One city council meeting was packed Thursday evening with both opponents and supporters of a local politician who’s feeling the heat.
Reactions by elected leaders in two Stanislaus County cities to the Utah killing of Charlie Kirk
have led to the resignation of an Oakdale councilman and demands
that a Waterford councilwoman step down.
Christopher Smith resigned to “help minimize further disruption to City business,” Oakdale Mayor
Cherilyn Bairos wrote Thursday in a letter to the community. The same day, droves showed up to a
Waterford City Council meeting to request that Lise Talbott leave her post in that city, while
others defended her.
On Smith’s Facebook page, people accused him of reposting a message that read, “Charlie Kirk has
arrived in Hell.” In another post, Smith on Tuesday apologized for years ago using the tagline “a
small blue dot in an annoyingly red town.”
In her leadership position with the Stan Dems group, representing the local Democratic Party,
Talbott wrote a letter declining to attend a vigil last week for Kirk hosted by Republicans at
Turlock’s California State University, Stanislaus. “We cannot in good conscience attend an event
that centers on Charlie Kirk, given his associations with fascist ideology,” she wrote.
Smith and Talbott are political progressives in mostly conservative cities. Mayors in both issued
public statements censuring Smith and Talbott, whose messages had unleashed torrents of both
criticism and support.
On his Facebook page, Smith said a man at Monday’s Oakdale City Council meeting shared concerns
about Smith’s social media comments. Three days later, hundreds supporting both sides in a
standing-room-only audience at the Waterford City Council spilled into an overflow foyer. Uniformed
deputies removed one woman during a disturbance in which she appeared to grab at a man’s cell
phone.
In her letter to the Oakdale community, Bairos said Smith’s “comments were widely viewed as
disrespectful and not reflective of the standards I expect in public discourse.
“While I fully support Mr. Smith’s right to free speech, as an elected official, his remarks
crossed a line into inflammatory territory, which does not align with the values of our city
leadership,” the mayor continued.
Smith agreed to step down “following thorough, thoughtful, and constructive dialogue, and after
much personal reflection,” Bairos wrote. She said Smith “has served as a dedicated councilmember
and a tireless advocate for our town.”
Attempts to reach Smith were not immediately successful.
In his Tuesday post, Smith said he had used the blue-dot-red-town tagline a few years ago when he
“felt disheartened by the divisive and often inflammatory messages I was seeing around town, like
‘F— Joe Biden’ flags and ‘F— Your Feelings’ banners. I found those messages deeply insulting,
frustrating, and annoying. However, I recognize that this tagline may have been offensive to some,
and for that, I apologize.”
In Waterford, Mayor Charlie Goeken said associating Kirk with fascism “is hateful, divisive and
just plainly untrue,” according to a flyer circulating in the audience.
It said Goeken’s comment was “posted to Facebook via proxy” on Tuesday, and quoted him as saying
Charlie Kirk was “a man of God” and “the left knows they cannot honestly win an open debate of
ideas, so many on the left have demonized conservatives for years with hate and name calling.”
Several audience speakers demanded the resignation of Talbott, who watched from her seat behind the
dais. Several defended her, saying she has long represented marginalized groups, and some said
Goeken should be the one to step down.
Blake Carmickle of Waterford said Talbott might have chosen a less incendiary term than fascist.
“How fascism works is, if you have political enemies, you kill them,” he said.
“The hateful and false rhetoric used in Councilwoman Talbott’s statement hurts our community and
provides no solution to the stark political divide we live in,” said Eric Sheetz.
“Does what she did to decline an invitation support her resignation? No,” countered Melynda
Rodriguez.
Talbott wished the crowd peace Thursday, and in an interview with The Modesto Focus on Friday
morning, she said she will not resign. “I’m getting lots of support from people. I just hope cooler
heads prevail and we can get back to focusing on what’s best for the city.”
The controversy in Stanislaus County in some ways mirrors a larger conversation happening
nationally about freedom of speech and The First Amendment in the aftermath of Kirk’s killing.
This week, the television network ABC indefinitely suspended the show “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” after
the talk show host’s remarks about Kirk’s killing.
Attorney General Pam Bondi earlier this week said the Trump administration will be targeting “hate
speech.”
Garth Stapley is the accountability reporter for The Modesto Focus, a project of the nonprofit
Central Valley Journalism Collaborative. Contact
Stapley at [email protected].
