Recall Fatigue. It is a thing. Gavin Newsom, then Jessie Lopez, then Natalie Rubalcava – it seems that voters around here are getting tired of being asked to get rid of elected officials they’d elected not so long ago. (Especially given recent Democratic “reforms” making recalls more difficult.)

But apparently, there’s an exception to that – when they’re asked to recall today’s crazy-ass extremist School Board trustees – the Culture Warriors who get elected when nobody’s paying attention, then get to work pushing their “social conservative” agendas, defying California laws, blowing wads of money on lawsuits, and reaping their reward in glowing FOX News coverage.

This is an OC blog, so we don’t normally cover Inland-Empire Temecula, but last year I couldn’t help noticing the startling similarities between what was going on in the Orange USD and the school board in Temecula, 50 miles away, so I wrote “From Temecula to Orange, the Normal People Rise Up!” Well, wouldn’t you have? Consider:

• Both culture-war majorities were narrowly elected in 2022 after being adopted for salvation by meddlesome, homophobic Mega-Pastors: Orange by Calvary Chapel Hills’ Jack Hibbs, and Temecula by Tim Thompson of Murietta’s “412 Church.”

• As one of their first acts, both new Board majorities fired popular, successful Superintendents, for no given or apparent reason, leading to both public outrage and institutional chaos.

• Both Board majorities instituted Forced Outing Policies for transgender and nonbinary students, something popular at first blush with parents, but against state guidelines, dangerous for many students’ well-being, and soon to be illegal under the state’s new “Safety Act.”

• Of course both Boards blew tens of thousands of dollars on needless and doomed lawsuits, while presiding over mass exodi of miserable teachers and staff.

• And both Culture Warrior majorities were eviscerated by the voters, with OUSD’s Madison Miner and Rick Ledesma removed by Orange voters in March, and now TVUSD’s colorful nutjob “Holy Joe” Komrosky removed by Temecula voters in June.

EXCEPT:

“Everything is Similar, but Different.”

I’d thought T.S. Elliot said that, it sounds like him, but apparently not. Still, it’s true. The situation in Temecula was different from Orange in a few ways. For one thing, the lucrative CHARTER SCHOOL INDUSTRY was not a factor in Temecula as it was in Orange. Apparently the 2022 Temecula coup was purely “Christian” Culture Warriors and their hare-brained Crusades.

Another thing, Temecula’s recall election was a lot CLOSER than the one in Orange – Miner and Ledesma recalled by nearly 8%, Komrosky by only 2%. This may be because the city of Orange now has more registered Democrats than Republicans (a new development) while in Temecula, Republicans (who tend to be more susceptible to these Culture War issues) outnumber Democrats by a whopping 16 points.

STILL. In both cases the recall organizers kept the issues and campaign nonpartisan as they SHOULD be in nonpartisan school board races – the issues of waste, incompetence, chaos, disrespect for the law. And organizer Julie Geary tells me that a healthy 20% of Republicans who voted in the recall election gave the thumbs down to Holy Joe (while 85% of Democrats did so, and it’s hard to tell with independents but it looks like they too solidly favored sanity and education.)

“Conservative?” Oh, stop it!

ALL the news coverage refers to these recalled Culture Warriors as “conservative.” Do words have no meaning any more? These are some kind of right-wing RADICALS. Since when is it conservative to blow over $81,000 of public education money on legal fees, in eleven months, on lawsuits you know you’re gonna lose, but make some kind of point? And is it really “conservative” to ban books, to oppose the teaching of uncomfortable parts of American history, to make believe The Gay doesn’t exist?

The thing is, Temecula really IS conservative, in the true sense. Their school board and their city council have always been responsible fiscal stewards, and the city has healthy reserves stored up. People move there not for the 106 degree weather, but because the town is well-run. Temecula voters hate CHAOS.

People also move to Temecula because of the high-quality public schools – it has that reputation! Great Oak High School is within the top 2% nationally, and has an international baccalaureate program. The other high schools there are great too. Temecula’s conservatives don’t like seeing their schools thrown into chaos. But then Pastor Tim Thompson got his wish, and the chaos began.

It took Pastor Tim getting TWO trustees elected (by narrow margins) in 2022 – Danny Gonzalez, and the firebrand Komrosky who was quickly elected President – to join wingnut Jen Wiersma and begin the Pastor’s holy war against DEMONS in Temecula’s education system. In short order, the Board fired popular superintendent Jodi McClay, banned “Critical Race Theory” which doesn’t exist there and hired an outside consultant to preach against it, adopted their Forced Outing Policy, and began to micro-manage state-mandated textbooks, taking particular exception to one book that dared to include a mention of slain gay civil rights hero Harvey Milk. (Sneered Komrosky, “Why even mention that PEDOPHILE?” For the record, Milk was not a pedophile.)

It was one hell of an eleven months, and a group of concerned local parents, teachers and citizens formed a “One Temecula Valley PAC” to do something about the mess. Wait, why do we say eleven months? Because last December THIS happened:

Danny Gonzalez Pulls a Tito Ortiz!

Remember Tito, the mixed martial arts legend and MAGA hero elected to the Huntington Beach City Council, who, despite bragging that he had protected Surf City from Black Lives Matter for ten hours “without a bathroom break,” couldn’t make it through more than six months of his four-year term before buggering off to Florida? (Too many haters!) Meet Danny.

The iron-plant owner immigrated from SOMEWHERE in Orange County (not sure where yet) having heard that Temecula was “a conservative Paradise” unlike most of the OC these days. HE was able to hang in there ELEVEN months before running off to Texas. He claimed to have had a wonderful time, but that his work called him to the Lone Star state. Of course there’s more to it. He knew he’d be targeted for recall just like Holy Joe, and plus there was the little thing that his iron workers had sued him over not paying health benefits, and he’d gone bankrupt.

In his parting remarks he accused his colleague Steven Schwartz, who is both normal and Jewish, of having “vile contempt” for “Christians.” Responded mensch Schwartz, “I don’t know how people who claim to be Christian have so much hate in their hearts.”

Well, everything should be better for Danny now in Greg Abbott’s backward Texas, he’ll fit right in. But that left a sharply divided 2-2 board which hasn’t been able to do much except approve field trips and such. And the Komrosky Recall proceeded apace.

The Demon-Seer Fights For His Life.

Some politicians you can’t tell WHAT they believe, they’ll say whatever it takes to get votes. (Trump Sr. comes to mind.) Others, like Komrosky, seem to be TRUE BELIEVERS, it’s just that they believe in some really fucked-up shit. Which kind is scarier? The question may be academic.

And this “One Temecula Valley PAC” sure was a fearsome foe for Joe, a wide coalition of parents, teachers, and community members dedicated to saving Temecula schools. Tireless organizer Julie Geary, a teacher originally from nearby Murietta, brags to me at length of how “data-driven” and “disciplined” her volunteers were.

But Komrosky had Republican Assemblywoman Kate Sanchez (who also represents some of Orange County) and above all he still had Pastor Tim Thompson, who has connections up the wazoo! Pastor Tim put on a fundraiser for the bedeviled trustee, in Tennessee of all places! And in May Pastor Tim really pulled out the Big Guns, and organized this:

That’s right, the former president’s slightly dumber and uglier son Eric, along with a few of Trump’s insurrection co-conspirators, flew out to the “Temecula Stampede” to tell local voters to STAND BY their madcap education saboteur. Meanwhile Holy Joe himself, touched by SOME sort of spirit, spewed out an hourlong tirade at the local Calvary Chapel, in which he called out many Temecula teachers BY NAME, warning the congregations that they were, in fact, DEMONS!

Here are some excerpts from Komrosky’s 1-hour Calvary Chapel speech (omitting his calling out teachers by name.) These short videos take up a lot of space here, but my article continues underneath. First, though, HOW IS ANY OF THIS LEGAL?

Calvary Chapel, Eric Trump … it still wasn’t enough though.

Now what?

It’s unclear now what a three-member board (two normies plus Wiersma) can actually do between now and November. The two normal members are up for re-election then, and also open then are the seats of Danny Gonzalez and Komrosky. Komrosky says he plans to run again, for the seat he was just thrown out of, but his chances don’t look great – it seems a thousand people who voted for him the first time voted to recall him this month.

I read somewhere that the reactionary forces (the Culture Warriors usually allied with the Charter School Industry) were really worried about the recall in Orange succeeding, seeing it as an ominous sign that the tide is turning against them and their days are numbered. This Temecula result confirms that trend. The Normal People ARE waking up and taking back their School Boards – and hopefully taking those races seriously from now on. Congratulations to the people of Temecula are in order!

Next, Placentia / Yorba Linda?