So last evening I was walking around Laguna Niguel when I passed the storefront of a vanquished local pizza joint gone dark.

And, in the window, hung the above sign.

Yes, Gina’s is coming to town.

A most heinous day of reckoning it is.

And this is not political. In fact, it’s not even particularly civic. It is merely the Code Red warning of a born-and-raised New Yorker who knows how to order two slices and a Coke; who knows the proper amount of grease to drip off the tip; who would rather lick the sidewalk than stop for pizza at a Sbarro’s or Chuck E. Cheese.

To you dear readers, I offer this declaration: Gina’s ain’t it.

Seriously, Gina’s ain’t it. It’s pizza, in the way “Police Academy III” was a movie. It’s pizza, in the way “Ted Cruz” is a man. Or, put different: What do you get when you combine shitty sauce, processed cheese, tasteless crust and the charm of an arm pit?

Gina’s.

So, yeah. I don’t know what measures were taken in the LA Times poll; I don’t know if those surveyed lack tongues; I don’t know if, perhaps, this state thinks Gina’s is high-level pizza.

But it’s profoundly bad.

Thank you.

Look at the above photograph.

Look at it twice.

Have your friends look at it.

Have your relatives look at it.

If you know any MAGA folk, have them look at it.

That’s Donald Trump, in Washington on Sept. 11, sleeping—literally sleeping—as names of the 9.11 victims were read off at the Pentagon. He was there for a ceremony honoring the 184 military personnel and civilians murdered when American Airlines Flight 77 hit the building.

If you’re thinking, “Well, that’s just a quick snapshot as he blinked …”

And I just wanna say, sincerely, WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE DOING HERE?

Seriously—what the fuck are we doing here?

Why are we, as a nation, continuing to cover for this soulless, sleep-deprived rapist ghoul? When do Republicans stand up and say, “Enough”? When do they say, “hmm … maybe Sleepy Joe wasn’t nearly as bad as this?”

It’s just the height of insanity, that 30 percent of the nation still thinks this dude is OK.

More to the point, the same guy who lied (yet again) about being a 9.11 hero couldn’t even muster the decency and respect to stay awake and honor the deceased. It’s beyond outrageous.

It’s un-American.

Today, as you obviously know, is the 25th anniversary of the 9.11 terrorist attacks.

Today, like clockwork, is my least-favorite spot on the calendar.

And as a native New Yorker, and as a guy who lived closely through it, I want to ask a favor to all my California peeps …

Talk about 9.11. Tell your kids. Tell your nieces and nephews. Tell your cousins. Obviously, not if they’re too young. But if they’re in their teens—tell them. Tell them about the heroism. Tell them about the heartbreak. Tell them about a uniquely united America. Tell that that life is finite, and must be appreciated.

Tell them about the four planes; about the terrorists. Tell them about flyers; about the smoke and fire. Tell them about people who saw their lives extinguished. Tell them about George W. Bush and Rudy Giuliani and tell them about the members of Congress—left and right—standing before the U.S. Capitol and, as one body, singing, “God Bless America.”

Tell them about Todd Beamer and Mychal Judge; about Tyler Ugolyn and Vernon Cherry.

Tell them America can be united and can be embracing and can be special. Even if it seems distant and faded.

Tell them about September 11, 2001.

Tell them all of it.

Lest we forget.

“The issues that he bawled about usually meant nothing to him. He was ready to abandon them whenever he could make votes by doing so, and to take up new ones at a moment’s notice … [He] was a vulgar and common man, a cad undiluted. He was ignorant, bigoted, self-seeking, blatant and dishonest. His career brought him into contact with the first men of his time; he preferred the company of rustic ignoramuses…. He seemed only a poor clod like those around him … full of an almost pathological hatred of all learning, all human dignity, all beauty, all fine and noble things. He was a peasant come home to the dung-pile. Imagine a gentleman, and you have imagined everything that he was not.”

— H.L. Mencken in an obit of William Jennings Bryan, 1925

•••

Even though I live here in Orange County, I am a New Yorker.

I will always be a New Yorker.

I was born and raised in a town, Mahopac, located about an hour north of Manhattan, and after graduating college and spending 2 1/2 years as a writer in Nashville, I moved to the Big Apple to work for Sports Illustrated and eat an endless supply of bagels (with whitefish and tomato) and late-night slices of pizza. It is no exaggeration to say I love New York City. The buzz. The passion. The ‘Fuck you’ and ‘Your mom’ and potholes and summer piss stench and asphalt hoops and Nas and Biggie and Billy Joel and … I love everything about it. In many ways, it’s who I am.

I repeat: It is who I am.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was in the rear seat of a car driving across Manhattan and heading toward the Holland Tunnel. It was me and three Sports Illustrated co-workers, with an ultimate destination of New Jersey to attend a golf tournament (unusual for me, because I loathe golf). As we cruised west, one of us noticed a bunch of people standing on an upcoming corner, gazing upward. Within a few seconds, we saw what they saw: A gaping, burning hole in Tower 1 of the World Trade Center.

This was my introduction to … The Worst.

What followed remains borderline indescribable. We reached our destination, sat in a room and—together—watched on TV as buildings smoldered and planes crashed and people (who began their days presuming it was just another Tuesday) faced the unfathomable decision of whether to leap to their deaths or burn to their deaths. I couldn’t believe it. Could. Not. Believe. It. Upon somehow finding a way to return to my apartment late that night, I hugged my fiance and just … I dunno. Absorbed. Crumbled. Paced and moaned and failed to understand the enormity of what had occurred. This was impossible, right? It had to be …

The days that followed … I mean, people talk about New Yorkers never being more united, and it’s the truth. But what I remember most are the flyers. Flyers here, flyers there. Flyers on doors and windows and platforms. HAVE YOU SEEN and IF YOU SEE. A friend and I shuffled over to a midtown armory, where loved ones looking for the lost gathered. With everyone aspiring to help (but little actual need), I stood, cupped my hands and announced, “IF YOU HAVE A FLYER, MY FRIEND AND I WILL MAKE COPIES OF IT AND POST ALL OVER THE CITY!” Dozens of people handed us pieces up paper, including one woman—the wife of a man named Robert Pugliese—who said, glumly, “I know he’s dead.” We spent the next six or seven hours posting flyers. Knowing, as Robert Pugliese’s wife did, the people pictured were most certainly gone.

I also recall the smell. Even though our place was about a mile north of Ground Zero, the stench was inescapable. Metallic, burning rubber, wood, fleshy. Up your nostrils. On your skin.

God, I fucking hate 9.11.

Anyone in New York City at the time hates 9.11.

•••

Wait.

I want to correct that last sentence, because it’s not true.

Donald Trump, a born-and-raised New Yorker who was in the city on the worst-ever day, seems to love 9.11. Or at least love lying about it. And using it to make himself some sort of hero.

Which he most certainly was not.

And before I delve into this, I want to scream one point, because it pisses me the fuck off. So … here I go: EVEN THOUGH EVERYTHING I’M ABOUT TO WRITE IS VERIFIABLY TRUE, THE MAINSTREAM NEWS MEDIA RARELY (AKA: ALMOST NEVER) BRINGS THIS UP. EVERY YEAR WE HAVE A 9.11 ANNIVERSARY, EVERY YEAR DONALD TRUMP SPEWS SOME BULLSHIT, EVERY YEAR WE ALL PRETEND THERE’S NO HISTORY HERE! IT’S INFURIATING!

Put different …

Donald Trump’s first awful act in regard to 9.11 came within a few hours of the disaster, when he went on TV (his favorite place) and bragged about now having Manhattan’s tallest building. If you’re thinking, “No way someone does that”—yes, way.

Here’s the clip …

It’s funny. Before he became president, and was just a reality TV bozo, I sorta gave the dude the benefit of the doubt. Like, maybe he misspoke or had a different idea in mind. But—no. We know Donald Trump far too well, and this is precisely who he is. He cannot not brag, even if the subject involves ruination and destruction.

Don’t believe me? Twelve years before the Sept. 11 attacks a trio of Trump-employed casino executives died in a helicopter crash in New Jersey. Initially, Trump pretended to care about the lost ones, and tried wearing the Mr. Compassionate mask he wears from time to time …

Alas, he couldn’t do it. Before long, Trump shifted from expressing grief to … telling the news media he had narrowly escaped the disaster. In fact, not only did he say so in conversations—he made it part of his bio. Escaped near death. Almost died. Only, cough, it was a lie. A 100-percent lie.

Think about that for a moment. Think about the type of broken brain that even considers this an option.

Step 1: My employees die.

Step 2: They leave behind families and friends.

Step 3: Everyone seems sad.

Step 4: They’re not paying attention to me.

Step 5: I’ll lie and say I was supposed to be on the chopper, too.

•••

Through the months, years and decades that followed 9.11, Trump’s lies grew as does his love for teenage girls.

In no particular order:

• Trump has said time and time again he saw one of the planes hit the Towers from his window at Trump Tower.

His quote:

One problem: The building is located on 5th Avenue between 56th and 57th Streets, a little more than four miles away from Ground Zero. Unless Donald Trump is Superman, the view literally does not exist.

• Trump has insisted, in the immediate aftermath, he sent a more than 100 workers to help with the on-sight recovery. There is, literally, no record of this, and nary a single Trump “worker” has said they were dispatched to Ground Zero. More to the point, tight records were kept of anyone/everyone allowed at the site. There is not a single notation of Trump employees on the scene.

• Trump has insisted he went to Ground Zero and the recovery zone—“Soon after, I went down to Ground Zero with men who worked for me to try to help in any little way that we could.”

And …

There is, again, literally no record of this. No log entry, no photography, no memories of others. Zip, zero.

Supporters will point to this image …

… but that’s Trump blocks away, where he was doing TV interviews.

Because, of course he did.

• Trump has said, in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, he made a $10,000 to the 9.11 Foundation. Only, there’s literally no record of it. And if a public figure like Donald Trump makes a donation, there would most certainly be a record.

• The worst of the worst of the worst might be Trump at his apex xenophobic self. Trump has repeatedly insisted he saw Muslims celebrating atop buildings in Jersey City as the Twin Towers fell.

Don’t believe me? Roll the tape …

Of course, it was just a lie. Because why wouldn’t you use an unspeakable tragedy to spread hate? Just as he did with the Central Park Five? Just as he’s done with immigrants eating pets. Just as he always does, because he’s a spiteful, hateful, disgusting, small, petty piece of shit.

•••

And I always think about this—how disqualifying it should have been (and still be) for the president of the United States to have used our greatest tragedy to lie and lie and lie and lie. How gross it is. How evil it is. How inhumane it is. The man is remarkable, in that he has, literally, no empathy or compassion. He is a succubus, here to use and take and absorb.

He is evil, and his reaction to September 11, 2001 should have ended any chance of leadership.

Alas, 25 years after The Worst, we are here.

Led by the worst.

So if you don’t subscribe to Marc Elias’ Democracy Docket newsletter, you’re making a mistake and missing out.

Elias, head of the Elias Law Group and one of the nation’s leading voices on election corruption and interference, has been fighting—and winning—the White House in court over and over and over. And as far too many mainstream news media outlets act as if everything is relatively normal, Elias has been sounding the alarm.

Today, he blasted it.

I don’t usually do this, but I’m going to past the entirety of his missive …

Yesterday we learned that the U.S. Postal Service has been secretly building a new “Federal Ballot Mail Portal” to review state requests to transmit mail-in ballots to voters. According to a recent USPS rule that has been temporarily blocked by a federal court, before the Postal Service will deliver a mail-in ballot to a voter, it must compare the name on the envelope with a list submitted by state election officials.

According to the whistleblower, the build-out of this system has been “sloppy and rushed.” They point to the fact that the new system has “a zero-percent failure policy.” The result, according to them, is that entire batches of ballot requests will be rejected if any single one of them contains an error.

Here is how they explain it in the complaint: “As presently designed, if even one bar code on one single ballot in a bulk-mailing of 10,000 ballots fails to properly scan during the verification process, the entire batch is rejected and sent back to the state — effectively stopping the ballots from being mailed to voters.”

The whistleblower views this as a serious flaw in the system. “Even under ordinary circumstances this would be problematic,” they point out, “because of predictable errors in any barcode scanning process.”

And of course, because this entire system has been rushed and subject to court orders halting work, these are not “ordinary circumstances.”

What the whistleblower and others see as a serious flaw in the system is — I am virtually certain — viewed by the White House as one of its primary virtues. Donald Trump wants to cripple mail-in voting. Short of that, he wants to weaponize access to it and ballot rejections to suit his partisan political interests.

He is not interested in a system that might only reject a ballot at random. He wants to ensure that disenfranchisement can occur at scale with partisan consequences.

That is the system that the Postal Service appears to have built.

As to scale, it is obvious that the zero-percent failure policy allows the Postal Service to use the pretext of one bad name to disenfranchise thousands at a time. That is why the whistleblower worries that “millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all.”

One of the most obvious ways this can be weaponized to target Democratic voters is by the USPS deciding how many names go into a single batch. For example, a rule that requires all ballots in a single ZIP code to be batched together would disproportionately impact Democrats because they tend to live in higher-density areas than Republicans.

On top of that, consider what the most likely sources of discrepancies might be. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who released the whistleblower complaint, noted that “someone [who] has recently changed their name after marriage or moved” would be a potential trigger for these so-called “errors.” If targeting married women and more transient voters sounds familiar, it is because these same populations were targeted for disenfranchisement by the SAVE Act.

Then there is the simple fact that more Democrats vote by mail. So even without any specific targeting, the widespread disallowance of mail-in ballots would have a direct partisan effect on the election.

Donald Trump has known that mail-in voting hurts Republicans ever since he started lying about it in advance of the 2020 election. In May of that year, he posted that mail-in voting will “lead to the end of our Great Republican Party.” And he has been at it ever since.

He has been lying about the risks of fraud in the mail-in voting system just as long. In July 2020, he tweeted, “Mail-In Ballots will lead to massive electoral fraud and a rigged 2020 Election.”

By 2025, the only thing that had changed was his preferred social media platform and his odd use of all caps: “ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING, and everybody, IN PARTICULAR THE DEMOCRATS, KNOWS THIS.”

None of this is to suggest that Trump is a smart man or a political genius. He isn’t. But one of his greatest assets is his ability to have his cronies and sycophants execute his wishes without his needing to be involved in — or even understand — the details.

We have seen this with criminal prosecutions at the Department of Justice and statements by the chair of the FCC. Those seeking to gain access and favor execute his wishes without the need for explicit, detailed guidance.

In my view, that is the most likely explanation for the design of the USPS portal. It may be sloppy. It may be chaotic. But it is designed to achieve what Trump wants.

•••

I am waiting and waiting and waiting for someone … any-fucking-one to stand up and fight. Not just folks like us and folks like Elias—but national political leaders. Where are the press conferences in front of the Capitol? Where are the rallies? I am dumbfounded and bewildered, because it’s very hard to win elections when you’re a pebble slamming into an ocean of corruption.

Where is the outrage?

Woke up to this article in the New York Times. And this in the Washington Post. And this at NPR.

This is not alarming.

This is not potentially awful.

This is a 7,000-alarm fire; a man running out of a burning building, screaming, ELECTIONS ARE GOING TO BE RIGGED BY THE GOVERNMENT, AND Y’ALL ARE DEBATING HASAN PIKER AND WATCHING THE NEW SPIDER-MAN FILM!!!!!

Seriously, I don’t understand what’s going on here. The White House is gumming up voting. Literally gumming it up. Before our eyes. Intentionally. And we’re skipping along, firing off water guns at Pete Hegseth saying something gross, or J.D. Vance looking the fool.

So, I sit here, screaming at the top of my lungs …

FIRE!

FIRE!

FIRE!

Will anyone listen?

I took this photo a few hours ago on a corner in Laguna Niguel.

It reminded me of something worth sharing …

Even though I’ve devoted much of my life to sports, I’ve actually only placed one wager.

The date was June 27, 1988. Mike Tyson and Michael Spinks were fighting for the world’s heavyweight championship. I was 16, and it was the summer before my junior year at Mahopac High in rural New York. A bunch of us were gathered at Ari Pollock’s house to watch the brawl.

Seconds before the pugilists entered the ring, someone asked if I’d wanna wager five bucks.

“I think Spinks is gonna shock the world,” I said.

“No way,” he said.

“Yes way,”I said.

“Wanna bet $5 on it?”

“OK,” I said. “But it’ll be fun taking your money.”

We shook hands. Spinks entered the ring. Tyson entered the ring. Tyson looked like a bull hopped up on steroids. Spinks looked like a scared child.

Opening bell.

Pop.

Pow.

Pow.

Pop.

The fight ended in 91 seconds. Not 92—91. It wrapped with Michael Spinks famously draping the ring like a flashy throw rug.

I surrendered my $5, and immediately hated the idea of handing over money for no bang.

And that was that.

I’ve never gambled again.

And my underwear are boxer briefs.

So the above Tweet was fired off by the Orange County Republicans. And apparently they think it’s just insanely awful how Robert Garcia, CA-42 congressman, appeared at an event where there was a sign expressing that federal agents have “no balls.”

Here, specifically, is the banner …

Let’s review a couple of things:

• 1. The Orange County Republican Party is headed by three people. The first is Will O’Neill, the former Newport Mayor who has literally—not a single time—criticized his lord and savior, Donald Trump, for (drumroll, please) … starting a war with Iran with no planning or achievable objective; hiring a defense secretary with no experience for the job; bragging about POWs being chumps; complaining about enlistee being chumps; bragging about grabbing women by the pussies; devoting nearly all of his time and energy to vanity construction projects; lying repeatedly about Jan. 6 and the 2020 election. O’Neill said shit when a noose was arranged for Mike Pence; said shit when Gracey Vander Mark posed with the QAnon symbol; uttered nary a peep as masked agents have grabbed people off the streets for the crime of being brown and/or speaking with an accent.

Of the other two, one (Ray Gennawey) is a nepo baby who has nothing to say about DEI backlash while climbing the ladder based on the power of a local name with zip and the second (Leandra Blades) is a wildly insane culture warrior.

• 2. Facts are facts—and if you’re an ICE agent hiding behind a mask … you have no balls. And I almost mean that literally: The process where testicles are surgically extracted from your groin, placed into a jar and fed to Biff, the one-eyed eel. It’s actually wild, if you think about it, that people like O’Neill and Gennawey and Blades are supportive of modestly trained agents. Wearing masks. To cover their faces. Even after the murders, the violence, the clear lack of professionalism.

• 3. It must be sorta sad, being Will O’Neill. The state hates you. The county is drifting more and more purple, toward blue. You have a functioning head, but you have to engage with these nuts all … the … time. You know masks mandates had a purpose. You know public teachers bust their asses. You know Trump is a conman. But you’re trapped, like a fly in amber. Either play the game, or disappear. So you play. And there you are—a sad, small creature with no backbone.

• 4. The OC GOP social account needs some game. Or lessons. Or something.

Pathetic.

There was a man named Doug Sharp.

I knew him from research for my Tupac book. We spoke a few times about his different ties to the late rapper. Doug was a former actor who was trying to make ends meet, but failing. He had little money. His career flattened out. His car broke down. I usually don’t give interview subjects dough (you don’t pay people for talking), but, oh, a year after our last talk I sent him some bucks to help with car repairs. He sounded like life had him drowning and he needed … someone. Something. A moment.

Earlier this week, he sent me a suicide e-mail.

There were four of us on the chain—I didn’t know the others. The letter was seven paragraphs long, and read—in part …

The life ending act has already be ‘executed.’ A Single shot 9mm hollow point bullet to the right temple. A DO NOT RESESSICATE ORDER IS IN PLACE WITH MY PRIMARY CARE PHYSICIAN AND IN CALIFORNIA SUICIDE FALLS UNDER THE PROTECTION OF THE RIGHTS OF A DNR; ADDITIONALLY I AM WEARING A DNR BRACELET AND NECKLACE.

I have journals, VHS tapes from when I did standup and a myriad of photos. I would llike to ask you and Jeff Pearlemen to share this inofration and workout the boundaries of what is wanted and what is not worth your time. Feel free to compose a story or do nothing; it’s not like I am going to find out and I understand that what I am asking steps over the bouandaries of acquaintances.

I think back to the days and years when I had a wealth of friends; howevver I was never able to feel the love. I felt unworthy and always believed the love would end; and it did.

I called 9-1-1 to report, and hope—maybe—nothing had yet happened, or Doug backed out. I was on hold for 10 minutes. Ten minutes. I ultimately hung up and forwarded LAPD the letter. Nothing happened.

Doug Sharp is gone.

This is the second time in my life someone has sent me a suicide letter. The first happened about 12 years ago; a former classmate named David Clingerman. He had a wife who loved him; a daughter who loved him. But he could no longer withstand the pain.

Life is hard. Even when people seem chipper and OK, life is hard. We all need help, positivity, reassurances, kindness, empathy.

We need one another.

Life is hard.

A confession: Before sitting down with Katrina Foley last week at Bottega Angelina in Laguna Niguel, I was very much prepared to dislike her.

The District 5 Orange County Board of Supervisors rep had been described to me—by various people of various stripes—as blunt, raw, (occasionally) dismissive, (occasionally) lacking tact and edgy. There are warm and cuddly local political figures who tell you exactly what they presume you want to hear. They pretend to remember your name; laugh at your mediocre jokes; make empty promises they know will never be revisited.

And there is Katrina Foley.

Someone I know and trust told me that, at her core, Katrina Foley is “a wonk.”

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“She loves her job,” the friend said. “Loves it. Loves meetings. Loves policy. Loves putting pieces together. She’s probably not gonna hug you, and she can definitely sound a little harsh, but she’s gonna work her ass off for you.”

And, ultimately, that’s the Katrina Foley I met. In the midst of a tight re-election campaign against Republican Diane Dixon (a former Foley friend, turned rival), Foley was candid, open and real in her takes on the campaign, on the struggles of political life, of Dana Point Harbor headaches and the threat of pesticides and her (bizarre, bewildering) love of meetings.

One can visit her website here, and donate to her campaign here.

Peeps, I bring you Katrina Foley …

JEFF PEARLMAN: “All right. Serious first question. I have no idea why anybody would want your job. I understand public service and greater good and all that, but it just seems miserable running, fighting. Then you get elected and people yell at you. Why even do this stuff?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Yeah. So, I will say in general, I actually love this job. I didn’t really know what a county supervisor did. I had a general understanding, but our county supervisors were MIA in my area. And so, I thought it was more like city council, mayor, part-time kind of thing. But once I got here, I realized that you have so much influence on so many things. Social service safety net, homelessness prevention, development projects and the airport, all these things that I find to be fun to get involved in and solve problems for.

“So, in general, I love the job. It gives me a lot of reward to help people every single day. I know that sounds corny, but I actually respond to my emails. I like to help people. But I would say it’s very much harder to get good quality candidates. People who care about policy, people who care about responding to community needs and aren’t just doing it for some political reason.

“It’s hard to get those people because usually there’s all these challenges. They’re either professionals that are working and they don’t have the time to commit to something like city council or school board, or maybe they have the time, but they don’t have the thick skin, I’ll call it, to put themselves through the ringer, to have their personal attacks on them, their family at risk, people coming to their house. This is a different time now that we’re in.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “You literally had people come to your house?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Oh yeah.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Come to your house?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Yes.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Knock on your door?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “They came to my house at least three times. It could have been four, I can’t remember. And I had to get the dignitary detail to come over because they had flags and their megaphones and they were yelling things at me. The first time it happened, I was mayor of Costa Mesa. And it was during COVID. And my husband and I and my son, we’re in our backyard and we’re in the pool. I’m in a bikini swimming around with my family. And then I hear all this commotion and I’m like, ‘What is that?’ So, I go over to sneak a peek over the fence and I realize, “Oh no, they’re at our house.’ So, I run to get a towel.

“My backyard is the soccer fields. So, you could see into my backyard from the public soccer field. And then people start coming around the back. I’m like, ‘Okay, I don’t want any pictures of me into my bathing suit.’ And of course, my husband would say, ‘Well, that’d get you votes.’ I’m like, ‘I don’t think so.' Maybe 20 years ago.’ So that was our first experience with that kind of a chaotic situation. And then it happened several other times when I became the county supervisor. And so, yeah, my house is now a place where we have a drive-by every once in a while, I mean, in terms of the police presence.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Do you feel like we live in a time where you can’t just go out and talk to these people and be like, ‘Hey, what do you guys wanna discuss ...’ Is it far past that?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Three of the people that were at my house in that time period either pled guilty or were charged during the insurrection. So, no, I’m not going out and talking.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “No, I think that’s wise.”

KATRINA FOLEY: “You don’t really know the difference between ... sometimes when I was on the city council, a lot of rhetoric. There was this one guy, he was a self-described white nationalist and he’d always target me at the podium, but he was like one. There wasn’t a movement of him in our city. And the people that would come to the podium would have legitimate community issues that they wanted to address their council about and get redressed. Whereas now I just feel that sometimes people come and they tell us we’re going to go to hell. I mean, they say things that you can’t tell if it’s just rhetoric or they’re actually going to try to hurt you.

“I always err on the side of, ‘Okay, they’re using their public speech.’ I’m a huge advocate for the First Amendment, so I’m not going to cut anyone off from speaking. But at the same time, sometimes the words are insightful of violence.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Do you feel like in this regard, there’s a pre and post-COVID element to it?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “For sure. Yeah.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Something broke.”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Yeah. There was a change. And it’s gotten a little better over the last year, I would say. It’s not as dramatic as it was for the first couple of years I was on the board. So, there’s that, but that’s only part of the job. The board meetings occur twice a month, sometimes once a month, depending on how the days fall. And so, that’s that.

“But overall, our office is out working in the community, having positive experiences with the chambers, with new small businesses, with the community groups, the sand advocates. I’ve never learned so much about sand in my whole life. I never would think that this would be something I would be an expert on. Working with our Latino families in some of the areas of the south county area that had never had anybody even talk to them. They didn’t even know they had a county supervisor or what that was really.

“So, I like working with our healthcare safety net groups and the environmentalists. There isn’t a small business that I don’t like supporting. So, it’s really enjoyable, I’ll say, to do the work and to be out in the community. And people always say to me, ‘Oh, you have so much energy. How are you everywhere? And you’re so energetic. How do you not get tired?’ And it’s a strange phenomenon because I don’t get tired. I could go into a big, huge community meeting tired and leave super amped up and can’t go to sleep because I get fuel from the people.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “What time do you wake up in the morning usually?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “I start texting people early. I’m usually up no later than 6 o’clock.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “What time do you go to bed?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “I probably go to bed around 11.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “You are not getting enough sleep there.”

KATRINA FOLEY: “I know, I know. I know, but I try. Even when I go to bed early, my clock doesn’t let me sleep more than six or seven hours. I just can’t do it.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Wait, so here’s something about you that I think is really interesting. You may disagree. My least favorite part of having started this website is any meeting. I hate meetings. I don’t like meetings as a sports journalist. I’ve never enjoyed meetings.”

KATRINA FOLEY: “You would not like this job.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Facts.”

KATRINA FOLEY: “I have meetings all day long every day.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Wait, all I see when I go to your Facebook page, ‘So excited to be at the blank’ and ‘Happy to be at the blank’ and ‘Was at the blank’ and ‘At the blank.’ Here she is at a table. Here she is speaking. I hate meetings with every part of my body. And you seem like...”

KATRINA FOLEY: “I like meetings.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “How does one like meetings?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Okay. So, Monday, you would have hated my day.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Okay. Tell me your full day Monday.”

KATRINA FOLEY: “My full day Monday. I started my day at 9 am in a meeting, and I went from 9 to 4:30 in back-to-back meetings, back to back to back. I didn’t stop meeting with people. Mostly staff coming and giving me briefings on initiatives and updates and preparation for the board meetings and all that. Mondays are when I do all those briefing meetings. They didn’t even give me time to eat lunch or go to the bathroom. I had an OCTA Zoom meeting and it finished at 3:40. And I’m like, ‘I’m reclaiming my time. I’m going to stop the meeting now since we’re done. We don’t need to chit-chat because I got 20 minutes to eat lunch.’”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “That’s funny.”

KATRINA FOLEY: “So, yeah. I mean, I like meetings.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “You really, truly, genuinely like meetings?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “I do. Some of the meetings I like … is sometimes you can’t get the work done unless you have a meeting. People think meetings waste time, but what I try to do, I try to be efficient with the meetings, especially when we’re trying to solve a problem. So, I’ll give you an example. Dana Point Harbor, when I first got elected in December of 2022, before I got sworn in to the fifth district, I went and had a briefing with the Harbor Partners, SDG&E, the county real estate, all these different groups.

“So, I had what Alyssa [Napuri, Foley’s deputy chief of staff] likes to refer to as a full Foley meeting. And that is where I pull everyone together to try to figure out what’s the clog? Who’s creating the clog or the cog in the wheel? And so, in this case, we had no utility permits for the parking structure for the Data Point Harbor. And the importance of that is that they can’t do anything until they get the utility permits. And at that point, they’re almost four years, five years into the contract. So, everyone’s pointing fingers. The developers are saying that it’s SDG&E. SDG&E is saying that it’s their consultant, the county. Everyone’s pointing fingers.

“So, I just went about asking that question. I’m one of two women in the room. It’s all men. And I just asked every single one direct questions to try to find out what was the problem. And then I said, ‘Okay, send me all the emails, SDG&E, that you have related to this certification.’ And it turned out we figured out the problem. The problem was the guy wasn’t certified to get the permits, so he couldn’t sign what was called a welcome packet. It was like a simple thing that was the problem causing us not to get the permits. But nobody knew because everybody’s delegating and they’re just assuming everyone’s doing what they’re supposed to be doing.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Wait, super nerdy follow-up. How did you figure out what the problem was?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “I listened to all what they were saying and I asked for the emails because I felt like, okay, I’m going to read the thread of emails to figure out what is supposed to happen next. And I read all the emails and there was an email that was a welcome package. It’s an SDG&E procedural requirement. You have to sign this package, but the only way you could sign the package is if you’re certified as a utility consultant. The guy wasn’t certified. It was that simple. And so, we discovered that and then, wow, solution found. And we ended up getting somebody else to handle it and then moving forward. It was like, boom, it all flowed after that. But I don’t know, sometimes people don’t ask questions.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “So, I write books for a living, and I wrote a book about the rapper Tupac. And finding little things like what kind of cigarettes he smoked or the name of an aunt or something like that just gives me a jolt. You seem super nerdy in that way too …”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Well, yes. It’s also because I was a litigator, and I’m still a litigator, I just don’t go to trial anymore, but for nearly 30 years. So, as a litigator, your job is to find the smoking gun and the needle in the haystack to prove your case. So, I just approach all of these county problems that are what seem to be gigantic problems that people can’t solve for all these decades like I’m a litigator trying to prove my case. So, I mean, it helps.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Did you get a high off of it? You find the reason the parking can’t be …”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Oh yeah, yeah. Of course. And that’s why I love this job. Every day I get to solve some problem. And I didn’t really realize about myself how much I like solving problems until I got this job. I mean, I knew it, but not really.”

“But I also get really frustrated if I can’t solve the problem. So, that’s the downside. I’m not one of those politicians that can just say, ‘Well, that’s somebody else’s problem. I did my part.’ I feel like obligated to fix it.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “What is an example from your career of something you weren’t able to fix that you wanted to fix? Or something you wanted to solve and couldn’t quite figure it out?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Well, I’m experiencing it right now, Dana Point Harbor. I thought we had it all solved, but all the politics is getting in the way of the progress.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Wait, obviously I’ve got to ask about this, but I’m actually fascinated by Dana Point Harbor a million different ways. So I can’t say I love Newport as a place to go. Meaning, I used to write my books at the Harbor House. And I like sitting in a corner booth at the Harbor House. It smells a little funky and the food is grimy and gritty and … I dig that. Is there a concern that Dana Point at the end of the day is going to wind up being Newport II?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Well, first of all, I don’t think it’s going to be Newport. Believe it or not, the perception about the Newport Harbor is not actually what Newport Harbor is. There’s a lot of mom and pops. There’s a lot of really long-time businesses in Newport Harbor. There’s a lot of old money in Newport Harbor. It’s not all shiny and new like everyone’s thinking. So, I do think it’s going to be very different. My dad was a deep-sea fisherman in Santa Barbara, so he’s had every dirty job you could imagine. And there’s a relevance to this story. I was in high school when he was a deep-sea fisherman in Santa Barbara. My senior year, I think. It turns out Joe Ueberroth was revitalizing the harbor in Santa Barbara.

“And as part of that revitalization, the old-school fishermen who fished out of the harbor, who hung out at the ... I can’t think of the name of it right now, but the little cafe there, all the places you’re talking about. We had those at Santa Barbara Harbor also. And people got really upset because they were going to get rid of all these places and the new places were going to take over and it wasn’t going to have the same character that it had. But the new harbor got built and people still go to the little cafe. It just has a different facade now. And the fishermen found a new place to hang and everybody found their corner, if you will. I suspect that will happen here. And to me, it’s not going to be like Newport. It’s unique in and of itself. It doesn’t feel like Newport to me.

“I think the whole thing, ‘Don’t Newport my Dana Point,’ is really because the developers are from Newport. And so, that’s where I think that comes from. But it doesn’t matter who was in charge of tearing down the buildings. People would be upset. But, look, I had my office in one of the buildings. They were old, leaking, very inefficient, the heat and air not working. The county just left the harbor to deteriorate all these years.

“And if there’s one thing that I have tried to bring to the job is that we have to maintain our infrastructure. We can’t just let things deteriorate like what was happening in this harbor for decades. Not even just a couple years, decades. So, I don’t think it’s going to be like Newport. I think it’ll be its own. It’ll create its own little community. People will still get out there and walk. The Jazzercise ladies that have been going there for 35 years, they’re going to still be there. And we’ll have our county area where we have all the free amenities.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “What are the biggest pains in the ass for you in regard to Dana Point and this getting completed?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “I feel like I’m the scapegoat for the failure to find financing.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Ah.”

KATRINA FOLEY: “I think the hotel developer can’t find the financing. She’s trying to blame me.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “How do you deal with that as a political figure? Because on the one hand you’re running for re-election. On the other hand, job’s a job …”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Yeah. So, I’m trying to get the project, the lease agreements approved so that there isn’t an excuse that you can’t find financing. If after the leases are bifurcated, which they keep saying is the reason they can’t get the financing, then what’s your excuse now? I mean, you signed a contract in 2018 that included commercial core marina hotels all under one lease. Well, you must have known in 2018 that you weren’t going to be able to get the financing because that’s what they say, they couldn’t get the financing because the hotels have to be separated out.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Is it tough to be in your position where any business person can blame the local political figure?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Oh, yeah.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “But the local political figure has to be really careful about blaming a business person.”

KATRINA FOLEY: “For sure. But what I will say in my 25 years of public service, starting as a planning commissioner, I have worked with incredible property owners. Henry Segerstrom, who had great vision, who did everything in a professional way. Working with staff, working with you, addressing any concerns of the council as a whole, of the planning commissioners, trying to find yes always. Compromising where they could to get to yes so everyone could have a win and we could all celebrate. William Lyon, Irvine Company, The Ranch, Tony Moiso. No one does what’s happening here, where you’re taking this all like a street fight in the media. I’ve never experienced this before.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Does it make your head explode?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Well, it’s kind of disappointing because Alyssa and I put our heart and soul in trying to get the approvals for the entitlements. We used a lot of political capital, both with the Coastal Commission, with the labor unions, with community groups. And we really did it because we believed in the outcome is going to benefit, hundreds of jobs going to be created. Lots of revenue coming in for the county and to help the county side of the harbor stay functional.

“When I first got the job to represent District 5, the prior supervisor had in the works, which I had to stop, to give the Dana Point Harbor Partners a contract to take over the county side as well. And the residents would’ve been completely opposed to that, which they’re even the feedback we get just we have a notice because we have this community meeting tonight. Everyone’s freaking out thinking it’s going to be the same thing. Commercializing of the ... to have to keep saying over and over and over again, ‘That’s not what we’re doing. We’re just trying to upgrade. It’s old. It needs to be upgraded.’”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Wait, so you have a meeting tonight?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Yeah. A meeting. Another meeting.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “I was going to say, are you more revved up for it? Or are you like, ‘I would love to go home and watch realty TV?’”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Well, first of all, I don’t watch reality, just TV. I’m more into ‘Gilded Age’ and ‘Bridgerton.’”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Fair.”

KATRINA FOLEY: “But no, I’m a workaholic. I love working. I would be working on something even if I’m not going to a meeting. I’m not good at relaxing.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Nordhoff High School, 1984, found the article on you …”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Ha. I know.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “It was actually very affirming. You were this way in 1984. So, I’m actually interested. Growing up, when was your first idea or germination of, ‘I might want to go into some kind of...’”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Never.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Never?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Didn’t even cross my mind. I didn’t know what politics was. Even in 1984 when Gary Hart came to our school …”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Did you even know who Gary Hart? I know it wasn’t the Gary Hart who ran for president, but did you know who Gary Hart was?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “I knew who he was because he was coming to our school and I was assigned to interview him.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “You wrote for the high school newspaper?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Yes, yes. It’s so funny, I had forgotten my question until I reread that today. So, the reason I was asking about the absences was twofold. I lived on my own that year ...”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “In high school?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “I was not living at home. My mom and my siblings had moved to Texas and I did not want to move to Texas. And so, my mom arranged for me to have a room that she rented in someone’s house, and I lived on my own.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Wait, what town was this?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Ojai. And then my senior year, I moved from there into my friend’s. I live with my friend’s family. And I worked at McDonald’s. Ojai does not allow any franchises. So, McDonald’s opened on the outskirts of Ojai.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “What year are we talking?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “It was 1984 or ‘85. I graduated ‘85. So, I got a job at McDonald’s. I was on the track team that year also. So, I was working. Sometimes I would miss an elective because I had to go to work. And then I hurt myself in a track meet.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “What was your event in track?

KATRINA FOLEY: “One time I did the 100-yard sprint and I never did it again. I ran cross country. I was not a short distance runner, but the coach was like, ‘You can do it.’ Coach was wrong.”

“I could speak in front of 500 people, but running 100 yards terrified me. So, I never did it again. But I pulled something, whatever. I don’t even remember. So, I was out of school for a couple days. But they had this weird rule, which I still to this day would oppose. If you’re getting an A or a B or whatever the grade is on all your tests and all your papers, why would you get your grade lowered for absences? That is stupid. Because kids have lives.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Sure.”

KATRINA FOLEY: “But anyway.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Wait, no, not anyway. So, Gary Hart comes to school …”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Yeah.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “And you kind of fire away.”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Yeah. But it’s funny because that article, and if you read it in context of who I am now, you might think I’m this way always. But no, at that time in my life, I helped with the junior varsity cheer squad. And I was all about my girlfriends and my boyfriend. And I was not at all interested in politics. I didn’t even know what politics was.

“And I did not get interested in politics until I got to UCLA. I mean, my mom was apolitical. We didn’t talk about politics. I had no idea what politics was. I got to UCLA and then my whole world changed. It was the Year of the Woman, Senator Boxer, Senator Feinstein around the ballots. I interviewed Senator Boxer because I was the editor for the news magazine, for the women’s magazine on campus.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Do you remember interviewing her?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Oh, yeah. I even have the cassette tape still.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Were you terrified or were you confident?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “I mean, I think I was probably nervous. Look, I was a ballerina and I did dance recitals as a girl. That was my escape from my dysfunctional family. So, I think I always figured out a way to project confidence even if I’m nervous. So, I’ve been doing that for my whole life. So, people don’t always know if I’m nervous. But in that case, I don’t remember feeling nervous, but maybe I was. Who knows? It was a long time ago.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Wait, I have to rewind here. You’re a senior in high school. Your parents are divorced?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Yeah. So, my parents were divorced when I was two. And then my dad lived in Santa Barbara. I lived with my mom lots of different places. I have two siblings. And my brother’s an army veteran. But my stepdad is who we lived with in Ojai. And he is what I refer to as my evil stepfather.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Does he know that you refer to him as your evil stepfather?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Well, he’s dead. I don’t care. He knows how much we don’t like him. So, he’s actually the reason that in my yearbook it says I want to be a lawyer. And that is because he was a bad man, raging alcoholic. He would take our family on these terrible excursions. It was horrific. I was like the adult in the room at 12, but he always targeted me. I was the target. And so, my mom was always trying to protect me against him. That’s why I was always in activity, so I didn’t have to be at home.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Did your mom work or she stay at home?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “No, my mom worked. Oh, she had to work. I mean, she did all kinds of different jobs. Real estate and sales.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Is she still alive?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Yes. We built her a house in the back.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Oh, cool.”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Yeah. But this guy, he was just a bad person. And the ultimate definition of how bad he was, was that when my mom took my sister, who was my half-sister, and my brother, and they moved to Texas, he tried to get custody of my little sister because he wanted the disability check. And so, he took our family through this horrific trial. And my mom had a friend who was a lawyer. He was a corporate lawyer. In retrospect, I learned all this as an adult. He didn’t know family law. My mom just got put through the ringer. He got custody of my sister, which he never should have. And he laid out this whole thing.

“My sister actually thought that her dad wanted her. He didn’t want her. He just wanted the money. And it was very painful to my sister. It was painful to our whole family. And I said that day, I’m going to be a lawyer because I don’t want any women to go through this again.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “You remember this?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Oh, yeah. Oh, I do. Because he put me on the stand and it was terrible. So, I was probably 13 at that time. And it inspired me to become a lawyer. Now, I ultimately didn’t do family law, but that’s what got me committed to representing people who don’t have a voice to represent themselves. So, I can thank him for that, even though I despised the man.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Wait, I’m not letting you off this easy. You’re a senior in high school and your mom and your evil stepfather and your siblings moved to Texas.”

KATRINA FOLEY: “My stepfather didn’t move. My mom left because she finally realized she had to get out of there. And I was on my own my freshman year.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Freshman year of?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “High school. Fourteen. So, I’ve been on my own. I mean, I’m not living by myself. We rented a room for me. I’ve been pretty much independent since I was 14. And so, I’ve been working since I was 12 because my mom was really poor and we didn’t have any money. So, if I wanted a new Chemin de Fer jeans, I had to work for it.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “What were the different jobs besides McDonald’s you’ve had in your early working days?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “So, I cleaned a lady’s mobile home and it was through the Youth Employment Service Organization. Her house was spotless. She just wanted to help young people. I babysat, obviously. Everybody babysits at my age. And then I sanded gourds for a while.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “How does one enter the sanded gourd industry?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “The Youth Employment Service. They just had these random jobs. I was a Girl Friday, I was a cocktail waitress, a bartender.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “What a Girl Friday? I’m sorry …”

KATRINA FOLEY: “I did errands for this restaurant owner, this French restaurant. I would run around, go to the grocery store, pick up things for him. They don’t call it that anymore. But yeah, I cleaned motel rooms. Yeah, I had a lot of jobs. Legal secretary. That was my year after college, legal secretary. And then after that, it’s all been lawyer jobs.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “And why’d you go to UCLA?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “I always wanted to go to UCLA. It’s like my dream school. I got into UCI out of high school and I declined. I didn’t know anything. I was dumb. I said, ‘Why would I? I don’t want to live in Orange County.’ And then I ended up making my whole life here.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “You got into UCI, but didn’t go?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “I went to Santa Barbara City College for two years. And then I went to UCLA for three years because I did a double major.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Besides the traumatic upbringing you experienced with a shitty stepfather, all that … what do you feel like steered you to actually entering politics? Was there a moment?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “So this is the dork that I am. When I moved here after law school, my husband is from Costa Mesa. But I didn’t know one person. I didn’t know one lawyer. I knew my husband’s high school friends, that’s it. And his parents. And so, I said, ‘Oh, what can I get involved in where I can meet people?’ It was 1997. And there was a woman, Libby Cowan was her name. She was running for re-election to the city council.

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Some people take up bowling or knitting or theater.”

KATRINA FOLEY: I know. Yeah. And so, she was one of the first gay elected officials in Orange County.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Libby Cowan?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Libby Cowan. Yeah. So, I didn’t know that at the time. I just knew she was a woman running for a city council. And so, I sent my resume and I was like all official. I did a fax. I did a fax! And then she called me and she says, ‘Well, okay. I’m going to hire you.’ I go, ‘Really? Okay, that’s so great.’ She says, ‘And the pay is nothing.’

JEFF PEARLMAN: “I’m in!”

KATRINA FOLEY: “I had so much fun meeting all the people. And then the planning commissioner position came open and I thought, ‘Oh, I could use my legal skills.’ And I used to live in West Los Angeles near Third Street Promenade when they redid Third Street Promenade. So, they were redoing west side Costa Mesa. That was the discussion at the time. I thought, ‘Oh, I have lots of great ideas because I just came from West Los Angeles.’ So, I applied and I got appointed and the rest is history.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “In 2002, you lost in the Costa Mesa City Council race. And that was your first election. What happened?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Well, first of all, I learned that running on a platform of ‘Costa Mesa needs a strategic plan’ is not a very good campaign.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Why is that a bad campaign?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “It doesn’t relate. People don’t relate to that. We did need that, and we ultimately did do that. But people want you to fix their potholes. They want you to beautify the neighborhood. They want you to make sure the schools are good. The traffic is reduced. Storefronts are open. Strategic plan, no one knows what that means. It doesn’t resonate. So, it was a bad campaign slogan. Or not slogan, but platform.

“And then additionally what I learned was you have to get every endorsement in writing because I never ran for office before. If someone signs my nomination papers, I don’t know about you, but I would think that that person supports me running for office because I would never sign someone’s nomination papers that I don’t support. Well, apparently my neighbor didn’t support me, but he signed my nomination papers, but I didn’t know.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “And did that come back to bite you?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Yeah, yeah, because he said he didn’t support me and I had him listed and they used this big headline. So, I learned, okay, you have to get stuff. You have to tighten it up a little bit. So, I learned from that. I learned a lot. I wasn’t partisan at that time. I didn’t have identity as a partisan person.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Were you registered as a Democrat?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Yeah, I’m lifelong Democrat. But it wasn’t relevant for me to the job. I wasn’t involved in the party. And that was the issue. That began—sorry, Costa Mesa—but that began the time in Costa Mesa where everything turned partisan because they wanted to take me out and never let me get elected. And they decided to always use partisanship as the way to do it. So, in 2004, I won and I kept winning.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Wait, I want to ask you a question before you go on with that. When you’re you and you’re just like this nerdy political person, and you have this first, not just a loss, but almost like a lesson that like, ‘Oh, politics is ugly and sucky and blah, blah, blah.’ How does it not in a way deter you from pursuing this to that degree?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “It’s a really good question. I don’t even know the answer to that question. I guess I’m tenacious is the only way I could describe that. I don’t like to give up and I certainly don’t like to lose. And so, if I’ve lost something, I try to win it some other way. That’s what I did.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “So, when you came back and won two years later …”

KATRINA FOLEY: “I got the most votes in the history of the city.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “What did that mean to you?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Well, it meant that there were things we did wrong in our campaign that we corrected. I had a campaign consultant. I changed the whole way I did it. I was more professional in how I ran the campaign. I ran it more less like I’m the neighbor running and more like a real campaign.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “You ran a tougher operation?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “One of my faults is I don’t like losing.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Are you actually like … if you’re at home, I don’t know, with the husband playing chess, you’re kind of an …”

KATRINA FOLEY: “I don’t like losing.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Really?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “We have a funny story. It’s probably not that funny to my friend. So, my boys have grown up very competitively. We never let the boys win. Even in little basketball hoops, we try to win, and card games, whatever. So, that’s what I was used to. So, my friend is visiting from another state and she has her stepson with her and he’s like 11 and we’re playing some card game. I don’t remember. And I won the card game and I’m like, ‘Yay, I win.’ And he just got devastated. I go, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m not used to this.’ We’re very competitive at our house.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “And that translates into politics, I imagine.”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Probably. I’ve had to fight for my whole life, so it’s just a part of my nature.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “The year is 2010. Newport-Mesa Unified School District Trustee. Again, who would want this job? I’m not trying to be a jerk, but …”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Oh, I had a very specific reason. I left my council position because my kids were going to go into the high school within the next two years, the junior high. And all of the families in the neighborhood were leaving our local high school and going to Newport and Huntington Beach. And we pay a lot of money in taxes. We should be able to go to the neighborhood school.

“And I toured the school and I was appalled. The locker rooms were horrific. It was really dirty. It was gross. There was facilities that were degraded. The football field had pothole things in it. You’re going to break your ankle running out there. And so, I came home and I said to my husband, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know how we can go to that school.’ And so, I decided to run for school board to fix it.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Did you?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Yes. We built a new stadium and a new theater, science labs, a new middle school. We had an increase in the neighbors that went to the school. They did not, the counselors and others, they did not encourage kids to go to college. We turned it into a college going culture there. We added STEM programs, dual immersion programs. So, in a very short time, I did a lot.

“And I used different schools as models. Corona Del Mar was an example. They had a whole science budget for their science classes, and they had the baseline of what they needed to add to what the school district was providing in order for kids to get the materials they needed for quality, that level of science, biology, et cetera. But they could just ask all the parents to donate to meet their budget. Well, Costa Mesa, those parents can’t all donate like that. So, I started advocating to increase the science budget across the district to be able to buy basic supplies, beakers, whatever the protective glasses are called ...”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Goggles?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Goggles. Thank you. Whatever they are. And you would’ve thought I’m asking for every student to get a Rolls Royce. It was ridiculous how much pushback I got. We ultimately got it done. But yeah, so we did a lot of good in that short period of time.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “What do you feel like you understand about problem solving that maybe other people don’t?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “I don’t think I have any better understanding. I think that people are conflict averse.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Are you not?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “I don’t like conflict. I don’t want conflict, but sometimes it’s unavoidable. But what I know from working as an elementary school PTA president, junior high, high school PTA, booster, foundation president, most parents are conflict averse. So, when you have parents in a school that’s socioeconomically disadvantaged and they don’t have time to be in conflict with the administration over something that they think they need, so they just don’t say anything. So, then nobody’s saying anything. So, I feel like I’m willing to step into that space that is uncomfortable in order to make something better happen.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “I would say it’s very interesting moving here from New York. In New York, you’re very like, ‘What the fuck is your problem?’ or, ‘Why can’t we just talk about this?’ And in California, especially in Orange County, it’s very like, ‘Well, I know this is awkward, but I just, if you could maybe...’ And I feel like people who are blunt walk pretty freely. It’s a much better way to be here because people are not nearly as blunt as they are on the East Coast. You disagree? You do have a New York thing about you. In a good way, not in a bad way. I swear to god, you definitely have a New York thing about you.”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Well, good because my son is moving to New York next week. He got into the Parsons. So I’m going to get to know New York.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “That’s awesome. Congrats.”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Thanks. I’m very proud.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Let me throw some rapid fires at you, okay?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Mm-hmm.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “How convinced are you or how convinced should we be that RoundUp pesticides, et cetera, actually cause the damage that people believe it causes?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Oh, I think that RoundUp and pesticides, I mean, look, the state of California has banned paraquat, which has been being used in agricultural areas because it’s dangerous to the health of our residents. I am convinced that RoundUp and other pesticides hurt our health. Do I have evidence of direct causal link between RoundUp and a person having cancer? No. There’s a lot of environmental factors probably that come into play. But any toxic chemicals being routinely used in the community is hurting our health. I am convinced of that. And I will try everything to reduce the amount of chemical exposure that we have as residents.

“And right now, what we’ve been doing is just routine spraying everywhere. I mean, look around all this manicured area. It’s because of routine spraying. It’s convenient, it’s low cost, but in the end, it’s actually more costly because it costs us our health. And I’ve had this position for a long time, not changing my mind.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “I don’t really get it. There are things I don’t understand in this world. People who are against, who say, ‘Well, climate change isn’t real.’ And I’m always like, ‘But you breathe the air too. You breathe the same air I breathe.’ Why are there colleagues of yours against your position?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “That’s just politics. That is just politics.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Why doesn’t it drive you freaking crazy?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Well, of course, because I like to solve problems. All of the different things that people want to fix, the sand erosion, the king tide, impacts from the king tides, all of that is because the planet is changing. I mean, that is why. So, people who don’t believe in climate change believe that that’s a problem. So, I’ve just tried to change the way we talk about it and talk about it from, okay, it’s economically better for us to address these issues.

“And it saves us money to go solar. It saves us money as taxpayers to be electrified in our fleet and not rely on fossil fuels for gas. It saves us money to not have to use heat and air so much because the buildings aren’t built the proper way or the materials that we use for building aren’t sustainable. So, it saves money. So, if you don’t believe in climate change, if you think that’s a hoax, but you do believe that you don’t want your taxes to be wasted, okay, that works for me.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “How concerned are you about the Big Beautiful Bill and the just hammering away at programs like CalOptima as far as being able to fund it?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Extremely concerned. Our county budget is wholly dependent on federal and state funding. We have 83 percent of our budget is mandated program funds. So, what a Big Beautiful … ugly bill, excuse me, did was eligibility workers have to be hired to process the applications for people who need CalOptima and who need for health insurance and who need CalFresh for food. So, the people who are eligible for CalOptima, let’s say an individual, $18,800 a year. That’s how much you can make. So, think about that. That’s a person who’s very poor in Orange County when the average income is $100,000.

“So, we now have to re-certify all of these individuals two times a year. Not only do we have the added work of twice a year re-certification, but in addition, we have all these new work requirements and volunteer hour requirements that we have to make sure that the clients are complying with. That takes time. That means we have staffing needs. You can’t do it without staff.

“But then they cut our budget 25 percent. So, they cut our budget in half. It used to be 50 percent paid for by the feds. Now it’s 25 percent. So, double the work, half the money. We already have seen about 70,000 people fall off of CalOptima this year since all of the changes went into effect. So, they’re projecting that we’re going to get to somewhere around 200,000 people that are going to need indigent care. And I’m getting really wonky here.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Bring it.”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Okay. So, in California, the counties are responsible under the Welfare and Institutions Code for paying for individuals who do not have insurance if they go to the emergency room or if they have an emergency. Prior to the Affordable Care Act, we had about 750,000 individuals that the county was responsible for caring for when they go to the emergency room or when they have a medical need.

“Right now, today, well, maybe it’s changed today, but last time I got briefed on this a month ago, 20 people. It went from 700,000 to 20. So, we don’t have a hit. However, all these new changes are going into place this year. They are projecting we’re going to get to indigent care about 200,000 people. We don’t have a funding source to pay for it other than the general fund, of which we don’t really have any discretion over because there’s backfills that we have to use from the general fund to cover the mandated state programming that’s unfunded. So, it’s just a nightmare.

“And we’re seeing in the food banks, the increase in the number of people going to the food banks is dramatic. Claudia tells me this from the Second Harvest. She says it’s close and it will be, by the end of the year, pandemic-time food assistance, which we’ve never before seen anything like that. So, now we’re looking at a pandemic response for food insecurity when we’re not in a pandemic just because people don’t have a way to pay for food.

“The economics of that is also important. I always go back to the economics because people maybe don’t think about it. But if I give you an EBT card and you go buy groceries in the local grocery store, you’re supporting the local economy because you’re buying food. And so, we’re going to lose all of that benefit as well. So, it’s a real problem and it was a big mistake.”

[The waiter approaches. I insist I’ll take the check.]

JEFF PEARLMAN: “I’m paying, by the way.”

KATRINA FOLEY: “No, no, no.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “No, I have to.”

KATRINA FOLEY: “You can pay for yours, but you can’t pay for mine.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Why?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “The gift code is $5.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Is that true?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Yeah. County of Orange has a special-”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Even if you’re being interviewed?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Yeah, I don’t know. I just pay for my own.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “The journalistic code is you can never let someone pay for you.”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Yeah, you pay for yourself, I’ll pay for mine. Win, win.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Fair.”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Let me just add one more layer the the impact of this all. And I’ve asked for which schools this will impact. In Orange County, we have a lot of schools that are on the free lunch program. And they just made the whole school is eligible for free lunch because there was more than 60 percent of the students were free lunch eligible, so they just made the whole school eligible.

“Now the feds are saying you cannot do that. So, they’re going to start just taking away all the eligibility for the whole school. And then individuals have to start applying individually again. So, that creates another problem. And for me, look, everything always comes back to. I never forget where I came from. If I didn’t have the free lunch program, the free breakfast program when I was a kid, I might not eat on a day. I ate breakfast at school, I ate lunch at school pretty much until I was a senior in high school when I could go off campus and eat whatever I want. And so, those are really important programs. The fuel that you get for your brain when you’re at school helps you to get smarter and have a better life.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “So here you are and you’re running. And your opponent is Diane Dixon. And they come along and they say, ‘Katrina Foley sucks. She sucks and she sucks and she sucks and she sucks.’ And they don’t really offer any great solutions. I’ve read her campaign literature. I’ve seen the different things. They don’t offer any details, any solutions. They just say, ‘Foley sucks. Foley sucks. Foley sucks.’ Do you feel like you just have to take it to a certain degree? This just comes with this job?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Look, it’s going to be very different in the general than it was in the primary. I mean, what’s important too, and I hope you will point this out. There were four, it could have been five, I think it was four opportunities for us to have a town hall, a debate, answer questions together in front of a crowd. She declined every single one. So, the first was Laguna Beach, the Laguna Voice, the radio station. She declined right before it was supposed to happen. So, then we had OC Tax. Okay. She’s like, ‘I’m Miss Tax Lawyer Against Taxes.’ Why wouldn’t you want to do that debate?” She refused to pick a date. Then—Speak Up Newport. This is her home base. And the guy that runs it is a former mayor of Newport. He sent me a text, he gave me a date. I said, ‘She’s not going to do it.’ He replies, ‘Oh, no. She will.’”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “You actually said she’s not going to do it?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Yes, I have the text. I said, ‘She’s not going to do it, Ed.’ And he said, ‘No, she promised me she’s going to do it.’ I go, ‘Okay, you let me know when you have it confirmed because I’m going to predict she’s not going to do it.’ And then he went about organizing it and everything, and then sure enough, she canceled.

“And then what was the third? Oh, the realtors. Laguna Beach Realtors. There was a forum and we got the questions in advance. We got all the questions in advance. It wasn’t going to be hard. It’s just a matter of us getting up in front of people and answering these really basic questions that any of us should be able to do without notes. She wouldn’t do it. All of these, except for the OC Tax and Speak Up Newport, they just canceled it all together. But the other ones, I just went by myself and answered all the questions. So, this time we have now supposedly on calendar OC Tax a forum, but I don’t think she’s going to show up.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “You really don’t think she’ll go?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “No. She will barely be in a room with me.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Have you met her? Do you know her?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Oh, yes. We were friends. All these initiatives that she has been getting through the state, these were things that I helped her with. And I worked with my Democrat colleagues at the state level to help get her through. The sober living home reform, the e-bikes. These are all things that we were working together on. And even when she called me to tell me she’s running, I’m like, ‘Why are you giving up your seat?’”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Wait, she called to tell you she was running against you?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Yeah.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “She called to tell you?”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Yes.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “That’s courtesy in a way, I suppose. I don’t know. That’s weird.”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Yeah. She said, ‘Oh, it’s going to be a friendly campaign.’ I go, ‘Well, it’s already unfriendly even before you’ve called me, and so I don’t see how that’s going to happen.’ I said, ‘The Lincoln Club’s already starting to attack me.’ This was before she even actually filed. And she’s like, ‘Oh no, we’re just going to keep it related to the issues.’ And I said, ‘We’ll see about that.’ Of course, that’s not what happened. Even her own mailers were aggressively anti-Katrina Foley. She put pictures of me looking very unattractive and claiming that I’m paying with my district funds for sex change operations for kids. And that’s just outrageous to say that.

JEFF PEARLMAN: “That’s the new boogeyman.”

KATRINA FOLEY: “I know.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Or you’re a communist. She’ll get to that next week.”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Oh no, that was in one of the mailings. Also, I’m going to defund the police. I’m going to go to jail. I’m corrupt. I mean, all these crazy things that are coming on her committee, not a third party. So, she’s a liar.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “I want to ask you a final question. Because I ask most people this. I mean, these are depressing times we live in. We have a freaking nut job as a president. We have all these people, these boon liquors. Do you think 10 years from now, we look back at America now and we think, wow, we survived this really crazy, awful time. Or do you look back, do you think 10 years from now we’re like, that was the beginning of the end of this amazing Democrat-”

KATRINA FOLEY: “Oh no. I’m going to say we survived. Are you kidding me? We’re going to see that in November. We are going to see a big turnaround in November because a lot of these bad policies that do not support Americans are now starting to impact Americans, even Americans who voted for Trump. And you’re going to start to see people just, they don’t want to be hurt anymore. They don’t want their gas to be so expensive. I don’t do grocery shopping. My husband does, and I even have noticed, because I see the bank statements, I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, what did you buy at the grocery store?’ He goes, ‘I bought the same thing I always buy.’”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “No doubt.”

KATRINA FOLEY: “But do we survive? Of course we do. We survive, because we fight for America.”

#TOC

So I received a wacky and wild comment from Melissa Crew of Moms on the Ground—listed earlier this week as 16th among Orange County’s Worst Political Figures of 2026.

And it was hidden in the FLAGGED portion of my in box, so I didn’t see it until, well, right now. But it feels fair to post it here, because Melissa exerted the energy to opine.

For the record, this will be, officially, the second time someone on the hard right has filed some sort of “report” against me/this site, which is a) A pretty crazy misunderstanding/warping of the First Amendment and its protections; B) Uniquely weird.

[If you’re interested, here’s Exhibit A—the saga of Texas’ own Amber Smith]

Anyhow, I am also officially using this space to invite Melissa to do a Q&A for the site. We can sit down over coffee and cashews and I will ask questions (and listen intently) about trans issues and your cause. You can bring your own recording device to make certain I am true to every word—which I, of course, will be.

Here’s Melissa’s missive (notations at the bottom) …

Hey Jeff! Don’t appreciate the references to my death or inaccurate information about our organization of volunteer moms and the hundreds of documents we’ve discovered in public record that prove the Democrat party and their organizations profit heavily from recruiting kids into child patient mills at school. I hope if you have any sane/curious readers that they will check out the #Trans_student_hustle. You obviously have not1, as our work is about protecting kids from predatory adults and organizations that use and abuse tax payer money, rob children of their health and futures, while enriching politicians, hospitals and NGOs. We want parents of trans kids informed, not lied to like Sacramento Democrats wanted- AB1955. We want Trans kids informed about how they are being recruited and victimized by a system who profits from their pain. We want them to know they are loved2 and there are people who have no conflicts of interest who simply did research because we are moms and protect our young is what we do. If doing that puts me on your list, it begs the question- are you being paid by the Teachers Union and others for this article?3 That’s ok, based upon all of the lies in your article, I suspect you wouldn’t answer honestly and you will delete my comment like you have previously.4 We will check public records to find your affiliations5. The public records on trans topic are clear and we want transparency for kids at school and parents that send them there. They deserve to have eyes wide open, and know who is profiting and how. Your words about trans parents and kids feeling ostracized and attacked are your words of fiction, not reality6. We are respectful. You are not, as evidenced in this article, it is your desire to ostracize and attack people who disagree with you or those you work for. In fact, I’d always invite conversation and transparency, never call anyone “freaks” “the worst” “a gaggle of loons” and a “junk box mixture” as you have for this article. And I’d never put together a list as you have because I’m not a bully. Obviously, you are. Also, I’m not “in politics” as you falsely report7. Pretty sad that the title of your article is calling people “freaks” and “worst” and then you call others hypocrites citing President Trump name calling. I hope people are smarter than you think they are. I believe they are. Please know that I filed a police report against you because I feel very threatened by your focus on my dying, even though you attempt to veil threats8. I don’t know how words about my death even tie into this article, so clearly it is a veiled threat and has been reported as such. You are a man and you threaten a woman, a founder of a moms organization that is simply showing public records to parents and kids with truth about who is profiting off of them. I hope (and I pray because I am a Christian as you accurately report) that readers will check out the public records and understand the billions of dollars that NGO’s, teachers unions, hospitals, and politicians stand to lose once parents know why there is an inorganic increase in young patients for trans medicalization. I am a private citizen9 and I believe there are a number of civil violations you’ve committed against me, so, I’ve also contacted my attorney #trans_student_hustle

PS: This is the entry from the list:

So in case you missed it (and I really hope you didn’t—because the thing was a bear), yesterday I posted my rankings of the 26 worst Orange County political figures of 2026.

Buried beneath neon names like Will O’Neill and Todd Spitzer and Jack Hibbs and Mari Barke was, at No. 21, Sophia Lorey, the outreach director for California Family Council (aka: a whole bunch o’ white conservatives who believe We, The People, need more God, less trans, more Bible, less diversity). And, in a way, I felt torn about including Lorey, who looks to be in her early-to-mid 20s, graduated from (the e-x-t-r-a-o-r-d-i-n-a-r-i-l-y sheltered) Vanguard University and has been thrown—dirty towel-like—into the echo chamber that is right-wing media (land of older white male hosts fawning over younger white female guests with good hair).

And, if I’m Lorey, I’m milking this cow as long as I can. Fox News calls? Get on it! Newsmax calls? Get on it, too! Hell, back in my early days as a Sports Illustrated writer, I was jumping from radio interview to radio interview to radio interview. For an early media pro, PR is everything.

Truly, I get it.

But … yesterday, on her IG story, the same person telling thousands of viewers and followers what to believe, how to act, why they should be angry, posted this …

And, like, what?

What!?!?!?!?!?

You need your pepper spray … walking thru downtown Philadelphia? In daylight? Seriously? Like, seriously seriously? Are you carrying $100,000,000 in your purse? Are you wearing a mink coat with the price tag dangling off? Why, in God’s name, do you deem it necessary to have pepper spray (in a look-at-me pink canister, no less) in (of all the places) Philly?

My next sentence was going to be, “It makes no sense”—but then I realized, it makes perfect sense. This is a child of conservative Southern California; a product of Vanguard. I remember when we first moved here from New York, and I was dumbfounded to learn how many of my daughter’s friends had never been to (gasp) Santa Ana, let alone Los Angeles. It was all just too … scary. Too … chaotic. Too Latino and Black.

But it also causes you to realize that people of this young woman’s ilk, who thrive in translating the Bible into essential life lessons, haven’t lived life. They haven’t seen. They haven’t smelled. They haven’t experienced stepping into a dirty pot hole, sipping from a beer at a Trenton pub, walking the streets of Washington Heights, taking a glimpse at Gary, Indiana, meeting folks on the stoops of Brooklyn and Detroit and Chicago.

They walk among us, and they walk believing they have the answers.

But they carry pepper spray in a pink canister.

In Philadelphia.

PS: I would like to add: It is not easy being a woman, obviously, and there are 8,000 reasons to not only feel unsafe, but to want to carry some sort of pepper spray. My issue here is with the, “I’m in Philly, so I need this.” Thank you.

There are two types of movies.

There are movies like “Terms of Endearment” and “Shawshank Redemption,” that set out to stir the soul and change your life. You shed tears, you sit silently, you exit the theater and think, “That was absolutely wonderful.”

There are also movies like “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” that are purposefully big and loud and mindless. You eat popcorn, you guzzle Coca-Cola, you watch and you leave and you blink unusually rapidly. These films do not exist to evoke contemplation. They exist to be loud and obnoxious.

I bring this up because you are about to read my compilation of the 26 worst Orange County political figures of 2026. This is the byproduct of a good deal of research and outreach; of soliciting suggestions and debating merit. It was long and arduous and—in myriad ways—depressing. More than anything, I want people around here to be good, honest, compassionate stewards. I want folks with empathy and a sincere sense of civic duty. Party be damned. Hell, positions be damned.

The individuals on this list … sigh. I don’t believe most of them to be evil or even bad, in the Merriam-Webster sense of the words. I just think they’re all some mishmash of a) painfully dumb; b) woefully misinformed and misguided; c) corrupted by power and the maintaining of control.

And, as I thought and thought and thought about this, I came to the realization that the distinctions of those categories matter. For example, Will O’Neill, the Orange County Republican Party chairman, is an intelligent guy and a once-respected mayor. He knows right from wrong; knows Donald Trump is a grotesque pig of a man and that the Jan. 6 riots were an assault on democracy. Unlike a Lisa Davis or Jack Hibbs, he’s plenty smart. He grasps real vs. fiction.

And yet—O’Neill has chosen to ignore it all, in a quest for power. I cannot overstate how sad it makes me; the Vader-like plummet of a decent man into an icy stink hole of shame.

Alas, it is what it is—and this list is what it is. Some of the folks (like O’Neill) would rather watch decency crumble than admit many on his side are bonkers. Some, like Mari Barke of the OC Board of Ed, drank the Kool-Aid and savored the taste. Some, like the aspiring social media influencer Sophia Lorey, likely find the glow of a spotlight irresistible.

Twenty six journeys.

Twenty six pathways.

Twenty six sad political people.

Welcome to the freak show …

1. Will O'Neill, chairman of the Orange County Republican Party

There are plenty of people on this list who lack intelligence, who lack insight, who are as deep as a dime and just follow along with what Fox News orders.

Will is not that guy.

Bro is a former Newport mayor; a reasonable and compassionate local standout who, in his time leading the city, was known across the political spectrum as a decent dude who looked after constituents.

That Will O’Neill is, I believe, dead.

The new Will O’Neill is a political animal. Trump brags about pussy grabbing? No problem. Trump makes $2 billion as president? Ho hum. The Jan. 6 riots? Fun for all! Gracey Van Der Mark flashes QAnon signs? Wonderful! The Huntington Beach City Council plans on putting forth a MAGA plaque! Amazing!

But … a picture in the OC State Fair features a kid holding an anti-Trump sign? Oh my God! The horror! The indignity! We need an investigation! This is the WORST THING EVER AND I AM SOOOOOOOO ANGRY!!!!!!!!!

It’s pathetic. But, far worse than pathetic, it’s performative. It’s insincere.

Truly, I’ve never seen (up close) anyone like Will O’Neill, who matches intellect and experience with a ho-hum willingness to carve up democracy.

###

2. Mari Barke, Member, Orange County Board of Education

Ever meet someone, and you’re like, “Wow, she seems lovely.” And someone else goes, “Nah, she’s terrible.” But you go, “Haha. She seems great.” And the other person stops in his tracks, grabs your shoulders and says, “No, seriously, bruh. She’s cray.”

That’s Mari Barke.

Name a position, name an endorsed candidate—and Barke is always (and I mean always) on the side of cruelty and the asshole. Need proof? Here she is catching up with John Eastman. Here she is with Steve Hilton. Apparently Gracey Vander Mark desperately needed a friend. Would you rather eat a hemorrhoid than spend time with Sonja Shaw and Sophia Lorey? Barke chooses the gruesome twosome. Hey, Tom Cotton’s in town! Send Barke to kiss some ass!

And, of course, Barke is just another in the long line of RULES DON’T APPLY TO ME. Hell, just this year she was accused of violating the Political Reform Act by failing to disclose million in income and assets.1

Bright side: She’ll protect you from the neighborhood trans kids.2

###

3. Jack Hibbs, founding pastor of Calvary Chapel

If I could switch bodies with 1986 Mike Tyson for one day, I would head over to Calvary Chapel, ask for Jack Hibbs, be told Jack Hibbs isn’t there, wait outside the church, see Hibbs roll up in his 2027 BMW 7 Series3—and I would go all Marvis Frazier on his ass.

Obviously, I’m not hitting anyone. Or even spitting on someone. But Hibbs, more than any other local “religious”4 leader, is uniquely responsible for the regional phenomenon of right-wing ministries diving head-first into MAGA politics, and brainwashing their parishioners into voting for whichever loathsome flimflam artists Hibbs (as Godly a dude as the last pimple I picked and flicked off into the toilet) commands. Once, there was a very clear, respected separation of church and state.

Once, bread cost a dime.

The thing that kills me most. Like, really kills me most: All these “religious” leaders (like Hibbs) back Donald Trump. Despite Jan. 6, despite “grab ‘em by the pussy,” despite raw-dogging the porn star, despite the bankruptcies, despite the cruelty, despite the indifference to the poor, the battered, the struggling. Somehow, Jack Hibbs believes he has a line to God. And God wants the dude from the Epstein Files.

Men like Hibbs have, in the process, corroded the beauty and dignity of religion and faith.

Why follow the teaching of Jesus that you claim to live by, when you follow … him?

###

4. Todd Spitzer, Orange County District Attorney

Spitzer earns roughly $500,000 annually, and an argument can be made no one in America is better at allegedly retaliating against women in his office who bring forth sexual harassment claims.

David Rush once juggled for more than 13-straight hours.

Darrell Griffith had a 48-inch vertical leap.

We all have our talents.

Hell, what tells the SPITZER IS THE MAN story better than this 2025 Eyewitness News headline, JURY FINDS ORANGE COUNTY DA TODD SPITZER HARASSED PROSECUTOR INTO RETIREMENT, AWARDS HER $3 MLLION …

The good news? Justice sorta prevailed.

The bad news? Spitzer still has his job—and taxpayers are in charge of the bills (literally, we’re responsible for paying nearly $18 million in settlements related to conduct this crumb and his peeps).

Grr.

###

5. Lisa Davis, president of the Capo Unified School District board

So I’ve been pretty locked in on the local school board, and Davis is … hmm … I’ll offer some adjectives, and y’all feel free to pick which you opt to use (Tip: they all apply):

Sinister.

Nuts.

Manipulative.

Uninformed.

Phony.

She also happens to be a world-class hugger, which would be lovely were she not perpetually attempting to Mama Bear kids at graduation ceremonies (Lisa, seriously—stranger-danger).

In all seriousness: I’ve seen Lisa Davis in action, and what’s going down at Capo Unified is beyond disturbing. The board has been largely taken over by a Moms For Liberty-inspired approach to academics, which includes “leaders”5 who believe in more God in school, less science in school, less funding for public schools and a damnation of those who don’t share your wackadoo religious beliefs. I wrote extensively about Lisa here, and it’s worse than you think.

Don’t believe me? Read this.

###

6. Esther Kim Varet, failed congressional candidate

I think we’re all still experiencing the PTSD caused by Esther, an art curator/expert who came from Los Angeles to grace us all with her genius and a doomed-from-the-start run for the CA-40th seat. Besides being seven levels of Planters, Esther established herself as a uniquely cruel, vindictive, incurious plantar wart of a human with an unrivaled arrogance and a one-of-a-kind talent for pissing literally everyone off.

For a brief spell, she seemed like a legitimate contender to challenge Young Kim and Ken Calvert for a slot in the final showdown. But then she began to talk. And post on social media. And tell everyone why she was right, they were wrong and a vote against Esther was a vote for a Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva-spreading vampire apocalypse.

Think I’m exaggerating? Read here and here and here and here and here and here.

Congrats, Esther! You’re a Democrat, and you made this list.

No easy task.

###

7. Leandra Blades, President, Placentia-Yorba Linda Board of Ed

When it comes to cruelty, Blades is Kid to Sonja Shaw’s Play. A retired police officer, Blades is one of those thumb nubs who seem equate the term “restoring parental rights” with “allowing Christ-loving parents to stampede educators while removing any books they choose because of some warped sense of pornographic guilt.” Blades led the charge against ethnic studies in school, though I genuinely wonder whether she could define the words “gender” or “studies,” or properly explain what gender studies entail. She’s also a big ol’ ICE gal who got her ass kicked in this delightful exchange with Tricia Quintero.

Oh, and, she was in Washington on Jan. 6.

Seriously, she was there. But (cough) just checking out the monuments.

Cough.

###

8. Dr. Jeff Barke, Doctor, ex-Rossmoor Community Service Director

Every time you see a bunch of local GOP sprigs cheering the potential imprisonment of (85-year-old) Dr. Anthony Fauci, a baby dove soars past Barke’s kitchen window.

A right-wing acorn to the 100th degree, Barke is a former at-large member of the Los Alamitos Unified School District Board of Education who has used his medical background (he is, indeed, a doctor), white coat and stethoscope to convince the lemmings his unhinged and unmoored views are worth your attention.

Barke has authored at least 50 books, including, “Covid-19: A Physicians Take on the Exaggerated Fear of the Corona Virus,” “Unavoidably Unsafe: Childhood Vaccines Reconsidered” and “Barke: My Journey from Medical School to the Brothels of New Zeland.”6

During COVID, he famously pulled out a 9-millimeter gun during a Zoom interview to make the point a firearm offered more virus protection than a mask. Then he said: “What I do, Peggy, to protect you and to protect others when I’m in public—I think better than a mask—this is what I do. You know, I live in Orange County so I carry this wherever I go.”

He also advocated for utilizing unproven medications like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin to treat COVID.

Otherwise, the dude is friggin’ awesome!7

###

9. Tony Beall, mayor of Rancho Santa Margarita

This Lincoln-esque statesman, leader and Costco shirt patron has committed to giving ICE his “full cooperation,” despite the increasing number of awful, unlawful, cruel incidents involving the agency. Hell, he said he’d welcome them to the city. Which, if we’re being honest, probably isn’t necessary, considering Rancho Santa Margarita ain’t exactly lacking in ICE types.

Even worse (I suppose) is Beall is one of those politicians who—Benjamin Netanyahu-like—clings to power at all costs. As the Orange Juice Blog noted last year, Bealle was threatened with a recall in 2020. To avoid such fate, he promised not to seek re-election. then, of course, he sough re-election.

This, from OJB …

Beall has been mayor for more than two decades—which, like death and taxes and three wins from the New York Jets—feels uncomfortably normal by now.

###

10. Elaine Gennawey: Founding President, South OC Republicans

There is something delicious about the founding president of the South Orange County Republicans misspelling “Republicans” on her LinkedIn page …

… but there’s nothing delicious about Gennawey’s impact on local politics. And what I mean is this: By many accounts, Elaine is a nice person. She comes off as warm, as engaging. If you speak to her at the upcoming Sea Country Festival (she’s usually there, alongside a life-sized Trump cardboard cutout), you’ll most certainly find her delightful. And, back in the day, she was very involved in local schools, in helping young boys and girls better themselves, in showing the kiddies a bright and optimistic future. I really mean that: She was a gem and devoted community steward.

So how in the name of Fred Flintstone [I’m about to start yelling, people] DO YOU STAND IN FRONT OF A DONALD TRUMP CARDBOARD CUTOUT AT EVERY FAIR? HOW ARE YOU OK WITH THE RAW CRUELTY? THE MEANNESS? THE INSULTS? THE VULGARITY? THE LIES? WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU—AND DO YOU REALIZE YOU’VE NOT ONLY SOILED YOUR NAME, BUT SHOWN FAR TOO MANY PEOPLE THAT KINDNESS IS MEANINGLESS, AND THAT THE NICE OLDER WOMAN WHO ONCE VOLUNTEERED IN THE COMMUNITY IS JUST ANOTHER RIGHT-WING HACK WILLING TO SURRENDER HER KINDNESS TO A LIFELONG HUCKSTER WITH AN ORANGE GLOW?

SERIOUSLY, ELAINE. DID THE PUSSY GRAB COMMENT NOT CAUSE YOU SOME PAUSE? WHAT ABOUT THE PRISONERS OF WAR-AREN’T-HEROES LINE? THE FIVE DRAFT DEFERMENTS? THE BANKRUPTCIES?

How does a nice person—even one engaged in GOP politics—sit back and watch?

How?

###

11. Pat Burns, Huntington Beach City Council member

If you’re me, and you’re covering local politics with a bit of snark and attitude, nothing is better than having someone both vile and destructive whose head resembles an uncircumcised penis.

Thank you, Pat Burns.

Dickie is a retired police officer, which actually sucks—because he conforms to every negative stereotype of the gig. He’s mean. He’s crude. He seems pretty racist and sexist. He’s a small little man who walks with a Clubber Lang swagger—and Dickie would surely hate that comparison, because Clubber Lang is Black.

I’ve seen Dickie operate at myriad Huntington Beach City Council meetings, and the dude is just a bully in every … single … sense of the word. He’s also (and this is no exaggeration) an absolute moron who seemed troubled nary a bit by his fellow law enforcement officers being battered at the Jan. 6 attacks. Police brutality? What police brutality? Let’s build a Trump statue!

Dickie is a simple and small man with a a giant ego who reminds me very much of Bull Connor.

That’s not a compliment.

###

12. Brenda Lebsack, Santa Ana Unified School District Board Member

First, were I starting a band right now, I’d name it “Brenda and the Lebsacks,” and we’d kick some serious ass opening for Lit and Suicidal Tendencies at the House of Blues Anaheim.

Second, well, Brenda Lebsack is yet another (yawn) anti-trans warrior just scratching and clawing for Riley Gaines to step aside so Sean Hannity will finally put an end to her appearances on fringe right-wing podcasts and call “The Sack” up to Fox News.

And if you’re thinking, “Meh, Lebsack brings nothing new to the table,” you’d be wrong. Why, back in April she starred in a board meeting by abstaining from proclaiming April as “National Arab American Heritage Month” because … eh … eh … we need to keep boys out of girls’ locker rooms!

Also, there’s this gem …

Just another in the long, ugly line of hard-right lemmings occupying Orange County.

###

13. Ken L. Williams, Jr., Member, Orange County Board of Education

On March 11, 2023, Williams was allegedly involved in a Hulk Hogan-v.-Andre the Giant-level road rage incident, attacking a 20-year-old driver, throwing him to the ground and choking him.

This, from Angelina Hicks’ excellent Voice of OC recap …

The best part? When reached by Hicks, Williams said his political opponents were trying to destroy his personal and professional career.

Alas, it didn’t work. Dude still holds his gig.

PS: Included in his official bio: “Dr. Williams strongly believes in our nation's founding fathers' vision of our country being the "city on the shining hill." He consistently promotes our nation's Constitution, the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, and the reliable standards of Judeo-Christian values as the reason for our nation's greatness.” Google Translation: Look, I don’t love everything that happened on January 6. But …

###

14. Andrew Do, former member of the OC Board of Supervisors

So Andrew Do is literally in prison as you read this, serving five years after being found guilty of using taxpayer dough to buy all sorts of stuff for his own personal pleasure (houses, meals, cars, etc). Making matters worse, he funneled the loot through a non-profit run by … his daughter.

The FBI wound up raiding his house, leading toward Do’s resignation and guilty plea to—to quote Nick Gerda for LAist—”taking bribes to award tax dollars to people who diverted $7.9 million that was supposed to feed needy seniors during the pandemic.”

And here’s the crazy thing.

The truly remarkable and bonkers crazy thing.

I’d still take Andrew Do over Will O’Neill.

I’d just make sure my wallet was somewhere safe.

###

15. Garrett Dwyer, Aliso Viejo City Council member

There is dumb. There is profoundly dumb. There is historically dumb. There is sloth with a head injury dumb. There is a sloth with a head injury addicted to crack cocaine dumb. There is a sloth with a head injury addicted to crack cocaine while listening to a ceaseless loop of Rush Limbaugh dumb.

And then there is Garrett Dwyer, who was appointed in 2025 to represent the third district of the Aliso Viejo City Council.

To watch Dwyer in action is to understand why dogs sniff their own poop. An unelected member of the council who was appointed by the MAGA majority to replace a Black progressive man who moved away, Dwyer recently dazzled the masses by hijacking a meeting that was supposed to be—innocently—about Aliso Viejo traffic patterns. A pair of experts were brought in, and recommended to the council that speed limits be reduced by five mph in certain stretches (primarily by schools).

Dwyer responded by pulling out his tablet (always with tablet, this guy) and reading (in what sounded suspiciously like AI-generated slop), “Reduction of the speed limit is a restriction of the freedom of movement of the citizens of the United States.”

Seriously.

He went on to complain the the traffic standards were being adopted from Europe—and that it was Europe’s attempt to get Americans out of their cars.

If you’re wondering what, precisely, Garrett Dwyer knows of traffic patterns, he works as a mortgage broker.

###

16. Melissa Crew, Creator of Moms on the Ground

OK, I have a dream.

Here it is …

It’s, oh, 60 years from now, and Melissa Crew dies peacefully in her sleep (to be clear, I’m not wishing death upon anyone. She’ll be around 100—so a nice long life). Melissa is surrounded by friends and loved ones, and as she drifts off she somehow comes to the realization that literally e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g she worked for … every battle she fought … every trans kid who felt ostracized and every parent of a trans kid who felt attacked and battered … was bullshit.

Maybe it’s God. Maybe it’s Satan. Maybe it’s former Blind Melon singer Shannon Hoon. Whatever the case, a spiritual entity greets her and says, “Hey, Missy, bad news. All that shit was nonsense, and I’m here to tell you there’s no heaven. You’re just dead. Ciao.”

Crew is a junk-ball mixture of warped and determined. She heads an operation, Moms on the Ground, that was initially registered under an already existing for-profit tech company called MJC Innovations. Four years ago, MJC morphed into Moms on the Ground and Crew teamed up with a gaggle of local loons to bring forth the magic.

According to an old LinkedIn page, Crew’s background is as a cosmetologist and health care company owner. But, hey, even skin care professionals can find Jesus. These days, Moms on the Ground is all about trans kids. Trans kids in sports. Trans kids in bathrooms. Trans kids in bathroom sports. Oh, and they’re also about “faith, families & freedom.” Though, like all the other hypocrites here, they had no apparent problem with Jan. 6, with Trump cheating on his wife with a porn star (No condom! Just sex!), with Trump calling people retarded and ugly and stupid.

Faith, families & freedom.

###

17. Don Wagner, member of the Orange County Board of Supervisors

Like Will O’Neill, Wagner is a former mayor (of Irvine). Also like Will O’Neill, Wagner is a MAGA-foaming zombie who does as his masters insist and downplayed actions related to Andrew Do’s corruption scandal.

If you wanna have some fun, hang out in Irvine and ask the OGs about Don Wagner. The top 3 words you’ll hear are 1) Corrupt; 2. Soulless; 3) Owned. There’s a long and sordid history of Wagner using his position to better himself and his peeps, with little regard for the general/greater good.

There’s also this gem of a reaction to the Capitol Insurrection, which oozes top-shelf bullshit …

Lastly, bruh is just a coward. Which seems contagious these days.

###

18. Gracey Van Der Mark: Huntington Beach City Council member

This one is like shooting fish in a particularly small barrel. Gracey is a first-generation Latina woman who is all in on MAGA, loves everything ICE is doing, rolls with the QAnon crew and worked hard to demonize librarians and keep non-porn porn out of schools. As we speak, she’s now running against the great Chris Kluwe for Assembly—and there are enough folks not paying attention that she may well win.

I can’t overstate this enough. Plenty of people on this list ate conspiracy theorists or are vindictive or are xenophobic. Gracey merges it all together in one toxic stew.

I’m pretty sure she’s 95 percent crazy, five percent asshole—but it could be 90-10. Just a warped and vile person who Will O’Neill would normally have nothing to do with.

###

19. Young Kim, CA-40th Congresswoman

As a longtime sports writer, I’ve seen the demise of athletes who—because of age or injury or some extraneous circumstance—fall apart, fade away and are never seen again.

This is the fate about to meet Young Kim, who will likely get her ass kicked by fellow Republican Ken Calvert in the redrawn 40th.

And here’s what’s particularly pathetic about Young Kim: Deep down, she’s a somewhat sensible moderate who (even in these modern times) was liked by all sides. She was agreeably, decent, reasoned, kind, chipper. You could talk to her and feel heard. You could make points as a Democrat and have her consider your stance.

Then, as a survival mechanism, she abandoned all principles and went full MAGA. It was a ludicrous rightward shift; a selfish-yet-misguided move that will result with her inevitable crash and burn and eternal banishment to Cameo, where she will spend the rest of her days peddling $5 birthday messages alongside Vanilla Ice, Bo Bice and Kyle Rittenhouse.

She’s earned it.

###

20. Amy Phan West: Westminster City Council member

Like all towns and cities across America, Westminster has its problems. Thankfully, Amy Phan West stepped up to lead the charge for …

Resources to alleviate homelessness.

Safe sidewalks.

An amazing Christmas tree lighting.

A new youth baseball field.

… a street to be renamed Charlie Kirk Way.

Seriously. And now there is a street in Westminster named Charlie Kirk Way.

Had Charlie Kirk ever visited Westminster? No. Did he have family there? No. Personal business interests? No. Is there any logical reason to have a Charlie Kirk Way in Westminster, Cal.? No.

Truth be told, this was yet another tired culture warrior moment brought forth by a woman with (apparently) little better to do than trigger the libs.

Well done, Amy. Well done.

###

21. Sophia Lorey, Outreach Director for California Family Council

Of all the people on this list, no one makes me as sad as Lorey, who works for the California Family Council and who seems to genuinely believe she is doing God’s tasks by speaking out against trans athletes and appearing on various right-wing news networks to amplify her message.

Youth, George Bernard Shaw said, is wasted on the young …

I hope Sophia reads this, because I wanna say to her—directly: I have no problem with you standing up for your beliefs. If you really, truly, deeply feel trans athletes are the issue of our time, go for it, I guess. Use your IG feed to spew and spew and spew. Bark away, girl. Bark and bark and bark some more.

But I ask you these two questions:

1. If your goal is (as you say) to honor God, why is your face everywhere? Being serious—why are you always posting your new shoes, your new dress, your fresh cut. Selfies in a mirror. Hugging your dog. Why is it all about you? And are you familiar with Philippians 2:3-8?

2. If you’re truly a protector of women (which you seem to aspire to be), why no words about Donald Trump (the man you voted for and support) cheating on wife 1 with wife 2, wife 2 with wife 3, wife 3 with a porn star he raw dogged, then paid off in hush money? Why nothing about all the sexual assault accusations? About E. Jean Carroll? You’re pro-woman, Sophia. Do you think they’re lying? All of them? Every single one? Going back four decades?

   Did the “grab ‘em by the pussy” line bother you? At all? Even a little? What about all the times he calls women fat and ugly? And since we’re here, I haven’t heard a word from you about Max Miller. Literally nothing. You’re pro-women, right? Fighting for your gender, yes?

   Where are you?

The truth is, Sophia, you’re being used as a tool by the old, white, perverted men who run your party; the men who conceal the Epstein Files; the men who hide Donald Trump’s grotesque treatment of women.

You’re young, and you’re social media savvy.

Now wake up.

PS: Have you ever thought to yourself—even for a second’s second—that maybe (just maybe) some of the stuff in the Bible is incorrect? Like, if God spoke to man, and man wrote down God’s words—perhaps he screwed some of it up. Maybe?

###

22. Janet Keo Conklin, City of La Palma Councilwoman,

failed Orange County assessor candidate

I mean, look, we all make mistakes, right? You put the butter knife with the bread knives You accidentally call your husband the name of your ex-boyfriend. You, eh, um, allegedly repeatedly use campaign contributions to pay for personal expenses.

There’s also this, from LAist’s Yusra Frazan …

Conklin lost the Democratic Party’s endorsement, then lost in the primary, but, like, what are we doing here?

Seriously, what are we doing?

###

23. Wendy Bucknum, Mayor of Mission Viejo

Top of my head, I just came up with a joke:

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

Bucknum.

Bucknum who?

Bucknum just sorta sucks.

And I admit—the joke isn’t funny. But neither is the Mission Viejo mayor, who was part of a three-headed monster (alongside Ed Sachs and Greg Raths) that simply decided to ignore the fairly straightforward term-limit rules and stay in power. Because, hey—staying in power is more fun than staying out of power. Or something like that.

Then, there was this.

One of the worst things about Bucknum and her GOP colleagues on the Mission Viejo City Council? The way they treat Cynthia Vasquez, the lone liberal on the five-person board and a genuinely good public servant.

For decades, the mayoral title has rotated from member to member, sans pause for political affiliation. Yet, without fail, Vasquez is always bypassed. To quote Laura Lacko: “You have one Democratic board member, Cynthia Vasquez, who’s basically marginalized by the rest of the board. They don’t take her seriously. Don’t really show her any respect. Bypass her for mayor They’re a bunch of MAGA weirdos who just want to ... take what’s happened on the national level and make it local and sorta act like you’re wrong, they’re right and that’s that.”

Just to be cruel.

Just. To. Be. Cruel.

###

24. Scott Baugh, Former Orange County GOP Chairman

A confession: Placing Baugh on this list in 2026 is a little bit like blaming Christina Aguilera for the state of modern music. Put different, Baugh is a dude who ran for office a bunch, lost a bunch, headed the Orange County GOP, threw elbows, kicked rocks, wasn’t particularly popular, vanished—and pops up every now and then like a gutter rat who smells your cheese. He’s brash and irksome and always seeking out leftover scraps, but he’s also increasingly irrelevant.

Which I enjoy.

###

25. Jennifer Adnams, Capo Unified School District board member

As I noted in the Lisa Davis entry, I’ve paid far too much attention to Capo Unified. It’s a brain-draining, soul-sucking experience of the greatest degree.

But, since this is my list … Adnams is something truly special. She’s the perfect Moms for Liberty Stepford robot; a woman who seems to 100-percent believe she is here—on earth and on the board—to bring people as close to Jesus Christ as possible. It is her life mission—”I’m a Kingdom-first person.” It’s her reason for breathing and eating and pooping. If you don’t believe me, watch her crazy-ass podcast, which puts the White in White Christian Nationalism …

The worst part? She’s dumb. Just not smart. Dim. Limited. Chews the bubble gum wrapper. But too vapid to see it, and determined to make Christ-like changes to portions of the world not asking for them.

Lovely.

###

26. Mike Munzing, Aliso Viejo Mayor Pro Tem

First, I wanna say something important, and sincere: Mike Munzing has battled serious health issues for years, and I (truly) pull for his well-being. I do not wish badly for anyone on this list. I mean that.

However …

Mike Munzing is a hateful scrotum sack dipped in the vomit of 1,000 squirrels. He’s just another uninformed-yet-loyal MAGA foot soldier who did his absolute all to ban the Pride Flag from waving above City Hall (he failed) and irrationally targeted the Boys & Girls Club because it tries to encourage (gasp!) diversity.

It’s actually annoying, because I’m pretty sure Munzing is (like Lisa Davis) seven parts ignorant, two parts enjoyably cruel, one part daydreaming of weekends on the Love Boat alongside Gopher and Doc.

Alas, such are the meager pleasures.

#TOC

So I met Arianna Barrios last week at L’Orange Cafe in Orange, and much like the downtown of her mini-metropolis, the veteran City Council member and mayoral candidate has a comfortable mojo about her.

She curses, though not excessively. Speaks with her hands to emphasize points. Laughs easily, spins a good yarn, refrains for spewing excessive shit talk about opponents. In many ways, she feels like the species of political figure we need to rediscover in these bitter times: Namely, she’s (gasp!) agreeable.

Barrios is running for mayor against Dan Slater, the incumbent and a man she once supported. And while she insists it’s nothing personal (“I like Dan”), that’s not entirely true. To Barrios, Orange is personal. Unlike most of us, who visit, grab a drink, shop for antiques, then drive off, this is her home. Which, via Barrios’ eyes, is on the verge of serious trouble. For Orange, Barrios is plagued the parallel problems of a looming economic tsunami and a mayor who knows not what to do about it. “That,” she says, “is why I’m running.”

One can visit Barrios’ website here, and donate to her campaign here.

Ladies and gents—Arianna Barrios …

JEFF PEARLMAN: “So, you’re running for mayor …”

ARIANNA BARRIOS: “I am.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “And is that fine and dandy with your people?”

ARIANNA BARRIOS: “I would say my husband would prefer I would’ve been done, because that was our plan. I was going to be done, this was going to be the end, and instead I will now be running against an incumbent mayor …”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “So why do it?”

ARIANNA BARRIOS: “Because I think the city as a whole has gotten way far off track. You probably haven’t been following all this, but the city has been in fiscal instability and free fall for years. This year we’re going to be on our second go for a sales tax measure, and I’m really worried. I had to think honestly about, if the sales tax passes, do I trust the current council configuration to do the right thing with the money? And if we don’t get the money, do I trust them to handle what that’s going to look like on the flip side?

“And it’s arrogance on my part. I own that. But I don’t think there are enough people right now saying, ‘Cliff, cliff, cliff!’ What are we going to do about that? How are we going to handle that?” There is no plan B. And how do you go into such a situation and not have a plan B?" It just boggles my mind.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Wait, so when you say we’re about to fall off a cliff, break it down. Why is Orange about to fall off a cliff?”

ARIANNA BARRIOS: “So over the years, we have flipped upside down from what we used to be in terms of our tax revenue. So it used to be like most cities, in that you would see a a financial situation that was guided and really run by sales tax. And that has changed. Now it’s guided by property tax. So when you do that, property tax here is very limited in terms of its growth. So you either have to go ‘Build, build, build, build!’ to increase that base, or you have to balance it out and find new ways of economic development. And Orange, unfortunately, for decades has been very, very slow or very, very bad at doing economic development. In addition, when you look at how our finances were handled or reported from just six years ago when I first came into the council … and I will tell you this, when I first got on the council, I thought I was stupid.

“I would come home and tell my husband, ‘I just must be the dumbest person on the planet. I don’t understand these budgets. They don’t make any sense.’ Now mind you, I had been on the community college board where we were dealing with budgets three times the size of the city. And I didn’t have any problem with that. But this, I couldn’t understand. And about six months to a year after being on the council, my very first go, I realized it wasn’t me. And my other colleague, Ana Gutierrez—we would just sit and just go, ‘It’s not us. Something’s really wrong.’ Well, things were being papered over. It was robbing Peter to pay Paul. It was basically a shell game to look like everything was fine. And it wasn’t fine. The structural deficits were huge and they were growing every year. We had gone out and gotten a brand new, fancy, beautiful firehouse, but all that was done under bonds.

“We had covered over all of our pension obligations, the ones that were unfunded, by doing more bonds. And it was just perpetuating that previous councils were not willing to really look at the situation in the face and say, ‘How do we change? We need a different trajectory.’ Growing numbers of employees, growing numbers of pensions, because you still have tons of pensions, you still have that.

JEFF PEARLMAN: “I’m going to ask you a dumb question. Why is it wrong? Why was it misguided to use bonds to fund a new firehouse?”

ARIANNA BARRIOS: “It might not have been had we been otherwise fiscally healthy, but we weren’t fiscally healthy. And for example, and I credit Council Member Dumitru with this, is that when they asked us to do the bonds for the pensions, they really hid this fact that they were asking us to also change what the mandatory minimum would be for our catastrophic reserves. And so those were changed and whittled down. And that’s problematic. I mean, that should have been really clear. It should have been really upfront. And instead it was just kind of like, ‘No, we’re not going to talk about that.’

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Even the people on the city council who you probably vehemently disagree with, they are human beings who live here in the city and probably want the best for the city. So why do you feel like they would behave so recklessly?”

ARIANNA BARRIOS: “I’m not sure that reckless is the right word. I just see the same pattern starting over again as when I first got on the council. And I had such high hopes when I first got on that we would be moving away from those old patterns. But I see them happening again. So I see this consolidation of power and ideas that were just, they’re old ideas. I’ll give you an example. So when we were passing the budget for this year, knowing that we were going to go off for a sales tax again, and knowing that that may or may not pass, nobody was asking the question about, again, what is the plan B? We’re passing this budget. We’re once again deficit spending to do it. We’re taking money out of our reserves to do it. So what is the plan B? If we don’t get this tax money, we know that in three to four years we will be insolvent.

“We should be passing two budgets, actually. One if the sales tax passes and one if it doesn’t. And what you can point to right now is Long Beach. Long Beach is, their deficit I think is somewhere around $14 million. They’re cutting people left and right. They’re cutting people, they’re cutting services, they’re cutting public safety. I mean, it’s terrifying, but it’s what has to be done. And people should know that. We should be utterly transparent with people about what it would mean.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “You feel like Long Beach is the potential ghost of Orange future?”

ARIANNA BARRIOS: “Yeah, I honestly do. And it terrifies me. And the first question my husband asks is, ‘Why in the hell would you want to do this job if you don’t think the sales tax is going to pass?’ I’m like, ‘Because who else is going to do this job?’ Someone has to stand up and say, ‘All right, I have a plan. It won’t be pretty and it won’t be easy, but someone has to step up and say it. It’s what’s right to do. We have to be honest with people. We have to tell them what they’re going to go through.’

“I look at it as like … I’m a huge student of history. I used to work at the Nixon Library—a place I love. And what my 1960s parents told me about Nixon was not the same as being there and saying, ‘Oh, I didn’t know he also did Medicare and helped on busing and I did the EPA.’ I didn’t know any of that. So it was just a great experience and it just taught me that you never know. You never know the whole story until you dig into it out and find the whole story. So I look at it very much like when you look at a Roosevelt and how he was just really honest with people. So I’m being honest—it’s going to hurt. It’s not going to be pleasant, but we’re going to get through it together. And here’s the trajectory and how we come out the other side.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Wait, so who are you saying that to? Like you’re saying, ‘We’re going to do this together, blah, blah, blah, blah.’ Who are you saying that to?”

ARIANNA BARRIOS: “Whoever will listen.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Are people listening?”

ARIANNA BARRIOS: “They’re starting to. So, I mean, I came late to this. I wasn’t sure I was going to run. I was really just like, ‘Oh, do I do this? Do I not do this?’ And the current mayor, Dan Slater, I’ve known him most of my life. There was nobody who was a bigger, stronger supporter when he first said he was going to run. I mean, I think I was one of the first people he came to and asked for support and help when he ran in 2022. And when I gave my support and help, I was all in, 100 percent. I worked my ass off to make sure that everything that could be done was done to help him get elected.

JEFF PEARLMAN: “And now you’re running against him. What changed?”

ARIANNA BARRIOS: “Four years later, there are some broken promises, which really disappointed me. I see a realignment to kind of the old establishment, the old boys network in town. And I was like, that’s not what I fought for. And you couple all that with what’s happening nationally. And it bothers me. It bothered me so much that I just was ripping my hair out, that there wasn’t this understanding that people are in trouble. There are people in trouble. I mean, I have gone with residents to immigration court. I have seen ICE raids in our city. You can’t ignore that. You just can’t. I mean, I guess you can ignore it. Some people do. But the lack of humanity and sympathy for that, coupled with everything else that we’re going through locally, hyper-locally, it all kind of mirrored each other. And I think at the end of the day, whether I win or lose, it doesn’t matter to me.

“What matters to me is that people have a choice and that people hear the truth.

JEFF PEARLMAN: “How many conversations have you had with Dan Slater about you running for mayor?”

ARIANNA BARRIOS: “Not one.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Oh.”

ARIANNA BARRIOS: “I went to him back in January and sat down and talked to him because I was really honest. And most people who know me know I’m painfully honest, mostly to my detriment. And I sat down and talked with him and I just told him where things were going, what things were bothering me, what I was concerned about. And not everyone’s going to have the same level of concern or passion about things. I get that. I’m not insane. But just the unrealistic element of like, ‘Oh, is that really happening?’ Yeah, it’s really happening. Do we care? Do we not care? What are we doing? And I just told him that I couldn’t support him this time around. My colleague, Ana Gutierrez, is also not supporting him this time around.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Is he pissed?”

ARIANNA BARRIOS: “I think he understood at the time how important these things for me were because, just as an aside, my grandparents fought tooth and nail, not unlike I fight for things that I’m passionate about, but fought tooth and nail to end school segregation in Orange County. I didn’t even know that until I was an adult. And once I heard about it, met with historians who followed it, and I was just like, ‘Holy cow, how brave for them to do those things.’ And nowadays we’re called to that same kind of bravery. And there are people who have no other voice, who have no one else to stand for them.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Do you think in a fairly conservative, fairly white, fairly older town like Orange, it is tough for this kind of message to resonate? Most of these people have money. Am I wrong?”

ARIANNA BARRIOS: “I think that’s a misnomer. So when I started first running 10 years ago, goodness, that was exactly what Orange was and had always been. Orange is a very conservative town. Orange is not that town anymore. When you look at the voter registration, Orange is now approximately a third, a third, a third. Republican, Democrat, Independent. So the Democrats are just pissed everywhere. And everybody knows this. So the city has changed dramatically from just 10 years ago, from even five years ago. So when you look at that, I mean, the No Kings events here in the city had over 3,000 people show up.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Do you view yourself as an underdog?”

ARIANNA BARRIOS: “Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I’ve been able to mostly self-fund in my past campaigns, so I’m not going to be able to do that this time. I am not going to be taking a lot of corporate money. I’ve already sworn off many options. No developers, no real estate money. I’m going to be very weary of any PACs. But yeah, it’s going to be a very grassroots, very boots on the ground, a very different kind of campaign. I’m not going to be doing 10 mail pieces. I have a very different strategy lined up for this one.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “How would you describe your strategy?”

ARIANNA BARRIOS: “I describe my strategy as hold the middle and unite the left. Because that, again, in a third, a third, a third environment, if I stay the middle—which is where I sit—I believe there are things we can accomplish together.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “If you were running in, I don’t know, Trenton, New Jersey or Youngstown, Ohio, you could look around and you could be like, ‘Look! Dilapidated buildings!’ or you could be like, ‘These streets are falling apart!’ But when one comes to Orange, it’s a beautiful town with orange trees and a cool downtown and a kind of thriving business approach. Is it hard to get people to be aware that the underbelly of problems the city has when it looks so pretty?”

ARIANNA BARRIOS: “Do you mean before or after we had a gunshot murder in our biggest park, Hart Park, in broad daylight where hundreds of families, children are in the park? No, it’s not hard to show them that there’s the underbelly. Is it hard when you have businesses who call me to complain because there are homeless people sleeping in their doorways and pissing on their front doors?”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Is homelessness a big problem here?”

ARIANNA BARRIOS: “Homelessness overall throughout the entire county has gone down by a lot. And the numbers in Orange have gone down by a lot. Where it hasn’t gone down is Hart Park along the riverbed and in the plaza. And the current group of homeless that we now see … so, we have the people we all know that have been here for decades and they’re harmless, sad and they deserve our sympathy. But what we’re seeing over the last six months is a very rough influx. And they’re just gravitating here because they don’t think we’re going to enforce. And we need to enforce.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “What does that mean? Enforce? Like, in what way?”

ARIANNA BARRIOS: “It means that we have so many resources in Orange. We have the Hub OC that offers nothing but services, referrals. We can get you a bus ticket in an hour to send you back home and reunite you with your family. We can get you into Be Well OC, which right here in Orange is the crown jewel of mental health services for the entire county. We can take you right over there. You can get rehab, you can get mental health services. You can stay in-house for. It used to be that people would be sent to jail and that’s how they get cleaned up. We actually have something where you don’t have to go to jail, but you get what you need in order to clean up. That’s what I mean when I say we can be compassionate.

“But if you’re going to carry guns and do drugs in our parks? No, I’m sorry. You got to go. You got to go. And I have no qualms about that because I don’t mess around when it comes to kids. And that’s something where we need to try something different. It’s like, can we just try something different? And that could mean a joint operation with Santa Ana Police. Because what happens is you go to the 22 Freeway, they do an enforcement that pushes them all over here. We do an enforcement, it pushes them all over there. We both need to do enforcement together and squeeze it all out like a zip. And just end it. Let’s just deal with the problem head on. And there’s no reason why we can’t do that. Absolutely none.

“So you say it all looks really cute here. There are massage parlors everywhere. When I first started asking about it, we were like at 60 and now we’re at 90. It’s like, what is happening? And if you go on that horrible app, Rubhub, it’s all there.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Wait. Did you just say Rubhub?”

ARIANNA BARRIOS: “There is an app called RubHub.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Ohhhh. When you say ‘massage,’ you mean happy ending massage?”

ARIANNA BARRIOS: “Ha. Yes. And there are 90 something of them. People come here to buy sexual acts.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “You also have some amazing coffee shops.”

ARIANNA BARRIOS: “Two things can be true.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Do you feel like we’re going to look back 10, whatever, 15, 20 years from now at this period in history and we’re going to be like, ‘That was the beginning of the end of America’s we knew it? Or are we going to look back and think, that was a really fucked up period in America, but we somehow survived?’”

ARIANNA BARRIOS: “So I talk, I’m very close to Congressman Lou Correa. He sits on the Homeland Security Committee in DC and he said something the other day. I was at an event with him and he just whispered in my ear and he’s like, ‘We need to be prepared for Election Day.’ He’s like, ‘And we need to talk about this.’ I mean, that was like, four days ago, and it’s like, ‘Oh, okay, what do you mean? What is coming?’ And I do think those aren’t existential threats. Those are real threats. And when Mr. Barranco, who was the first—that was the story of the gardener who was beaten—and it was the first national news story about what was happening with immigration. He was from here in Orange and his family all lives in Orange. And I went with his sons to his hearing out in Adelanto—the most depressing place I’ve ever been.

“The fact of the matter is the United States of America now has concentration camps all over the country. And we are holding people without due process. I mean, that is terrifying. And I really worry that my father, who loves nothing better than to come down to the plaza and sit and have a cigar and just be an old man … that someone will hassle him. Someone will ask for his papers and ask, ‘You look Mexican? Are you even American? Do you belong here?’ I mean, that we’re even asking the questions is beyond me.

JEFF PEARLMAN: “You’re here in this conservative town and you serve with conservative board members. Why do you think these people are okay with Trump?

ARIANNA BARRIOS: “I think secretly a lot of them aren’t, honestly. I think when you think about the hardcore MAGA Trump people, I don’t think they’re all that anymore. When you look at the national numbers, you’re looking at about 27 percent, 29 percent. As I’ve talked to my colleagues, I think I can see where the line is. So some of them, I think, yeah, they’re out. And others, sadly, are all in. Like, all in.

“And this is true everywhere. They like the cruelty or they think it’s somehow going to be cleansing or they’re just deluded that it will never hit them. But I talked to others of them and I think they now see it as a much more dangerous time. And I think there was a lot of change after the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. It was so graphic. It was so in your face. You couldn’t get away from it. And it was terrifying.

“But I’m angry and inspired. I believe in the fight. I just strongly believe that if you have the gall to stand up—because it takes a lot of gall to stand up and say, ‘I want to represent people’—you better be damn sure that you’re willing to represent all people. That is the rule. I turned in my paperwork the other day and for probably the 20th time of my life, I had to raise my hand and say the oath. And that oath is amazing. I still get chills about it. And I think that’s the same oath that George Washington took, that Abe Lincoln took, that Richard Nixon took. It means something. It means not backing down.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Do you think you’ll win?”

ARIANNA BARRIOS: “I’m going to do my damnedest. And like I said, if nothing else, it gives people a choice and people deserve a choice. So let’s get after it.”

#TOC#

In case you missed this, Gracey Van Der Mark, the Huntington Beach city council member and Republican candidate for state assembly, district 72 recently posted a bunch of photographs alongside Brandon Gill.

And if you’re thinking—“Brandon Gill—the dude who sang “Rub You the Right Way!”

No, that’s Johnny Gill.

And if you’re thinking, “Brandon Gill—former Charlotte Hornets guard!”

No, that was Kendall Gill.

Brandon Gill is the 32-year-old MAGA congressman from Texas best known for his boyish looks, his Dartmouth diploma and his calls for a prohibition on Muslim immigration.

Put different: Gill is a bad guy. A profoundly bad guy. A uniquely bad guy. A white Christian Nationalist who backs mass deportations, proudly Tweeted, “It’s still not illegal to be white” and responded to a video clip of Zohran Mamdani eating with his hands by writing, "Civilized people in America don't eat like this. If you refuse to adopt Western customs, go back to the Third World.”

And … Gracey knows this. Loves this. Because, despite being both Latina and the daughter of first-generation Americans, she’s a (again, weirdly) vile racist who has somehow been brainwashed into seeing a white reflection gazing back in the mirror. She lacks empathy, sympathy, decency, kindness, and views the MAGA cruelty spewed by shrubs like Gill as distinctly American.

On the bright side, her website is broke …

PS: Chris Kluwe is an obviously obviously obvious guy to vote for in this race.

Say what you want about Katrina Foley’s campaign—they’re extremely prompt and reactive. I would say, oh, within 10 minutes of this post hitting the site, I heard from a surrogate. Then another surrogate. Then—Katrina Foley.

Who insisted she was unaware of my requests. And offered her cell number. And said, to paraphrase a bit, “Let’s do this.”

Well, now we’re meeting on Friday! For coffee! And maybe scones!

Props to Katrina and her campaign.

The universe is saved.

So for the past, oh, three or four months, I’ve very much wanted to do a high-level Q&A with Katrina Foley, the highly respected, highly regarded, perhaps-a-smidge-offputting Orange County supervisor who is in the midst of a rough re-election battle.

And, for the past, oh, three or four months, I’ve been subtly blown off.

Which I don’t get.

This website (which is 100 percent free) exists to bring (mostly) political news and information to denizens of our fine county. I write from a leftward stance, and very much want a candidate like Foley to thump Diane Dixon, her opponent and a woman who puts the title in entitled.

While I do not consider myself important or interesting or essential, the fact is myriad posts on this website often exceed 10,000 views—which translates to about 10,000 Orange County voters. And I do believe (extremely strongly) that it is incumbent upon people like Foley to speak to their constituents. That means, obviously, town halls. It means debates. It means forums. And (gasp) it means interviews with people like (double gasp) me. People who ask questions; who do their research; who won’t merely throw softballs toward the plate.

Again, I know I’m not important. Hell, I’m a sports writer disguised as a political writer. But this race is important, and I hate (like, h-a-t-e) the optics of a preferred candidate avoiding questions to nurse what (I assume Foley believes) is a small-yet-solid lead in polling.

Roughly 1 1/2 years into this wacky Truth OC experiment, Katrina Foley is literally the only Democrat to repeatedly blow this site off.

I am not (I swear) personally offended.

As a voter, however, I think it sucks.

PS: Chad Williams is a Republican city council member in Huntington Beach. He and I agree on literally nothing. I mean, I hate everything the dude stands for. But, to his credit, Williams has agreed to be interviewed—because, he said, he’s in favor of open dialogue.

PPS: The worst part? I’m a huge Katrina Foley admirer.

So, as some of you know, I work as an adjunct journalism professor at Chapman University. And one of my star students last semester was Meg Corsi. I asked Meg to take a gander at the state assembly district 72 election—and, in particular, Republican lunatic Gracey Van Der Mark.

Here’s Meg’s report …

By Meg Corsi

Special to The Truth OC

A child of impoverished immigrants, a woman of color, born and raised in Los Angeles, and a survivor of an abusive marriage. These are all traits that would seemingly describe a strong liberal, and yet, in this particular case you would be sorely mistaken.

Gracey Van Der Mark has the background to fit someone who’s seen enough oppression and abuse to understand what it takes to help people, yet she has proven time and again through policies and resolutions she created and voted on that she has more interest in appealing to MAGA politics.

In 2022, Van Der Mark was voted onto the Huntington City Council. While on the council, Van Der Mark spearheaded numerous policies and mandates. She established a resolution relocating library materials containing “sexual content” (City of Huntington Beach Resolution No. 2023-41, 2023), introduced a countermeasure to California’s SAFETY Act by passing an ordinance to make Huntington Beach a “parents’ right to know city” (Huntington Beach Municipal Code 1.23.020, 2024), and a ban on mask and vaccine mandates. She also voted to pass pride flag restrictions, diversity celebration repeals, and a voter ID measure.

One of her biggest and most critiqued efforts was against the Huntington Beach Public Library. She aimed to relocate certain books from the children’s section to the adult section under the notion that some of the books contained “sexual content” (City of Huntington Beach Resolution No. 2023-41, 2023). During her time as mayor pro tem, Van Der Mark gave a presentation to the council about the kinds of books in the children’s section of the library that she wanted to move.

The presentation included books such as Gender Queer, by Maia Kobabe, It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health, by Robie H. Harris, Grandpas Pride, by Harry Woodgate, and S.E.X: the all-you-need-to-know progressive sexuality guide to get you through high school and college by Heather Corinna. While all of these books do contain nudity and sex, and conversations around gender and queerness, they are presented in the name of education, and not in an erotic way.

Not that such nuance matters to Van Der Mark.

The resolution stated that “No City Library or other City facility shall allow children ready access to books and other materials that contain any content of sexual nature.” (City of Huntington Beach Resolution No. 2023-41, 2023) Some critiqued the ambiguous language, questioning what “sexual nature” meant exactly. Many trained librarians who had been educated about reading standards were extremely outspoken on the matter, as their professional opinions were not being taken into account.

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1955, otherwise known as the SAFETY Act, prohibiting California public schools from disclosing a student’s sexual orientation or gender identity to parents without the student’s consent. In an effort to counteract this measure, Van Der Mark introduced and, by a 4-3 vote, approved an ordinance declaring that Huntington Beach is a “parents’ right to know city.” Under this ordinance, educators, or other entrusted adults working with children, may not withhold information relating to a child’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to parents with or without consent from the child. However, because California public schools are governed by state codes and school districts, municipal city councils have no actual legal authority over them. Because of the SAFETY Act being in place, Huntington’s resolution cannot fire, fine, or otherwise hurt educators or other entrusted adults who violate the ordinance. Instead, the ordinance serves more as an indicator to outsiders of who the Huntington Beach City Council is, and as a legal basis for suing under state law.

Finally, in 2023, Van Der Mark imposed a ban on mask and vaccine mandates in the city. This ban came at a time when the state of California, Orange County, and Huntington Beach had no active mandates for masks or vaccines, as those mandates had ended earlier in the year and there were no plans to revive them. While this mandate was city-wide, there were exceptions. Individuals who actively had COVID-19, or private businesses, had the right to set their own mask and vaccine rules. Just like the “parents’ right to know city” this resolution did not actually do much, as again, there was no mask and vaccine mandate in place when this resolution was put into action. It was mainly put in place to block potential future mandates and protest the government’s role in Huntington.

Van Der Mark is now running for the state assembly district 72. Stretching along the coast from Seal Beach to Laguna Beach and inland toward Lake Forest, District 72 is a large area that Van Der Mark may well wind up rerresenting. If elected, she would introduce, debate, and vote on bills, consult on the state budget for programs like healthcare, public safety, schools, and more. She would provide oversight to make sure laws are being enforced and implemented correctly, and assist residents with issues involving state agencies.

God help us.

Meg Corsi is a Chapman undergrad and founder/editor of Infected Magazine.

In case you missed this gem, yesterday’s Orange County Register ran a piece headlined, PHOTOGRAPH AT OC FAIR CONDEMNED BY COUNTY REPUBLICANS AS CALL TO VIOLENCE AGAINST TRUMP.

This, from Claire Wang’s article …

And I’m going to say something that may well shock some readers of this website.

Deep breath.

Deep breath.

Deep breath.

I (gasp) can see Will O’Neill’s point.

I mean it—I can.

Here is the photograph he is referring to, which languishes inside one of the hangars within the OC Fair …

And while I don’t think it’s a particularly big deal, it does seem sorta weird to highlight the image of a bunch of kids wishing the United States president a “happy last birthday”—aka: we hope you die.

So, again, on the surface I don’t fully disagree with Will O’Neill’s point.

But …

I’m just wondering, for kicks and giggles. Why did Will O’Neill never speak up after Trump supporters attacked and destroyed the United States Capitol? Why did Will O’Neill never speak up after Trump supporters (on that same day) set up a noose for the purpose of hanging Mike Pence? Why did Will O’Neill never speak up after Trump praised Montana congressman Greg Gianforte for physically assaulting a reporter? Why did Will O’Neill never speak up after Trump respond to George Floyd protests with “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”? Why did Will O’Neill never speak up after Trump advised the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by”? Why did Will O’Neill never speak up after Trump said of a heckler at his rally, “Maybe he should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.” Why did Will O’Neill never speak up after Trump saw protesters outside the White House and said to Defense Secretary Mark Esper, “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?” Why did Will O’Neill never speak up after Trump said this of journalistic protections: “You take the writer and/or the publisher of the paper … and you say, ‘Who is the leaker? National security.’ And they say, ‘We’re not gonna tell you.’ They say, ‘That’s okay, you’re going to jail.’ And when this person realizes that he is going to be the bride of another prisoner very shortly, he will say, ‘I’d very much like to tell you exactly who that leaker is!’”

Why did Will O’Neill never speak up when Trump bragged about grabbing women by the pussies? Why did Will O’Neill never speak up after Trump cheated on his wife with a porn star he raw dogged? Why did Will O’Neill never speak up when Trump mocked a disabled reporter? Why did Will O’Neill never speak up when Trump referred to myriad women as ugly and dumb? Why did Will O’Neill never speak up when the only refugees Trump allowed into America were white South Africans?

Why did Will O’Neill never speak up when Trump mocked POWs for being captured? Why did Will O’Neill never speak up when Trump had John McCain’s name covered on a battleship? Why did Will O’Neill never speak up when we learned Trump made $2 billion over the past 1 1/2 years?

Why did Will O’Neill never speak up when Trump tried to overturn an election he lost? Why did Will O’Neill never speak up when Trump said he won California three-straight times? Why did Will O’Neill never speak up when Trump said the fix was in on Spencer Pratt? Why did Will O’Neill never speak up when Trump lied about decreasing drug prices by “2,000%, 3,000%.” Why did Will O’Neill never speak up when Trump said he “opened up the water” for SoCal?

Honestly, I can go on. And on. And on. And on.

Truth be told, Will O’Neill doesn’t care about a photograph in the OC Fair. Like, truly doesn’t care. He’s not actually offended. Or bothered. Or even irritated. It’s just an opportunity to make some noise, and were the image a bunch of kids mocking Joe Biden or Barack Obama, O’Neill wouldn’t have uttered a peep.

But, alas, Will O’Neill is nothing more than a sad, pathetic, little political opportunist; a dime-a-dozen regional hack who somehow looks at his children and looks at his wife and still—despite their gazes—believes this is how he should behave.

So, hey, take the picture down, OC Fair. Make Will O’Neill happy.

But just be warned: The silence will last, oh, a week. Maybe 10 days, max.

Then he’ll find something else to complain about—while ignoring the cruel, violent, disgusting, irredeemable pig in the White House.*1

Not sure whether most readers know this, but when I’m not offering reheated political commentary, my main job involves chronicling sports (This is me). I actually started as a baseball writer at Sports Illustrated, where for much of my six years at the magazine I traveled America, hopping from ballpark to ballpark.

And … it’s weird. I grew up a huge baseball fan, but the job sort of beat it out of me. The flights. The juiced players. The endless hours inside a clubhouse. Sitting through a four-hour snoozer between Pittsburgh and Milwaukee. Boring men speaking about boring topics. It wound up feeling painfully stale, and by the time I bolted the magazine in 2003, I was pretty much done with America’s Pastime. I’d watch, but only casually, and without concern or rooting interest. Baseball became beige carpet to me. Just … meh.

Enter: 2026.

I cannot tell you how or why, but I’ve been attending a lot of Angels games this year. And, by “a lot,” I mean, oh, nine or 10. Maybe 11. It’s peculiar, because the team is absolutely brutal (they’re about to lose 100 games for the first time in franchise history) and Mike Trout’s bat has slowed significantly and Arte Moreno, the owner, is a victory-allergic sack of greed dung. The stadium is dated, the uniforms are dull, the food offerings are brutal (Jesus Christ, what is Oggi, and why does it exist?), the giveaways are cheesy. It is, by all measures, a bad Major League experience.

That said—I’ve loved it. Like, really, really, really loved it. As a lifelong New York Jets fan, I know a thing or two about watching bad operations. And while losing stinks, it’s also a powerful bonding elixir. To see players fail and fail and fail is to develop empathy, compassion, kindness. The Angels players don’t want to lose. They’re just not good enough to win. Which is no fault of their own.

The Dodgers have Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman and Shohei and, now, Tarik Skubal.

The Angels have Nolan Schanuel.

It’s not a fair fight.

•••

I digress.

As we speak, Major League Baseball’s trade deadline approaches, and the Angels are getting busy. Thus far they’ve sent Jose Soriano to Toronto, Logan O’Hoppe and Chase Silseth to Texas, Brent Suter to Atlanta. I suspect, within a few hours of you reading this, shortstop Zach Neto will be gone, too.

The deal that got me, however, happened a few hours ago, when the Angels dealt outfielder Jo Adell to Cleveland for Jacob Cozart, a catching prospect.

When I first saw the news, my heart sank. Jo Adell? Gone? To Cleveland? Noooooo. If you don’t know, Adell is a 27-year-old corner outfielder from Kentucky. He was drafted by the Angels out of high school in 2017, and turned down a scholarship from Louisville to pursue a dream. Like almost every member of the Angels, Adell was a flawed player—a defensively mediocre, offensively limited gamer whose breakout 2026 season (37 homers, 98 RBI) feels like something of a mirage. Truth be told, Adell is fairly dime a dozen: A solid ballplayer, but far from spectacular.

That being said, I loved the guy. He played hard. Played loose. Connected with the fans. Felt engaging, energetic, peppy. To watch Jo Adell in right was to see someone who appeared to be present in the moment and locked in on the game. He also sports a dope beard, wears neon sleeves, jogs with a unique pep. There’s a style there. A Jo Adell style.

Now, alas, he is gone—off the Cleveland; off to join a Guardians team that plays in a beautiful downtown stadium, in front of fans who care, for an organization that prioritizes winning.

Like all ballplayers, he will be replaced in Anaheim, and the Angels will find a new No. 7 to wear his old No. 7.

For me, however, Jo Adell symbolizes more than just another ballplayer.

In the summer of 2026, I rediscovered my love of baseball.

I discovered Jo Adell.