Stanislaus County’s Supervisors’ District 4 includes a large swath of the City of Modesto. It’s by far the most urban district in the entire county. It’s also the district most impacted by homelessness and crime. The incumbent supervisor, Dick Monteith, is by all accounts a good man, but no one thinks of him as pro-active. Now in his mid-eighties, Monteith has been a throwback to the supervisor of old, a […]
Tom Berryhill for Supervisor
Denham and Friends: Is Dirty Money the New Norm?
“Rep. Denham may have found a new low in despicable campaign tactics.” Headlines about the latest Trump scandal—this time about a phony charitable foundation used to launder money—have become ho-hum moments. It’s pretty hard to top payoffs to porn stars and Russian bagmen. But dirty money in politics isn’t anything new; in fact, it’s now a political norm. Maybe because it happened three years ago, recent news that former Oakdale […]
Damrell Easy Choice for Supervisor
There’s probably no better contrast in the race for supervisor in Stanislaus County’s District 4 than that between Frank Damrell and his opponents Tom Berryhill and Janice Keating. Everything about Frank Damrell represents Modesto’s and the county’s better days, while too much about Berryhill and Keating reminds us of the calumny and corruption in the era of Trump. Steve Ringhoff’s excellent report about Tom Berryhill’s violations of rules required by […]
Chief FPPC enforcer called Berryhill scheme, “Cheating…plain and simple.”
A current candidate for Stanislaus County Supervisor in District 4, Tom Berryhill was fined $40,000 in 2014 by the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC). Was this a technical violation of complex campaign law? Did Mr. Berryhill admit the violation? Was he repentant? The answer to all three questions appears to be, “No.” Why look at this “historical” event, stemming from activity in 2008? Well, while the fine was widely reported, […]