Drama Returns to the Council
The Helen and Blair Show
In late August, I learned the outcome of Dee's plan to go after Councilmember Keith Blackburn. The plan, rooted in Blackburn’s alleged harassment of guests outside Blair’s Agua Hedionda home, was to reignite drama at a City Council meeting. The plan also targeted Lorraine Wood the other Republican incumbent up for reelection.
Public comment always precedes official city business. Speakers can address any issue not on the agenda, and it’s strictly first-come, first-served. That meant Helen and Blair had to arrive hours before the 5:00 p.m. meeting just to secure the top two spots. They knew what they were doing.
The auditorium wasn’t full, but there was a noticeable cluster of Cody supporters in attendance — though not Cody herself. They seemed to know something was up, if not exactly what. Helen had asked me to keep quiet about the plan, and I had.
Blair spoke first. She wore a black cocktail dress with a deep V-neck and long silver necklaces. The outfit, like her tone, was chosen for effect. She read from a script, never faltering, pausing often to look up and make dramatic hand gestures toward the Council. Her voice was calm, confident — performative without being theatrical.
She began with a detail that wasn’t widely known: years earlier, the Council had passed an ordinance allowing Blackburn to serve one day a month as a reserve officer with the Carlsbad Police Department despite his elected role on the Council. She implied this was more than just an odd arrangement; it was a loophole made for him.
Then she dropped the real charge: Blackburn, she claimed, had chosen the day of Blair’s party to go on patrol and had run the license plates of her guests — none of whom were illegally parked. She called it a “misuse of police authority” and said she had filed a formal complaint with the CPD.
The Chief of Police, she said, had responded in writing: the department had concluded its investigation, but under California law, the findings — including any disciplinary actions — were confidential.
Blair didn’t miss a beat. She asked how a department that depends on the City Council for its budget could be trusted to investigate one of its own members. She demanded Blackburn release the findings publicly. And she urged that “two members of the Council” place an item on the agenda — before the November election — to repeal what she called the “Blackburn exception.” The two members she meant were obvious.
Then came Helen.
Her outfit was business casual — a notch up from her usual look, but a far cry from Blair’s dramatic styling. She identified herself as a representative of the North County Environmental Coalition. She then noted it was the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the Let the People Vote project and near the anniversary of the Council’s vote to approve the Caruso project.
Helen’s target wasn’t just Blackburn. It was the City Council itself.
She focused on the city-funded “Voter’s Guide” distributed during the Measure A campaign — a glossy mailer meant to explain (or defend) the Council’s decision to bypass normal planning procedures. Helen said much of the guide was misleading, if not outright false. She claimed the stated $100,000 budget was inaccurate and demanded the City disclose the actual cost. Transparency, she said, was a minimum standard for public trust.
Then she pivoted to Blackburn, tying the secretive “investigation” into his conduct to the opaque spending on the Voter’s Guide. She called for the Council to create a code of ethics and an independent ethics board. She suggested that “perhaps Councilmembers Blackburn and Wood” should be the ones to put it on the agenda, adding with emphasis, "before the election."
The reaction was muted. No applause. A few NCEC regulars snapped their fingers. The tone in the room was more courtroom than rally.
Blair’s speech landed better. The ordinance allowing Blackburn to serve as a part-time officer was real, if obscure — passed without notice years ago by the Republican-majority Council. Her insinuation, paired with the secrecy of the CPD’s investigation, raised at least a few eyebrows. I briefly considered referencing it in my own campaign — as a symbol of how the Council shielded its own. But I never did.
Helen’s comments, by contrast, felt flatter. Her focus on the Voter’s Guide seemed like a reach. The ethics board proposal sounded reasonable, but the timing — demanding it be discussed before the election — made it feel like what it was: a coordinated shot from Cody’s camp. It had the fingerprints of a committee — NCEC leadership trying to package something unethical, easy to explain, and galvanizing to Cody’s base.
They succeeded on the first two. The third was more debatable.
Dramatic? Sure. Interesting? Possibly. But the real drama was still to come.
A Puzzling Call
It was Blair.
She sounded upset — flirting with tears but settling for brief pauses. I hadn’t heard from her in a while. Her calls were often emotional, but usually in a personal way. I assumed this one might be about her son’s health. But it wasn’t.
This call was all business. No updates on her kids. No sidelong comments about her ex-colleagues. Just a short, clipped message.
Blair told me — unprompted — that no matter what anyone said about her, she was not associated with Cody or supporting her campaign anymore. She added that she would not be raising money for Cody, either.
Then, almost as an afterthought, she said, “And I’m not the only one.”
That was it. Her voice cracked slightly, and before I could ask anything, she said quickly, “I have to go now. Bye.”
Click.
I couldn’t help but connect it to the rumors that were widely circulated — that Cody’s campaign had lost several of her original supporters.
Still, Blair had been a uniquely effective fundraiser. And she did a creditable job with her attack on Blackburn at the City Council meeting a few weeks before. It didn’t seem plausible she had been fired.
Something was missing from the call, but she never gave me space to ask. I have to admit I was relieved. I was too consumed by my own campaign to dig into whatever she was struggling with.
Rene had warned me: Cody’s campaign wasn’t my concern.
Blair and I had always had a sweet but distant connection — like my relationship with Helen. The kind that comes and goes. Sometimes you just let them go.
Blair Recants
I wasn’t at the Council meeting, and I didn’t watch the livestream. It made so few waves I probably wouldn’t have known about it at all, except my friend Larry called to tell me something had happened at the Council meeting a few days before. Larry claimed to have inside information about Cody’s campaign. He always claimed that. This time, he might have been right.
I pulled up the City Council’s video archive, found the late September meeting, and fast-forwarded until I saw Blair approach the podium — third speaker during public comment.
What the hell was she wearing?
A long black overcoat that reached her ankles, draped over what might have been the same black V-neck cocktail dress she wore during The Helen and Blair Show a month earlier — minus the silver necklaces. The coat wasn’t buttoned but loosely belted, flashing glimpses of her dress and one leg or the other as she moved. Somewhere between Darth Vader and The Long Riders.
She began, without ceremony:
“This is directed towards Mr. Blackburn.”
I had never met Blair in person. Her Facebook photos didn’t convey just how tall she was — something I only noticed during her earlier appearance before the council. She had extended the microphone to its highest reach, leaning slightly in the practiced way tall people deal with the challenge of their stature. This time, she didn’t even bother adjusting it. She bent into it, shoulders rounded, voice low.
“There was an incident at my house after the Measure A party, and I made very serious allegations against you that were totally unfounded.”
Her head tilted slightly. She gave a smile — small, sideways, childlike. The kind of smile a kid makes when they admit to stealing a cookie. It was what psychologists call inappropriate affect.
“During that time, I asked for a report to be written about the investigation that was absolutely concluded to my complete satisfaction, where there was no wrongdoing by Mr. Blackburn.”
She glanced down at a note card. Her speech was halting, punctuated by frequent hesitations. She was winging it, improvising her confession. The sly smile faded. She began to feel the gravity of what she was saying.
“And my allegations were absolutely inappropriate. They never should have been leveled at somebody who guided our Boy Scouts for six years and who had served on the City Council for eight years.”
She started, stopped, restarted sentences. Repeated words. Rearranged phrases midstream. Her voice got softer with each sentence. There were long pauses — the kind just before tears.
“That was my mistake. Secondly — and mistake number two — and the second mistake was also reading a statement prepared for me that I did not write.”
“I learned plagiarism was bad when I was 11.”
That part stopped me. Plagiarism? I wasn’t sure what she meant. I paused the video, made a note to look it up. The kind of plagiarism she was describing — if she was describing it correctly — didn’t match anything I recognized. I suppose plagiarism is a form of lying. But it wasn’t the kind of lie she was trying to confess to.
“I did not write that. I did not have any knowledge of that. I should not have spoken it. And that was my mistake too.”
“And I ask your forgiveness. And I am really, really sorry. You did not deserve that.”
She paused, then added:
“Six years ago, our Boy Scout troop asked you for help building a playground, and you found $5,000 for them. You stood by us, and you didn’t deserve what I said. I deeply apologize. You did not deserve that.”
The last sentence came out barely above a whisper. Then she left the podium without another word.
The first time I watched the video, I felt sorry for her. I couldn’t imagine the humiliation she must have felt. It took me a few days to go back and watch it again — it had never really left my mind. I watched it twice. I couldn’t watch it a third time.
I still felt some sympathy for her. But it was a sympathy shaped by distance. The hollowness of her apology grew with each viewing. And the claim that she hadn’t written the speech — hadn’t even known who did — might have been technically true. But it didn’t matter.
To me, the original attack reeked of committee work. The same committee that came up with the plan to attack Blackburn in the first place.
And still, that was no excuse for what Blair had done.
I don't believe Helen had anything to do with it.
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