Glendale Extremists Gear Up for Local Elections
- invisible man2023
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
Now that MAGA has all the power federally, the local extremists of Glendale seem to be preparing to take another run at City Council and possibly School Board seats for the upcoming June 2026 election. Here's what we've seen:
PATRICK MURPHY / GLENDALE CITY COUNCIL:
La Crescenta Facebook Warrior Patrick Murphy appears to think that he can leverage his dozens of comment likes into a full-fledged campaign for Glendale City Council. (He does know he'll have to come down the hill to serve if elected, right? And that 60% of Glendale residents are - GASP - renters!).
Patrick Murphy's agenda based on his public posts can be boiled down to: SAVE THE NORTH GLENDALE PARKING LOTS. And "I SUPPORT FIREMEN."
Patrick Murphy's wife Genae appears to be using her public Facebook posts to seed panicked stories of DEVELOPMENT IN NORTH GLENDALE, and her mutuals on social media are all the same dozen retrograde extremists we've seen before, including Jordan Henry, James Clarke, Lisa Cusack, and Mike Mohill.
SCORCHY RAY SHELTON / GUSD SCHOOL BOARD?
Scorchy Ray Shelton continues to spend his retirement (funded by his ample union pension) showing up regularly to both City Council and GUSD School Board meetings.
Shelton's latest showing at the August 12th GUSD meeting featured a rant in which he implied that current GUSD Board Member Kathleen Cross - a single mother of three currently undergoing breast cancer treatment - is now "a man" because she had a mastectomy as part of her treatment.
Transphobic, misogynistic, and pure hate all in one comment. A real Scorchy public comment banger for the books (and that's saying something).

Is Scorchy planning to run for GUSD so he can finally kill the union and hate more people publicly? Based on his YouTube public comment history, sure seems like it! Here he is a year ago hinting at a run because Cross "probably will not run again" because she is "currently fighting cancer." Call us crazy, but it seems like he's rooting for cancer so that he can run for office.
Is this extreme? We think so, but Shelton hates being called an extremist, so don't do that. Re-posting his publicly recorded comments is a public service we're proud to provide here at GEN!

In the same YouTube comment thread, Scorchy also shared that like fellow fascist Sonja Shaw, he also had a very bad childhood and likes channeling his trauma into hurting other people via local government. Sir, your pension covers healthcare, please find help.

THE SONJA SHAW CONNECTION: THE ANTI-GROOMER CROWD REMAINS SILENT ON EPSTEIN FILES, FOCUSES ON MAKING CALIFORNIA LESS SAFE FOR CHILDREN INSTEAD.
Speaking of Sonja Shaw-- the demon-obsessed, book-banning queen of genital inspections is now running for State Superintendent of Education. Is she qualified for the position? No! But does she have the backing of CA's network of Christian nationalist churches? Yes!
In the last election cycle, Shaw was a symbol of the possibilities of the organized reactionary right in the state-- book bans, forced-outing, and wasting taxpayer funs on culture war lawsuits-- and hence a coveted endorsement for local political campaigns (she endorsed both Jordan Henry and Aneta Krpekyan). Her current campaign appears focused on targeted harassment of teenage athletes and doing whatever will get her on Fox News or please her Christian nationalist pastor, Jack Hibbs.
This week that included rallying in Sacramento with a crowd of around a thousand, bussed in by mega-churches and a coalition of moneyed far-right organizations including SPLC-labeled hate-group California Family Council, anti-abortion extremist group "Abortion Survivors," the Home School Legal Defense Association, and the Alliance Defending Freedom. Familiar SoCal traveling school board agitators joined the rally along with the Tennessee-based book-banning zealot Karen England and Che Ahn- head of the Christian Nationalist Harvest Rock church network and familiar to GEN readers as the guy who annointed La Crescenta's Elizabeth Wong Ahlers in her failed state senate campaign.
The rally focused on opposing two pieces of legislature (both of which are currently in the "suspense file" where their future is unknown)-- AB84 and AB495. AB84 is focused on increasing accountability and oversight for charter schools, particularly those offering non-classroom-based (NCB) instruction and has incited nationally organized opposition from the same orgs attacking public schools and demanding voucher programs to funnel public taxpayer funds into private programs.
AB495 aims "to support families during temporary parental absences, particularly those related to immigration-related administrative actions. The bill expands the definition of who can sign a caregiver's authorization affidavit, includes a new form of joint guardianship, and addresses immigration-related guidance for schools and child care facilities." (source) With ICE terrorizing communities and regularly violently kidnapping individuals at random the need for this bill is clear-- it provides options for families to ensure their children have access to safe and trusted adults if their caregivers are taken (you'd think the "Protect Kids" crowd would love it!). HOWEVER, Jack Hibbs on behalf of his best boy friend Tony Perkins at the Family Research Council has made defeating AB495-- by claiming it's an attack on "parents' rights"-- a primary focus, even telling his congregants they should leave the state if the bill passes (making his right wing peers angry since they can't afford to lose those republican voters).
Hibbs, Perkins, England and other anti-LGBTQ+ Christian nationalists learned that claiming the mantle of "parental rights" was a successful way to fear-monger, recruit, and rally their flocks to whatever position advanced their political goals. In this case, it's convincing their privileged suburbanite followers that a bill designed to protect the most vulnerable somehow threatens their own "parental rights." If they are able to defeat AB495 the result will be more children traumatized by separation from their families, potentially funneled into an overburdened and rife-with-abuse foster care system, or worse.
Once again the folks who claim to want to "protect kids" and "parental rights" show they really want special rights for people within their faith or political movement and punishment for everyone else.
As our local elections ramp up we'll continue watching the movement of which local candidates are part. The reactionary right continues to adopt new issues in order to expand its influence-- locally the focus on bike lanes and building density is designed to appeal broadly-- but these efforts lead directly to the larger project of enforcing and strengthening economic hierarchies and social engineering against pluralism and inclusion. We've seen it happen and we'll be watching.

