The Shoppes on Agua
Hedionda - A Memoir
My Life as a City Council Candidate
Who says history is always written by the victor?
by
William Fowler
Author's Note
This is a story about my campaign for Carlsbad City Council in 2016. I was encouraged to write it by a couple of people involved in the campaign, and I have written about what I found most interesting—not the grind of the campaign itself, but the memories, the absurdities, and the people I encountered along the way.
I’m not the main character in this story. I’m the narrator. I describe what happened, participate in dialogue when necessary, and occasionally reflect on my own role. My name doesn’t appear in the text. That’s not an accident. It isn’t important.
What is important are the people I met. Most were women. Volunteers, supporters, opponents. This story is about them—who they were, what they did, and what they thought. Since the story is not much about me, I should give you enough of my background to set some otherwise missing context. I’ve always been interested in politics. In college, I was a Nixon supporter. Forty years later, I was voting for Obama and registering as a Democrat. My original goal had been law and politics. I earned a BA, MA, and PhD in international relations. But instead of a life in academia, I took a detour into computer technology, ultimately becoming a data engineer.
I’m not a true believer in any political cause or personality. What interests me most about politics is analytical: how do you win an election? That curiosity, paired with a sense that I was being sidelined professionally due to age and shifting tech trends like machine learning and AI, helped push me into running for office. Maybe politics could offer a new place to belong.
The fight against Rick Caruso and his grandiose vision for a high-end shopping mall along Agua Hedionda Lagoon in Carlsbad also drove my decision to run for City Council. Carlsbad voters seemed ready for change, and I wanted to be part of that.
This story sits somewhere between Creative Nonfiction and Historical Fiction. Events are based on real experiences. Elected officials appear under their real names; I have made up names for other characters. Characters don’t always map to real people—but all characters represent something real. All of this serves the continuity of the narrative. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
If you lived in Carlsbad in 2015 and followed the fight over the planned shopping center at Agua Hedionda Lagoon, you’ll likely recognize the roles certain characters played despite the fictional names. If not, I hope you can still follow along, connect the dots and maybe even get a laugh or two out of it. That’s what this story is worth.
Buena Vista
I first met Cody at a public meeting at the Buena Vista Audubon Society Nature Center in Oceanside in August of 2015. It was a gathering of volunteers organizing a signature drive for a citizens’ referendum. I hadn’t heard of Cody before, and I didn’t know anyone there personally, but I recognized a name or two. One of those was Dee, who had initiated the referendum and was chairing the meeting. Out of about 30 people attending, 23 were women.
Dee introduced Cody and spoke of her modest fame, not in politics, but in an aquatic sport. According to Dee, Cody’s involvement in a coastal sport somehow made her a leader on environmental issues. It was an assertion made without much explanation or evidence, but protecting the environment was central to the referendum's message.
Cody and I, along with a few others, were asked to serve as precinct leaders. As we registered signature gatherers for our respective voter districts, Cody and I chatted casually. I noticed an attractive woman who appeared to trail Cody as they moved through the room. Their closeness was evident, though Cody was clearly the Alpha in the relationship, as she seemed to be among all the women there. The woman appeared to be a few years older than Cody—closer to my age—but not a generational difference.
As Cody and I talked, her companion hurried over but said nothing. Neither she nor Cody offered an introduction. She looked at me with quiet suspicion, as if I might be encroaching on something. She reminded me of Helen Reddy.
← Part One: Prequel | Table of Contents | Jody →
Jody
Jody and I met two years before the Buena Vista meeting at a
campaign event for her boyfriend, who was running for Congress. I was running
for Trustee of Mira Costa College (MCC), my first foray into politics. I sent
her an email harshly critical of her boyfriend-candidate's speech. That was how
I learned she wrote all of his campaign speeches. I guess it was a subconscious
warning to Jody about how impulsive I often act. Jody later lectured me about
self-destructive male impulsiveness. Jody would often pontificate about
dysfunctional male traits. I usually agreed with her. Despite that, Jody gave
me lots of advice about running for MCC Trustee and was the only person
interested in my budding political career.
Jody had a Master’s in Sociology and had all sorts of
political theories based on her years of study. She was the only person I knew
who applied learned esoteric concepts to everything she did. That is what made
her interesting to me. She wasn’t a great campaign manager – the ill-fated
congressional campaign ran on these esoteric concepts that were a mystery even
for me. And her boyfriend's speeches never improved much.
Jody was a thought leader among some women in the local
Democratic Party. She was active in the
Occupy Movement and founded several local Facebook pages with names like Barrio
Votes and Wake UP La Costa. Jody worked part-time for the City of Carlsbad in
the City Manager’s office and knew everyone in Carlsbad’s political scene. She
had a wealth of information about Carlsbad politicians and politics.
Jody told me about Cody's recent arrival in Carlsbad's
political scene. I was also curious about Cody's sidekick and asked Jody about
her. Interest by a male in a female in politics is fraught with
misunderstanding. Romantic or prurient interest in a female is a mortal sin in
politics, especially in the Democratic Party. I honestly did not have those
interests in Cody's nameless colleague, as my immediate reaction to her was one
of dislike. She seemed like a hanger-on to someone famous whose attachment was based
on physical beauty. That idea is admittedly a sin of political incorrectness,
even as it reflects a certain obvious reality. But it is a misdemeanor compared
to the felony of carnal interest.
Jody and I argued about stuff like that constantly, which
made prying the name of Cody's sidekick from her a challenge. Jody refused to
accept concepts like “physical attraction” or “physical beauty,” and everyday
things like body weight, hairstyles, or dressing to attract the opposite sex
were never discussed. How was I to ask the name of the woman who seemed to hang
out with Cody?
“You know, the attractive one always around Cody”
“I don’t know what you mean by attractive.”
"She dresses like she is getting ready to go
camping."
"Sorry, I don't go camping."
"She looks like Helen Reddy."
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
“Maybe she and Cody are a couple?”
“Why don’t you ask her that? Maybe you could even ask her
what her name is.”
A few days later, Jody absent-mindedly told me her name as
if we had never had that conversation. She remained silent about their
relationship. I will refer to Cody's friend as Helen.
Jody and I often talked about my interest in running for
Carlsbad City Council. She made a list of people I should meet—insiders,
operatives, community influencers, and potential allies. At the top of the
list was Cody.
“She’s planning to run too,” Jody said. “Better to get to
know her before you end up as opponents.” She warned me, “Just know, Cody’s got
a very big ego.”
That didn’t bother me. In my professional life, I’d dealt
with plenty of egotistical and even narcissistic personalities. I’d learned a
few things: don’t ask too many personal questions—they’ll tell you what they
want to, when they want to. And if you flatter them, they’ll believe just about
any praise that supports their self-image. If you can get past the
competitiveness and condescension, they’re often quite charming.
Cody and I never became close, but we built a respectful
working relationship. And I never experienced much ego when dealing with her,
though I would learn that quite a few people did.
Jody never became my campaign manager, even though I asked
her more than once. She never said "no" outright—just deflected or
changed the subject. At first, I didn’t think much of it. But over time, I
began to understand other things were going on. For one, Jody seemed mildly
agoraphobic. We almost always met at her condo. Sometimes we would meet for a
late lunch at a quiet vegan restaurant in a strip mall near I-5 off Palomar
Airport Road. I surmised from our casual conversations that Jody was an animal
rights vegan, and from our late lunches, thought was avoiding the lunch crowd
or perhaps practicing some form of intermittent fasting. She wouldn’t meet at
Starbucks or anywhere crowded with people and background noise. “Too many
bright lights and overly confident men talking too loud,” she once said. The
quiet restaurant was calm, familiar, and just noisy enough for our
conversations to fade into the background.
← Buena Vista | Table of Contents | Caruso →
Caruso
The Backstory
A billionaire shopping mall developer based in Los Angeles,
Rick Caruso planned to build a luxury retail center on land bordering
Carlsbad’s Agua Hedionda Lagoon, one of the city’s three scenic coastal inlets.
The undeveloped land was home to a sprawling strawberry field leased by a local
farmer who also ran a popular roadside stand selling strawberries and sweet
corn to tourists and residents. Many locals believed the land was protected,
destined to remain in its rustic state.
Before August of 2015, only Carlsbad City Council members
knew of Caruso’s plans. He had privately lobbied them and provided VIP tours of
his upscale developments in Southern California. These secretive meetings
violated California’s strict open-meeting laws, which require city council
deliberations to be conducted in public.
When Caruso unveiled his proposal, he expected widespread
support. Instead, the community was divided. While some welcomed the idea of
upscale development, many feared it would destroy one of Carlsbad’s great
natural treasures. The City Council approved the plan within weeks of the
announcement. Making matters worse, the approval bypassed the normal approval
process for development projects. The approval sparked outrage. The Buena Vista
meeting, held the first Saturday after the announcement, launched the Let
the People Vote initiative to force the city to schedule a voter referendum
on the project.
The successful Let the People Vote initiative resulted in a
referendum election called Measure A held in February 2016. The election
overturned the Council’s decision. Voters in Carlsbad overruled the City
Council and denied Caruso the right to build the project. It was close, fifty
two percent of the voters voted against the project.
For convenience, I will often purposely refer to the two
projects together as the "the Measure A fight."
The Backlash
Carlsbad City Council meetings had long been quiet, polite
affairs. Collegiality was the norm, not the exception. This civility was the
product of decades of Republican control. Only rarely in Carlsbad’s history had
even a single Democrat served on the Council. With a few notable exceptions, it
was a body comprised of men—most of them members of the same Rotary lunch
club. They were business leaders and
local patriarchs. They were city fathers in a very literal sense.
Before Caruso, even controversial decisions stirred little
public emotion. Aside from the occasional letter to the editor in the local
newspaper, Carlsbad politics avoided protest culture altogether. Council
meetings were procedural, lightly attended, and reliably unremarkable.
That changed almost overnight.
Caruso’s project—and the Council’s rush to approve
it—transformed those quiet meetings into flashpoints of outrage. Attendance
soared. For the first time, folding chairs and outdoor monitors were set up in
the courtyard outside the council chamber to accommodate overflow crowds.
Inside, the air was often thick with tension.
Angry voters lined up to speak during the public comment
periods—even at meetings where the project wasn’t on the agenda. Measure A
activists helped drive turnout and keep public anger at a boil. Speaker after
speaker launched personal attacks on Council members, including Mayor Matt
Hall, the project’s most vocal proponent.
The accusations were sometimes wild. Hall was repeatedly
accused—without evidence—of having an illegal and corrupt relationship with
Caruso. And while Caruso himself almost never attended, he became the symbolic
villain of every meeting. He was considered a carpetbagger from Los Angeles who
wanted to transform Carlsbad from a low-key beach town into a resort playground
of hotels and shops most residents couldn’t afford.
The old rules of decorum began to fall apart. For the first
time in living memory, Carlsbad politics became theater—and the City Council
chamber, a stage.
The Meltdown
The wildest City Council meeting came just days after the
defeat of Measure A.
Everyone was still raw. Emotions hadn’t cooled, but the
momentum was shifting. The packed City Council chamber had the air of a
courtroom at the end of a trial no one had won.
Mayor Hall tried to maintain control, but the room had
developed its own rules. He warned the crowd repeatedly not to clap during or
after public comments. That only encouraged the anti-Caruso crowd, who began
snapping their fingers instead — a quieter defiance that pissed the mayor off.
At one point, overwhelmed by the noise and the tension, Hall called a recess
and walked off the dais, leaving the Council meeting to sit in awkward silence
for five full minutes.
The Council meeting lasted for hours. There were the usual
angry speeches, the trembling voices, constant distracting comments yelled from
the audience. And then, near the end, something strange happened.
Matt Hall gave a sullen soliloquy ending with, "If
apologizing 1000 times would heal Carlsbad I would do it."
Hienrich, a vocal Measure A volunteer who taught at a local
high school, had just approached the podium, called as the next public speaker.
Before being recognized by Hall, he leaned into the microphone and said,
"But you didn't actually apologize."
After some hoots and more finger snapping and a brief
stunned silence, Hall apologized. In fact, he uttered "I apologize"
three times.
The high school teacher said, “Okay” amid scattered
applause.
Someone yelled something about a town hall. But the energy
had shifted. It no longer felt like a movement. It felt like a curtain call.
By the next meeting, the folding chairs were gone. No
overflow crowd. No finger snapping. Only a few scattered regulars and the City
Council's own custom Rules of Order remained.
The video of the meeting had disappeared from the Carlsbad
City Council Web page.
For a while, it seemed the drama had left the building. At
least, until it was brought back by a scandal involving a Carlsbad City Council
incumbent running for reelection and the Carlsbad Police Department.
← Jody | Table of Contents | Dee →
Dee
Dee, an Oceanside resident, was locally famous for her community activism and had long agitated for parks, open space, and environmental protections. But her true political skill was extracting monetary settlements from developers—deals that often benefited the nonprofit she ran, the North County Environmental Coalition (NCEC), based in Oceanside.
These “shakedowns,” as some called them, usually yielded minor concessions—slightly fewer units or maybe some open space. But Dee’s real power came from her influence over local chapters of the Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters, and even the League of Women Voters. She helped write their political platforms and played a major role in determining who received endorsements.
In truth, most grassroots environmentalists avoid electoral politics—it’s the part of the movement they see as most corrupt. That left someone like Dee, who didn’t mind getting her hands dirty, to speak and act on their behalf. And if she squeezed developers in the process? So much the better.
NCEC launched the successful referendum campaign to force a vote on Caruso’s proposed lagoon mall. Dee had branded it Let the People Vote, and NCEC gathered enough signatures to force the special election: Measure A. Once the Council approved the mall project, the campaign pivoted overnight from the Let the People Vote signature gathering project to Dee's branded No on Measure A project.
I was surprised when Helen, Cody's sidekick, was named NCEC’s new president. Helen announced a $75,000 donation from the operator of a competing, older shopping mall nearby. NCEC didn’t have to disclose how the money was spent, but much of it, one way or another, ended up backing Cody’s City Council campaign. Non-profits like NCEC spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns under the protections of Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruling that allows this.
After the referendum's success, many NCEC leaders—Helen included—shifted their efforts to electing Cody to the Carlsbad City Council. But no one played a more strategic behind-the-scenes role than Dee, even though she wasn’t officially part of Cody’s team.
Dee was widely respected among women political activists. Older than Cody and Helen, she had retired from a long career at the California Department of Fish and Game. She didn’t look the part of a political powerhouse: she was petite and spoke softly. During the signature drive, she stood outside Trader Joe’s with a sign hanging around her neck hand scrawled with “Let the People Vote." But in a City Council meeting, when she did speak, she was well prepared, articulate and persuasive.
Dee was one of the most effective organizers I’ve ever seen. In my corporate life, few middle managers could match her skill. While I find extortion as a business model abhorrent, I also understand why many view those tactics as a kind of Robin Hood justice.
Dee had enormous influence on the 2016 Carlsbad City Council election, exceeding that of her candidate, Cody.
← Caruso | Table of Contents | Jody vs. Dee →
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.
← Dee | Table of Contents | Cody →
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