Kevin Crye at his recent town hall event.
In the present moment, it’s fair to say no local politician is more openly hostile to government at all levels than Shasta County District 1 Supervisor Kevin Crye. District 4 Supervisor Patrick Jones may have come up with the idea of breaking the county’s contract with Dominion Voting Systems, but it’s Crye’s reaching out to My Pillow CEO and election fraud conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell that’s grabbed most of the headlines.
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell discusses Supervisor Kevin Crye and Shasta County in his Lindell Report podcast.
Crye, Jones, and District 5 supervisor Chris Kelstrom voted 3-2 to terminate Dominion’s contract in February, potentially disenfranchising 111,526 registered Shasta County voters as the 2024 presidential election approaches. Such decisions come naturally for Crye, an authoritarian muscle-head who doesn’t hide his disdain for all things government.
“If you want something done slow and probably incorrect have the government do it,” Crye said on a recent Patriot State of Mind podcast as Red White & Blueprint co-founder Carlos Zapata and Cottonwood militia leader Woody Clendenen expressed agreement.
At his town hall meeting last week, Crye sounded a similar note, claiming the problems he’s been dealt as a newly elected supervisor exist because “people haven’t done their jobs for 20 years or more.”
Kevin Crye lectures Erin Resner at his town hall.
“The only way it’s going to get better is if business owners start leaning in privately and stop waiting for the government to fix the problem,” Crye said, lecturing local business owner Erin Resner after she asked a question about a dismissed county official. Crye narrowly defeated Resner in the District 1 race last November and has pointed to the nearly $2 million total raised by local campaigns during last year’s electoral cycle as proof Shasta County business owners and private citizens are awash with surplus cash.
Yet nearly half of that record campaign haul was donated by Connecticut son-of-a-billionaire Reverge Anselmo, an anti-government libertarian who injected nearly $1 million into local political action committees last year, including $4900 to Crye’s campaign. According to Crye’s latest campaign filing, last year he raised $142,067 and spent $110,613. He’s currently sitting on $47,000 in campaign cash.
“I don’t think it’s the government’s job to do a lot of this stuff,” Crye said at the town hall, referring specifically to homelessness and mental health issues. “I think it’s [up to] churches and private citizens.”
“There’s money available, that’s where we tap into things,” Crye insisted. “When I say ‘we’ I’m talking about myself and some friends.”
Crye’s not kidding. There’s plenty of money available and he and “some friends” are tapping into it.
By friends, Crye is presumably referring to the clients and employees of the four companies he currently runs, Ninja Coalition HQ, Ninja Coalition Inc., Valor Talent, and Endless Rope. As I reported last week, Crye failed to list these companies as required by law on his statement of economic interests, known as a Form 700, when he filed to run for the District 1 supervisor seat last year.
Kevin Crye and WNBA star Ruthie Bolton, one of the many “talents” in California Adventure Camps.
Crye and his traveling circus of Ninja warriors, former Olympic athletes, lesser-known musicians, a magician, a Christian filmmaker, and other almost-famous celebrities aren’t dipping their beaks in the dark pools of private wealth publicly touted by their ringmaster. They’re drilling into the far more lucrative field of government grants and programs, such as the Extended Learning Opportunity Program, one of the state’s responses to learning loss resulting from COVID-19 pandemic mandates.
The state government program kicked off in the 2021-22 school year and proposes to spend $5 billion through the 2024-25 school year on “learning opportunities that take place outside of normal school hours,” including programs before and after school, during winter and spring breaks and summer school.
ELOP is the source of the $340,000 contract Crye’s Ninja Coalition Inc. is currently seeking from the Gateway Unified School District board of trustees. It also appears to be driving exponential growth in Crye’s Ninja businesses.
“Privately I’m working with 40 school districts across the state,” Crye bragged at the town hall. He claims he now has 50 to 60 full-time and part-time employees. “I work with 12 [school districts] in Shasta County. I work with every single school district in Siskiyou County and shortly every one in Tehama.”
That’s more business by an order of magnitude than Crye declared on the “assuming office” Form 700 he filed in February, just two months ago. Crye lists the four companies mentioned above and some of the school districts in the new filing, but his latest company, California Adventure Camps, which is angling for the Gateway contract among more than a dozen others, isn’t listed.
Current and pending California Adventure Camps contracts on display at GUSD.
At a Gateway Unified School District board meeting earlier this month, Crye claimed California Adventure Camps has additional contracts with Bella Vista Elementary, Chico Unified School District, Fortuna Union Elementary School District, and Orland Unified School District. Like California Adventure Camps, none of these districts is listed on his recently filed Form 700.
Crye claims California Adventure Camps has contracts pending with Amador County Unified School District, Gerber Union Elementary School District, Lassen County’s three school districts, McKinleyville Union School District, Natomas Unified School District, and Tehama County’s three districts.
Keep in mind that last year Crye claimed he had no economic interests to declare even though his Ninja businesses have been in the government pipeline since at least 2021.
Now he’s hit the motherload and here’s the best thing: No audits will be conducted on ELOP spending until the 2023-24 school year. That’s state policy on a $5 billion program. It’s exactly the lack of government oversight conservatives like Crye complain about constantly.
Gateway Unified School District paid Ninja Coalition Inc. $30,000 in the 2021-22 school year and $75,000 in 2022-23, according to the district. Services included setting up a Ninja-style obstacle course at the school and pep talks from members of Crye’s performing troupe, who are referred to as “talents” in the contract.
Crye doesn’t confine himself to ELOP funds. The Redding School District paid Ninja Coalition Inc. $71,975 in 2021-22 and 2022-23 for similar services; the funding came from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, according to the district.
Enterprise Elementary School District paid Ninja Coalition Inc. $56,000 to set up an obstacle course from Nov. 28 to Dec. 2 last year. It was paid for by Local Control and Accountability Plan funds and some one-time state funding according to the district.
According to Allan Carver, Superintendent of Schools for Siskiyou County, the Siskiyou County Office of Education paid Ninja Coalition Inc. $250,000 for the obstacle course and four talents who appeared at the Nov. 6-11 event last year. The funds came from the After School Education and Safety program.
Note that including “talents” in the Ninja Coalition Inc. package of services can boost the cost considerably. Enterprise Elementary paid Ninja Coalition Inc. $56,000 to set the obstacle course up for one week. Siskiyou County paid $250,000 for the obstacle course plus four talents. That’s five times what Enterprise paid.
Crye is clearly using the athletes and artists represented by his talent agency to capitalize on the billions of dollars of ELOP funds sloshing around in the state’s public education system. Crye’s latest company, California Adventure Camps, merges the Ninja Coalition Inc. obstacle course with his Valor Talent clients in a product tailor-made for the expanded learning program. If all of Crye’s claimed contracts come to fruition, he could be raking in millions of dollars per year.
Gateway Unified School District trustees Lindsi Haynes, Elias Haynes, Dale Wallace, and Phil Lewis
According to Gateway Unified School District administrators, the perennially cash-strapped district received $1.4 million in ELOP funding for the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years, three times the amount it normally receives for after-school programs. Thanks to the state’s “use it or lose it” policy any funds not spent during a given school year are returned to the state. Like many districts across California, Gateway has had difficulty spending the money before the deadline, which added to the tension when the GUSD board of trustees considered the $340,000 contract with California Adventure Camps in open meetings earlier this month.
It’s not that things weren’t already tense enough. The Gateway board is still reeling from the attempted right-wing takeover of the district which began in November with the election of Cherrill Clifford and Lindsi Haynes and ended in February, when board president Clifford resigned after it was revealed she had signed a secret contract with controversial thrice-fired school superintendent Bryan Caples.
Since then the board, reduced to four members, has been deadlocked in a 2-2 tie, unable to select Clifford’s replacement despite publicly interviewing and voting on two separate sets of candidates during the past month.
Indeed, it seems ultraconservative husband-and-wife board members Elias and Lindsi Haynes and more moderate longtime trustees Dale Wallace and Phil Lewis have agreed to disagree on just about everything, including Gateway’s contract with California Adventure Camps.
The contract first came up at the regular board meeting on March 15 and was debated again last week. The goal of ELOP funding is to entice students to attend school outside of normal school hours with programs such as California Adventure Camps, which is seeking to provide services to Gateway for spring break and summer school in the 2022-23 school year.
Schools provide the academic content for the spring break and summer school programs. According to the Gateway contract, California Adventure Camps provides physical exercise, inspirational speeches, and entertainment, including art camps with professional artists, field trips to the Ninja Coalition HQ gym, bowling with a professional bowler, swimming, gymnastics, skating, laser tag, cooking classes, and even an end-of-the-year concert featuring Smash Mouth, an event Crye crowed about at his town hall.
According to the contract, the total cost for all services provided by California Adventure Camps is not to exceed $340,000 and is due in full by the completion of summer school. The figure is open-ended because the district can’t predict how many students will attend summer school this year. If more students attend, more money will be spent on California Adventure Camps services—if the contract is fully approved.
When ultraconservative trustee Lindsi Haynes was presented with the $340,000 contract at the March 15 regular meeting, she felt blindsided and railroaded. If the deadline to spend the money was fast approaching, why was she just now learning about the contract? The room fairly erupted as staff, teachers, parents and even a few of Haynes’s allies pleaded with her to “trust the staff” and approve the contract. Crye made several appearances at the podium, begging Haynes to approve the contract now so his “talents” can be scheduled for spring break.
Haynes was incredulous. She had promised voters she wouldn’t rubberstamp large state contracts if she was elected and now she was being advised to do just that. The board voted 3-1, with Lindsi Haynes dissenting, to approve the spring break portion of the contract and table the summer school portion until the next meeting. Elias Haynes voted against his wife for the first time since she took office in December.
But by the time the contract came up again at the special meeting on March 21, Elias had changed his tune, agreeing with his wife that California Adventure Camp’s rates seem excessive.
“The talent is unbelievably expensive,” Elias Haynes said. “That’s a lot of money. It seems like a lot.”
He has a point. For example, the services California Adventure Camps will provide Gateway during spring break April 10-14 include the Ninja obstacle course, art classes, field trips to the Escape Room, Turtle Bay, and Shasta Caverns, and in-school visits from three talents. The price tag is $95,000, paid in advance.
A sense of urgency pervaded the room. Parents and teachers beseeched the Haynes to approve the six-figure summer school contract for the sake of Gateway’s student body, still recovering from pandemic learning loss. Lindsi Haynes pointed out that many of the services offered by California Adventure Camps are available for lower rates from organizations such as the YMCA.
Interim superintendent Steve Henson admitted the district hadn’t sought out other service providers and revealed that the district has yet to hire a coordinator for the expanded learning program. He tried to assure Haynes that approving the contract wouldn’t place the district in financial or legal peril.
“The state is not auditing us, next year they start on auditing,” Henson said. “They’re giving us a free pass.”
Several supporters of the contract admitted they were no fans of Crye but claimed the district had no choice but to approve the six-figure contract. Although Henson claimed the contract is with California Adventure Camps, Ninja Coalition Inc. and its president Kevin Crye are named as the contractor in the paperwork.
“It is a lot of money,” said longtime trustee Phil Lewis. “But I don’t want to send the state back $500,000.”
The fact that $340,000 is a lot of money hadn’t escaped self-proclaimed militia member and Gateway parent Jesse Lane. Lane has been nominated twice by Lindsi Haynes to replace Clifford; he failed to break the board’s 2-2 tie on both attempts. Lane appeared to figure out that Crye is a far cry from the small government conservative he claims to be.
“How would Kevin Crye know this was available?” Lane asked the Gateway board from the podium. “Kevin Crye knew this was out there, somehow?”
No one really had an answer for him.
Approval of the California Adventure Camps contract was postponed once again on a 2-2 vote, with both of the Haynes dissenting.
Supervisor Kevin Crye and Country Strong Learning Center co-owner Lani Bangay on the Patriot State of Mind podcast.
“This isn’t about dodging questions,” Crye said at his town hall meeting after dodging a question about his dealings with Mike Lindell. Crye admitted there was no pending deal with Lindell of any kind and claimed he couldn’t say anything further because he’d promised local TV anchor Mike Mangas an exclusive on the topic.
“Once you lose your word, you’ve got nothing,” Crye continued. Moments later, he pretended he didn’t know Susan Taylor, his selection for the ad hoc committee that interviewed county CEO candidates when she stood up and claimed the county had offered her no help with a homeless Asian teenager she and her husband had taken in off the streets. Her story fits perfectly with Crye’s anti-government worldview.
During last week’s town hall meeting, Supervisor Kevin Crye hands the microphone to friend Susan Taylor, also one of his ad hoc advisory committee selections. The two pretended as if they didn’t know each other.
In a telephone interview, Crye admitted that pretending not to know Taylor was a mistake.
“I was wrong,” Crye said.
Crye unimpressed with MyPillow CEO meeting
I asked Crye what he’d learned from his visit with Mike Lindell.
“It was a big nothingburger,” Crye scoffed.
I told him that according to county records, he had billed taxpayers $1410 for his flight and other expenses to travel back east to meet with Lindell, which seems like an awful lot of money for a nothingburger.
A snapshot of Kevin Crye’s Shasta County Travel Reconciliation Form. (Click here to see the entire page.)
He said $1400 wasn’t too much to spend on travel. I asked him if the $5 billion Expanded Learning Opportunity Program he’s plugged into wasn’t exactly the kind of big government spending he’s always complaining about.
“What I don’t like is they spend a bunch of money and there’s no quantifiable results,” Crye said. He said he has metrics based on attendance and test scores that prove his Ninja programs work. He also said he plans to file an amended Form 700 listing his new business interests in the coming months.
Crye has a complicated relationship with the truth. Like a carnival barker, he has no problem freely dissembling if necessary. Yet occasionally he slips up and tells on himself. At the town hall, realizing the crowd was 80 percent against him, he attempted to portray himself as open-minded by supporting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s education policies.
“Whatever your political leanings are, one thing our governor has done really well is there’s been statewide recognition about how messed up our young people are because of what they’ve lost the last two years,” Crye said. “So they created the ELOP funding which is the expanded learning opportunity program.”
“The state now has really doubled down, it’s important that we catch these kids up and they’ve made that commitment,” he continued. “So I will say I want to work on anything … let’s do it right.”
What Crye didn’t say, and what the audience didn’t know, is that he’s already tapping ELOP funding with contracts with dozens of school districts potentially worth millions of dollars.
Kevin Crye dodged Jeff Gorder’s questions about Mike Lindell at Crye’s town hall event last week.
So far, Crye doesn’t appear to have violated the Fair Political Practices Commission’s regulations on economic conflicts of interest. No issues involving his contracts with numerous local schools have come before the board of supervisors since he’s taken office, and he can always recuse himself if one does.
But from the beginning of his political career, Crye has been less than forthcoming with his constituents and the public about basic issues, such as, what does he do for money? Where does he live?
In November 2021, Crye famously moved from his District 4 home to an apartment in District 1 so he could run for the seat being vacated by Joe Chimenti. Crye has concealed the apartment’s address as much as he can, using a P.O. Box on Form 700s instead of his street address. Crye and his wife still own the District 4 home and this has led many people to believe Crye still lives in District 4.
That’s false. According to voting records, which require a street address, Crye moved to a Hilltop Drive apartment in District 1 in November 2021. In August 2022 he listed a new address on his voter registration form, an apartment in Salt Creek Heights in District 1 on the far western edge of Redding. On the recent episode of Patriot State of Mind, Crye claimed he and his family moved into the apartment last June.
On the podcast, Crye claimed California’s climate change policies are killing the economy and complained that the city of Redding was dragging its feet on completing a park near his apartment complex. He asserted a county employee, a personal friend of his, had shown him how to reduce the number of employees in his own department.
“We’re growing government, it’s getting slower,” Crye said. “I don’t know how we go back.”
Asked by Carlos Zapata how the supervisor job has affected his life, Crye said it had reduced the amount of time he gets to spend with his son but otherwise things are hunky dory.
“For my businesses, it’s been OK,” he said. “I’ve got great leaders in my different businesses. Our Ninja gym is fine, talent agency fine, travel events and California Adventure Camps is OK.”
Indeed. During the last year and a half, Crye raised more than $100,000 for a successful political campaign while simultaneously drumming up millions of dollars in government contracts. No wonder he’s asked the county to provide him with an assistant. He’s a busy man.
Zapata asked Crye if he’d lost business because of his political beliefs.
“I’ve had the opposite in some ways,” Crye said. “More people say, ‘I’m so thankful for what you’re doing.’ That’s what’s different about me than past supervisors. The person I replaced [Chimenti], he’s working for a contractor now, doing homes. He gets put right back in the whirlwind of Redding and business and deals.”
Crye said this with a straight face without betraying the fact that he himself is involved in dozens of business deals with schools up and down the state. He bragged about making travel arrangements to Dubai for one of his athletes, first claiming that he talked to his highness the prince of Dubai himself before admitting he had only talked to someone who works for the prince.
Crye’s point was to make his Ninja activities look somehow more noble than the massive feeding at the public trough that it is.
“I can’t be bullied, I can’t be bought, I can’t be threatened,” Crye said. “My livelihood has nothing to do with anything political.”
On the contrary, Crye’s livelihood has everything to do with politics. He is almost completely dependent on a $5 billion government program signed into law by one of most liberal governors in the United States.
And that’s just one of the things Kevin Crye doesn’t want us to know.
