Politics

Anyone even remotely familiar with the Village I scandal had to be stunned upon receiving Brad Hawn’s campaign mailers this week. Village I was scandalous for two reasons: One, although they promised a pedestrian-friendly planned community, developers reneged on the deal; two, Village I featured a fees shortfall approaching  forty million dollars. Hawn’s mailers accuse Garrad Marsh of being a Village I developer, implying he somehow illicitly profited from Village […]

Stanislaus County’s nine mayors ganged up on Denny Jackman last Sunday. In a classic example of writing by committee, the Modesto Bee OP/ED piece of Sunday, January 8, was full of self-congratulatory pieties and vacuous platitudes but did nothing to address Jackman’s well-founded claims of dereliction of duty in planning for smart growth and farmland protection. Instead, the mayors decried, “finger pointing” and proudly touted, “a series of maps that […]

Fred Herman has been a core member of the local Progressive Movement for more decades than anyone can count. Here, Fred offers an insider’s look at Occupy Modesto. Occupy Wall Street? Sure? Occupy the nation’s capital? Absolutely. Occupy college campuses? Yes, but beware of pepper spray, billy clubs and tear gas. Occupy Modesto? The very idea once provoked giggles.  Still, a small, ever-growing group of Modesto area patriots concerned with […]

There’s a telling moment during the Modesto Bee interview with mayoral candidates Garrad Marsh and Brad Hawn. It comes when Bee publisher Eric Johnston asks Hawn whether he wrote his pension reform initiatives himself or had help from a campaign consultant. Hawn’s reaction is a study in waffling. He ultimately admits many things at once: his wife helped him, lots of people helped him, he wrote them himself. He never does […]

Like planets following orbits ordained by gravity, Modesto elections followed the path of conventional wisdom as the November 8 turnout was a typically low twenty-two percent, incumbents won, another family dynasty was born, and mayoral candidates faced a runoff. Despite running in the newly-drawn District 3 for the first time, incumbent Dave Lopez prevailed over Todd Aaronson. Stephanie Burnside easily defeated scrappy challenger Jenny Kennoyer. Dave Cogdill Jr. brought yet […]

Leave it to the Modesto Bee to whiff on the biggest political decision in years. Yes, when it came time to step up and take a stand, the Bee took a walk. That’s what happened when The Only Game in Town wouldn’t make the call on the Modesto Mayor’s race. With three strong candidates, two of them developer-friendly, the Bee passed. Modesto’s newspaper of record then recommended a solidly pro-developer […]

Despite efforts by Todd Aaronson to downplay the relationship, there’s no question Aaronson, Ryan Swehla and Joe Muratore are joined at the hip. These Siamese triplets have well-established business and social relationships that would have gone unnoticed and uncommented upon if not for the SCAP scandal. Muratore’s and Swehla’s business ties became a problem when Muratore was declared in conflict of interest because of his position on the Modesto City […]

To Todd Aaronson, it must have seemed like the perfect storm, with prevailing winds in his favor. For months on end he’d used his expertise at marketing to take the pulse and temperature of Modesto’s District Three, the bloc carved out by the City’s decision to adopt district elections. He’d acquired an “A” list of endorsements no one else could hope to match. Best of all, his opponent wasn’t an […]

Longtime Modesto Bee reporter Fred Herman, who’s been retired for decades, shows here he hasn’t lost his writing chops as he comes out strong for City Council candidate Jenny Kenoyer. Fred fondly recalls when he was proud to support Republican Peggy Mensinger in her quest for better planning, smarter growth, farmland protection and green alternatives. He sees Jenny Kenoyer as a key player in building a team that will unite […]