Full Circle

History repeats itself; first as tragedy, then as farce, and finally as desperation.


HISTORY

In 2003, a group calling itself Residents United for Claremont paid for an election eve, citywide mailer that tried to scare voters into supporting incumbents Sandy Baldonado, Karen Rosenthal, and Al Leiga. The RUC letter warned voters that they would face the loss of vital city services if challengers Jackie McHenry and Peter Yao were elected. McHenry and Yao won, and, contrary to what RUC had predicted, the sun still came up in the morning.

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TRAGEDY

In 2005 came Preserve Claremont, about whom we've written much. PC raised nearly as much money as some of the candidates' campaigns. They used the money tattacking Jackie McHenry and Corey Calaycay with innuendo, rumor, and, in at least one case, a blatant lie. The PC experience so tarred the people behind it, that many, including a few leftover from the Residents United Campaign, rejected the group or at least started to display independent thinking.


DESPERATION

The hardcore PCers, though, just went underground and work mostly behind the scenes now. Some of the true believers like J. Michael Fay and Bill Baker, respective treasurers for city council campaigns of Joseph Lyons and Robin Haulman, still take active roles when called upon for the their services and PC experience.

Haulman was the original chosen one of the PCers, but some of the antics surrounding her campaign - cheating in a debate or stealing another campaign's fliers - damaged her candidacy to the extent the Claremonsters had to have an insurance policy in Lyons. So, you see people like PC spokesman Butch Henderson donating money to both Lyons and Haulman. And they've hitched the Haulman-Lyons wagon to incumbent Sam Pedroza to get people to vote for the three of them as a slate, the hope being that Pedroza's coattails pull the other two along into office.

Yesterday's Claremont Courier had a full-page ad (purchased at the going rate of a little less than $900), taken out by a group calling itself "Concerned Claremont citizens." (Their civic-minded concern apparently isn't large enough to warrant a capital letter for themselves.)

The CCC ad took what had been a sarcastic letter to the editor from council candidate Opanyi Nasiali and turned it around by interpreting it literally. Nasiali's letter (posted below) appeared in the Daily Bulletin and in the Courier last September.


The ad proclaimed "WE ARE SHOCKED!" and falsely intimated that Nasiali was serious about eliminating the police and public schools. It asked the reader, "Is this someone we want on the Claremont City Council."


What's really shocking is the implied contempt the ad has for voters. They expect readers won't read Nasiali's full text and will just scan the bullet points, helped out by the large arrow pointing the eye neatly past the context-placing introduction.

The ad was signed by eight people, including Ann Joslin, a Claremonster in sheep's clothing along with her life partner in crime Planning Commissioner and aspiring council candidate Bob Tener. Joslin's still sore at Nasiali for opposing the Parks and Pasture assessment district and for his successful backing of the Measure S bond for Johnson's Pasture, both in 2006.

Not coincidentally, also in yesterday's Courier, Joslin and Tener have a letter extolling the virtues of Joseph Lyons. The Joslin-Tener letter, together with another from Architectural Commissioner Susan Schenk singing the praises of Robin Haulman, are designed to work in concert with the "Claremont Concerned citizens" ad. The latter is supposed to drive people away from Nasiali, who has been running ahead of Lyons and Haulman, and the letters are there to attract voters who buy into CCC's attack ad.

Another CCC signer was Bob Gerecke, who has been working for the Pedroza-Haulman-Lyons alliance. Gerecke is a past president of the Claremont Democratic Club, whose repertoire of dirty tricks in this campaign has included appropriating private property for campaign signs. Gerecke's wife Katie, is the past president of another Claremont 400 institution, the League of Women Voters.

Yet another is Sally Alexander, who one reader notes is the 97-year-old mother of Pedroza-Haulman-Lyons supporter Sandy Hester, making Alexander the oldest frontwoman in Claremont election history.

As we say, none of this is new. The Claremonster playbook only has two or three pages, all of them outlining some aspect of their bullying ways. Expect to see more of the same, possibly including one or two hit pieces paid for by municipal employee unions awaiting new contracts.

As this election winds down, we see all these strands coming together so that the all too familiar design becomes visible. In five days, on March 8, we'll see how it turns out. In Claremont, we've always gotten the government we deserve.

Debatable Tactics

Claremont 400 Marionette

Elections bring out the worst in the Claremont 400, who would do just about anything to keep control of this silly little town. Some of the campaign theatrics seem to have been lifted directly from infomercials or patent medicine salesmen. For instance, at the 2009 election kick-off party for former Claremont Assistant City Manager Bridget Healy, one of her supporters, Ken Corhan of Measure CL fame, got up and asked a question, acting as if he were just some random member of the public rather than one of the people who signed Healy's nomination papers.

Witness the traditional candidate forums, of which there are many. The most important of these, or at least the ones with the largest attendance, are the Claremont Chamber of Commerce, Active Claremont and the League of Women Voters of the Claremont Area.

The first two of those organizations have already held their events. The LWV candidate forum is Thursday, February 17, in the Padua Room of the City's Alexander Hughes Community Center.

In the past, the LWV forum has seemed to favor the Claremont 400 candidates, often by picking questions that highlighted their candidates' issues and by avoiding those that might bring their friends harsher scrutiny. In contrast, the Active Claremont forum has been something like the People's Choice Awards, with the audience presenting questions to the candidates.

The AC website has video of their January 19 forum posted online. You can download the video file and, if you're into self-flagellation, you can watch the entire one hour and fifty-four minutes. One interesting change the AC board made this year was to allow the audience members to ask the questions themselves, rather than writing them down on index cards as has been the past practice.

This change worked out well for one audience member, Mel Boynton (photo, right). Boynton took the mic and asked the following:

I'd like each of the candidates to address what you know about the Youth and Family Committee and its 11 goals for working with the school district, the City and non-profits and what you'd bring to the table to make that, uh, increase the quality of life for our youth and family [sic].

How many candidates would be able to enumerate even one of the those eleven Youth and Family Master plan goals, which appeared in the amended YFMP in 2007? Of all the many issues facing Claremont how could a candidate have known to prepare for a question like the one posed by Boynton?

It turned out that only one of them could give the sort of answer Boynton was fishing for. That person was Robin Haulman, who ticked off nine of the 11 Youth and Family Committee goals, virtually word for word, from page 15 of the YFMP's action plan. Haulman didn't even bother to memorize the 11 goals. She just turned to a page in the notebook she referred to throughout the debate and, with the aid of her reading glasses, simply read straight from the YFMP action plan.

Even with the aid of crib notes, Haulman got only nine of the 11 goals and didn't even bother to answer the second part of Boynton's question. So, while we can count on Haulman to know some of the goals, if elected she won't do anything to improve the quality of life for our youth and families. The takeaway was that Haulman does fine when she can recite text, but she can't put an answer into context, which qualifies her as the perfect Claremont 400 marionette.

Here's a video clip of Boynton's question, followed by Haulman's response (watch Haulman looking for the right page to read from as Boynton asks his question):




And, just for your reference, here's the section of the YFMP that Haulman lifted her answer from. If you print it out and read along as you watch the video, you can see just how closely her answer matches the list:

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How do we know Boynton is hooked up with the 400? Well, for one thing, Boynton was listed as a Bridget Healy supporter in 2009. And he's supporting Sam Pedroza, Robin Haulman and Joseph Lyons this time around.

Coincidentally (or not) Boynton is on the board of the Pomona Valley chapter of the United Nations Association of the US, which had as its last speaker Joseph Lyon's campaign treasurer, J. Michael Fay. Fay, you'll recall, was also the treasurer for the Yes on CL school bond campaign last November. Another board member (and current president) is Katie Gerecke, who has served as a Claremont League of Women Voter's president and whose husband Bob is a past president of the Claremont Democratic Club.

Also, as he said in his introduction to his question, Boynton is a member of the City's Youth and Family Committee, which includes Butch Henderson as a member. Henderson, along his wife Rosemary, is an honorary co-chair of Robin Haulman's election committee.

Boynton's question itself wouldn't be an issue if it weren't coupled by that quite specific response by Haulman. How could Haulman have known to include that one specific page out of the thousands of pages of city staff reports, memos and correspondences without some advanced notice?

We couldn't help but notice, too, that Boynton's LinkedIn page used to list "political strategies" as one of his specialties (he deleted that particular specialty after we posted this):


Boynton's CV also lists some of the organizations he belongs to. These include the Claremont United Church of Christ, where Butch Henderson was the senior pastor, and the Claremont Democratic Club, which has become the Claremonsters' tool for election outreach in what is supposed to be a non-partisan election.

So, to recap, here's what we learned from the Active Claremont forum:

• Mel Boynton? Smooth operator.
• Robin Haulman? Not so much.

Mean Girls

SUGAR AND SPICE

We've noticed that the brand of bullying practiced most often by the Claremont 400 has a decidedly feminine component. The coterie that runs things in this town has long been dominated by women. Former mayors Judy Wright, Diann Ring, Ellen Taylor, Sandra Baldonado, and ex-commissioners Barbara Musselman and Helaine Goldwater have called the shots for far too long. And we can add former Claremont Assistant City Manager Bridget Healy (photo, right) to this list.

Just because the style is a dominated by a womanly kind of aggressiveness, though, that doesn't mean it's limited to people of the female persuasion. If you'll recall, men like Claremont Human Services commissioner Butch Henderson, former mayor Paul Held, former planning commissioner Bill Baker we especially nasty in their leadership of the Preserve Claremont campaign in the 2005 City Council race. (Not coincidentally, they are all also very much involved with current city council candidate Robin Haulman's campaign.) And the person who tapped into all that aggression to use it for his own purposes was a man, former City Manager Glenn Southard.

We've always thought the psychodynamic undercurrents in Claremont were worthy of academic research, and it turns out there's actually people who study the kind of female aggression at play here. We found an old NPR Talk of the Nation segment from February 27, 2002, the topic of which was just the sort of bullying practiced by the Claremont 400. (You need the free RealPlayer if you want to hear the discussion.) The segment's description said:

Girls are not all sugar and spice according to some researchers. The latest study on girls says they may be AS likely to use aggression as boys. Rather than fists, girls express it through manipulation, exclusion and gossip-mongering. It's become quite a problem in some middle and high schools, but what's the solution?

CAN YOU RELATE?

People who study such things, psychologists and anthropologists and the like, say that among children and teens, male aggression tends to be more straightforward and less complex than the sort seen in girls. Female aggression is generally indirect and has a strong social component, with the most aggressive girls leveraging their social intelligence to get their friends to ostracize girls they don't like, usually through gossip and whispering campaigns. Female aggression relies on the mastery and manipulation of social relationships to isolate and ostracize, hence the term "relational aggression."

The pressure of wanting to fit in, coupled with the relief at not be the one targeted, causes weaker girls in a group to join in or to at least remain silent, and the group comes to be dominated by the girls who the most socially adept but who have the lowest empathy, the ones who are capable of the most cruelty.

One of the panelists on that NPR show was seventh grader Nicky Marewski from Poukeepsie, NY, who described what she observed at her school:

The girls who are sort of in charge of all this, they figure out who they don't like and who they just don't think are acceptable, and they tell their friends.

That seems to be the general Claremonster modus operandi, which makes us wonder if we're just witnessing a collective case of arrested development. From what the relational aggression experts say, there seems to be some anecdotal evidence of this behavior continuing on through life. It can express itself in the workplace in the form of office politics or, in the case of the Claremont 400, in just plain old politics in general.

It's really empathy, or rather its absence, that seems to be the key factor, and that's certainly something that's been lacking among the Claremont 400, though they seem to be blind to their own shortcomings. Time and again, we've seen them unable to step outside of their own groupthink, unable to place themselves in their opponents' shoes, with the result that they have no openness to ideas that don't comport with their own preconceptions.

Let's go back to the 2002 Talk of the Nation show for a moment. Kaj Bjorkqvist, a Finnish professor of developmental psychology, remarked:

If you combine it [social intelligence] with low empathy, then it turns into indirect aggression. Girls who are high in both social intelligence and empathy tend to use more constructive strategies for solving conflict.

And that's exactly why we're caught in this odd community dance of anger. The people in power leverage their high social intelligence and dominate city elections so that they control the City Council and all the city commissions. Similarly, they control organizations like the Claremont Chamber of Commerce and various local charities. That's why you see someone like Preserve Claremont donor and former Claremont Board of Education member Michael Fay again and again, as treasurer of current council candidate Joseph Lyon's campaign or treasurer of the failed $95 million Measure CL school bond.

Or you see Preserve Claremont spokesperson Butch Henderson listed as an honorary co-chair of council candidate Robin Haulman's campaign and PC donor Bill Baker listed as Haulman's treasurer.


BIRDS ON A WIRE

If you want to observe relational aggression in action, go to a city council meeting. You're likely to see Helaine Goldwater seated in the back row knitting away like Madame Defarge as she watches the little melodramas she creates get played out.

At one recent council meeting, Sandy Baldonado, Barbara Musselman, and Robin Haulman were in the audience, all in a row like crows on a telephone line. Baldonado and Musselman, along with Bridget Healy, are backing Haulman as step one in their plan to get Healy elected to the council in 2013.

Recall that Healy lost badly in the 2009 city election, but rather than accept defeat, she and her friends began an image rehab program by getting Healy a position on the the Claremont Chamber of Commerce board, having her prominently involved with the Claremont Area League of Women Voters and by having her make appearances at City Council meetings to speak, along with Musselman, about the poor performance of current City Manager Jeff Parker, whom they accuse of gutting and outsourcing city services.

In their long range plan to shove Bridget down our throats, they've adopted more than a few positions they fought against when Baldonado was on the council and Healy working in City Hall as Glenn Southard's right hand woman. To listen to them now, they've replaced the secrecy they coveted with concerns for governmental transparency and have claimed to be champions of the people where once they had nothing but contempt for the public.

We can never forget, though, that Healy once authored a city staff report outlining a proposal to have a social worker or psychologist stationed at City Council meetings ready to rule on whether people trying to speak during public comment represented imminent threats to the council, commissioners and staff. The idea was to have a process for removing speakers from the council chambers. Then there was Baldonado, who with her trademark classiness, once told members of the public who were observing a council retreat to "get a life."

As strange as it sounds, the Baldonado-Musselman plan seems to be working. Haulman (photo, left) stands a good chance of getting elected, and people have cut her a lot a slack. At candidate forums she's been unprepared and has read canned responses from a notebook she continually flips through (she's working on fixing this and a few of her other obvious shortcomings), but to hear the after action reports, one would think she's a regular policy wonk when it comes to city issues. People, too, have forgiven Healy and are willing to overlook the ethical conflicts of interests she would have on the council on important issues such as employee pensions.

We'll see how much Claremont has really changed since Healy last worked here. Our guess is that the mean girls still have the run of the town.

Sunday Sermon

As we've often said, some Claremonters (the ones that count, anyway) possess a peculiar, almost religious devotion to their city workers with members of groups like the local League of Women Voters or the Claremont Community Foundation acting as oracles or priests. Sometimes they are even actual religious leaders.

A mere hint of outsourcing any of city services will result in widespread hysteria among the true believers, the Claremont 400, as the recent civic discussion over Claremont's waste management showed. Imagine the wailing that would ensue if the city were to consider disbanding Claremont's police department and entering into a contract with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office. The pitchforks-and-torches set would be out in force at the next City Council meeting.

Yes, Claremont loves its public servants.

As if to prove our point, the Yes on Measure CL campaign, the folks who are trying to pass a $95 million school bond, sent out a mailer last week adorned with photos of one of Claremont's finest, CPD Officer Sean Evans, who was quoted and featured in a couple photos.

We were mulling over our politicized police department, which seems intent on lending the Measure CL campaign a helping hand or two, no matter how many claims of non-partisanship City Hall makes. Looking at the recent flyer, it struck us that, as Officer Evans blessed the children gathered around him in one of the photos, he might have possessed just a touch of that beaming, beneficent, iconic presence leaders of all types, religious and political, like to affect in order to inspire the masses:

SEPARATED AT BIRTH?

Church & State, Revisited

From the More Things Change file:

The Insider has learned that the circle of people officially associated with the Yes on Measure CL campaign has widened from the original three - Bill Fox, Mike Seder, and Lee Jackman - to include insurance agent and Claremont 400 heavyweight Randy Prout, former Claremont United Church of Christ pastor and current city Human Services commissioner Butch Henderson (photo, left), and former Human Services Chair Suzanne Hall, wife of the ubiquitous Ken Corhan.

We shouldn't be surprised to see Prout or Henderson or Hall/Corhan, popping up in the Measure CL campaign. All were associated with the 2005 Preserve Claremont campaign that tried to derail the candidacy of Claremont city council member Corey Calaycay. We should also remember that the PC campaign was as much about censoring council member Jackie McHenry and keeping then-City Manager Glenn Southard in charge as it was concerned with barring Calaycay from the council.

That the current school bond campaign and its supporters don't mind twisting the truth shouldn't come as a surprise either. During the 2005 city council election and after, Henderson, who seemed to use his position in our town's main church to unduly influence people to support the Claremonsters' agenda, was a spokesperson for the Preserve Claremont campaign and was quoted in the Claremont Courier on 2/19/05. In that article, Henderson admitted not only that his campaign employed manipulative tactics, but that such games are a natural part of any political campaign, even one involving the Claremont UCC's head pastor:

Mr. Henderson responded to a complaint he had heard that the [Preserve Claremont] ads were "manipulative".

"Of course they are," he said. "That's what politics is all about. Claremonters like things to be real nice. They say, 'Let's do powerbrokering behind the scenes and be real nice.' But politics is about leaders. Mr. Calaycay s running for office and we're trying to get factual information out about him."

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It mattered not a whit that the "factual information" Henderson alluded to consisted of nothing more than rumor, innuendo, and outright lies, much of which was supplied by city staff. But, rather than being shocked that a former man of the cloth would engage in such self-acknowledged manipulations, we should expect it.

We can't help but recall the last Claremont Unified School District Measure Y bond campaign in 2000. During that lead up to that campaign, school district officials held a public meeting at which residents who lived near Claremont High School showed up to protest the planned use of Measure Y money to put a football stadium in at the high school.

When it became clear during the meeting that the football facility plans were going to imperil Measure Y's passage, the district officials took a break, held a quick sideline huddle with Superintendent Keeler calling signals, and then reconvened to assure the audience that no Measure Y dollars would be used for the high school stadium. At that meeting, one Butch Henderson, who happened to live very near the high school, stood up and said he was happy with the district officials' plan to accommodate his neighbors.

With no opposition from the Towne Ranch neighborhood, Measure Y passed by a little more than 100 votes citywide. Within a matter of a few years, the district, flush with Measure Y dollars, installed the permanent football field, lights, and bleachers at the high school. In fact construction workers are installing a second course of permanent seating right now.

So, yes, the neighborhood was lied to. But in Claremont anything associated with the school district approaches a certain religious fervor, complete with a kind of priesthood to deliver CUSD's holy word. The truth is whatever that priesthood says it is. As Pastor Henderson could tell them, all's fair in politics and war.

Not a Stadium

Sunday Morning Lesson

Superbia et Ira

We take our text this morning from the writings of newly-appointed Human Services Commissioner, Saint Homer the Butch. Pastor Henderson wrote in yesterday's Courier:

Claremont has an ideal opportunity to create a well-planned housing community for seniors and families on the former COURIER site.

By bringing together folks across the generations, this small community within our larger community will add to the vitality of Claremont. It will offer an affordable housing opportunity for many who already work in Claremont and enable them to live in the community where they are employed.

Families with younger children will have convenient access to Oakmont School, where there is plenty of room for new students [He's right on this one if Helaine Goldwater was to be believed at last Tuesday's council meeting. She stated that 50% of Oakmont's students were "interdistrict transfers", meaning they came from outside of Claremont. See the video here at 2:13:00 ff.] The location is also conveniently situated near Claremont’s downtown business centers. We have a developer with an excellent track record and with viable, appealing communities in place around Southern California.

No location or plan will ever be perfect nor meet the objections of those who find fault with every affordable housing proposal. Now is the time to continue building quality of life sustainability in Claremont by seizing the opportunity.

Butch and Rosemary Henderson

As we read the first three paragraphs of this letter, our bosom swelled with welling pride to be a member of a community so obviously willing to do the Right Thing. Pastor Henderson's sermons have always had that effect on people, and we'll be attending the Human Services Commission meetings faithfully for more moral instruction from here on out.

It was something of a wrong note though to hear him refer in the last paragraph to "those who find fault with every affordable housing proposal". We thought we detected more than a hint of anger so some of his fellow men there, indicting--though not by name--a segment of our community apparently worthy of his remark.

We have in this letter pride in his community and his place in it and thinly-veiled anger at what must be a substantial portion of it--at least substantial enough to get into his head. It sounded kinda judgmental to us.

Then we remembered that "pride" and "anger" were two of the seven deadly sins. So take this lesson.

The Budget Results Are In

At last Saturday's city budget meeting, the Claremont City Council approved a $2.32 million budget makeover, the Daily Bulletin reported. The changes were need to help the City deal with what the city was saying was going to be a $2.69 million shortfall in Fiscal Year 2009-10. This comes on the heels of a $1.5 million deficit for FY 2008-09.

That's total shortfall of $4.19 million through July 31, 2010, and it could have been worse. Luckily for Claremont, the state of California didn't touch local transportation funds when state legislators and Governor agreed the budget compromise last week, otherwise the hit for local governments would have been $1 billion worse. As it is, because our leaders can agree to a permanent fix to the budget process, our state leaders will probably be having another budget showdown in a few months. The Sacramento Bee's Dan Walters is calling it our state's five-month budget cycle.

So, Claremont's budget solution may not represent a real fix at all, and that 2009-10 deficit could still grow, depending on how the economy performs and what future revenues the state tries to take.

The cuts the City Council approved last Saturday include "golden handshakes" to encourage employees to take early retirement, raising fees for some city programs, and increases in parking ticket fees. The City will also have to workout an agreement with employee associations for either a 38-hour work week or a four-day work week. This will amount to a 5% pay cut for most employees. The City is also likely to eliminate some positions entirely.

The Bulletin article reported that Councilmember Peter Yao was the sole vote against the measure:

Councilman Peter Yao voted against the proposed changes. His objections were the cost of the Public Employees Retirement System "Golden Handshake" retirement package, where an employee receives two years of PERS service credit, and a larger police department budget in 2009-10 than in 2000-01, despite a similar budget projection.

"I can't honestly support it," Yao said, adding he felt the proposal was a temporary and not permanent fix.

* * * * *

The council also meets tonight for their last meeting before their August break. The city website was down for much of today, or we'd offer you a breakdown of some of the issues. Try checking out the city's website yourself at www.ci.claremont.ca.us.

Some interesting items on tonight's agenda:

• The College Ave. affordable housing project.
• The official city flower (staff says, "Sticky-leafed Monkeyflower").
• Expansion of the Oak Park Cemetery.
• Renaming the 100 block of East 11th St. The new name would be "Drucker Way." This is being proposed by the Claremont Graduate University.
• The City's investment report for FY 2008-09 (not all financial news is bad, it seems).
• City commission appointments and reappointments (some surprises here, including Butch Henderson, who landed a spot on the Human Services Commission).
  

The council meeting begins at 6:30pm in the City Council Chambers at 225 W. 2nd St. in the Claremont Village.

Fine Speechifying for the 4th

Claremont's annual Speakers' Corner, a 4th of July celebration of free speech, carries its tradition on today from 10:30am to 3:30pm in Memorial Park.

According to the map in the Claremont Courier's 4th of July insert, the Speakers' Corner podium will be set up along Indian Hill Blvd. just south of 10th St.

The Courier insert listed the speakers' schedule. Speakers are limited to 10 minutes, and some of the speakers had not listed their topics as of the Courier's press time. There are also some unprogrammed blocks.

Girl Scouts beware! Claremont Mayor Ellen Taylor speaks at 10:50am. And Councilmember Sam Pedroza follows with a speech titled "The Government You Can Touch" (and which touches you back, we might add - IN THE POCKETBOOK!).

Citzen Michael John Keenan, Democratic congressional candidate Russ Warner, former Preserve Claremonster and retired United Church of Christ pastor Butch Henderson, and League of Women Voters leaders Marilee Scaff and C. Freeman Allen are also scheduled:

SPEAKERS' CORNER - 10:30AM TO 3:30PM

10:50am - Ellen Taylor
Welcome to Claremont's Independence Day Celebration

11:00am - Sam Pedroza
The Government You Can Touch

11:10am - Michael Keenan
Not Determined

11:20am - Marilee Scaff
Save Water and Welcome a Park [and spend $32 million]

11:30am - Freeman Allen
Sustainabiliy: Something New or Business As Usual

11:40am - Butch Henderson
Not determined

11:50am - Charles Doskow
Not Determined

Noon - Dave Laybourn
Not Determined

12:10pm - Dave Never
Why Obama Will Improve Our Politics and Our Government

[NOTE: This may actually be Dave Nemer. The Courier had him listed as "Never," so we faithfully reproduced it. Of course, a copy editor might have left out a punctuation mark or two: "Dave? Never!" ]

12:20

12:30pm - Russ Warner
My Candidacy for the 26th Congressional District

We've got a more complete list of today's festivities here.



Left: William Jennings Bryan speaking at Claremont's 4th of July Speakers' Corner in 1908 during Mayor Ellen Taylor's forgotten first term.

(Click image to enlarge.)

The Nice Faces of Claremont

We were looking at our earlier post on Sue Keith and got to admiring her photo. How, we wondered, can someone who looks like anyone's favorite grandmother be bad?

With the Claremont 400, we think it all gets back to studying the actual words and deeds and seeing past the smiling faces. We must look beneath the surface.

EXHIBIT 1: Homer "Butch" Henderson is the retired senior pastor from Claremont's United Church of Christ. The UCC goes back to Claremont's earliest days, and Henderson, like Keith, has done many good works. This year he was chair of the city's steering committee for the Youth and Family Master Plan Update.

Yet, he was also a spokesperson for Preserve Claremont, the organization of city staffers, former councilmembers, commissioners and other Claremont 400 people that in 2005 attacked current Councilmember Corey Calaycay and then-Councilmember Jackie McHenry.

The Preserve people ran ads containing false information and also organized two citywide bulk mailings the weekend before the election - mailings that were funded primarily by a $2,000 donation from Claremont Toyota, owned by Roger Hogan whose auto center property is responsible for 57-percent of the city's sales tax revenue (big fish, little pond).

All nice faces, not so nice words and deeds.

EXHIBIT 2: We've run this a couple times before, but it's worth revisiting. Former Claremont Mayor Sandy Baldonado can be charming and winsome. Just like Keith, Baldonado is a Claremont League of Women Voters member. A photo of her doesn't betray any hint of pettiness or a mean spirit. Yet, at a city council meeting in 2005 she let her guard down and took some potshots at the city of Victorville and the state of West Virginia.

Again, let the words speak for themselves:

Claremont Bits and Pieces

As we write this over the weekend, there is no Weekly Update by City Manager Jeff Parker posted on the City website. Guess there are no new businesses to pimp. We suppose he could note, as Saturday's Courier did, that at least one new merchant has broken its lease in the Packing House and left due to lack of customers.

Seems as if the building owner and the Chamber of Commerce ought to get together in an emergency effort to deal with the issues. The City and Redevelopment Agency will have a role to play but don't have the competencies to lead the charge.

The merchants must have a realistic view of things. As someone pointed out talking when talking about restaurants, it's not enough to have a business license in Claremont. You have to put out good food consistently, and with good service. Everyone has to take a look at the fundamentals.

* * *

La Puerta Sports Park and Antenna Farm

A curious agenda item for tomorrow's council meeting, Tuesday, November 13: A group of neighbors are appealing a split planning commission decision to allow cell phone antennas in La Puerta park. We don't know all of the issues, but suspect there are plenty of reasons to hear the appeal. For one thing, the staff report is woefully inadequate: the "Financial Review" section deals only with the chump change of the appeal procedure, and not with the real money on the table from the cell phone operator. Buried deep in the report are allusions to money, and $2,000 per month is mentioned, but no real indication of where it goes.

We'd also like to see one of the appellants, Helaine Goldwater, orchestrate the appeal. It's always a pleasure seeing her work.

* * *

Praise God from whom all blessings flow

The Congregational Church scored in Claremont last week: Beth Bingham, Congregational minister in Pomona, elected to the School Board. Butch Henderson, retired Congressional minister from UCC in Claremont appointed Chair of the Committee on Youth and Families Policies and Procedures.

This seems to be in line with the Congregational doctrine of "advancement of His Kingdom in the world."

We've seen this before, when former-councilmember Lew Miller's campaign was run out of the Louise Roberts room at the Claremont Congregational Church, and when Butch Henderson chaired Peter Yao's campaign Q&A events in 2003.

* * *

Revisiting the Packing House, a reader writes,
"Low foot traffic and poor signage are among the concerns of several business owners in The Packing House who are struggling to stayafloat."

Big raises for the planning and development staff!

Council - CUSD Meeting Tomorrow

The Claremont City Council and the CUSD School Board are having a joint meeting tomorrow night - no doubt to use the opportunity and the combined city staff and school board resources to shore up support for the candidates handpicked by the the Claremont 400 and the sitting and outgoing school board members.

The Council and school board will meet at 6pm tomorrow at the Alexander Hughes Center at 1700 Danbury in Claremont.

They'll be, among other things, installing former Claremont United Church of Christ senior pastor Butch Henderson as chair of the Committee on Youth and Family. Henderson, you may recall, is still trying to rehabilitate his image after his disastrous stint as co-spokesperson for Preserve Claremont in 2005. (He's trying to accomplish this without having to actually apologize for anything.)

As chair, Henderson has the power to appoint his friends to the committee. Which, if you have followed Claremont politics, is how these things work - set up a committee or a commission for some specialized task, fill the positions with Claremont 400-approved members, then use that committee (or city commission) as a springboard for the school board or the city council.

What they don't tell you is that they consciously exclude qualified applicants so that those people, which leaves the Claremont 400 as the city's gatekeepers. You must agree with them completely or forget any chance of participating or having your ideas heard on an equal footing. And should an excluded person decide they want to run for a local office, the 400 will say, "Ah, but they haven't been active in local issues."

And because they control the meetings, the Claremont 400 also controls the agendas, allowing for the appearance of open, public meetings and public comment, without actually having to take those comments into real consideration. This is what gives a process queen like City Councilperson Linda Elderkin the ability to puff out her chest and say, "It's been through x number of meetings. We've had plenty of input."

You can see the City and the 400 setting this very same thing up with their Sustainable City Task Force. Mayor Pro Tem Ellen Taylor has forced herself onto the Council committee that will interview the task force applicants. She's done this into order to impose control of process (that is, skew it). Count on Taylor to fill the task force with her League of Women Voter friends.

You'll likely see someone like Planning Commissioner Bob Tener come out in the end as the task force chair so that he can use it on a resume for City Council at some point. Tener's the sort of power-ego type that the Claremont 400 just love.

The sad thing is that Taylor and the rest use paid city and school board staff to aid them in these power plays. You pay for the staff time through taxes and fees, but you aren't really allowed an even playing field if you disagree.

If you've got an independent streak, if you are a skeptic or want a reason-based process, too bad. That door was closed to you a long time ago. You don't count. Just behave nicely and don't forget your place.

Church and State

Tonight at 5:30pm at the Alexander Hughes Center, the Claremont City Council will hold a special meeting on the adoption of it's Youth Master Plan Update. The Steering Committee for the update was chaired by Homer "Butch" Henderson (pictured at left), the retired senior pastor from the Claremont United Church of Christ. For those of you who are out-of-towners, the UCC is the church in Claremont.


LOOKING BACK ON BUTCH AND THE PRESERVE CLAREMONTERS

Back on July 20th, we wrote about Henderson's role as a spokesperson for the Preserve Claremont campaign during Claremont's 2005 City Council election.

We decided to take a trip in the Wayback Machine and looked up the 2/19/05 edition of the Claremont Courier. In that issue, reporter Melissa S. Mansfield had a long story about the Preserve Claremont effort and the uproar it was causing. The issue isn't available online, but you can try the Courier, as well as the Claremont or Pomona Public Libraries.

The Preserve Claremont campaign had two goals: 1) To publicly censor City Councilmember Jackie McHenry, who had been elected as reform candidate, and who had been critical of then-City Manager Glenn Southard; 2) prevent candidate Corey Calaycay from being elected.

The PC organizers raised thousands of dollars and ran a series of full-page ads in the Claremont Courier. A number of them, headed by Claremont Human Services Commissioner Valerie Martinez, also formed a second PAC called "Claremont Business PAC" and sent out two last-minute city-wide mailers to try to boost the support for Councilmember Llewellyn Miller, who was running for re-election.

The 2/19/05 Courier article quoted Butch Henderson in a telling couple paragraphs:

Mr. Henderson responded to a complaint he had heard that the [Preserve Claremont] ads were "manipulative."

"Of course they are," he said. "That's what politics is all about. Claremonters like things to be nice. They say, 'Let's do powerbrokering behind the scenes and be real nice.' But politics is about leaders. Mr. Calaycay is running for office, and we're trying to get out factual information about him."

The "factual information" Henderson spoke of included an ad containing false statements that alleged that Calaycay had left the employment of a California state legislator's office under a cloud. That legislator sent not only endorsed Calaycay but sent a letter refuting Henderson's "factual information." The legislator's letter ran as a full-page ad in the Courier.

Perhaps what is most disturbing is that here we have Butch Henderson, senior pastor at the main church in town, the Claremont United Church of Christ, basically acknowledging that his group was manipulating public opinion. It confirmed what we and others have complained about for years regarding the Claremont 400.


NO CONSEQUENCES

The Courier article also reported that "The PAC was formed under the name and address of Francine Baker, the art director in the Human Services Department, who is listed as the group's treasurer. So, in addition to the UCC's senior pastor, Preserve Claremont also had city employees working to influence the election of the people who would be their bosses.

What is striking about the article is how no one would take responsibility for the group's organization:

Ms. Baker declined to comment on how she became treasurer, saying, "I don't remember, it was a ways back." [The group got their first donations less than one month before the article came out.]

She referred all questions about the committee to Ms. Martinez, [former Councilmember Bill] McCready and Mr. Henderson. When asked who founded the group, none of the 3 indicated a specific ringleader or group of leaders.

And then there was this representative of one of the 2005 council candidates:

Ed Leavell, a 26-year resident of the city, said [former Claremont Mayor Paul] Held invited him to come as a representative for one of the council candidates. "He was vocal at the meeting but wasn't running it. It seemed like [former Claremont Councilmember Bill] McCready was running it."

As we've noted in the past, several of the candidates from the 2005 campaign benefited from the false claims made by the Preserve Claremont group. For instance, current City Councilmember Ellen Taylor won election and refused to speak out against the false campaign claims the Preserve Claremonters were making. Further, several of Taylor's supporters, including her treasurer Cindy Sullivan's family, were also Preserve Claremont financial supporters.

The Preserve Claremonters needed a lot of public image rehabilitation, especially their spokespersons. They and their Claremont 400 friends know that the public's memory is short, so given enough time and good works like the Youth Master Plan Update, people will forget how truly awful they were in the no-so-distant past.

It's up to you to remember. Thank them for their contributions to the community, but also hold them accountable for their other misdeeds as well.

Where Are They Now?

Claremont, being a just and righteous city, has no tolerance for people who get involved in smear campaigns. People who spread lies and misrepresentations during campaigns end up deservedly shunned. Or do they?

Homer "Butch" Henderson was a spokesperson for the Preserve Claremont campaign in 2005. That group was a political action committee with two goals: censor then-Councilmember Jackie McHenry, and defeat council candidate Corey Calaycay. They failed in both, but many of them were around again in this year's city election engaging in a below-the-radar campaign in support of Mayor Peter Yao and candidates Linda Elderkin and Sam Pedroza, both of whom won election. They also succeeded in their other goal of defeating Councilmember Jackie McHenry's bid for re-election.

Back in 2005, Henderson was still the head pastor at the Claremont United Church of Christ (UCC). He must not have believed in the separation of church and state because he seemed to use his position in the community to try to garner support for the Preserve Claremont effort. Also involved as spokespersons were Claremont Human Services Chair Valerie Martinez and Councilmember Paul Held, who similarly seemed to think they could parlay their official positions into support for their smear campaign.

Even when the backlash against Preserve Claremont began, Henderson never renounced the Preserve group or their tactics. Never once did he speak publicly about the false information his group published in a full-page Courier ad.

And, after the election, after then-City Manager Glenn Southard had resigned and left for a position with the city of Indio, Henderson gave a long sermon on Good Shepherd Sunday, 2005, on the subject of leaders who were good shepherds. In his sermon Henderson mentioned such good shepherds as Moses, David, Jesus, and...Glenn Southard! What select company!

Since that time, Henderson has retired from the pastorizing business. Now he's occupying himself by being the chair of Claremont's Youth Master Plan Steering Committee. In addition, the recently updated Youth Master Plan also had the input of such Claremont 400 luminaries as former Mayor Suzan Smith, current Councilmember Ellen Taylor, Claremont Board of Education President Joan Presecan, Board of Education member Steve Llanusa J. Michael Fay, Helaine Goldwater, and Teddie Warner.

The powers-that-be in town apparently have forgiven Butch for his non-transgression (in their eyes), at least enough to put him in charge of the Youth Master Plan Update.

Do they extend the same charity of spirit towards the victims of their Preserve Claremont campaign of 2005 and their whispering campaigns this year? How about it Butch? The quality of mercy is not strained....

_______________________


Ironically, page 6 of the Youth Master Plan Scorecard indicates that as far as decreasing "incidents of intolerance of differences," the community needs to improve. Ya think? Or as another Homer would say, "D'oh!"

How about we start by acknowledging the intolerance on the parts of our own community leaders? This group self-righteously lays claim to an almost saintly level of tolerance, but is itself guilty of the worst sort of clannish, small-town pettiness. We think we all can do better.

Kick Off

Good morning and Happy Mother's Day! Welcome to Claremont Insider. For those of you who aren't familiar with Claremont, CA, or California in general, Claremont is a small-sized town of about 35,000, located in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains about 30 miles east of Los Angeles.

Claremont is a college town, dominated by the Claremont Colleges, a consortium of several different, small, private colleges. The colleges are the largest employer in town.

Claremont itself is set up like a New England township, with a central area called "The Village" (as we'll see later, it is not unlike the movie of the same name). The Village is tree-lined and filled with older Victorian homes. The United Church of Christ is the main church in town, led by Pastor Homer "Butch" Henderson, about whom more later.

Claremont, or rather official Claremont, considers itself a Progressive community, generally liberal in its politics, and somewhat activist.

In the coming days, weeks, and months, we hope to look under the hood, so to speak; to get at the essence of the town, and to show the good AND bad of the town that we observe. Self-image and reality in Claremont have gotten horribly out of phase in the past 20 years, and we feel a certain civic duty to bring those back into clear, sharp focus.

We'll report on the stories behind the stories. We'll take you behind the scenes and show you the side of Claremont that doesn't seem to make it into the papers. We'll bring you the REAL Claremont, warts and all, rather than the sanitized, air-brushed official version.