With their standard bearer bloviating about facing charges and threatening virtually anyone not buying into his ‘I’m above the law’ rhetoric, former President Donald Trump has inspired other Republican office-seekers to copy his pitch.
Locally, El Cajon Mayor Bill Wells has issued a statement accusing a Democratic party activist and housing official of sending a threat his way.
Recently, I received a message from Ryan Clumpner (@RyanClumpner) the Vice Chair of the San Diego Housing Commission. This message contained a threat to derail my political career and prevent my future electoral success. The underlying motive behind this threat was my outspokenness on the housing voucher program in El Cajon and San Diego County. El Cajon Mayor Bill Wells
There’s just one teeny weeny problem. Wells made it up. A simple screen grab would have been all he needed to make his case. It hasn’t happened.
Fact-challenged KUSI gave Wells air time to talk about this “threat,” which –if it were true– amounted to partisan rhetoric. (Rep. Darrell Issa’s disparaging remarks about anything connected with Democrats may be repulsive to some, but nobody takes his words as a threat.)
Clumpner responded
I have never messaged Bill Wells. But I'd never support an elected official who politicizes the bipartisan Housing First approach for their own political gain. Residents of every city deserve access to lifesaving services and affordable housing.
Wells has his eye on Rep. Sara Jacobs’ D51 Congressional seat in 2024, and his faux tough guy approach to unhoused humans is the basis of his brand.
Here’s his approach to current homeless strategies, with “Housing First” taking the place of CRT and other GOP boogie men.
“They’ve enabled them to make it very easy to be on the streets, to be drug addicted. And we need to take that away & make it much more difficult, make it a much harder life.” -Bill Wells.
Housing First programs in San Diego are aspirational, since there is far from enough housing available for people living on the streets.
The Big Lie at the heart of Republican critiques of this strategy for homelessness is that do-gooders are chucking drug addicted, mentally ill, criminals into buildings and walking away patting themselves on the back. Great Americans (I’m assuming the taint of MAGA) are then extrapolating drug dealers, crime and filth coming to their neighborhoods.
The Big Truth here is the term “with supportive services” baked into Housing First approaches. No agency or government entity anywhere is simply about putting roofs over the heads of unhoused humans. In places where the marketplace has room for unfortunates, the program works.
Now-Democratic activist Ryan Clumpner started his journey in local politics as Carl DeMaio’s mayoral campaign manager in 2012. He also served as consultant for the Lincoln Club and the Chamber of Commerce. He was (and is) willing to get into the trenches and duke it out with opponents.
The rise of Donald Trump made Clumpner decide that the GOP was no longer a good fit for him. Now he belongs to the local class of politicos who are despised with varying degrees of intensity by hard core partisans on both sides of the aisle. In truth, he’s a Democrat and still scrappy, especially in social media..
From Voice of San Diego:
His primary win was a gut punch. His general win was a surreal fog. It felt like he’d stolen something I loved and smashed it. That’s an emotional response. The party never belonged to me, and the fact that it holds so much power right now refutes the idea that he broke it. He changed it, and I was out of step with the change.
In August 2018, Clumpner was appointed to the board of the San Diego Housing Commission, by GOP then-San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer. He gained notoriety in 2022 as the Reader exposed him as being associated with mailers intended to get outlier Democrat Lori Saldana into third place in the District 2 City Council primary.
This effort put Republican Linda Lukacs on the November ballot. The idea was to save the candidacy of council member Dr. Jenn Campbell, who’d endured a rebellion by District 2 voters over votes/endorsements she’d made on housing-related issues.
(Getting Saldana off the ballot was also considered politically necessary because of a history of disruptive behavior. I’d say more about this, but Saldana is bitter about my writings which have been critical in the past and blocks me on social media. For what it’s worth, council member Campbell isn’t my favorite. )
Getting back to Mayor Bill Wells…
My first awareness of him was as a spokesperson defending El Cajon’s ban on feeding homeless people in public places. The policy gained international notoriety after a dozen activists were cited for offering meals as an act of civil disobedience. Charges were later dropped, and Wells tried to blame a local epidemic of Hepatitis A to justify the city’s actions.
In recent years, Wells has served as Fox News go to guy for interviews with a slant against California, giving his views on homelessness (suggesting drug addiction and mental illness as the primary problems), reparations (claiming a non-existent payment of $1.2 million to black residents will stoke division and jealousy), and Prop 47 for crime (“It’s almost impossible to arrest anybody.”) among others.
He gained some cred with the COVID conspiracy crowd by refusing to enforce restrictions ordered by Governor Gavin Newsom. In January 2021 Wells led prayers at a religious concert with hundreds of unmasked followers in defiance of state lockdowns and social distancing measures. Needless to say, El Cajon had one of the highest case rates in the county.
Congressional District 51 was redrawn after the 2020 census to include much of eastern San Diego City along with the cities of El Cajon, La Mesa, Spring Valley and Lemon Grove. In 2022, incumbent congress person Sara Jacobs won re-election with nearly 62% of the vote.
El Cajon Mayor Bill Wells faces an uphill slog. He thinks his best bet for winning is the pity party he’s throwing. And if saying ‘I favor defeating Wells in every future election’ is considered a threat, then count me in.
News Clips for Mutants
Trump Names A Baffling New Enemy In Latest Unhinged All-Caps Rant Via HuffPost
Donald Trump has found another enemy, and this one might be his most mysterious choice of villain yet.
The former president fired off an all-caps post on his flailing Truth Social website attacking many of his usual suspects, including “the radical left” and “marxists & communists.”
But this rant also included a new target: Mutants.
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Supreme Court rejects challenge to Native American child welfare law Via Daily Kos
The Supreme Court on Thursday preserved the system that gives preference to Native American families in foster care and adoption proceedings of Native children, rejecting a broad attack from Republican-led states and white families who argued it is based on race.
The court left in place the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act, which was enacted to address concerns that Native children were being separated from their families and, too frequently, placed in non-Native homes.
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How a dose of MDMA transformed a white supremacist Via the BBC
De Wit was now very worried. She'd just given a drug to a disgraced white supremacist, she realised, and had apparently inspired him to do who knows what out in the world. "Go ask him what he means by 'I now know what I need to do,'" she instructed Bremmer. "If it's a matter of him picking up an automatic rifle or something, we have to intervene."
A murderous spree turned out to be the opposite of what Brendan had in mind. As he clarified to Bremmer, love is what he had just realised he had to do. "Love is the most important thing," he told the baffled research assistant. "Nothing matters without love."
When de Wit recounted this story to me nearly two years after the fact, she still could hardly believe it. "Isn't that amazing?" she said. "It's what everyone says about this damn drug, that it makes people feel love. To think that a drug could change somebody's beliefs and thoughts without any expectations – it's mind-boggling."
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"They’ve enabled them to make it very easy to be on the streets, to be drug addicted. And we need to take that away & make it much more difficult, make it a much harder life.” -Bill Wells." Nothing like good ol' right-wing populistic logic to take the place of decades of data and experience as to works and what doesn't.