Is Jason Sams real, AI or hologram?
The Orange County Board of Education candidate makes it extraordinarily hard to tell.
There is a man named Jason Sams.
I think.
I’m pretty sure.
Perhaps.
He is running for a position on the Orange County Board of Education—area five
I think.
I’m pretty sure.
Perhaps.
Last Wednesday, on a street corner in Mission Viejo, I watched him address the crowd at yet another wonderful South OC For Democracy event. He spoke for, oh, seven minutes, and offered nary a word of substance or detail or interest. To be blunt, it was the worst presentation I’ve witnessed in my year throwing down Truth OC jewels.
If you don’t believe me …
Because I was but a few feet away, I can confirm—with 96.5 percent certainty—that Jason Sams is a real Homo sapien; a 50-year-old man with shoes, pants, a belt, a shirt, sunglasses, a shaved head, a warm smile. That, however, is as far as I can go.
He is the most befuddling Democratic candidate I’ve seen thus far. And his, “Hey, why not?” approach to this profoundly annoys me.
So let’s dig in …
To start with, Jason Sams has a website. Which, obviously, is required of 2026 political candidates. Here is the link. Nothing (literally nothing) about the page makes sense. It is a base-level GoDaddy template, and whoever filled in the blanks has clearly never set foot near a functioning computer. The fonts are buffoonery squared. The primary photograph is crudely placed. The capitalization decisions wound my journalistic soul.
This is what is listed below MY STORY …
Just for kicks, I asked ChatGPT to write a one-paragraph summation of why I (Jeff) am running for Orange County Board of Education (which I’m not), and it produced this …
I mean … y’all see it, don’t you?
You see it! Right? Right!?
I digress.
There is a DONATE link that takes you to a … blank-ish PayPal page. There is a listing of CAMPAIGN PRIORITIES that (again) could be straight from a ChatGPT quickie. Inexplicably, there’s a HELP OUR CAUSE plea alongside this photograph …
Is the cause forestry? Nature photography? Chopper bungee jumping? The return of Alf to NBC?
I do not know.
And the site irks me. First, because it sucks. Second, can we at least take this shit somewhat seriously? Please. I’ve been hard of late on Esther Kim Varet—but at least she’s in it to win it. Say what you want, the woman is trying. Jason Sams’ website screams, I’M IN IT BECAUSE MOM TOOK AWAY MY NINTENDO SWITCH! It’s vague and ugly and ridiculous and useless, and nary a single voter would leave thinking, “This is my guy.”
Oh, and it gets worse: In the lord’s year of 2026, Jason Sams has no social media presence. Literally zero. He links to nothing from his site, and a scan of the ol’ IG comes up empty. Same with TikTok. And Facebook.
Again—can we at least take this shit seriously?
Jason Sams’ LinkedIn page is little better. It’s just … vague.
Here’s the ABOUT section …
His first two EXPERIENCE listings involve recent advisory roles …
And his longest position—16 years and running—is as the founder and chairman/sustainability of the Stone Water Group, a company that hasn’t shown a pulse since 2018, boasts a dead website and, I guess, sorta kinda maybe existed/exists.
If that’s not kooky enough, Jason Sams spent two whole months as the executive director of something called the Markarian Law Group and nine months as the board of director at the Ryan Banks Academy.
Sigh.
•••
And here’s the thing. Dogging Jason Sams is not fun for me. At all. But we—Orange County’s Democrats and liberals—have to stop with this shit. Candidates are our business cards, and if we roll out ridiculousness, we’re doomed to be branded ridiculous. Either the people we push forward to run need to be engaged and qualified and inspiring (See Galvez, J.J.), or we need to find other place fillers. But the worst thing we can do (the absolute worst thing we can do) is promote duds, then watch them drown and have independents think, “Same ol’ OC Dems ...”
I have no reason to believe Jason Sams doesn’t have good intentions, but I also have no reason to believe he knows what he’s doing. He probably saw an opening, saw an election, saw some free time and thought, “Hey, LFG.”
But if you can’t express a real, non-ChatGPT reason for your campaign, and if you can’t offer up base-level facts on the position you aspire to hold, and if your LinkedIn page includes a two-month job, you’re not the right dude.
There’s no shame in that.