‘They’re really on a rampage’: Departing Tommy Gong reflects on election conspiracies, racism
In a surprise move, San Luis Obispo County Clerk-Recorder Tommy Gong on Friday announced he’s resigning his position and leaving the area — exactly one month after enduring hours of election misinformation and racism at a Board of Supervisors meeting.
Gong, the first Asian American elected to countywide office, will move to Contra Costa County in July to start a new job as a deputy clerk-recorder.
On Friday, he told The Tribune the decision to leave was primarily motivated by a desire to be closer to family in the Bay Area, although attacks on his office following the 2020 election “probably played a factor” in his choice.
Prior to making his exit public, Gong sat down with The Tribune to discuss the impacts of election conspiracy-mongering and anti-Asian racism and how his office can move forward and instill faith in the county’s voting system.
Request for audit, ‘intimidating’ Republican Party conversations
Gong first began seeing signs of election misinformation spreading locally in March, when he received a request from the Republican Party to perform an audit of the county’s voting system.
This would have involved “providing physical access to the county’s voting system components and imaging the hard drives,” a May 4 county staff report said.
Residents can request recounts up to five days after elections are certified, but Gong didn’t hear from the Republican Party until months later.
“There were already telltale signs of what was going to happen, you know, leading up to (May 4),” Gong said. “Certainly you know we had the request for the forensic audit. And I would say even in the discussions with them — a little bit threatening is not the right term — but it was, I guess, (they) attempted to try to sound a little bit intimidating, so I knew something was coming, I just didn’t know what.”
Gong said he’s not opposed to recounts on principle: “For me to be able to do a recount is validating, because, you know, we’ve done recounts before.”
He witnessed his predecessor, 20-year clerk-recorder Julie Rodewald, conduct recounts while working for her and saw that the process could be “vindicating” for clerk-recorders.
“I wouldn’t have been opposed to, ‘OK, the ballots are here let’s do some sampling of it.’ But once we started to look at the election code and election laws, no. After that certification period, there are no provisions for me to say I can go out and just do my own recount the way I want. And so I had to say no.”
Gong said the request appeared to be rooted more in conspiracies than in good faith efforts to understand the voting system. And the county’s vote tabulation vendor, Dominion Voting Systems — which already must subject its equipment to a thorough state certification process — would not allow imaging of proprietary software.
He compared the request to the election audit currently taking place in Maricopa County, Arizona, which state lawmakers requested under similar circumstances.
“What are they actually after?” Gong asked. “They never set out any operational guidelines of what they’re going to do, how they’re going to do it. I mean, I haven’t followed it that closely, but it’s all been under suspicious circumstances ... you know, bamboo — all of a sudden they’re looking for down below in the paper. That was never set out from the beginning. Is it truly a recount? Are they fishing? These are the sorts of things that have gotten a really bad rap, right now, and I think that’s the fear for what would happen in a recount of some magnitude.”
Radio ad campaign, hours of ‘disheartening’ comments
After he declined to allow the audit, Gong started hearing local Republican Party radio ads spouting conspiracy theories and mentioning him by name, telling voters to call into the May 4 Board of Supervisors meeting and express their concerns about the county’s election system.
Many of the issues the party brought up — including voter identification laws and limiting mail-in voting — were things controlled by California lawmakers, not county clerk-recorders.
“Here I am driving to work one morning this spring and this comes out,” Gong said. “Oh boy, you know, they’re really on a rampage for this. And, you know, again, nothing that I have any control over, but yet they’re trying to make a big stink about this. But that’s what made it disparaging in that way.”
During the meeting, Gong and his staff sat through hours of calls from voters reading scripted comments full of conspiracy theories and pushing for state-level changes he can’t implement. Some even called for hand-counting of ballots, which hasn’t occurred in the county for more than 60 years.
“I don’t have any control over that,” Gong said. “So yeah, this is disheartening to, to educate and guide their followers on something that I don’t have any control over, and yet I’m held accountable to it. So that’s the unfortunate thing as part of just the misinformation that’s getting circulated around.”
The county broke its all-time turnout record in November 2020, when 88.35% of voters cast ballots. Gong and his staff spent five months switching the county’s voting system over from a neighborhood precinct model to a voter center model to better facilitate voting during the coronavirus pandemic.
Gong takes public criticism of the 2020 election personally because of all the work he and his staff put in to make it a success.
“I don’t believe that people truly understand what my staff went through for that election,” Gong said. “To conduct the type of election we did — to prepare for that type of election, counties usually spend a year and a half to prepare an election in this manner ... I know there might be some naysayers and all, but it was a huge accomplishment for this county. And really the county should be very appreciative. The staff — I can’t thank them enough for all the hard work. A lot of blood, sweat and tears poured into that election.”
For Gong, more people voting means his office is doing its job.
“When you’re an election administrator, what are you going to be touting?” Gong asked. “The high number of registered voters, the high number of voter turnout, vote-by-mail voters. You’re not going to say, ‘Oh, these are the people I disenfranchised from voting and these are people I prevented from voting.’ Yeah, that doesn’t go on your record. That doesn’t shine on your record. It’s about getting more and more people engaged and to participate in elections.”
Gong said he remains “unapologetic” in his defense of the county’s voting system.
“I’m upholding the integrity of the election,” he said. “I still stand by the results of the election and (that) all of the processes and procedures were followed when we were conducting elections.”
Impact of anti-Asian racism
During the meeting, one caller made an explicitly racist comment asking if Gong is “a member of the Chinese Communist Party.”
“It was interesting because we were hearing all of the scripted comments and everything, and your mind kind of goes numb as you’re listening,” Gong said. “That one did stick out, I will say. I was like, ‘Did I hear that right?’ You know, (it) was a little surprising. And my staff was with me, and it was like, ‘Oh yeah, wow.’”
Gong grew up outside of Modesto, where his family ran a local chain of grocery stores. When he was going into kindergarten, Gong’s mother warned him that children may “call you names” or make racist comments.
Hearing the racism at the meeting made Gong think back to that time.
“When I ran for public office and was elected, the first Asian American to be elected to countywide office in SLO, it brought me great pride and a glimmer that we were progressing as a society,” Gong said in an email. “When that comment was made during the (Board of Supervisors) meeting, it brought me back 50 years ago with the pettiness, questioning if we actually made progress or not.”
When asked if he worried about his family’s safety after the meeting, Gong said, “it did give me a little twinge of that.”
“Even after moving into the community, kids will be kids and they’ll say what they’re going to say and all that,” Gong said. “My boys have been pretty good about it — I don’t think it’s been too bad. My wife has an accent, a fairly heavy one ... sometimes that gets thrown into her face, which is really unfortunate.”
The “mob mentality” that seemed to form around the Board of Supervisors meeting was what caused Gong to become concerned.
“I won’t say that I live in fear or anything like that, but when I made it home, I just told the boys, ‘You might want to be sure of your surroundings and everything,’ as they should always.”
Gong said he’s especially worried about the recent increase in violence toward the elderly in the Asian American and Pacific Islander community.
“That’s a real concern for me,” he said. “I mean, my parents are that age, and it’s just really sad to see that type of violence being taken about. And if it has anything to do with the coronavirus being tied to China and everything, it’s just really unfortunate that it would go that course and people would want to victimize others for that.”
A Memorial Day apology
On Memorial Day, Gong and his sons played “Taps” on their trumpets at Atascadero’s annual ceremony, as they’ve done for years. He said the comments at the Board of Supervisors meeting were on his mind ahead of his performance.
“I thought about that, that morning,” Gong said. “But once we got there ... I saw all the familiar faces that we would normally see. And I did have a lot of veterans come up to us and thank us for doing it, for playing ‘Taps,’ thanking me for what I do for the county and everything. So in that way, it felt very welcoming. And so then it went out of my head about that.”
In addition, a woman claiming to be the person who made the racist comment during the Board of Supervisors meeting came up to Gong and apologized to him.
“The individual came up to me to introduce herself, and the name did sound familiar,” Gong said. “And she said she was the one who made the comment, and she wanted to apologize for it, shook my hand.”
Gong, who considers martial arts icon Bruce Lee a personal hero, quoted him as he considered how the community can move forward with respect for everyone.
“Under the sky under the heavens, there is but one family,” Gong said. “And that is us as a human race, so we need to work together that way. And, you know, we should appreciate each other’s differences, and each other’s cultures, and I think that’s what Bruce Lee tried to do ... sharing what he said in his Chinese culture, as (do) others. So whether it’s martial arts or cooking, or whatever, then you know there’s something that we can all benefit from one another. So, yeah, it’s always trying to maintain that respect from one another.”
This story was originally published June 9, 2021 at 9:00 AM.
