Erin Spivey wants to reclaim Huntington Beach's sanity
Horrified by her town's governmental MAGA leanings, the city council candidate is convinced change is on the horizon.
So on Sunday night I headed out to Huntington Beach to attend a Flag Day shindig that included face painting, flag pins, a fruit platter and a bevy of local political candidates and leaders. There was Chris Kluwe, running for State Assembly. There was Chris Duncan, running for state senate. There was this person and that person and that person and this person and … and …
There was Erin Spivey.
In case you don’t know the name, Spivey is one of four Democrats (along with Ben Davis, Brenda Glim and Taryn Palumbo) vying for city council in HB, a land of MAGA nuts and Trump slavery and LGBTQ+ bashing and librarian defaming. And, well, the woman has something snappy to her. First, she’s a longtime educator and librarian. Second, she doesn’t take any shit, and has refused to be intimidated by the nutty Gracey Van Der Mark and her merry band of assholes. Third, she’s insanely charismatic and likable, without any of the political residue. And fourth, she has her late dogs’ paw prints tatted on her right arm. I mean, c’mon.
Erin and I sat down on a patio, and she won me over from jump. You can donate to her campaign here, visit her website here and follow her on the ol’ IG here [Oh, and you can watch the entirety of this interview at the bottom of this page. Just scroll on down].
Here’s Erin Spivey …
JEFF PEARLMAN: Erin.
ERIN SPIVEY: Jeff.
JEFF PEARLMAN: How’s it going?
ERIN SPIVEY: Pretty good. How are you?
JEFF PEARLMAN: I’m good. I didn’t see that I would wind up today at a rooftop in Huntington Beach.That was a life twist I didn’t see coming …
ERIN SPIVEY: Oh, well, good life twist.
JEFF PEARLMAN: I guess so. All right. Serious question. We’re here in Huntington Beach. I do not live in Huntington Beach. When I started my website, everyone said to me, avoid Huntington Beach because ‘they’re fucking crazy and it’s just going to drive you in a sinkhole,’ which it has done. What has to happen for even one Democrat to break through and get on the city council? Literally, what actually has to happen? Because you would agree this is not an easy battle …
ERIN SPIVEY: No, not at all. So just looking at the numbers and the data—Republicans outnumber Democrats in the city by about 12,000 votes. So it’s about 52,000 to 40,000 and then we have 33,000 NPPs. So the path to victory—as it did with the library measure—it runs through those independents and it runs through a lot of people who are tired of what’s going on here in Huntington Beach. And we saw that in the turnout for the library amendments in June 2025. What we’re looking at is Huntington Beach used to be a libertarian town. And while that’s not exactly my bag, I at least can get it. Let people do their thing. And I totally understand that. But we’ve strayed so far from that and I think a lot of our NPP voters and our independent voters still, that really resonates with them. So I think reaching out to them is the path to victory.
JEFF PEARLMAN: Do you feel like there’s maybe a tipping point moment or a moment … the MAGA plaque or the, I don’t know, QAnons? I don’t know. For you, do you see a moment where it’s like these people are just behaving in crazy ways that maybe crosses a bridge for people?
ERIN SPIVEY: I really think it was the library fight, right? I think it was those porn signs that Chad Williams put up. That actually ended up doing my side of the fight a big favor because it raised so much awareness. It was a black eye for the city, unfortunately. We made the news yet again for a really bad look, but it helped get the word out and people were so opposed to the library that they loved being framed as porn pushing, pedophiles, groomers, abusers. People in this town really love the library. And I feel like that was the moment that really tipped the scales in our favor.
JEFF PEARLMAN: Do you think there was a point when even those people were like, wait a second, we sort of overplayed our hand on this?
ERIN SPIVEY: Yes, absolutely. I think you saw it when Chad came out initially and was pushing back and being like, “Why do you care what the signs say when there’s porn in the library?” And so many people were like, “There’s not porn in the library.” And people started visiting the segregated books in the library and were like, “This is not pornography. I don’t know what they’re talking about.” And they started talking to their friends and they were like, “This is bonkers now.” And you saw Chad come back after that and met with the guy who cut out “PORN” from all of the signs and was like, ‘We sat down and had a great conversation.’ So he knew and then you saw it, he brought it up several times how he kind of got hung out to dry on this issue because it was clearly the whole council behind it, but Chad was the face of the project. I think a lot of what we’re seeing from Chad now is bitterness over that and over the mayor issue.
JEFF PEARLMAN: It’s actually interesting because it seems like he actually is rebelling a little bit against the MAGA that created him locally …
ERIN SPIVEY: I don’t necessarily know if it’s against MAGA. I think it is only against this current city council. He feels very betrayed by how they played the whole library thing by letting him take the blame for the porn signs. And he is very mad that he got skipped over for mayor. And so he’s really only mad at this current city council. I think he’s still MAGA all the way.
JEFF PEARLMAN: Since I started doing this site, I’ve often thought to myself, ‘it takes a certain level of crazy person to decide to run for office.’ You would agree with this, I’m guessing?
ERIN SPIVEY: Yes.
JEFF PEARLMAN: What made you actually initially decide to run?
ERIN SPIVEY: I was relentlessly bullied by the community. As a librarian. So I was working here and as I mentioned, I quit and I sued the city as soon as they passed the censorship measures. And once I sued the city and I started coming out and speaking out about this a lot, people started asking me to run and, like, my mom’s best friends were asking me to run and my best friend was asking me to run. And then when we won the library issue in court in September and the city council voted two weeks later unanimously to appeal that decision and keep the censorship ordinances on the book. That was the tipping point for me. And Dan Kalmick called me up and said, ‘This is the moment, Erin. There’s momentum already because of what’s going on nationally and locally.’ And because I was the face of this library movement in a lot of ways that resonated so deeply with the community, they were really like, ‘This is the time for you to run.’ My plan was to run for school board because I was a teacher librarian or I was a teacher. That was my jam—education. That’s what I was going to do. And they were like, ‘No, you need to run for city council.’ And I was like, ‘I don’t think so.’
JEFF PEARLMAN: So how did you actually finally decide to do it?
ERIN SPIVEY: Yeah. So I have three kids. My oldest is high-functioning autistic and my youngest is a person of color. We adopted her through the foster care system. She’s already had a traumatic life and having to be in a city that’s not always very nice to people of color … I had a long conversation with Rhonda Bolton about her experience and she told me she would do it again.
JEFF PEARLMAN: Why?
ERIN SPIVEY: Because she believes in the project, she believes in democracy, she believes in government and the fact that she would be willing to do it again spoke clearly volumes to me and she assured me that safety was never an issue for her kids and there are precautions they took that I can take. So we talked it out. I also had a long conversation with Natalie Moser just on the mechanics of running and I was like, ‘Why would I do this?’ She’s like, ‘Because you are the person.’ And I of course talked to my parents. They were against it. They live here in Huntington Beach and they’re like, ‘Are you joking? City council’s insane. Why would you do that?’ And I said, ‘Because this is me, I’m the person. This is the moment.’ And they were like, ‘Oh.’
JEFF PEARLMAN: That’s funny.
ERIN SPIVEY: Yeah. My sister’s very against it, but now everybody’s come around because they see the momentum. They see that the city is actually ready for change.
JEFF PEARLMAN: So I’m a sports writer. There are times when a team is a long shot to win and you ask players, ‘Do you think you’re going to win or do you hope to win?’ A lot of players will be like, ‘Honestly, I hope to win, but I’m not sure.’ Do you believe you’re going to win? How do you feel confident wise?
ERIN SPIVEY: I absolutely believe I’m going to win. I know that it’s a big swing for all four of us, so that’s where I hope we can retake the majority, but I absolutely believe that I am going to be the next city council member for Huntington Beach come November.
JEFF PEARLMAN: And what gives you that confidence?
ERIN SPIVEY: I talk to people. I talk to a lot of people and people believe in the library. People are ready for calm, normal city council meetings. They’re ready for any kind of life without drama. And Huntington Beach is just exacerbating that right now. So I know that people are ready to support me for this because I speak the same language they do. I didn’t choose this fight. This fight chose me.
JEFF PEARLMAN: Actually, It’s very interesting. When I talk to friends about the national elections, I always say if I were running for president in 2028, I’d be like, ‘Don’t you just want to have a normal ... Don’t you not want to think about me every day?’ And it seems like it’s the same in Huntington Beach. Don’t you just not want to think about this nonsense every single day?
ERIN SPIVEY: That’s 100 percent what I tell people is like, I want to make government so boring that you forget about me. I don’t want to know who the secretary of the treasury is. I don’t want to know who my city councilor is and what every issue is coming before city council. We need to engender trust again in city council and so many people want that same thing. I was at a meet and greet with some parents of small children yesterday because I have small children and they’re all saying the same thing. They’re so tired of this. And that fatigue is really, I think, what’s going to change the vote in November.
JEFF PEARLMAN: What’s been your best moment of running and your worst moment of running?
ERIN SPIVEY: I think my worst moment of running was when I called a school board member here in Huntington Beach and I was like, ‘Can you endorse me?’ And she’s like, ‘No.’
JEFF PEARLMAN: Did you think she would?
ERIN SPIVEY: I did. She’s not endorsing anybody. She’s like, ‘Politics is too crazy now. I’m not making any endorsements.’ And so that was disappointing. My best moment I think was at my kickoff. I had it at Eat at Joe’s across the street from Golden West College. It’s like a sports bar, but it’s family friendly and we filled it. It was max capacity in there and I didn’t even anticipate that. And so many people were fired up. These were people like friends, family … like my best friend’s aunt, people that I didn’t think would be there, like the secretary at my kid’s school. People are ready for change and that was just the most empowering moment.
JEFF PEARLMAN: Much of my career has been library-dependent and librarian-dependent. Librarians have truly helped me in ways high and low. Why do you think the city council has sort of seemed to go after librarians as a profession?
ERIN SPIVEY: I can give you one answer. A very clear answer: Gracey Van Der Mark.
JEFF PEARLMAN: She’s awesome.
ERIN SPIVEY: She’s amazing. She’s the best. I love her. So much. She would love me if we ever got to sit down together. She is the reason the city council went after the library. She was the engine behind the whole thing. So it all started because we had Gender Queer, which is a well-known graphic novel, in the library.
JEFF PEARLMAN: I just want to say I read it about two months ago. I fucking love that book.
ERIN SPIVEY: It’s amazing. And it’s obviously not pornographic. There are some depictions of sex scenes, but it’s an illustration and it’s not photographs. Anyways, we won’t get into the actual legal definitions of pornography, but she found out that was in the library. And when it initially came out, it was a YA, a young adult book, because that’s who it was written for. And over time, the publisher and the author decided it was better to move into adult because there were sex scenes in it. So Gracey Van Der Mark, after she had already gone after Ocean View School District for the sex education in middle school, which was a state mandate, she fed all kinds of lies to parents in the community and they were like, no, this is untrue. So she then came after the library, she met with the librarian. The librarian said, ‘Okay, let me review the book.’ She was like, ‘You’re right, this should be in the adult section.’ And they moved it from YA to adult.
However, the library director, when she met with her, was perhaps a little rude and Gracey took that personally and she went on a rant about how librarians are terrible people, how just having a degree doesn’t make you an expert, how parents know their kids best and they should be the ultimate judge. And we agree. We absolutely agree with that point. But she could not let it go because this was personal to her. She had been insulted and that is the whole impetus of this whole thing. And then Moms for Liberty popped up
JEFF PEARLMAN: Those guys are awesome.
ERIN SPIVEY: Also awesome. They would be my best friends for sure. So when Moms for Liberty popped up, they gave her cover to run an even bigger campaign of censorship and they were going after school libraries and we were the only city in California to go after the public library because that is crazy and it is illegal and there is constitutional precedent about this issue and Gracey lost in court and now she can’t get away from the issue fast enough or far enough. The city council really thought they were going to win this issue because Moms for Liberty was winning across the country at the time. And then the tide turned because libraries have an 84 percent approval rate. Congress has like a 21 percent approval rate. It is crazy to go after the library.
The tide turned and city council did not see this coming because none of them are library users. None of them are fans of education or reading for fun. So they were embarrassed when the community came together and spoke out against what they were doing and they organized and they got more votes than they even got when they got elected. That was embarrassing for the city council. Dave Min took Huntington Beach to Sacramento as an example of what not to do and passed the Freedom to Read Act. That was embarrassing for Huntington Beach. So then they lost in September in court. That was embarrassing. So they continue to go after the library because their egos cannot take it. This has never been about what’s best for Huntington Beach. This has always been about their personal biases.
JEFF PEARLMAN: How long have you lived here?
ERIN SPIVEY: My whole life. I went to UCSB for college, bounced around a litle bit during grad school and then came back when my oldest was 1 1/2.
JEFF PEARLMAN: So when we hear about Huntington Beach—we, being people who don’t live in Huntington Beach—we hear how crazy Huntington Beach is. Are we getting a fairly accurate depiction of Huntington Beach or is there something that this is obscuring?
ERIN SPIVEY: I think it’s hard to say, right? I don’t think there’s a clear picture of what Huntington Beach is or what it wants to be right now. During COVID, we saw the worst of Huntington Beach with all those rallies downtown, all the anti-mask stuff. Then there was the anti-BLM riots or I don’t even know what you would call them.
JEFF PEARLMAN: Good times.
ERIN SPIVEY: We just call them good times. All great stuff and right in front of our iconic pier. And so that is a great national news story. Huntington Beach and you see the pier and the beautiful ocean in the background and it just makes us look bad. And that attracts more bad actors that want to be part of those stories. So then we elected four MAGA people and then three years later we elected three more. So I’m not sure Huntington Beach knows what they want to do. I think there’s a lot of apathy in this community, at least until the last couple of years. And I think there’s confusion about what’s really important. I think now more eyes are open than ever because of the shenanigans of the city council. And I grew up in a town that was a life of duality.
I was born in 1980. So Huntington Beach in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s had actual skinhead riots and there was the racially motivated murder in the ‘80s and there were neo-Nazis in Huntington Beach. That was true. And Huntington Beach worked very, very hard from the mid ‘90s through the 2000s to remake our city. That was a place that was inclusive, that was for everybody that businesses wanted to be a part of. And then everywhere in the world kind of lost its mind during COVID and Huntington Beach did, too. And I think people were just fed up. And I said this before, I think we all experienced kind of a collective trauma from COVID. Definitely. And we all experienced it in different ways. And a lot of people around here were so scared and they were so fed up with what was going on and the lack of information and the lack of security that they wanted change. It changed for the worse and I think they’re seeing that now.
I believe Huntington Beach wants to become Surf City again and not the Trumpiest city in America, as the Wall Street Journal called us. I think Huntington Beach wants to be a sleepy surf town where we have all these events during the summer that welcome people from around the world. I think we missed out on a huge opportunity to host the Olympics here when we have the infrastructure and the practical know- how on how to do it because of this craziness. And I think Huntington Beach would have been so proud to have that surf event here. So my impression when I talk to residents is they’re ready to go back to a place that would have been the perfect location for the Olympic surf event.
JEFF PEARLMAN: Are you mentally prepared for the idea that you could be, like, one person on a board with these less-than-ideal folks and that you’d have to work with them?
ERIN SPIVEY: Yes. Yeah. When I worked for Huntington Beach, I used to call myself the most annoying employee in the city, because I am the squeaky wheel. I am super tenacious. I keep going after what I want until I get it. And I plan to do the same thing when I’m on city council. Hopefully I will not be alone. Hopefully we retake the majority. I think it’s going to be a big swing. If I’m there by myself, I’m going to be the most annoying person on city council. I’m going to make it known that they don’t support transparency. I’m going to make it known that they have no plans to better this city. I’m going to make it known that they continue to support cronyism and nepotism and corruption and I am against all those things until I can move the needle enough until we get to a place where we elect a common-sense majority.
JEFF PEARLMAN: Chad Williams comes up to you. Do you guys have something in common? Could you work with a ...
ERIN SPIVEY: Sure. I mean, Chad did call librarians pedophiles and groomers.
JEFF PEARLMAN: That is true.
ERIN SPIVEY: So I think it would be starting from a rough place, but he has changed his tune over the last year and he seems to be more focused on making things better, like actual city business. And I can work with anybody if they’re actually focused on the issues that face our city and not culture wars.
JEFF PEARLMAN: Let me ask you a final very important question. Tell the story of your arm tattoos.
ERIN SPIVEY: So these [on the right arm] are all of my dogs who’ve passed over the rainbow bridge. So these are their actual paw prints that we got scanned.
JEFF PEARLMAN: How many dogs have you had?
ERIN SPIVEY: So this is four that have passed and I currently have two, a pit bull and a German Shepherd. And then this [on the left arm] is from Miyazaki’s Spirited Away and this is a character called No Face. And No Face in the movie is looking for meaning and he is only happy at the end of the movie when he finds purpose and his purpose is just cleaning house.
And so to me, this speaks about how we’re all searching for purpose in this life and it doesn’t matter what it is, but once we find that purpose, we can find happiness.