Jody Versus Dee
North County Environmental Coalition
Working for the City Manager’s office, Jody wasn’t a decision-maker but a low-level part-time staff member. She supplied Dee with documents and data at the City Manager's direction in response to their frequent Records Requests. As a rule, Carlsbad responded quickly to such requests, so Dee and Jody had a friendly relationship.
Still, Jody was wary as a supporter and volunteer for the North County Environmental Coalition. NCEC was a private money-raising organization whose leadership was never made public. It did not have paid staff. It did not have "members." NCEC was run by Dee and a group of Lawyers who drove their shakedowns through the court system. They also managed all projects and controlled all the money collected by donations and substantial legal settlements. The NCEC enlisted volunteers to do specific projects like Let the People Vote. No one outside the secret ownership made decisions about their projects' direction and management.
The No on Measure A fight animated local politics. Most volunteers realized rejection of the City Council's approval of the project would influence the Carlsbad City Council election. Jody and I agreed that Cody had become the visible leader opposing the Caruso proposal. Participating in the signature gathering of the Let the People Vote project would increase my visibility in the community and help me if I ran for City Council. And Jody, too, would gain visibility as NCEC became more visible in Carlsbad.
Dee had asked me at the Buena Vista meeting to lead the signature gathering in my precinct despite having just met me. However, a woman in my precinct who felt entitled to have that job expressed her disappointment to many in the group. Although a neighbor, I first met this woman at the Buena Vista meeting. She appeared to have anger issues. Even at the Buena Vista meeting, she argued with Dee. Living in my precinct meant she would be on my team. She was hypercritical of everything and everyone.
I began to refer to her as Angry Women #1 after seeing the label in the credits roll of a movie playing at that time. I only used the term when talking to Jody and a few close cohorts on my team. There was also an Angry Woman #2 in the film. Of course, there has to be an Angry Woman #2 in this story, too – a Chiropractor who was an angry troll on Facebook. She didn't live far from me, and I gave all the signature sheets I collected to her as she managed all signature collecting in Northeast Carlsbad. Jody and others in my group assured me that my diagnosis was valid.
I had concluded that Dee asked me to be a precinct leader because she had previous experience with Angry Woman #1. Still, I was blamed for taking the job from her. That turned into a black mark on my reputation. And that black mark grew like cancer among Cody’s supporters.
Jody was always wary of Dee, even though they were friendly. Jody's wariness was a sense of competition with a fellow activist who had achieved results acclaimed by local environmentalists. She felt that Dee was too corporate to become active in something like the Occupy Movement, which was near and dear to Jody. Jody didn't like other things related to how the NCEC ran the Let the People Vote project.
Jody started expressing her grievances in conversations with others at NCEC meetings. I could see Cody and Helen beginning to take notice. She often complained no one knew who was running NCEC, the eventual presence of President Helen notwithstanding. She also thought she was being pushed out of the decision-making process. NCEC seemed to have 4 women leaders, including Dee and President Helen. They would take turns making public announcements on behalf of the organization or represent NCEC at Carlsbad City Council meetings. I noticed that Cody never spoke on behalf of NCEC.
The Value of a Signature
As a volunteer team leader in Let the People Vote, I collected filled-in signature forms from canvassers and handed them off to Angry Woman #2. I realized the names and addresses of voters who signed the forms would vote against the project and City Council members who supported it. That made them useful if I ever ran for office. I mentioned to Jody that I’d started photographing the ones I received and asked how we might get copies of the rest. Jody’s response was immediate and cold: unethical if not illegal. In reality, the forms were public records, but I didn’t bring it up again. I concluded it would probably require an army of people to process the thousands of names and addresses for relatively little benefit.
Sometime later, Jody texted and asked if I could meet her for a late lunch at the vegan place near Palomar Airport Road. I walked in and found her at her usual corner, way in the back near the shared restroom, where the light was dim and the noise minimal.
“She’s building a fucking database,” Jody said as soon as I sat down. She didn’t lower her voice—there was no one else around. “She’s entering the names and addresses from the petition forms into an NCEC computer.”
News traveled fast. Just a day or two earlier, I was at Dee's house helping NCEC prepare the petition sheets for submission to the Registrar of Voters. Dee announced that volunteers would begin entering signer information into a special laptop “for validation purposes.” But I knew all along such a database, if they pulled it off, would serve to defeat Measure A—and later, fuel Cody’s city council campaign.
“I’m shocked! Who would ever think to do that?”
Jody gave me a withering look.
“It’s such bull shit! It’s unethical and probably illegal!”
“You’re surprised? What? You thought she had higher ethical standards than me? You know, that really hurts my feelings!”
“No, I just think she’s smarter than you, she should know better,” bringing the conversation to a draw.
“They didn’t ask the Registrar,” Jody said, “Didn’t tell any of the volunteers. Just started entering the names. Said it was for ...”
“Validation purposes,” both of us ending her sentence in kind of a nice harmony.
“You knew this.”
My turn for the withering look.
“Dee didn’t ask you to help?”
I laughed. "Of course not, I'm not on Team Woman."
Jody responded without smiling, “So what if it’s a matriarchy. Still, it doesn’t matter how much you do—if you’re not inside, you’re outside. Regardless.”
I tried to stay neutral, though the irony wasn’t lost on me. “Weren’t you… part of that?”
“Not all women are allowed on their team either. I thought I was, but then I started asking questions—about who runs what, how do they decide stuff like where the money goes—and suddenly I was persona non grata.”
After a pause, Jody asked, “So, what do we do?”
“Ask her to share the data, of course.”
Jody frowned and her shoulders slumped.
“I’m out” she said finally. “Out of NCEC. Out of Let the People Vote. Screw Dee. I’ve got my own plans.”
Her Plans
I knew what she meant. Jody had long talked about starting her own nonprofit for political activism. Her idea was to launch a Facebook page or group first—use it to recruit volunteers, pull in donations, and grow from there. Lately, she’d started calling it the Carlsbad Taxpayers Association—a not-so-subtle signal that it would compete with NCEC.
It struck me as a fantasy. Jody had plenty of talents, but she wasn’t Dee—not an organizer on that level. And the fact that she often avoided public events wouldn't help. Dee would also be skeptical if she found out. Still, Jody might not be a threat in Oceanside, but in Carlsbad, she had deep connections to elected officials, to department heads. And NCEC didn’t even have “Carlsbad” in its name.
Jody created a "secret" Facebook group called Agua Hedionda Votes. The group required an invitation from Jody to join, and she had enough Carlsbad followers on Facebook that its membership grew fast. Jody said it was a secret group in that no one but members could see posts, who posted them, and comments about them.
One of the biggest mistakes of my yet-to-be-launched campaign was telling Jody I wouldn't join a group whose content was hidden from public view. Jody warned me that I was making a mistake. She said I needed to read the posts from Cody's people in the group. Some would say things against me. I assumed Jody would tell me what was posted and who posted it. However, Jody said her ethical standards would not allow that. Anything posted on Agua Hedionda Votes would stay on Agua Hedionda Votes. I subsequently learned some had a lot to say about me, but I never found out what they said. I was sure that I was the target of much of the content and not in a good way,
Jody's plan for the Carlsbad Taxpayers Association went no further.
I never thought Jody’s break with NCEC would have much to do with my campaign. But the gender divide, I knew that was a problem. There was a current running through all of it, quiet but powerful. I was never part of Dee’s inner circle and now Jody was out too. The women who ran things had their own code and their own alliances. I wasn’t sure how to navigate any of it or if I could navigate it at all.
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