It’s August 13, 2024. To say there’s been a lot going on within Shasta County government is an absurd understatement.
The third attempt by the two *actual* Republican supervisors (not the three who have used their 3-2 majority to turn Shasta County into a modern-day banana republic) to nominate appointees for their respective districts to the Shasta County Elections Commission was met by some interesting early comments by megalomaniac Chair of the Board Kevin Crye.
Crye proposed shortening public comment time limits from three minutes to two minutes because there were about 10 speaker cards collected on the last Regular Calendar agenda item, R6. This item involved the potential appointment of Brad Garbutt to the Shasta County Elections Commission, a group that was proposed by Patrick Jones and has been a topic of significant controversy. Considering it was only mid-morning, this was the last agenda item involving public comment, and this idea stood to save about 10 whole minutes, it was not exactly Crye’s most popular plan.
Crye’s attempt to turn the expected three-minute public comments abruptly into two-minute speeches was met with frustration by others on the board and several angry outbursts from the public.
After his surprise affront to the First Amendment, Crye then proclaimed that because Brad Garbutt had attended one of his self-promotion-Friday-coffee sessions, though Crye felt that Garbutt was “crazy,” he would now support Garbutt’s nomination and discouraged public commenters from being disrespectful.
Special offer! Price match the public funding that goes into monthly payments that go to Kevin Crye’s Ninja Coalition business, and get a free coffee! (This isn’t real, it’s sarcasm, and that would cost you a lot more than a cup of coffee.)
Wait a second. So the chair of the Board of Supervisors acknowledges that public commenters may be influenced by the attitudes of the board, such that it’s worth actually bothering to discourage their raucous behavior, but the same chair did NOT express any sentiment like this during the first two motions by Tim Garman to appoint his representatives to this same Elections Commission, instead letting members of the public make insane accusations and defamatory comments about those private citizens? Because those two …didn’t go to coffee? I seem to remember hearing about Nathaniel Pinkney (Garman’s first proposed appointment) attending a Friday coffee, and that Jenny Nowain (wife of Benjamin Nowain, Garman’s second proposed appointment) has been a regular attendee of Friday coffee meetings too, but that’s none of my business, I guess. Methinks that Kevin Crye was taking a tactical approach because he feels that Brad Garbutt hasn’t been quite as active in holding the Board of Supervisors accountable as the previous two nominees for District 2.
Or to put it a bit more bluntly: Kevin Crye wanted those first two rejected nominees — Benjamin Nowain and Nathan Pinkney — to suffer while members of the public predictably treated them like garbage during a government meeting, so Crye just sat by quietly and let it happen.
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- Rejected Elections Commission nominee Benjamin Nowain.
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- Rejected Elections Commission nominee Nathan Pinkney.
Nowain and Pinkney were both previous victims of an out-of-control board majority that will only use calls for order and decorum as weapons against free speech and criticism.
Lori Bridgeford reinforced my theory today that she’s behind the anonymous ShastaAnon by directly referencing it in her public comment while clutching her pearls and claiming that Brad Garbutt—ostensibly a fully-grown man occupying the same room where another member of the Elections Commission coined the phrase “uncircumcised Philistines”—had the raw, unabashed nerve to use a profane swear word after being silenced by Patrick Jones as he was leaving. Considering how few of us Americans have ever had to suffer hearing the “F” word in daily life, Bridgeford’s outrage is consistent with the credibility of … well, the rest of the things she says. Bridgeford likes to claim that she’s not on social media, but that conveniently didn’t prevent her from catching a YouTube video that was uploaded just yesterday.
Election denier and former Patrick Jones appointee to the Shasta County Elections Commission Beverly “Bev” Gray actually made a fairly astute observation—Crye had voiced that he was planning to support Garbutt and his desire to shorten public comment would also apply to the Garbutt critics, and it might make Crye look bad (or worse) if after hearing those comments, he was still voting to appoint.
Leslie Sawyer made a laughable statement that she “invites dissenting opinions” and then played an audio recording from the horrifying moment Garbutt dared to use a curse word. Then her phone went off mid-speech as she continued pretending to have moral convictions.
Laura Hobbs was the final speaker. Hobbs didn’t say the quiet part out loud by directly referencing ShastaAnon, but her pearl-clutching about Garbutt using a swear word included a scene pulled directly from their newest smear campaign, where they take a flattering picture of Lindsi Haynes and narrate an uncorroborated accusation that Garbutt privately called her the “b” word. I’d love for Laura Hobbs and her buddies Richard Gallardo, Lori Bridgeford, and Robert Exter (a graphics design artist who is likely behind both Hobbs’ campaign graphics and the ShastaAnon hit piece graphics) to try to explain what they were all so busy doing over the last few days. But nah, I know what they’ll really do. They’ll just keep feigning innocence because hiding behind VPNs, protonmail emails, P.O. boxes, and “incognito mode” makes them feel extra smart and untouchable. If they’re liking their odds at the pearly gates, I might have some bad news for them.
The appointment of Brad Garbutt was approved. Patrick Jones was rather predictably and vocally against it.
Brad Garbutt, the newest appointee to the Shasta County Elections Commission, is a respected local real estate professional who was nominated by experienced District 3 Supervisor Mary Rickert.
At the conclusion of the agenda item, Kevin Crye made some cracks regarding what the “media” will do with this. He did so as I, the “fake media,” write this piece. Here’s my take: if you don’t want to be treated as hateful, how about this: just actually don’t be obviously hateful.
Don’t constantly demean a more experienced supervisor—you make it very clear that you don’t respect her, and your actions invite bullying against her despite her years of hard work and dedication. People see through the pretense.
Don’t play the victim when the same people who have been dealing with constant lies, manipulation, threats, and harassment are so sick of this behavior that they’ve resorted to using swear words every so often.
Don’t constantly accuse a large portion of your constituents of being mentally ill, ignorant, brainwashed, and worthless just because they don’t get on their knees and thank you as you vote and argue against their interests and against them.
The Trumpian approach of calling critical media outlets the “fake news” was one of the most dangerous and unconstitutional attacks on our democracy that happened during Trump’s 2016-2020 administration. Why? The First Amendment protects the media so that people can be informed and the government can be held to account if they are not acting with integrity. When government actors are telling reporters to “drop dead,” dismissing the news as meaningless lies, trying to exclude the media when they are trying to report on yet another closure of a board meeting — does that seem like government actors having nothing to hide, remaining above-board, and treating all constituents with equal respect? No?
After the agenda item, there was more public comment trying to attack the reputation of voting systems. An older male reiterated his statements from the previous meeting accusing then acting-ROV Joanna Francescut of “admitting to fraud.”
Joanna Francescut, the county’s former acting ROV, smiles as she leaves the Shasta County Courthouse after winning the lawsuit filed by election denier Laura Hobbs. Photo courtesy of Doni Chamberlain.
The older male was talking about the hearing moving to dismiss a sloppy civil case filed by Laura Hobbs that couldn’t even be saved when she spent thousands to bring Alexander Haberbush up here from southern California trying to save face/farce. The main issue was Shasta County Elections Office failing to use the Secretary of State’s randomized alphabet order while preparing their ballots, and this would have put Laura Hobbs at the top of the ballot. Joanna Francescut had explained that she had been under pressure, suddenly becoming the acting Registrar of Voters once Cathy Darling Allen had to retire early for health reasons likely induced by occupational stress, and Francescut had not gotten a chance to check ballots for compliance with the randomized alphabet. This was human error attributable to the very abuses the “election integrity” crowd caused with their constant harassment. Hobbs was still on that ballot, and Allen Long still won his election by a wide enough margin to avoid even a runoff. The claims that human error in the ballot ordering had made any difference in the outcome of the primary smacked of ridiculous guesswork. At least that was the rational takeaway—and it is clear that some of us only hear “she admitted to FRAUD!” and then go rattle that off repeatedly in public.
The judge threw out the case without hesitation, and Hobbs ought to thank that judge for saving her the wasted money and time for an absolutely humiliating loss in a runoff. Hobbs didn’t take the hint, so she’s still spouting her same ridiculous conspiracies at board meetings, including today’s.
The meeting continued with various other uninformed commentaries about the unhoused, including a poorly-articulated public comment by Leslie Sawyer talking about some effort in Chico trying to help the unsheltered. If anyone understood what she was even talking about, let me know in the comments.
Speaking of which, Nick Gardner was recently on the radio, reiterating the disproven claims that larger counties (such as San Francisco) are supposedly sending all their homeless people here to Shasta County. Here are the facts: San Francisco does have a program called “Homeward Bound” that offers free bus fare given that the person seeking a ticket out of town has family or a support person at the destination—someone is willing to help the unsheltered individual try to get back on their feet. Shasta County also has a nearly identical program through the Good News Rescue Mission called “Journey Home.” The one difference I spotted was that unsheltered adults leaving the Shasta County program would be barred from receiving help from the Good News Rescue Mission for the year following their ticket out of dodge if they chose to come back again. Shasta County funds unsheltered services to the tune of approximately $300K a year, whereas several other California counties allocate many millions of dollars (San Francisco: over $40M per year, LA County: over $100M per year, San Diego: over $20M per year, full stats here). Maybe someone should point out to these genius outspoken locals that having a shortage of shelter beds, a shortage of jail beds (because *we* won’t tax ourselves to build a bigger jail that doesn’t get us sued), and not funding programs that address homelessness could be the reason it is such a visible problem here. But that’s not nearly as fun as just endlessly speculating that the sneaky “San Francisco liberals” are the cause behind every problem.
That’s been the moral of every story and every meeting: decisions that could actually help the citizens of this county are sidelined so people can complain about the boogeyman “liberals.” When Kevin Crye voted to do away with a functional voting system without no plan, he vilified “liberal” Governor Gavin Newsom to fend off his recall.
The Board of Supervisors barely passed a vote accepting grant funding to buy an Elections Office building instead of renting one, and members of the public snidely called the money “ZuckBucks” and accused the money of being some insidious plot to give the “liberals” some secret advantage in future elections.
Guess which of the supervisors said that accepting 1.5 million dollars would be a “dark shadow for your elections office.”
Maybe one day we’ll figure out that minding our own business, solving real-world problems, and sticking to actual facts instead of harebrained conspiracy theories is key to a happier life. In the meantime, we’re due to be featured in a book that’s being released next month by Sasha Abramsky. In the book, which goes to print on September 3, 2024, Abramsky follows two counties that descended into far-right chaos: one that returned to rational behavior, and one that did not. Guess which one is Shasta County. The book is called Chaos Comes Calling: The Battle of the Far-Right Takeover of Small-Town America.
I guess we’ll see how the next Tuesday goes. And the one after that. Fun, huh?
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.
