The Sonoma County Sheriff’s race is on

The 2022 Sonoma County Sheriff contest is down one candidate, Kevin Burke, Healdsburg Police Chief, who dropped out of the race last week. As the meeting secretary for CBSC (Citizens for a Better Sonoma County), I get to participate in the candidate interviews. We interviewed the remaining three candidates: Asst. Sheriff Eddie Ingram; Lt. Carl Tennenbaum, retired thirty-year law enforcement veteran in the SFPD, and Captain Dave Edmonds, retired thirty-year veteran of the SCSO.

I asked the same question to all three candidates: “Do you support working with IOLERO, the citizen’s review board established in 2016 and given legal teeth by the passage of Measure P in 2020? Do you accept the premise of civilian oversight of the Sheriff’s Office?” 

Eddie Engram’s answer was so lawyered up that I’m not clear what his actual position really is. He did take exception to my follow-up question: “So can I interpret your remarks to be a departure from Sheriff Essick’s policy of refusing to cooperate with IOLERO?” There was not a problem, he asserted. Carl Tennenbaum answered the question without hesitation, noting that his entire career in the SFPD had been spent under a civilian oversight board. Dave Edmonds put to rest the false claim lodged by an opponent that Edmonds did not support IOLERO by stating clearly, on the record, that he looked forward to a collaborative relationship all of the county agencies, including the citizen-mandated IOLERO. That issue is settled. 

I attended a SVUSD Zoom meeting for the first time ever Tuesday, March 9th. The Index-Tribune had printed multiple letters denigrating Mr. Kelly every way from Sunday. 

My initial reaction was: ‘Well, I voted for this guy. The North Bay Labor Council had endorsed him, so he must be pro-labor. Why are all these folks so agitated? What’s going on here? Is he really that hard to work with?’   

 The board’s main accusation against John Kelly cited his negotiation of a Project Labor Agreements (PLA). Two former corporate executives on the board made it sound like he did a bad thing. Wait, what? That’s why I voted for John Kelly.

 These trustees are enforcing ideological discipline on a public official. Support a PLA and we will ruin you. That’s the exemplary execution we all witnessed at that dreadful meeting.

Rounding out my defense of unpopular figures was an amazing bit of news that caught my imagination. The March 23rd, 2022 Press Democrat ran a story on local Santa Rosa boy, Evan Neumann, son of renowned hotelier Claus Neumann, who earns the coveted Mara Lago gold-plated trophy for biggest MAGA baller of the year. 

Neumann’s instigator role in the Capitol insurrection got him placed on the FBI wanted list. He expeditiously escaped the country to Italy and then headed for the lawless Caucasus region. Now, as a refugee from political persecution welcomed into the bosom of Belarus, he will be in the alt-right hall of fame for outrunning the FBI and Interpol, skipping the country to claim political asylum while all the southern-fried rubes, militia dorks, Proud Boy incels and Fox News Q moms are now getting sentenced to real jail time for what they were told was ‘legitimate political expression’ at the Capitol on January 6th. Trump would have loved to have a son that cool.

Evan Neumann is king of the MAGA chuds. I am hostile to his politics, but if I’m talking 100%, I have to respect his game. Baller on vacation.

The downside is that now he has to live the rest of his life in a backwards autocratic hellhole, governed by Putin crony and ruthless old-school dictator Alexander Lukashenko, who has giant statues of himself all over the country. Nightlife in the capitol, Minsk, one of the poorest cities in Europe, features the National Opera and Ballet Theater. That sounds like a real party town down there, son. Have fun!