Making things right

Well, it’s definitely campaign season. Early as it might seem, one race is getting particularly interesting. Heated, one might say. That’s the three-way contest for the District 4 Board of Supervisors seat being vacated by Steve Lambert.

The folks seeking office are college instructor Sue Hilderbrand, farmer Tod Kimmelshue and Biggs Mayor Nathan Wilkinson, the businessman Lambert endorsed last spring.

One of the ignition points is apparently a CN&R story from 2012 in which Hilderbrand, who teaches political science, is attributed with inviting an activist speaker named Scott Crow to Chico (see “As the Crow flies,” Newslines, Dec. 13, 2012). Someone read the piece and wrote a letter to the editor published in the Chico Enterprise-Record last week about her “close ties to radical ideas.”

Kimmelshue has since run with that narrative on a social media post linking to the E-R write-up. It remains online despite Hilderbrand having penned a response in the daily in which she challenges one particular aspect of the letter that paints her in that light—her purported support of so-called “focused vandalism,” as reported in the aforementioned CN&R story.

Problem is, she doesn’t support vandalism and never said that she does. At least, that’s what she told this editor when she reached out to me last week—almost seven years to the date the original story was published—to complain she’d been misquoted.

I was skeptical. I mean, Hilderbrand is now a would-be politician. But she made a good case—with screenshots of a conversation she had via Facebook with the author of the article the day after the story went to print, as well as an email she sent to the assigning editor.

She also pointed to a CN&R letter to the editor that ran the following week in which she expounds on the context of Crow’s anarchist-inspired efforts to help Hurricane Katrina survivors after that awful disaster (see “Clarifying anarchy,” Letters, Dec. 20, 2012), such as setting up relief clinics without getting the proper government approvals. Given what we’ve experienced with the Camp Fire—and the many ad hoc helpers who have sprung into action over the past year—that doesn’t sound radical to me.

Unfortunately, the letter didn’t specifically mention the misquotation and the mistake was never corrected in the online version of the story. Knowing everyone involved, I’m certain there was no malicious intent.

In defense of my predecessor, former CN&R Editor Robert Speer, Hilderbrand acknowledges she didn’t take her complaint directly to him back in 2012. As for yours truly, it’s now my job to make things right.

I’ve done so this week. Belated apologies to Hilderbrand and, by extension, Kimmelshue.

The best readers Speaking of helping those in need, the CN&R readers who purchased gifts for kids living at the Esplanade House deserve a big shout out. You came through once again this year and it’s much appreciated.

Also, thanks to the folks who’ve dropped off donations for the Camp Fire survivors experiencing food insecurity. We’re continuing to stockpile those supplies—mainly nonperishable food and toiletries—and plan to cart them up the hill to the Magalia Community Church’s de facto relief operation after the holidays. Cheers!