CNN missed it, NBC missed it, and CBS missed it— but not OC180NEWS.com. We bring you the most important election result for West Orange County—Dean Grose is back.

In Tuesday’s voting, former Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grose was elected to one of the six 67th Assembly District slots on the Orange County Republican Central Committee. Grose, with 11,358 votes, or 9.3% of the total, was the fifth in a field of 12 candidates. The top six vote-getters are elected.

Of the seven fellow Republicans Grose beat out to win his seat, four were incumbents--Kristine Alonzo, Valerie C. Dickerson, Devin Dwyer, and Mike McGill. The three non-incumbent candidates Grose beat were Matthew Harper, who was elected to the number six slot, Vivian Kirkpatrick-Pilger, and, Judy Ahrens.
Besides Grose and Harper, the other four candidates elected to the central committee were Scott Baugh, the Chair of the Orange County GOP, incumbent Jerry Jackson, Steve Hamilton, and Cathy Green, Mayor of Huntington Beach. The 67th Assembly District includes Cypress, Huntington Beach, La Palma, Los Alamitos, Rossmoor, Seal Beach, and portions of Anaheim, Garden Grove, Stanton, and Westminster.

Yesterday www.OC180NEWS.com caught up with Grose at his granddaughter’s graduation in Las Vegas. ”Only two of the incumbents made it through and so I’m looking forward to working with the entire committee on trying to bring about some clarity and some core values back to the GOP,” Grose said.

Shortly after Barak Obama was elected President of the United States, Grose emailed to some friends a cartoon which depicted the front lawn of the White House as a watermelon patch. The supposed humor of this cartoon comes from the assumption that black people are unusually fond of watermelon. The email quickly ended up on the internet and garnered so much media attention and public ridicule, that Grose decided to resign as Mayor and as a member of the city council. It was one of the few times a Los Alamitos City Council meeting had national live television coverage.

We asked Grose if he anticipated another run for elected office. He told us “there’s a strong possibility that I may rerun for the council seat. I’ve had a lot of people—especially in the last six to eight months—come up to me and indicate that they were very supportive of having me back on the council. But, I haven’t totally made that decision yet.”

If Grose chooses to run for Los Alamitos City Council, he would have a shot at one of three seats which will be on the November 2 ballot.
Council members Troy Edgar, Dean Zarkos, and Gerry
Mejia are all up for reelection. The candidates may draw their candidate papers—and thereby express their intent to run—as early as July 12, and the latest filing date for the November general election is August 6. None of the current council members are termed out this year by the city’s maximum of three terms, but after a recent City Council meeting, Mejia indicated she was considering not running for reelection.