Critics of Huntington Seashore Mayor Gracey Van Der Mark have referred to as her many issues throughout her quick however chaotic political profession.
She has been accused of antisemitism as a result of she as soon as created a YouTube playlist titled “Holocaust hoax?” that featured movies questioning the Shoah.
A racist, for utilizing the time period “coloured individuals” to consult with Black attendees at a racial justice workshop in Santa Monica the place she and Proud Boys confirmed up.
A puppet of forces seeking to cleanse Surf Metropolis of liberal something.
A homophobe, for supporting measures that banned the flying of the Satisfaction flag on metropolis property and any municipal celebration of Satisfaction month, and for pushing for a purge of LGBTQ+ titles from the younger grownup part of the Huntington Seashore Public Library she discovered indecent.
Vendida, for being a Latina supporter of Donald Trump.
None of those phrases was on my thoughts after our one-hour dialog final month. As an alternative, what bubbled up was buchona.
Initially used to explain the wives and girlfriends of Mexican cartel members, buchona has reworked into shorthand for Latinas who wield energy and are usually not afraid to flaunt it.
That’s the Van Der Mark I encountered the second we met in her small fourth-story workplace at Huntington Seashore Metropolis Corridor.
The 50-year-old wore a form-fitting denim zip-up jumpsuit straight outta Stagecoach. Her scorching pink nails matched the J. Crew trench coat wrapped over her chair, and the coat of the identical colour hanging from her workplace door. Finishing the look was a crystal-bedecked “HB” necklace within the fashion of town brand.
“I’m not polished, and I don’t need to be,” she mentioned matter-of-factly as I sat throughout from her. A plaque on Van Der Mark’s desk said, “I’m Sort of a Massive Deal” — a gag reward, she insisted. Subsequent to me was Huntington Seashore Police Chief and interim metropolis supervisor Eric Parra, for some cause, earlier than public data officer Jennifer Carey changed him.
We had been assembly due to my March 21 columna suggesting that Trump select Van Der Mark as his vice presidential candidate, since she had “a resume tailor made for MAGA Land.” She despatched me a notice afterward, saying she loved my piece and had hung a digital model of it subsequent to her desk, beneath a 2018 clipping from the OC Weekly, which I used to edit, crowning Van Der Mark as considered one of Orange County’s scariest individuals.
She additionally requested a print clip. I mentioned I’d ship it in individual, so we may discuss.
A photograph of Huntington Seashore Mayor Gracey Van Der Mark inside her Metropolis Corridor workplace alongside mementos
(Christina Home / Los Angeles Instances)
Van Der Mark is the newest in an extended line of bombastic conservative Orange County politicians who’ve gained nationwide consideration. However there’s by no means been one like her, a Horatio Alger fable come to life — born Gricelda Larrea to immigrant Mexican and Ecuadorian dad and mom, raised in working-class Maywood because the ninth of 11 kids, a mom at 19 — able to brawl with those that imperil her Huntington Seashore paradise.
“We’re going to combat you for those who’re hurting our group,” the previous copier technician mentioned in her high-pitched, fast-paced voice. Of critics, she boasted, “What they should do is that they should squash me. They should attempt to destroy me. They should attempt to make me go away. However I’m fairly cussed. It’s not going to work.”
The truth that she’s a proud Latina fluent in Spanish makes Van Der Mark a very potent pressure this election cycle, as Latinos more and more develop skeptical of President Biden and Republicans want each final Latino vote they will get.
“OK, I don’t love to do id politics,” she mentioned once I requested if her ethnicity was important to her rise. “However it’s true that for those who ship a white man with a tie [to a Latino neighborhood], they’ll take a look at him with suspicion. But when any person identical to them goes and says, ‘No, that is actually what’s taking place,’ individuals pay attention. And that’s what the individuals who don’t like me are afraid of.”
After escaping an abusive relationship the place she generally slept in a automotive along with her kids, Van Der Mark married her present husband in 2000. They moved their blended household to Huntington Seashore.
“I didn’t understand that there have been areas like Huntington Seashore the place it was secure,” she mentioned, admitting to being amazed at faculties with no fences or steel detectors — “That took me a couple of years to get used to.”
Did she ever expertise discrimination in a metropolis lengthy infamous for racism? Not as soon as, she mentioned, as a result of “I wasn’t searching for it.”
Nobody appears to be discriminated towards, although.
“Should you’re saying, ‘Did anyone name you a beaner?’ By no means,” Van Der Mark responded. “I imply, if there was racism, I didn’t discover it.”
She was a “Democrat liberal feminist” who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 however soured on him for specializing in “the content material of our melanin” and “making a sufferer mentality” for minorities, particularly kids. The stay-at-home mother went with Trump in 2016 and was appointed to 2 native college district oversight committees in 2017, then booted from them for her aforementioned far-right dalliances.
I requested if she regretted hanging with these people.
“They had been at rallies and protests, and I didn’t ask them, ‘What are you guys? Who do you imagine in? Who do you want?’” Van Der Mark replied. “I used to be observing, I used to be studying, I used to be …”
“Taking pictures with them,” I interjected.
“Properly, they had been simply individuals,” she shot again. “I didn’t even know what Proud Boys had been. They had been simply individuals that might simply bounce in an image. And it was like, footage with like, 200 individuals. I’m not going to go and vet everybody.”
There’s an image of her smiling alongside 19 others who crashed the Santa Monica anti-racist workshop — together with two alt-right personalities who went on to take part within the notorious “Unite the Proper” gathering of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot — however no matter.
Van Der Mark unsuccessfully ran for the Ocean View Faculty District board in 2018, misplaced a 2020 Metropolis Council bid, then lastly gained her council seat two years in the past together with three different Republicans. The 4 of them overturned a Democrat majority, then began a scorched-earth marketing campaign towards opponents that continues.
They stripped the Huntington Seashore Interfaith Council of its decades-long privilege of choosing invocation audio system earlier than council conferences, declared Surf Metropolis to be a “No Masks and No Vaccine Mandate” city and are mulling whether or not to denationalise town libraries after Van Der Mark’s bowdlerization efforts sparked a livid backlash.
In the meantime, Huntington Seashore Metropolis Atty. Michael Gates unsuccessfully sued California over its housing mandates, whereas state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta fired again with a lawsuit towards a voter ID legislation handed by Surf Metropolis voters this spring, which Van Der Mark described at an April information convention as akin to “declaring conflict” on residents.
Had been all these battles value it?
Huntington Seashore Mayor Gracey Van Der Mark wears a necklace with the initials for her metropolis
(Christina Home / Los Angeles Instances)
“We’re going to tackle as many points that we are able to whereas now we have the power to make a distinction,” she replied.
Was it good for town, although? Council conferences have become caustic, hours-long blabfests.
I famous that Van Der Mark and her allies poisoned the civic effectively proper from the beginning, when they voted to rescind a longstanding council decision that rotated the ceremonial, unpaid place of mayor to the councilmember with probably the most seniority. That allowed Van Der Mark to imagine the seat final November after only a yr in workplace, leaping over Natalie Moser, Rhonda Bolton and Dan Kalmick — all Democrats.
“I believe it’s best to arise and push again towards one thing that’s not proper,” the mayor mentioned. “These individuals weren’t proper for the job.”
However politicizing a nonpartisan custom eroded group ties, I argued.
“Properly, there are a variety of issues which have occurred historically that had been unhealthy, or traditionally that weren’t good. It wasn’t due to the social gathering. ”
However Moser, Bolton and Kalmick are Democrats.
“That’s their difficulty.”
Then, Van Der Mark requested if I needed to see one thing on her pill. I hoped it was the timeline she retains of all of the assaults towards her.
Nope, it was porn.
Earlier, she had described in exacting element the illustrations and descriptions of oral intercourse she claimed had been in kids’s books at Huntington Seashore libraries, copies of which she saved in a bookcase in her workplace, proper subsequent to a set of writings by the Founding Fathers.
It was very nanny state of her to meddle with metropolis librarians, I remarked.
“They attempt to say, ‘Properly I’ve a librarian’s diploma, so I’m extra educated than you,’” she countered. “Dad and mom don’t know that this rubbish is in our library.” She turned the pill round.
“Click on on any blue hyperlink you see like.”
No thanks.
She picked one at random. Bare ladies.
“Nearly each college and their district nonetheless has this sort of rubbish,” she mentioned. “The one ones which might be being broken are kids. The adults, I imply, do no matter you need, I don’t care. Do no matter you need. Go away the children alone.”
Van Der Mark grew to become barely emotional.
“I do know if I might have had higher alternatives rising up, I in all probability may have had a neater life. At this level, I don’t remorse the challenges that I’ve been via, as a result of they’ve introduced me to the place I’m in right now. I’ve had fairly horrible experiences which have made me stronger.
“And I do know what it’s prefer to really feel helpless and depending on somebody since you obtained youngsters and also you don’t need to rock the boat as a result of the violence would possibly go in direction of your youngsters,” she continued. “I perceive what that’s like. I additionally perceive what it’s prefer to should shut up and never work together, as a result of it’s the most secure path to take. I discover myself utilizing a few of these methods on this place.”
Our time was nearly up. Are you looking for larger workplace? I requested.
“It’s not my dream,” but when supporters ask her to run, “I’ll do it,” she mentioned.
What’s the hazard of opponents underestimating you?
For the primary time, HB’s boss buchona had nothing to supply.
“I don’t see myself as a hazard,” Van Der Mark lastly mentioned. I identified that she has made a profession of utilizing the hate thrown at her to gasoline her rise. That prompted a closing, triumphant thought.
“I’m going to maintain succeeding. They usually don’t need me to. And that makes me need to do it extra.”
