Katrina Foley needs us.

If you're thinking of donating money to a candidate, Orange County’s supervisor for the Fifth District is The One.

One can donate to Katrina Foley’s re-election campaign here.

Katrina Foley is not warm and cuddly.

Katrina Foley is not going to smother your pet in kisses.

In person, Katrina Foley can be a bit terse, a bit sharp-elbowed, a bit snarly, a bit rough around the edges.

She is also one bad-ass motherfucker, a straight-up dogged worker and a helluva public servant.

As we speak, Foley—Orange County’s supervisor for the Fifth District since 2021—is in an uber-tight re-election race against Diane Dixon, the hard-right MAGA assemblywoman and (I believe deep in my soul) the body double for the actress who played Webster Papadopoulos’ adoptive mother back in the mid-1980s …

Will Foley win? I honestly don’t know. The GOP/Republican donors are throwing an absolute shitload of dough into this race, with the hope that (somehow) money and attack ads can overcome incumbency, Democratic momentum and the nationwide Donald Trump-sucks-even-worse-than-we-thought-he-would tidal wave besieging nearly every single Republican within its path.

Wait.

Deep breath.

Over the past bunch of weeks I’ve spoken with scores of people about Foley, a woman I’ve seen speak but have yet to meet one on one. And the No. 1 word you hear? Relentless. Utterly relentless. Foley works and works and works and works. Picture the biggest workaholic you know; the person who sticks around the office when everyone else is gone, just to make sure productivity is up and the copy machine is humming. Now triple everything. That’s Foley.

I started compiling a list of her accomplishments, but it became insanely thick and a bit repetitive. So I’ll focus on this: At the same time far too many (local and national) Republicans pretend climate change is a Star Trek-inspired hoax, Foley has fully devoted herself to protecting the environment, which a hyper focus on the shoreline. Here’s a quick primer …

As for Dixon …

I mean, she is what you’d expect of someone who wears a collar-up $700 white zip-up vest with pearls. She’s Newport. Uber Newport. Fancy car, fancy home, wealth-before-humanity, where-can-I-find-the-perfect-$12-cup-of-coffee.

Dixon’s record is one of protecting accumulated personal fortune over common-sense decency. It’s also of doing some painfully egregious shit. Most famously, she voted a hard no on AB 249, which required childcare centers and K-thru-12 school buildings built after 2010 to meet existing federal and state standards for lead levels in water systems. During Dixon’s four-year run on Newport’s City Council, she sat back and watched as the city used RoundUp (linked to increased cancer risks—specifically non-Hodgkin lymphoma—as well as environmental damage, including the destruction of beneficial plants and potential harm to soil ecosystems) for weed management—even when everyone knew the stuff was hyper-toxic and harmful. When, earlier this years, Trump issued an executive order to increase the production of toxic pesticides, Dixon (a vocal supporter of the lunatic president) said nary a peep.

If you’re wondering about bills Dixon voted against, well …

AB 249 - AB 249 would have required childcare centers and TK-12 school buildings built after 2010 to meet existing federal and state standards for lead levels in water systems.

SB 682 - SB 682 would have limited the use of PFAS in certain products to match the standards of other states and cities. (Passed / Gov. veto)

SB 601 - This bill would have restored Clean Water Act protections on a state level to prevent polluters from discharging toxic waste in these waters. (Passed / Gov. veto)

AB 1963 - This bill requires the Department of Pesticide Regulation to complete- by 2029- an evaluation of paraquat dichloride and make the determination to either ban or place new restrictions on the use of the pesticide. (Dixon Voted No, Passed & Signed into Law)

AB 3233 - This bill, the Local Environmental Choice and Safety Act, will safeguard the longstanding authority of local governments to equitably regulate and phase out oil and gas operations in their jurisdictions and affirms the state’s commitment to protect the public from oil and gas pollution. (Dixon Voted No, Passed & Signed into Law)

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In short, Dixon is everything you don’t like in a public figure, but also one very much worth fearing. Again, she’s got dough. A lotta dough. She presents well. Likes vests and strange color patterns and fluffy dogs …

She also digs Trump, seems to have no problems with attacking Iran, has never uttered a peep of protest in regard to the president’s cruelty, inanity, poor-judgment. She’s 100-percent old-school Orange County Republicanism.

She also may well be our next supervisor.

Which—trust me—would suck.

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One can donate to Katrina Foley’s re-election campaign here.