Rene
The Legacy
Rene Bishop was also on the list of people to contact, made by Jody back in the Let the People Vote days. Rene came from the politically prominent Toast family in San Marcos. Her grandfather was a ranch owner and the first mayor of Escondido at the turn of the twentieth century. Her grandmother founded the first hospital in North County. They named their daughter Melba—a family name from her mother’s side. Shrugging off the inauspicious name, Melba Toast became a controversial City Councilmember and served several non-consecutive terms over 30 years.
Rene deftly adopted her husband's name when she married. She told me she learned everything about politics from her mother Melba.
The Dinner Test
When I called, Rene said Jody had already reached out, saying I could use some help. She and her council aide were having an early dinner at a restaurant in San Marcos and invited me to join.
It was pleasant but inconclusive. I told them about myself, about the Caruso project, and asked for campaign advice. She said she made most decisions in her campaigns herself, despite officially having a campaign manager—her aide. She shared stories of growing up in San Marcos politics, working on her mother’s campaigns from a young age.
When the check came, she refused my offer to split or pay it.
A Blunt Offer
Outside in the parking lot, she stopped me.
“I don’t know how much I can help you,” she said, “but I can tell you this—my mother always said you have to dress like the person you want to be. You should be dressing like a city councilmember. Not like an aging hippy. No one in Carlsbad wants an aging hippy on their city council.”
Then she laid out her terms.
“I’ll help you under two conditions. First, we go to Nordstrom. You’ll buy a proper campaign wardrobe. It’ll cost you—three thousand, maybe more. Second, you cut off that ugly mullet of yours.”
She paused.
“I’m not saying you’re necessarily ugly…” she said, drawing out the word necessarily for dramatic effect, “but that mullet has to go.”
Maybe those weren’t her exact words. But I didn’t need to read between the lines. Her expressionless face—honed through years of council meetings—waited for my reaction.
I’d had my share of dressing-downs in the professional world. I hoped I kept my face as blank as hers.
“When do you want to go to Nordstrom?”
Her face broke into a smile. Her eyes brightened.
“Great. North County Fair. Tomorrow at 3:00.”
We went. It cost a little more than two grand.
The Posse
I didn’t immediately warm to Rene. Her ego was big—bigger even than what I’d experienced of Cody. But her knowledge of local politics was bigger still. Jody was a theorist. Rene was a practitioner. After the shopping trip, I began calling her for advice on my website, speeches, and campaign literature. She was always helpful.
As we got to know each other, we began meeting more often—over the phone and sometimes in her office. I learned that she was also involved in Wally Binghamton’s campaign, in more or less the same role she played in mine. But Wally was running for Congress and was thought to have a decent shot at winning, so Rene often cut our calls short to take his.
Eventually, she invited me to join her at weekend events, standing in for her council aide. I took photos of Rene with constituents, carried handouts, took notes. “You’ll see how a successful councilmember works with people,” she said.
I also joined her, often with her husband, a real estate agent and active Democrat, at dinners or charity events with a political angle—like the San Marcos Boys and Girls Club banquet. Wally was always there too. We weren’t the Three Musketeers, exactly, but more like Rene’s posse.
Rene and I had a warm rapport enabled by a shared sense of humor and a certain skepticism about life. We shared Reddit memes by text and laughed through disagreements when we spoke in person. But her version of “Good Cop, Bad Cop” depended on the medium. In person or over the phone, she was supportive, charming, and quick to laugh. But in emails and texts, her words could be blunt, cold, and devoid of context. She once texted out of nowhere:
You aren't raising anywhere near the amount of money you need. Why aren’t you spending the time cold-calling for dollars, like I've been telling you? That’s what a serious candidate would be doing.
Our friendship somehow persisted through some very rough patches to the end of the campaign.
Rene also had peculiar obsessions that seemed to trace back to Melba’s campaigns. They weren’t wrong—just tiring to hear over and over. One was lawn signs.
Lawn signs, she insisted, were one of the most effective tools for building name recognition, and everything about them had to be carefully planned and executed. The colors? ONLY red, white, and blue. The content? ONLY the candidate’s name and office. And all text MUST be readable from a moving vehicle traveling 30 miles an hour.
She was just as particular about photography. All images for mailers and handouts had to be shot by photographers she had worked with before—people who, presumably, already understood how to capture the Bishop aesthetic.
She also knew Debbie well, which made me nervous. Rene said Debbie’s claim—that voting for me was voting against Cody—was irrelevant. "Focus on your own race!" That, she said, was another of Melba’s core principles.
The Forecast
Then came the turning point.
Rene told me she was certain I wouldn’t win.
Candidates without name recognition needed to run three or four times before gaining enough support. That meant a team of 20 volunteers and about $100,000 in campaign funds—bare minimum. Even Cody, she said, only had a slim chance against the incumbents.
It was sobering. I had repressed the truth in the excitement of starting the race. But I had come too far to walk away.
“This is just the first of the three races it takes to win,” I told her, weakly.
She never changed her mind, but never brought it up again. She didn’t have to. Her doubt hovered in the background of every conversation.
Offer and Regret
One day, Rene showed me an email thread between her and Debbie. It was dated before Cody’s endorsement by NCEC was announced. They discussed that I wouldn’t be endorsed—and the possibility that NCEC would endorse a Republican woman named Alice for the other Council seat. Alice was reasonably well known in Carlsbad, serving on the Carlsbad Unified School District board. She was considered a moderate conservative who didn’t make waves. She was also part of the influential Rotary lunch crowd. Debbie claimed she was a volunteer in Measure A’s defeat — though when I questioned her at a DEMCCO meeting, she could only point to a single letter Alice sent to the City Council that fall. I had never seen her on any campaign lists or at any organizing meetings.
Debbie also called me “by far the weakest candidate” and claimed I was “not perceived as electable by the Carlsbad folks who worked with him on Measure A.”
Rene disagreed, pointing to my support on Jody’s private Facebook group. And Rene claimed that Carlsbad would never elect two women.
Rene and I disagreed about what Alice’s endorsement meant. I believed it was part of an effort to marginalize me — to rewrite the Measure A story with just two main characters. Rene, for her part, thought Debbie was making a strategic gamble that could backfire. Rene and I agreed that Alice would pull votes away from Blackburn and maybe some from Wood.
Rene wrote letters to the County Democratic Party and DEMCCO pointing out that Cody, endorsed by the Democratic Party was violating Democratic Party rules. There are rules against Democrats running on a slate with and endorsing a Republican. Such a violation could justify the party Central Committee's withdrawal their endorsement. No one thought that would happen to Cody, but we were not going to let that kind of thing pass unnoticed.
A short time later, Rene proposed I drop out and run for Tri-City Healthcare District Trustee instead. She said a wealthy ex-CEO of the hospital wanted someone to support his lawsuit against the district. I called him. I wasn’t the guy.
Next came a new plan: I’d drop out of the race and endorse Cody. In return, she’d support me in 2018. I ignored it, but Rene kept pushing. She asked me to write the email to Cody myself—and then decide.
I wrote the draft. Rene made a few edits and said it was the right move.
A few days later, I sent it:
I’m now at a decision point... It would help me very much if you would be willing to support my candidacy for Council in 2018... I plan to make a final decision this week. It would help to know your answer by 3:00 PM tomorrow…
I regretted it the moment I hit send.
Then I waited.
I told myself I didn’t care what she said. I told myself I wasn’t really going to go through with it anyway.
But I kept checking my email.
I tried to focus on other campaign work, to no avail.
More than once, I thought perhaps my instinct was wrong. Maybe the offer really was a smart play.
The waiting was killing me.
The next day, Cody replied:
In 2018, I will commit to doing what I can to help support your candidacy for Council.
Cody had provided me no relief. Rene had talked me into this and I felt she hadn’t understood my commitment to run. But the mistake was mine. Egoists test power by asking you to give up something important to you. You have to say no.
My frustration with Rene mirrored my anger at myself.
The Worst Week
Now I had to send Cody a shit-eating follow-up email withdrawing the offer. It was the worst week of the campaign.
Then, as if on cue, Debbie called. Brief and to the point.
She offered to have me appointed President of the Agua Hedionda Lagoon Foundation—an elite local organization with real power—if I dropped out of the race.
I declined. She thought she smelled blood in the water.
She did.
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