There has certainly been plenty of talk by local and sometimes national media about our Shasta County political chaos, but this article is for the rest of you. Those who would prefer to stay away, work a job, pay taxes, and keep your lovely heads down and out of this mess. Here is my message to you: It is probably time to take a deep breath and get involved.
Why? The Shasta County Board of Supervisors is set to screen candidates for a new Registrar of Voters next week.
This means that the person who will run our future elections is about to be hand-selected by the same sitting supervisors who brought you:
–Breaking in to county property at night to rip down protective (and presumably publicly-funded) COVID-era barriers while being filmed for a political propaganda docu-series called the Red, White, and Blueprint.
-Who needs a plan? Let’s just get rid of our current Dominion voting system contract and just remain optimistic that the details around basic voting rights will just, uh, sort themselves out.
-I know! Let’s get rid of our experienced and qualified health officer, and just leave that seat vacant for the better part of a year. Maybe we should have realized it could be difficult to recruit an anti-science extremist for a medical position.
-Let’s sit silently while speakers do things like accuse a sitting supervisor of having a “satanic” license plate, call other constituents “stupid,” disseminate absurd conspiracy theories, and utter racial slurs. Why? Well, we agree with all that, so… First Amendment something-or-other.
-We say we have a corrupt county DA, but when an investigation proves this untrue, we toss that letter and never say a word about it.
Look at any of the recent meeting agendas where there’s a closed session item mentioning “anticipated litigation,” and come back to finish this article once you’ve finished angrily shaking your head.
THE CANDIDATES
The board wanted to keep the ROV position as accessible as possible. Chair Kevin Crye, who seems to be doing fine financially given all the public money allocated to his Ninja Coalition business, made a crack about baristas being eligible for the position. First of all, if it came down to Kevin Crye continuing to hold his position, or literally any barista in town replacing him, I’m going with the barista. Second of all, not everything has to be an unsolicited self-promotion for the Friday coffee “Let Us Worship Kevin” sessions. The man cannot finish a train of thought without giving himself a kudos. My guess is that baristas are not nearly as excited about him as he would like to think.
So, Shasta County had an opening for the Registrar of Voters that was posted to the county website as a public recruitment. The qualifications were absolutely minimal for a position that carries a six-figure salary. It’s normally an elected position, and campaigning candidates typically demonstrate a wealth of knowledge to earn the trust of voters. Shasta County was very fortunate to have Cathy Darling Allen, our now-retired County Clerk/ROV. She spent nearly two decades serving our local elections, understood state and local procedures required to process and tabulate votes, and was a highly respected professional in her field. She absolutely crushed rival candidate Bob Holsinger in the 2022 election, 68 percent to 32 percent, respectively, for a 36-percent winning margin. This is a position requiring passion, integrity, management skills, knowledge, and drive, so unqualified candidates walking in to that office would be stunned to realize that they have signed up for a myriad of demanding responsibilities and air traffic control position might actually be a stress-reduction move.
Of the 39 applicants who pursued the ROV position, 9 are set to appear before the board this week, starting Tuesday. The political chaos brigade is set to conduct a dystopian pageant, spending many painful hours pretending that meaningful qualifications actually matter to them. Watch closely, and certain board members will no doubt have a “favorite:” someone that they in all likelihood recruited on the sidelines, quietly agreed upon, and are now just going through the motions to get that person into power.
Here are the 9 finalists, shamelessly copy-pasted from a recent KRCR article:
- Debbie Burkett, a Shasta County Tobacco Compliance Specialist.
- Clint Curtis, of the Law Offices of Clint Curtis and Associates with offices in New York, Florida, and the Dominican Republic.
- Joanna Francescut, the current Assistant County Clerk and Registrar of Voters.
- John Gaglione, a Deputy Clerk and Executive Assistant in Kane County, Illinois.
- Kristen Kelley, Chief Executive Officer of the Humboldt Assosciation of Realtors.
- Kenneth Michaud, a Construction Safety Coordinator with Caltrans District 2.
- Daniel Sloan, an Associate Professor at Simpson University in Redding and adjunt professor at Pepperdine University Law School in Malibu.
- Thomas Toller, a lawyer and former Deputy District Attorney for Shasta County.
- Jennifer Waltman, a Senior Staff Services Analyst for the Shasta County Health and Humans Services Agency.
A fun side-note: one of the incredibly few requirements for Registrar of Voters candidates is this: you can’t practice law for a collections agency. Part of the application form reads:
· I understand that Govt. Code section 24004(a) restricts a clerk from (1) practicing law or having as a partner a lawyer or anyone who acts as a lawyer for a collection agency or (2) acting as a collector or for any collection agency or have as a partner a collector or anyone who acts as a collector for a collection agency in the county where he resides and holds office.
This apparently didn’t discourage some lawyers from putting their names in the ring. Most noticeable among the attorneys is Clint Curtis, whose resume and cover letter repeatedly references some magic words to those who buy into disinformation: “election integrity” and “hand count.” Makes you wonder if Mike “MyBankruptPillow” Lindell is already on his speed dial, or if that’s just an aspiration for now. Conveniently, Mr. Curtis is totally willing to hang up his practice and move out here from Florida.
Other noteworthy names: Dan Sloan, former candidate for District 2 Supervisor who, in a KRCR interview, was quoted as saying:
“When I go to conventions, they look at me like I’m a hero. They don’t even know me and all I have to do is say, ‘Shasta,’ and it’s, ‘Oh my gosh! Shasta. You’re the Dominion Voting Machine guys!’ So we’re famous, and infamous; it’s good and bad. Now what it tells me is we’re making progress in restoring confidence in a system that’s broken.”
Seems like a real catch who will TOTALLY follow state law.
Now let’s talk Kenneth Michaud. If that last name sounds familiar, it’s because it is. Kenneth is the spouse of now-resigned Election Commissioner Lisa Michaud. Quick glance at her Facebook profile reveals “Conservative, Qualified Write-In Candidate: LISA MICHAUD Shasta College Trustee Area B.” For good measure, there is a United States flag ready to shout at you right next to these words on her cover photo, and the profile picture is a ballot with her name written in. Oh, how I wonder what kind of energy Kenneth will bring to this non-partisan position. Hint: he references a presentation on the Mesa Pattern of Fraud in his cover letter, and glowingly validates Patrick Jones’ “observations” about the Elections Office.
Tom Toller doesn’t seem so bad, until he talks in his cover letter about helping Erik Jensen on the 2022 campaign trail to try to become the Shasta County District Attorney. Jensen spent most of his career in worker’s compensation, but Bridgett had 20 years of experience as a prosecutor and was already running that office during her bid for re-election. Actually, this screenshot pretty much says it all:
District Attorneys generally will have some experience as “prosecutors.” Mr. Jensen’s seems to have gone missing.
Why have the experienced prosecutor running an office when you can have someone that hangs out with the Red, White, and Blueprint crowd? Toller goes on to flirt with the idea of trying to skirt laws that are “at odds” with local interests, saying such laws “should be interpreted strictly and narrowly.” Perhaps he will have a similar attitude toward counting the votes he doesn’t agree with, too.
The two unknowns who don’t raise any red flags in their applications are Kristen Kelley and Jennifer Waltman. One is the CEO of a realty business, the other is the Senior Staff Services Analyst at Shasta County Health and Human Services, and both appear to have experience at management levels. They don’t appear to have any experience specifically in an Elections Office position, but otherwise, they seem refreshingly normal.
Amid these names is the rather obvious choice: Joanna Francescut.
So, who is Joanna Francescut?
Joanna Francescut is the acting Registrar of Voters now and has worked at the Registrar of Voters office for 15 years under Cathy Darling Allen. Francescut has administered or helped to administer over 30 elections. Francescut’s resume is stunning, and she has worked in the Shasta County Elections Office since 2008. Both the Placer County and Contra Costa Elections Offices wrote strong letters describing her as a “commensurate professional” noting that she is “respected across California,” “has a vast understanding of state election law” and it doesn’t stop there. Endorsements of Francescut also came from former Shasta County Supervisors Les Baugh and Joe Chimenti, retired Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko, Shasta County Assessor-Recorder Leslie Morgan, retired CEO Larry Lees, and former Clerk-Recorder Cathy Darling Allen herself.
If you want to fact-check me a bit, or get an unsettling preview for what’s to come next week, here’s their applications.
Several members of the public have already urged the Board of Supervisors to simply cut to the chase and appoint Joanna Francescut, but if the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that the current board majority cannot be counted upon to make responsible decisions.
I say “board majority” because there are still two board members pushing back against the chaotic decisions of the past few years, but as Patrick Jones telegraphed rather transparently in the Red, White, and Blueprint docu-series he participated in back in 2021, the goal was to (as the episode was literally titled) “Count to Three.” If you have three members of a five-member board who will ignore law, logic, and reason in order to push your agenda accordingly, the other two votes will simply fade into the night.
So what’s the point of all this? The point is that the board wants to push THEIR choice of Registrar of Voters appointment, not the most objectively qualified candidate, but THEIR pick. The first things a “Count to Three” pick will likely do:
(1) Try to keep Patrick Jones in his District 4 seat despite a rather decisive re-election loss against Matt Plummer.
(2) Allow Laura Hobbs to go to runoff against Allen Long. Long received 5,410 votes and Hobbs trailed that by 3,347 votes in the primary. Laura Hobbs sure seems to enjoy repeating “14 votes” because that was the margin by which Long got more than 50% of the overall vote despite there being 4 candidates in that race. That means: given four options, more than half of District 2 still chose Allen Long over all other candidates. Hobbs is now seriously pushing the narrative (and a lawsuit she originally filed without a lawyer, or apparently a word processor) that she should STILL get to go to a runoff race, because he was “only 14 votes over the margin to avoid a runoff.” Long’s lead over Hobbs is so substantial that if you take only the numbers he’s leading by, the 3,347 votes over and above Hobbs, that’s still 1,284 more votes than the total number she received overall, 2,063. The board majority, despite the fact that she is suing the same county THEY SUPERVISE, has voiced support for her.
(3) Defy state laws and push inefficient hand-counts riddled with human error. Ever need to do some math, so you bust out a calculator instead of trying it by hand or in your head? That’s about what a tabulation machine is. This is a county where people in influence and power believe in chemtrails, the Mesa Pattern of Fraud, and other implausible conspiracy theories. Buckle up.
Who are some of these people in influence and power? I’ve talked a bit about Patrick Jones and Kevin Crye already, because they are the two loudest members of the Board of Supervisors pushing these wild agendas, but as long as Chris Kelstrom can drink enough Red Bull to stay awake at his seat at the dais, he’ll almost always vote their way without hesitation.
Behind the scenes: A look at the side characters
Lately, some of the equally corrupt, but lower-profile folks have been slipping up on the radar, too. Laura Hobbs can often be seen chatting with folks like Richard Gallardo, Patrick Jones, Jim Burnett, Bev Gray, and others in the inner political circle. She revealed during her “Let’s force my failed race to a runoff, or at least work overtime to smear Joanna Francescut in the process, so not appointing her goes down easier with the public!” lawsuit hearings that she was aware of candidates on the screening list for this coming week. That was not yet public knowledge, and when asked, she said she “heard it through the grapevine.” Who is the “grapevine?” Let’s not be silly.
They’re talking. They’re planning.
Laura Hobbs is keeping company with people like Richard Gallardo, who must surely be very independently wealthy, considering he apparently has all the time in the world to go hang out at the Elections Office (apparently with a gun under his shirt, and that is a felony even for those who can otherwise carry concealed).
Richard Gallardo sitting in the Elections Office with a visible outline on his waistband that, according to him, would have absolutely nothing, nothing AT ALL, to do with a firearm that was pulled off him shortly afterward by the Redding Police Department.
Other Gallardo hobbies include: going to whine at local board meetings, going to whine at local SCOE meetings, showing up to whine on Laura Hobbs and Patrick Jones’ behalf, participating as a co-plaintiff in some statewide lawsuit aimed at open carry laws, whine about the state, frequently make whining posts on social media with information—so obviously unquestionable—that Gallardo has taken to putting spaces between many of his w o r d s to trick social media platforms so they don’t flag and remove his false information. This busy fellow STILL had an extra $3,000 just laying around to donate to Laura Hobbs on April 5, 2024, AFTER her election was already called against her on March 28, 2024.
Incidentally, some of the witnesses at Hobbs’ hearing have already been Richard Gallardo and Patrick Jones (who left his seat empty in the midst of an ongoing board of supervisors meeting and was photographed standing around at the courthouse waiting for the Hobbs hearing to start).
Patrick Jones doing the important work of standing in a hallway,
while his supervisor chair across the street sits empty mid-meeting.
By the way, it’s not really a “trial” like Laura Hobbs has said on her social media, posting glamour photos of herself with a fake courtroom doctored into the background.
A photo that looks about as real as Hobbs’ commitment to Shasta County.
If you’re following local news, these hearings are actually about whether a judge will even let the case keep going, or just dismiss it now-ish. Hobbs and the lawyer who jumped at the chance to brag about being involved in an “election challenge,” Alexander Haberbush, are fighting tooth and nail to keep this nonsense alive, and then they are out bragging about what a big revolutionary whoop this is for “election integrity,” but really, a judge is basically just watching them try desperately to breathe life into some stillborn joke of a lawsuit and trying not to get too visibly bored by all the nonsense.
If you still aren’t convinced that these people are cranking out an astounding amount of weird, uncomfortably invasive, dishonest material, go read this.
ShastaAnon: Well, look at the usual suspects
I’m not a betting man, but if I was, I’d say that the images and computer skills for ShastaAnon are probably coming from Robert Exter, a courtroom sketch artist whose LinkedIn profile boasts experience in graphic design.
Robert Exter is perhaps the quietest member of the Shasta County Citizen “Journalist” crew, (my sarcastic quotes, not A News Café’s) which famously includes Lori Bridgeford and Richard Gallardo, man of many attempted citizen’s arrests.
Here’s an example from a past article that colorfully, but rather accurately, sums it up:
Their silence is probably not in the offing, but it would be a kindness to us all.
I’ve also noticed that the fan website “apatriotnewscafe.com” is awfully complimentary toward these two. Not linking here because… they’re not worth it.
But when you’re asking who “ShastaAnon” is, or really ANY secretive, sneaky local political effort, think about this:
(1) Gallardo sure seems like the type to obsessively collect what seems like it ought to be relatively private information, like this time he showed up to a private residence, or this lovely compilation of what seems to be typical Gallardo behavior. Gallardo loves to brag about his relationships with law enforcement, even though the general consensus from them has universally been, “uh, no thank you?”
(2) Bridgeford’s hobbies include vaccine clinic protests, pretending to be a journalist, announcing that she is a licensed marriage family therapist (OOF), and revealing in remarkably short order that there is something very wrong with her mentally.
(3) That picture earlier in this article? That was Lori Bridgeford in the courthouse hallway standing in front of Patrick Jones as he waited for the Hobbs lawsuit hearing to start.
(4) Bridgeford and Gallardo stomp around trying to promote Shasta County Citizen “Journalist” every chance they get, and they are desperate for relevance.
(5) Gallardo also really seems to enjoy disparaging Stephanie Bridgett, and the most recent “ShastaAnon” target has been…Stephanie Bridgett. Prior to Bridgett, ShastaAnon targeted A News Cafe publisher Doni Chamberlain with a dossier and matching video. Now add in the fact that other targets have included Dan Sloan, rival to Hobbs, and Matt Plummer, rival to Patrick Jones. Starting to get the idea?
The Shasta County Citizen “Journalist” crew hasn’t been worth the headlines, so they usually seem to just get passing comments about how clearly insane they all are. You know how someone can be making a wild scene and folks nearby will just keep on walking, trying not to engage, because some people are just too unstable to even acknowledge? That’s been these people. But right now, ignoring the antics of a few local headcases might just be a mistake.
Next week, the Board of Supervisors will be making a critical decision that stands to compromise the will of the voters, sane local interests, and even the stability of Shasta County itself. We ALL need to be really, really paying attention to the hearings, maybe even taking a deep breath and summoning the courage to have our voices heard. Before it’s too late.
Silence DoGood is an anonymous guest writer who would like to help stop the insanity in Shasta County. Motivated by the strong desire to go back to doing the dishes instead of worrying about a potential civil war, DoGood seeks to bring humor, sarcasm, and insight to the sane folks who have resisted the very reasonable urge to move somewhere that isn’t currently determined to eat itself.
