Politics
Column: What's behind those 'Shame on you' billboards in the Coachella Valley
There are so many billboards on each side of the 10 Freeway through the Coachella Valley that they bleed into one another like a deck of cards being shuffled. They come at you so fast that you begin to think the headliner this weekend at the Coachella festival is attorney Jacob Emrani.
Even in this cluttered landscape, two billboards featuring Desert Community College District Board trustee Bea Gonzalez stand out.
They’re at opposite ends of the valley — one near Fantasy Spring Resort Casino in Indio, another just east of the Indian Canyon Drive exit in Palm Springs — and feature the same photo of the spiky-haired, bespectacled trustee.
“Bea Gonzalez. Shame on you for voting against COD [College of the Desert] students!” the billboards blare against an orange background. Below that is the name of the group that funds them, Promises Made Promises Broken.
The hundreds of thousands of concertgoers who’ll pass by most likely won’t give the billboards a second thought. But they tell a story of a political brawl that has consumed the Coachella Valley.
Supporters say a long-planned College of the Desert campus in downtown Palm Springs, which is expected to break ground this year, will bring prestige and new programs such as hospitality, engineering and film to an area that needs it. Opponents such as Gonzalez say that the estimated $400-million cost is exorbitant and that the funds should be spread across underserved areas of the Coachella Valley.
When Gonzalez beat a two-term incumbent in a 2020 election, she joined two other trustees in trying to limit the scope of the Palm Springs project, if not scuttling it altogether.
Soon came the attacks: An unsuccessful 2021 push for a faculty vote of no confidence against Gonzalez and her trustee allies. A 2022 election that saw former college president and Gonzalez critic Joel Kinnamon join the board and flip the majority to his favor. A threatened recall that never materialized. Whispers that Gonzalez is a puppet of Latino politicians based in the eastern portion of the Coachella Valley who have increasingly clashed over resources with pols in the wealthier, whiter western communities.
And, of course, there are the billboards, which have shifted up and down the 10 since the beginning of 2023. They’ve become such a part of the region’s life that Gonzalez recently told me she’s used to having strangers stare at her before asking if she’s that woman.
“I have to laugh,” the 55-year-old said as we enjoyed bowls of split pea soup at a diner in Desert Hot Springs, “because what else can I do?”
The brawl has grown so contentious that the city of Palm Springs sued College of the Desert in 2022 for failing to turn over documents related to land use decisions, in alleged violation of the California Public Records Act. Kinnamon got into a physical altercation in January with United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1167 President Joe Duffle, a Gonzalez ally, with each accusing the other of starting the fight.
Kinnamon didn’t respond to repeated requests for an interview. Meanwhile, Promises Made Promises Broken — which the Desert Sun, the local newspaper, has described as “worrisome” for its refusal to disclose its members or donors — has flanked its anti-Gonzalez billboards with mailers and video ads as the group seeks to defeat her at the ballot box in November.
“If you know an election is coming, the smart thing to do is to create a negative perception far in advance,” Promises Made Promises Broken spokesperson Bruce Hoban said. “This Bea thing with ‘No, no, no, no, no’ at every trustee meeting is nerve-racking. It’s just relentless.”
Gonzalez is warm and self-effacing, with a good laugh. She said of the long campaign against her: “I think [opponents] are scratching their heads and thinking, ‘OK, we’re attacking her. We’re shaming her, and she won’t stop.’ But I really think these people have no clue the investment that I made into my community for years.”
Born and raised in Indio, Gonzalez is a College of the Desert alumna and has worked as an administrator for the Coachella Valley Unified School District for nearly 30 years. A longtime community activist, she ran for the community college district board in 2020 after hearing complaints from former students about shoddy facilities and a lack of classes and majors.
“You and I know,” Gonzalez said, “that if you want to change something, you have to be inside. And that there’s no other way.”
When she assumed office, the mother of two went through staff reports on the long-proposed new campus project. It was originally planned for northern Palm Springs, but Kinnamon announced in 2014 that the district wanted to take over a long-abandoned mall downtown and build there. Two years later, voters passed a $577-million bond to help fund that project and other improvements for existing facilities.
Gonzalez said that she’s not opposed to a new campus in principle but that putting it in Palm Springs makes no sense since there’s already a smaller facility there, and far more students reside in cities such as Cathedral City and Desert Hot Springs, which she represents.
“And so to me, I was, like, ‘Wait a minute, what is going on here?’ And all of a sudden, there was this outrage from the entire West Valley, and all these attacks started — and I mean, they went all in. Every time I would vote no on a contract or ask a lot of questions — boom! Billboard No. 1. Boom! Billboard No. 2.”
She smiled. “I figure by now, I should have at least 20.”
Hoban, the Promises Made Promises Broken spokesperson, said he didn’t “know anything about College of the Desert, anything about community college” until attending a breakfast meeting in 2021 and hearing Gonzalez criticize the Palm Springs project, then finding out the board was going to cancel a proposed Cathedral City campus.
“All the plans that had been promised for 17 years were getting heavily modified or canceled and we said, ‘Wait a second. Why isn’t anything being built in the West Valley?’”
As a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, Promises Made Promises Broken doesn’t need to disclose its members or how it spends its money. Paperwork filed with the California secretary of state lists its officers as Palm Springs restaurateur John Shay, jeweler Theresa Applegate and Cary Davidson, a Los Angeles-based attorney and trustee at Claremont McKenna College.
An email to them requesting an interview was instead returned by Hoban, who co-chaired the campaign that defeated a 2018 measure that sought to ban short-term rentals in Palm Springs of single-family homes. Asked who else belongs to Promises Made Promises Broken, Hoban said it’s “made up of people who have always been very involved in political issues and causes, so we know our way around.”
He wouldn’t disclose how much the group spends on billboards, although he claimed the going rate in the Coachella Valley for one billboard was $500 to $4,000 a month. Whatever the amount, he said his group is “100% completely” satisfied with their investment.
“People see them, and people will talk to us, and say, ‘I didn’t realize this problem with Bea Gonzalez,’” Hoban said.
Gonzalez acknowledged that she was angry when the billboards first went up, but she has made her peace with them.
“I’m getting this because I’m doing my due diligence — I ask these questions because I want that clarity,” she said. “And when the attacks started, it just made me even more curious.”
She pulled out a letter from a manila folder that she sent to California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office asking that he investigate the use of College of the Desert’s bond money over the last 20 years.
“How can I vote yes, if a yes vote would be simply because of the intimidation? I can’t do that,” Gonzalez said.
A spokesperson with Bonta’s office said it’s “unable to comment on, even to confirm or deny, a potential or ongoing investigation.”
We finished our breakfast, then drove toward the 10 to see her billboard near Indian Canyon Drive. We parked on the freeway divider and admired it from afar as traffic sped by just feet away. I told her I vaguely remembered seeing the low-slung orange thing last summer.
Gonzalez waved at the billboard, as if to say hi. Then, she cracked up.
“Well, at least they used a good photo of me!”
Former President Trump slammed the anti-Israel “radical left lunatics” creating chaos at colleges nationwide, highlighting that the antisemitism on campuses is promoted by the left, not conservatives.
“This is a movement from the left. These are radical left lunatics, and they’ve got to be stopped now because it’s going to go on and on. And it’s going to get worse, and worse,” Trump said Thursday morning outside of a Manhattan courtroom where he is standing trial.
“And, you know, they take over countries, and we’re not letting them take over the USA. We’re not letting the radical left morons take over this country.”
Student agitators have infiltrated college campuses nationwide in recent weeks, including radicals on Columbia University’s campus taking over the campus’ Hamilton Hall building, while schools such as UCLA, Harvard and Yale are working to clear student encampments where protesters demand their elite schools completely divest from Israel.
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Former President Trump speaks to the media as he leaves Manhattan Criminal Court on April 22, 2024, in New York City. Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first of his criminal cases to go to trial. (Brendan McDermid-Pool/Getty Images)
The protests are associated with groups tied to far-left organizations backed by dark money and liberal mega-donor George Soros, Fox News Digital previously reported. Namely, the National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) has had a large presence amid the protests on Columbia University’s campus, as well as on the campuses of UCLA, Tufts and the University of Texas at Austin.
In his remarks Thursday, Trump praised law enforcement officers in New York City and Los Angeles for working to clear encampments and Columbia’s Hamilton Hall, and make arrests amid the chaos.
An anti-Israel demonstrator holds a Palestinian flag on the rooftop of Hamilton Hall at Columbia University in New York, on Tuesday, April 30, 2024. (Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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“I’m so proud of the New York’s finest… I know so many of them. They’re incredible. They did a good job at Columbia and likewise in Los Angeles. They did a really good job at UCLA. It was very much embedded,” Trump continued.
“And just so you understand, this is the radical left. This is a movement from the left, not from the right. The right is not your problem. Despite what law enforcement likes to say, the FBI director said that he worries about the right.”
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NYPD officers line up outside Columbia University, Monday, April 29, 2024. (Rashid Umar Abbasi for Fox News Digital)
The NY v. Trump case focuses on Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, paying former pornographic actor Stormy Daniels $130,000 to allegedly quiet her claims of an alleged extramarital affair she had with the then-real estate tycoon in 2006. Trump has denied having an affair with Daniels.
Former President Trump leaves Trump Tower on his way to Manhattan Criminal Court, April 15, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Prosecutors allege that the Trump Organization reimbursed Cohen and fraudulently logged the payments as legal expenses. Prosecutors are working to prove that Trump falsified records with the intent to commit or conceal a second crime, which is a felony, in violation of a New York law called “conspiracy to promote or prevent election.”
Politics
Opinion: Kristi Noem executed her dog. That's not the main reason she'd be a lousy vice president
People think I’m a cat lady, but that’s only because dogs are high-maintenance and for years I traveled often. I’m that person dog walkers dread: the dog lover who stops them so that I, a stranger, can give their hound some love.
Naturally, I was among the millions of people sickened on learning that South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem once executed her puppy, Cricket, in a gravel pit, apparently for being puppy-like. And save some tears for the pet goat she next dragged to the killing field and shot, simply for being rambunctious and “rancid.”
Noem’s account in a coming memoir, apparently intended to show her guts, grit and gunplay as she auditions to be Donald Trump’s running mate, instead had the rare effect of bringing Americans of all political persuasions together — in revulsion at her.
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Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
“Kristi Noem manages to unify the left and right, the woke and Q-anon, the trans and homophobes unanimously around the proposition that she is a monster,” right-wing pundit Ann Coulter posted on X.
Trump hasn’t weighed in on Puppygate. (He did, however, provide a blurb for Noem’s book: “You’ve got to read it!” Did he?) Perhaps he’s been distracted because he’s penned up in a Manhattan criminal court. Or maybe because he’s that rare breed that doesn’t seem to like dogs; Trump is the only president in a century who hasn’t owned one. He does have dogs on his mind a lot, but always when he’s barking pejoratively about women, terrorists and political enemies (“choked like a dog,” “dumped liked a dog,” looks like “a dog,” “died like a dog”).
Yet Trump aides, hiding behind a cloak of anonymity, have been quick to confirm the conventional wisdom: Noem is almost certainly disqualified as Trump’s choice for vice president. As the pun-intended headline in the Murdochs’ New York Post put it this week, “Kristi Noem has ‘no shot’ as Trump’s VP pick after puppy-killing controversy: sources.”
And that’s what sickens me now: There is so much that should disqualify Noem from being first in line for the presidency — starting with the fact that she questions Joe Biden’s election and supported Trump’s efforts to overturn the result and resist the peaceful transfer of power — yet it took a puppy’s killing to actually disqualify her.
What a testament to our warped politics.
Every other Republican said to be on Trump’s shortlist similarly seconds his false, antidemocratic grievances about 2020. And yes, I understand that when the man at the top of the ticket is the election-denier and insurrection-inciter in chief, it follows that he’ll want as his No. 2 a candidate who echoes his utterances and snaps to his commands — like a dog, right?
Or, like Sens. Tim Scott of South Carolina, Marco Rubio of Florida and J.D. Vance of Ohio; Reps. Elise Stefanik of New York and Byron Donalds of Florida; North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, and Trump rival-cum-sycophant Vivek Ramaswamy, among other would-be lapdogs eager for his nod.
During the 2016 campaign, then-rival Rubio snarled about Trump: “For years to come, there are many people on the right, in the media and voters at large that are going to be having to explain and justify how they fell into this trap of supporting Donald Trump.” Now — after Trump’s impeachments, an insurrection and four indictments — it’s Rubio who’s fully entrapped. This week he was tweeting against the “Biden supporter democrat ‘judge’” in Trump’s New York hush-money trial. Just like his master.
Vance is another aspirant who has rolled over for Trump. “I’m a Never Trump guy,” he said in 2016, and he suggested to a friend that Trump might be “America’s Hitler.” But on ABC’s “This Week” in February, Vance lashed out at host George Stephanopoulos for even asking about the events surrounding Jan. 6, and then admitted he’d have refused to certify Biden’s election had he been vice president.
As Vance and the rest of the veep wannabes know, Trump demands complete loyalty. (So why doesn’t he have a dog?)
Noem was relatively early to endorse Trump for reelection, at a September rally in South Dakota. Back then she said she’d be his veep nominee “in a heartbeat,” adding, “Trump needs a strong partner if he’s going to take back the White House.”
And just how does a woman demonstrate she’s got such strength, at least to Trump and MAGA world? Noem decided one way was to write her self-promoting book, “No Going Back,” and include anecdotes like the multipage account of shooting Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer, and a family goat.
In her telling, first disclosed by the Guardian, the puppy had an “aggressive personality” and, “out of her mind with excitement,” disrupted a pheasant hunt — and attacked a neighbor’s chickens like “a trained assassin.” Noem grabbed a gun and took Cricket to the pit: “It was not a pleasant job, but it had to be done.” Then she figured she might as well dispatch the “nasty and mean” goat, too. It required two shots.
What strength. Amid days of denunciations, the supposedly strong Noem stuck to her guns, posting online about how the episode underscored her ability to make “tough decisions” and her knack for “real, honest, and politically INcorrect stories.”
As fed up as Secret Service agents must be with Biden’s bite-happy German shepherd, Commander, it’s hard to believe any of them want to draw their guns on him like Noem did with poor Cricket.
I hope she did kill her veep prospects. I’m just sorry it’s not for the right reasons.
Politics
The White House has a new curator. Donna Hayashi Smith is the first Asian American to hold the post
The White House has a new curator and Donna Hayashi Smith is the first Asian American to hold the post.
The White House announced her appointment Wednesday, the start of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
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Originally from Wahiawa, Hawaii, Hayashi Smith joined the White House curator’s office in 1995 and has now served under five presidents. She had been serving in an acting capacity since last year after the retirement of her predecessor, Lydia Tederick.
The White House is photographed from Lafayette Park on Wednesday, May 1, 2024, in Washington. The White House has a new curator and Donna Hayashi Smith is the first Asian American to hold the post. Hayashi Smith had been serving in an acting capacity since last year. She will oversee the care of thousands of artifacts in the White House collection, cataloging and preserving everything from presidential portraits to furniture to the china place settings. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)
As curator, Hayashi Smith will oversee the care of thousands of artifacts in the White House collection, cataloguing and preserving everything from presidential portraits to furniture and more.
Hayashi Smith led the curator’s office through a process in 2022 to ensure that the White House continues to be recognized nationally as an accredited museum.
First lady Jill Biden cited Hayashi Smith’s service under five presidential administrations and said she looked forward to working with her to preserve the White House’s “living history.”
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