Historic win for Mercado
Dems out 2-term incumbent Singh as property appraiser
Orange County Democrats ousted two-term incumbent Rick Singh from the property appraiser’s office Tuesday, overwhelmingly choosing to put a woman, state Rep. Amy Mercado, in the post for the first time in county history.
Mercado, 46, advances to November’s general election as a virtual lock with a pair of write-in candidates as her only competition.
She won about 60% of the vote while Singh got just 32% and Khalid Muneer took about 8%. “I think folks are tired of the same old, same old,” Mercado said.
She said Singh was weighed down by a criminal probe into his
office, though a state attorney decided against charging Singh with official misconduct.
“All the problems he had were self-made,” she said.
Singh said he was proud of his office’s work, his reputation for standing up for “the little guy” and for being the first public official to make $15 the minimum wage in his office. He decried the campaign’s “dark money” which paid for attack ads against him.
During the campaign, Singh blamed “big business interests” for trying to oust him from the job, specifically naming Disney with whom he has often sparred in court over his office’s appraisals of its hotels and other properties. He claimed the company was behind a flood of attack ads from a Miamibased political action committee, which promoted Mercado and hammered away at him.
“I think it decided the entire race,” he said. “You’ve got people cooped up at home [because of the coronavirus pandemic] and you’re bombarding them with hundreds and hundreds of dollars [of campaign ads] to sway them. It’s relentless…But it is what it is.”
Businessman Khalid Muneer, 68, who finished a distant third in the race, congratulated Mercado.
“The voters have spoken and the voters have said we need change in Orange County,” he said. “That’s what I wanted.”
Mercado and Muneer criticized Singh’s behavior in office, arguing he cost taxpayers more than $500,000 in legal fees to defend himself from accusations and whistle-blower lawsuits filed by former members of his administration. While the state attorney said there was no evidence of a crime, a report issued by the office noted that his office altered documents for an audit.
Mercado noted she is also the first Puerto Rican elected to the appraiser’s office. She previously made history in the Legislature in 2016 with her father state Sen. Victor Torres as the first father-daughter pair to serve together. The county property appraiser is one of the most powerful locally elected positions because the office determines how much homeowners and land holders pay in taxes by setting the value of properties. The post pays an annual salary of about $170,000.
The write-ins who closed the primary to Republicans are Tim Loucks, a former mayor of Groveland who supported Singh’s campaign, and Republican Scott Boyd, a former Orange County commissioner who once considered running against Singh.