District 4 Supervisor Patrick Jones.
Editor’s note: A Cottonwood printing company’s name was mistakenly included with this story. The incorrect company’s name has been removed. We regret the error and any confusion.
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Please forgive the ShastaAnon-style headline: I decided to borrow from the worst. And honestly, that is much better than shameful Shasta County Board of Supervisors District 4 Supervisor Patrick Henry Jones deserves. Let’s dive in.
BACKGROUND
Patrick Jones authored a brief blurb about his backstory and why he was running for County Supervisor. According to Jones, at age 51, he somehow managed to live in Shasta County for “over 50 years” then goes on to say he attended classes at Sacramento State University. Last I checked, Sacramento State University is not in Shasta County, so the only reasonable inferences I can devise are:
(1) Jones definitely did not study math in college,
(2) Jones is lying, or
(3) Jones was at least open to the concept of remote learning to save a commute.
Petty sidenote: Jones still taps the space bar twice between sentences. Yikes. Is this super important? No. But this person is like a nesting doll of ridiculous faux pas, and after what he’s done to Shasta County, he gets NO passes.
Jones mentioned he’d been on Redding City Council for about eight years and had served as mayor. He boasted that he’d worked at Jones’ Fort for most of his life, a gun shop that appears rather indifferent to details such as having a valid business license and avoiding horrific customer reviews. In his District 4 Supervisor appeal to voters, Jones expressed his opinion that Shasta County needed to open “now” and blamed the “current board” despite the statewide mandates that could not just be openly defied without adverse consequences.
In 2015, Jones butted heads with Veteran’s Museum Director Robert Burroughs over a fundraiser where Jones insisted afterward he was to get half of the fundraiser proceeds based on a verbal agreement. A similar situation happened again last year, with Burroughs saying of Jones, “if you’re not part of the money that goes in their pockets, you’re on your own.”
HEY, BIG SPENDER
It’s become a popular talking point over the years that Patrick Jones received a $100,000 donation from Reverge Anselmo. Now add another $15,200 to that courtesy of Anselmo. Patrick Jones also received $21,000 from Win River/Redding Rancheria.
For all my dedicated fact-checkers who might have clicked the link and said, “wait, that only says $20k?” Here you go:
I truly appreciate you, A News Café readers. Please always fact-check me, and just know that in this vortex of insanity, I’m genuinely out to bring you some honest information.
I (apparently) went through the campaign donation declarations. Jones’ last Campaign Disclosure Statement Form 460 received on December 4, 2020, lists a “year to date” campaign contribution total for 2020 as $148,746.95. That calculation wouldn’t include 2019 donations totaling $8,600.00. Add those up, and you get $157,346.95.
When you scan Jones’ expenses during his campaign, Jones spent about $72,000 on Media Plus, a Redding marketing company run by Chris Swaga. Ms. Swaga characterized herself as a “very private person,” so information about her was difficult to come by, but on September 10, 2014, Swaga appeared as a guest on about an hour in to KCNR’s Free Fire Radio to deliver a fiery rant about how she would go out to tend to her horses and find disgusting materials left behind by transients. Swaga chuckled at the idea of something awful happening to one of the transients.
Jones also splurged on “Go to Print” mailers to the tune of $71,794.86. I couldn’t even find a business by that name locally, but I welcome A News Café readers to take a crack at it. Actually, here’s my suspicion: the Shasta General Purpose committee lists the ZIP code for “Go to Print” as 96022.
Interesting how all these political candidates used the same obscure business name.
Maybe if we weren’t busy drowning in slick, expensive campaign advertising materials, we could have built that new jail after all.
Here were the biggest single expenditures by Patrick Jones, around the same time he received that large donation boost from Reverge Anselmo on August 3, 2020.
The heavy funding did not stop Patrick Jones from operating in the red during his campaign. For example, between February and June of 2020, Jones declared expenses exceeding his contributions by over $4,000. If Patrick Jones reads this, he will no doubt bring up the fact that he himself (and Jones’ Fort) donated to his own campaign, so a few thousand dollars supposedly came from him. Sure, Jones.
Best case scenario: that money was deposited out of desperation to get Jones’s campaign account out of the red.
Worst case scenario: that money came from a third party and Jones contributed it under his own name in an effort to conceal the donation.
Doesn’t this just scream “living within your means?”
In fact, several of Jones’ claimed contribution expenses included hundreds in Wells Fargo bank fees, the first of which was labeled an “NSF” charge. Now, this one is dedicated especially to all the fiscal conservatives who have supported Patrick Jones thinking he is remotely concerned with saving county money—in the banking world, that acronym stands for “Non-Sufficient Funds.”
They left the “NSF” bit off the subsequent Wells Fargo expenses, but they still took their irresponsible money management habits out of campaign contributions.
Toward the end of his campaign run, Patrick Jones’s expenses suddenly take a food-driven turn: he started expensing meals from places like the Olive Garden, Shasta Pizza, Marie Callender’s, etc. I have a little theory: Jones probably thought that he had a little extra contribution money to blow. He went to six different restaurants, only two of which were in his district, between October 23, 2020 and December 4, 2020. The November 3, 2020 election would have happened 12 days into that reporting period, so not much point in getting together to discuss political strategy after the polls have already closed. Jones spent about $900 worth of campaign donations on those “meeting” meals. Then Jones ended up going over his campaign contribution fund by more than $5,600 dollars.
Check out the numbers for contributions and expenses along the right side of this image.
Patrick Jones spared no expense in depicting himself as a gun-toting, flag-waving answer to the collective frustrations people were having with the COVID-19 health guidance.
And here is what that generosity ultimately brought our county:
Patrick Jones blew through an ungodly amount of money on local political campaign advertising, and this was still the best he could come up with.
Look, a global pandemic isn’t exactly a good time. Most of us watched too much Tiger King and went a bit stir-crazy during the lockdowns. People struggled. But the pandemic was never just about inconvenience—like the 2020 election, it was manipulated into political agendas that fueled vicious division and years of hatred. “Hate Thy Neighbor.” You’ll see what I mean. I never wore a mask to “comply,” I did it for someone’s grandfather or grandmother. I didn’t vote against Trump because some undocumented immigrant stole my ballot and changed my vote, I did it because the guy is well, weird. That’s a mild descriptor, but I do enjoy that it bothers him.
PATRICK JONES: SO WHY DID HE REALLY RUN FOR OFFICE?
A little note on the timeline: if you look at the earliest-declared campaign contributions, you can see that Jones didn’t run because of the pandemic or even because Donald Trump lost re-election on November 3, 2020. Those things hadn’t even happened yet.
Reverge Anselmo gave his first campaign contribution of $5200 to Patrick Jones in December of 2019, long before either of those events. Anselmo famously lost multiple lawsuits against Shasta County when he would not comply with permitting requirements and land ordinances on his property. His litigious battles cost him one of his marriages and he moved back to Connecticut in a huff. For someone determined to “exact Reverge” on a rural California county, Patrick Jones is the ideal vehicle.
Another top donor before the November 2020 election or the pandemic was Dr. Promila Dhanuka, wife of Dr. Piyush “PK” Dhanuka, a past candidate for District 1 Assembly who ran as an Independent and bombed out in the primary race. In his Placer County candidate statement, he mentions that voters can call him “Paul.” He also began his candidate statement by disparaging Sacramento, and was a guest star in Red, White, and Blueprint—I mean, who even needs to listen to the vast majority of public health experts and leading doctors in the country, the CDC, or the FDA? We found one gastroenterologist living in our rural county who agrees with us! It’s the real deal, guys! In a Record Searchlight article leading up to his political race, Dr. Paul Dhanuka expressed some oddly refreshing frustrations about the partisanship fights. But then when he was accidentally listed as a Democrat in Lassen County, Dr. Paul Dhanuka simply wasn’t satisfied with the announcements, a new batch of vote by mail ballots, and direct efforts to contact the 68 voters whose ballots had already been cast to offer them a second opportunity to vote. Instead, in true Laura Hobbs-ian fashion, Dr. Dhanuka vented about “election integrity” and revealed he was talking to a lawyer about his options. Considering that Dr. Dhanuka was trying to play lawyer-hardball with Lassen after getting only 9.5% of the vote from 11 different counties, including one that is over 15 times more populous than Lassen, it should come as little surprise that his wife had just donated $4,000 to Patrick Jones a few weeks prior. By the way, Dr. Paul Dhanuka is now running for Redding City Council. Please try to remember that low turnout likely contributed to Kevin Crye keeping his District 1 seat by a paltry 50 votes, so if Dr. Paul Dhanuka gets on City Council with only something like 49% voter turnout and then we’re complaining about it, maybe I don’t want to hear it.
Just kidding. I do. I clearly do. Heck, as I’m writing this, I’m already up to eight pages and several hours of research and I’m not nearly done yet. But as I’ve heard from many medical professionals, uh, “prevention is key.”
The Jones fans donated because they had axes to grind with governments. Patrick Jones saw that, and he’s been pandering to it ever since. The pandemic and the 2020 election were simply devices used to get Jones into office, fueled by malicious motivations aimed at getting revenge against the “evil system.” What we’ve seen in the last few years is exactly what happens when you elect someone to run a county who simply ignores the rules, unless the rules serve him personally.
So in my humble opinion, Jones, who had already spent years in political office, craved one thing, and one thing ONLY: unfettered power.
THE BEGINNING OF A DARK ERA: PATRICK JONES TAKES OFFICE
“Hate Thy Neighbor.” This has been the legacy of Patrick Henry Jones, and we probably have his biggest campaign donor to thank for that.
On December 15, 2020, the last regular meeting before Patrick Jones took county office, public comment did include many of the now-typical extremist talking points:
• “We the People!”
• The Constitution, my rights!
• We’re your boss! You work for us!
• Maybe your pay should be docked!
• We need access and transparency!
That said, the toxic people were still in the infancy of their hateful agendas, so there’s a weird charm to those early commenters. It’s almost like watching a childhood home movie knowing the same cute little kid stumbling around with a ball later grows up and starts a Ponzi scheme.
In contrast to the early-stage toxicity, several public commenters also sincerely thanked District 4 predecessor Steve Morgan for his committed service to the county. Former Supervisor Morgan is a Vietnam veteran who had consistently showed up for his community, but when your political opponent shells out enough money to buy a yacht just on advertising alone, it can start to feel a bit pointless. It’s bittersweet seeing that appreciation in hindsight. District 4 had it pretty good.
Numerous public commenters also gave refreshingly reasonable input asking the board to follow state mandates, protect public health, and encourage law enforcement to actually enforce the mandates instead of turning a “blind eye.” If you do want to watch that last pre-Patrick Jones meeting and see what I’m talking about, a friendly warning: it may be rather emotional to look that far back, comparing what it was like back then with where we are today.
WEEK ONE: RULES ARE FOR SUCKERS
Starting in January 2021, Patrick Jones was empowered to represent his district and his role was to make decisions (mostly budgetary) in service of Shasta County and its residents. In his first week in office, on January 5, 2021, the board having already voted to keep the meetings virtual, Jones went ahead and opened up the chambers to the public anyway—an action for which he and former District 5 Supervisor Les Baugh were censured.
District 4 Supervisor Patrick Jones and former District 5 Supervisor Les Baugh breached the board chambers that were closed during a spike in COVID cases.
January 5, 2021 was also the day that Timothy Fairfield infamously threatened, “you have made bullets expensive, but lucky for you, ropes are reusable.”
“When the ballot box is gone, there is only the cartridge box. You have made bullets expensive. But lucky for you, ropes are reusable,” said Fairfield.
There were actually two meetings in short order: one regular and one special. Both were supposed to be virtual. The regular meeting occurred January 5, 2021,when both Baugh and Jones sat together at the dais.
Supervisors Les Baugh and Patrick Jones disregarding the vote to keep meetings virtual in 2021.
Point of clarification, in the archived video of the special meeting from January 6, 2021, Baugh is no longer perched defiantly on the dais, but Jones once again looks smugly into the screen with his trademark “rules for thee, but not for me” glower.
Patrick Jones and Les Baugh probably both got a talking-to following the antics of the January 5th meeting. Baugh was capable of respecting the vote he disagreed with after some further consideration. Jones doesn’t seem to be afflicted with the burdens of compassion, honesty, or humility.
THE ADS WERE JUST THE BEGINNING OF THE PROPAGANDA ATTACK
Now let’s talk a bit about Jones’ involvement in the infamous Red, White, and Blueprint docu-series.
First scene of the entire series: melodramatic footage of Patrick Jones sitting pensively on the steps leading up to the board chambers, unsmiling and hunched in his grumpy trademark posture.
The on-screen text reads “December 13, 2022,” which is a pretty weird choice for an episode originally released on March 26, 2021. A more accurate date for the filming would have been December 13, 2020, which would mean that before Jones even took office, he was already being filmed in a docu-series where the goal was to see three recall elections removing Leonard Moty, Joe Chimenti, and Mary Rickert.
In Episode 3, Patrick Jones gripes that he doesn’t want to cut whole departments, but cannot stand inefficiencies. See above re: campaign budgeting. Later in the episode, he describes coming in dead last in his first two campaigns for city council and finally nabbing a position on Redding City Council after his third run. Shockingly, he mentioned not getting along with the other councilmembers. In a haunting moment of foreshadowing, Patrick Jones talks about how board members must be able to “count to three” to “effect some change,” aka get their wishes granted.
Later in the series, Jones is again on camera dramatically subjecting himself to a lie-detector test.
Supervisor Patrick Jones takes a polygraph test in Red, White and Blueprint episode.
That Patrick Jones had lied was supported by a wealth of information and shocked politicians who vehemently stood by their recollections of events. Patrick Jones proved one thing with this ridiculous stunt: that man can lie without skipping a beat.
COUNTING TO THREE
The efforts to recall Mary Rickert and Joe Chimenti fell apart, and the folks behind the Red, White, and Blueprint had to settle for one successful recall: Leonard Moty. In their eyes, 33% is still a passing grade worthy of celebrations and smug victory laps. That supposed victory was further undermined by the fact that replacement Supervisor Tim Garman didn’t just become a feckless Patrick Jones loyalist. Supervisor Garman got a front-row seat to the indecent behavior and he started fighting it, much to the chagrin of those who wanted a “vote my way, no matter what” mentality.
Patrick Jones eventually got his “count to three” when relative loyalists Chris Kelstrom and Kevin Crye took office after the 2022 election.
Supervisors Jones, Crye and Kelstrom comprise the MAGA majority.
Let’s take a look at Patrick’s apparent wish list since becoming a Shasta County Board member:
• Firing Karen Ramstrom without cause. Her seat as county health officer sat vacant for approximately a year and five months.
• Bullying former CEO Matt Pontes by threatening to publicize a youthful indiscretion that had been disclosed as part of Pontes’ hiring process. Pontes resigned for greener pastures.
• Doing away with Dominion Voting Systems with no plan for how votes would be counted based on election-denying disinformation. This risked county-wide disenfranchisement. Patrick Jones responded to a reporter for SF Gate by very maturely suggesting that reporter “drop dead” and then he did not keep public records of that exchange.
• Proposing a zoning change specifically to benefit his pet gun range project despite opponents expressing concerns. Worries included preservation of of local wildlife, noise pollution, potential for chaotic and unsafe fire evacuations from the location, and the risk that stray bullets would present a mortal danger to residents even from nearby freeways. Millville residents responded to Patrick Jones’ self-serving agenda by filing a lawsuit.
• An ultimately toothless Second Amendment resolution that took three separate taxpayer-funded meetings and significant public comment to pass. Jones seems to have been pushing this pet issue since at least 2021—but it’s not for the benefit of his family gun shop business, he says.
• Pushing for an Elections Commission whose sole purpose appears to be to complain on the dais at taxpayer expense and encourage violations of state law. Patrick Jones’ initial nomination to this commission was Bev Gray, who participated along with Jones in a controversial radio ad that encouraged voters to go to a private citizen with perceived ballot irregularities instead of contacting the Shasta County Elections Office. Jones denied involvement with the ad. Then KQMS revealed the ad was funded by Jones’ Fort. After an exasperated exodus of commissioners, Garman’s nominations, Nathaniel Pinkney and Benjamin Nowain were both denied appointment via the predictable “count to three” tactic.
• Bullying activist constituents. Patrick Jones hates that his own ex-girlfriend Dolores Lucero regularly criticizes him in her public comments, at one point wearing headphones while she spoke as a sign of disrespect.
District 4 Supervisor Patrick Jones donned noise-cancelling head phones when Dolores Lucero began speaking. Photo by Doni Chamberlain for A News Cafe.
Patrick Jones had already gratuitously labeled Nathaniel Pinkney a “domestic terrorist” back in 2021. Later on, when a public commenter used a racial slur and then flipped off Pinkney from the podium, Patrick Jones chose to instead single out Pinkney for removal based on “disruptions on the floor” and afterward dug up a years-old video of Pinkney performing a YG song in a rather dense display of cultural incompetence.
Patrick Jones also targeted Christian Gardinier for removal for “disrupting the meeting,” something he never once saw fit to even attempt when his own supporters yelled out from the floor, singled out other board attendees, and sought to intimidate other private citizens.
When Patrick Jones said it was a “hard no” on Benjamin Nowain, whose wife he had previously called “stupid Jenny” into a hot microphone at a prior meeting, Nowain’s wife protested by sitting quietly on the floor seeking an apology. Instead, Jones refused to apologize for his lies and Nowain’s wife was physically removed by deputy sheriffs. Side note: I’ve heard much more than I can reveal about what Patrick Jones does behind closed doors to further sabotage private citizens, but I will say this: it’s disgusting.
• Fighting the UPEC union’s pleas for a reasonable wage increase to offset their benefits cost increase and allow them to support their families. Jones claimed it was simply not in the budget. This is same very guy who blew through his enormous campaign fund, insisted upon various government actions he was repeatedly warned could result in lawsuits, and got sued over his gun-range pet project—no wonder the UPEC strike had a giant “Ratrick Jones” display out in front of the board chambers.
• Pursuing blatantly inappropriate replacements for County Registrar of Voters following Cathy Darling Allen’s likely stress-induced medical retirement. First Jones appeared to pursue Clint Curtis, a rather problematic candidate I covered in detail in my second guest article. Then, when Kevin Crye telegraphed that either Jones and Kelstrom would vote with him for Thomas Toller or they would be stuck with *gasp* the candidate already serving as the acting Registrar of Voters, with stronger qualifications and a wealth of excellent endorsements—at that point Patrick Jones and Chris Kelstrom swerved to a Thomas Toller vote. At the time of the vote for appointment, Thomas Toller had zero experience working in elections, but insisted that he had been working on studying the Election Code that he had recently downloaded to his smartphone. The Supervisors were also expected to complete ranking sheets during the appointment process. Jones was the lone supervisor who didn’t even attempt to comply with this requirement.
• Sowing distrust regarding the Shasta County District Attorney by seeking an investigation by the Attorney General and then just tossing the response instead of publicly revealing that the Attorney General had found no wrongdoing. This letter was quietly tossed shortly before a contest that included Jones’ re-election bid on the ticket.
• Introducing an agenda item seeking to appoint Jon Knight to the Mosquito Vector Control Board. Knight’s accomplishments include: experience with pesticides to the extent that they are relevant to all the growing enthusiasts—who would NEVER EVER dream of using hydroponic equipment to cultivate cannabis—patronizing his business Northern Roots, his attendance at the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots (but he didn’t enter the Capitol building, he maintains), producing the Red, White, and Blueprint docuseries, and having the phone number advertised in that controversial KQMS election ad associated with the Google Voice number for Knight’s significant other’s business, Lit From Within.
I couldn’t resist throwing in a photo of Jon Knight smiling inside the business that would never dream of profiting off cannabis cultivation even though Shasta County is just to the east of the Emerald Triangle and many cultivation sites are located inside county lines.
WHERE IS THE RULE-BREAKING LINE, ANYWAY?
On June 13, 2021 at 9:43pm, as shown in Episode 4 of Red White and Blueprint, Patrick Jones creeps through the night into the closed board chambers dressed in his cartoonish goon best: dark clothing and a beanie. He uses a drill to remove a publicly-funded protective barrier (a COVID-19 safety measure), then slinks back into his vehicle, all with cameras rolling. Across the screen, a note explains that county employees re-installed the screen after this sketchy little interference with the county’s property. The whole goal of that scene was to make Patrick Jones look rebellious and brazen.
At the next meeting, Jones dramatically starts to remove the same barrier again, despite a concerned comment by then-fellow supervisor Joe Chimenti about getting clearance by Cal-OSHA approval. Jones disregarded this immediately, saying, “I’m taking mine down right now.”
That’s been Patrick Jones.
Patrick Jones does what he wants, he doesn’t care if we like him, and he doesn’t care what happens as a result of his self-serving actions.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Shasta County has some glimmers of hope on the horizon: Patrick Jones was mercifully defeated in a large margin by Matt Plummer during his bid for re-election, and he is due to vacate office this December.
If experienced and tenacious District 3 Supervisor Mary Rickert also keeps her seat in her run-off against Corkey “Please Ignore Whatever is Happening on My Ranch” Harmon, we may once again have a reasonable majority. There are two types of Republicans nowadays: the ones who were raised with conservative values and lived a conservative lifestyle, and the ones who went off the deep end showing the world just how low they will go to gain power and control resources.
There isn’t much hope for Chris Kelstrom or Kevin Crye, but they didn’t start this fire—Patrick Jones did. If we can all weather the next few months while Patrick Jones continues fanning the flames in his last-gasp attempts to terrorize this community, maybe we’ll be alright. But please, I beg of you, let’s never do this again. Don’t be fooled by advertising and propaganda. Don’t forget to vote, and vote wisely. Choose people who want to help our community get better, NOT the ones who just want to burn it all down.
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.
