Debbie Peterson Wants to Run for Grover Beach Mayor? No Way.
It was 2016.
I was listening to Hometown Radio with Dave Congalton on KVEC-AM when then-Grover Beach City Councilmember Debbie Peterson, a guest on Congalton’s show, claimed I personally and physically accosted her. No additional details were given.
Here’s the thing: I never met Debbie Peterson and she showed no receipts that we ever met or spoke. Nevertheless, I received death threats on social media from listeners who believed in her nonsense.
Here is some important context.
For over a decade now, CalCoastNews has long alleged that I was paid by former District 3 Supervisor Adam Hill to disparage his critics and perceived political adversaries. And it’s true that some of my analysis and fact-checks focused on their coverage of Hill, but it was never done at his behest. Of course, he shared some of my work on social media, but that’s not tantamount to collusion.
They made that categorically baseless allegation as an elaborate way to deter people from reading some rather benign but sharp analysis of their reporting, which I found flawed. For instance, in 2013, CalCoastNews co-founder Karen Velie was arrested, charged and later found guilty for driving under the influence. Velie and her website staff alleged and heavily implied Hill had somehow orchestrated her arrest and was somehow involved in the “kidnapping” of her grandchildren by Child Welfare Services. None of their allegations were proven.
And because I was one of the more prominent critics of CalCoastNews at the time, they wanted to do everything they could to suppress my content and freedom of speech. In 2019, I wrote a book about my harrowing experiences with them (Defamers: How Fake News Terrorized a Community and Those Who Dared to Fight It).
Peterson, a noted ally of CalCoastNews, published a book in 2022 (The Happiest Corruption: Sleaze, Lies, & Suicide in a California Beach Town) wrote a book that heavily and brazenly referenced their work. In her book, Peterson fabricated some bizarre tale that I “coordinated” with the late supervisor to frame Velie for falsely accusing me of engaging in lewd and lascivious activity on the social news and content aggregation network Reddit. Peterson’s allegation was not only false, but it was oddly perverse and completely unnecessary. I found her needless inclusion of the Reddit post to be sexual harassment.
All of this is especially strange since I’m a private citizen, not an elected official. It’s been surreal to see my name being crazily bandied about after all these years. One would think that if there was a modicum of truth to Peterson and her beloved website’s allegations, the FBI would be knocking at my door and would have a conversation; that didn’t happen. And the California Court of Appeals ruled there was no evidence to show Hill collaborated with “agents” to do his bidding when Velie tried suing Hill. Velie has not disclosed her failed litigation to her readers. The fact my name was brought up in a case that went all the way up to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit was jaw-dropping.
And yet, with the same gusto as those who’ve insisted the 2020 election was “stolen” from former president Donald Trump, Peterson insists I’m still paid off by somebody to write what I write.
Sadly, this is pattern and practice for Peterson, who’ve spent a good chunk of her political career suckling the teat of Hill’s flaws — whether by making dubious claims in a robocall that Hill locked her in a county government building and claimed he had a gun or attending a District 3 candidate’s forum that knowingly and falsely claimed Hill would be in attendance. It’s one thing to point fingers at the former supervisor for things he’s actually done, but it’s another thing entirely to lie about him for profit and attention to a fraudulent extent.
Is the truth not good enough for Debbie Peterson?
I mean, the more we learn about Hill and what he was up to, the more she could rest her laurels on those sordid details. But the truth is not good enough or salacious enough to satisfy her insatiable need for attention.
Take, for instance, what’s happening in Grover Beach right now. Peterson recently announced she is running for mayor years after she resigned from the City Council and alleged her colleagues and staff were “corrupt” because they were allegedly involved in pay-to-play schemes with cannabis businesses. Nothing actually materialized from her allegations. And the organization she helped found, Grover H2O, recently alleged the current council majority is “corrupt” for raising water and sewer rates that they eventually repealed. The city pulled out of the Central Coast Blue project, which essentially undercut Grover H2O’s ferocious push to repeal the rate increases and recall City Council members who voted in favor of said increases.
Debbie Peterson comes into the Grover Beach mayoral race with a checkered past and a penchant for loudly banging the drums of wars that already ended. A vote for Peterson is a vote for dysfunction based on a foundation of fraud.
