Paso Robles school board candidate denies election fraud claim — and trustee backs him up
A 19-year-old Paso Robles school board candidate under investigation by the District Attorney’s Office for alleged election fraud has denied the claims made against him.
Hunter M. Breese is registered to run for the Paso Robles Unified School District Board of Trustees under an address in Trustee Area 3, but according to a complaint filed with the DA’s Office, he doesn’t live there.
“All I can say is, I didn’t do anything wrong,” Breese told The Tribune at a Paso Robles school board candidate forum on Monday night. “I talked to (county Clerk-Recorder) Elaina Cano months ago and everything was fine. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
Breese declined to respond to more specific questions about the allegations and would not confirm to The Tribune where he is living.
Cano previously confirmed the investigations to The Tribune but declined to comment further on any complaints filed with the DA’s Office. She did not confirm or deny whether Breese had discussed his candidacy with her.
Paso Robles resident Camille Katz filed the complaint against Breese with the DA’s Office on Sept. 25 on behalf of a “small group” of Paso Robles citizens and parents who suspected wrongdoing, she said.
Katz alleges that Breese is not evidently living at the address in Trustee Area 3 — which belongs to the fiancee and largest campaign donor of Kenney Enney, another current sitting school board member running for re-election — but has been recently seen at his parents’ home in Trustee Area 5.
“Everything just seems very suspicious,” Katz told The Tribune. “It all just kind of fell apart, like a puzzle.”
Filing for candidacy under a false address is a felony crime punishable by a $1,000 fine and/or up to three years in jail or prison. Doing so under penalty of perjury can carry up to four years in state prison.
The DA’s Office is also investigating Arroyo Grande mayoral candidate Gaea Powell and previously charged Michelle Morrow, a former candidate for the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors, who are also both alleged to have registered under false addresses.
The DA’s Office did not confirm or deny anything about the new allegations when contacted by The Tribune.
Breese has a history of trying to run for school board
At 19 years old, Breese is the youngest school board candidate by a long shot. He graduated from Paso Robles High School in 2022.
Breese is currently campaigning for Paso Robles school board Trustee Area 3, but this is reportedly not the first time he has expressed interest in a school board seat.
According to the complaint, Breese has been trying to run for Paso Robles school board since early 2023, when he appeared at numerous meetings claiming that he lived in Trustee Area 2 and announcing his intentions to run for that seat.
The Trustee Area 2 seat is currently held by sitting board member Joel Peterson, who was appointed by the county in December 2022 without an election when no one else ran for the seat.
At a school board meeting on Jan. 10, 2023, Breese challenged the validity of Peterson’s appointment, claiming that “it violates the state and federal regulations for a fair and free election.” There is a recording of his public comment on YouTube.
At the meeting, Breese criticized Peterson’s role in appointing Superintendent Chris Williams and blamed Peterson directly for “incompetent fiduciary oversight.”
Breese did not express his intention to run against Peterson at the Jan. 10 meeting, nor did he claim to live in Trustee Area 2 — but he did at another meeting around the same time.
A YouTube video posted on Jan. 26, 2023, features Breese speaking at a political event about his comments at the Jan. 10 school board meeting. The caption reads that the video was “Paid for by the Republican Party of San Luis Obispo County.”
“I’m hoping that we can get Joel Peterson to step down,” he says in the video.
During his 10-minute speech, Breese speaks about leading an effort to recall Peterson and says he would plan to run against him for his Trustee Area 2 seat.
“I was at the school board meeting on Tuesday and I was throwing the knives. I was tossing knives at Joel Peterson,” Breese says on the video. “Those knives were hitting him and I think they were hitting him hard and I’m just going to keep doing it and I’m going to keep doing it until he finally says, ‘you know what, I’m stepping down, that’s it.’ And I’m gonna file my paperwork as soon as he does that, and I’m gonna run for his position.”
However, the recall efforts against Peterson failed, and his seat is not up for reelection until 2026.
So now, Breese is challenging incumbent Nathan Williams for the Trustee Area 3 seat instead.
Katz said the switch-up looks suspicious to her, and she thinks that current sitting board member Kenney Enney could be involved, too.
She called Enney and Breese “political allies” and said they are “campaigning for office together.”
The two appear together on campaign signs, online and at events alongside candidate Laurene McCoy — though Katz said McCoy has “no involvement in this at all,” as far as she knows.
“Kenny Enney and Mr. Breese are definitely working together in various ways,” Katz said. “They’re trying to flip the school board to go more right.”
At the January Republican Party meeting, Breese spoke about his campaign platform and the need to flip the board, which was more progressive-leaning at the time, though school board trustees are technically nonpartisan positions.
He said the “woke” board would implement critical race theory into school curriculum and enforce mask and COVID-19 vaccine mandates “pretty quick here unless we get this board back.”
Breese mentioned at the meeting that he was on Fox News twice his senior year of high school, once for protesting the mask mandate at Paso Robles High School and another time for a controversy involving a teacher telling student members of the Paso Robles Conservative Club — of which Breese was president at the time — that they “can go jump off a bridge” after flying an anti-Biden flag at an event honoring veterans. Curt Dubost, then Paso Robles Joint Unified School District superintendent, called both the flag and the teacher’s response “inappropriate,” according to the Fox News article.
Why is Breese registered to run at someone else’s home?
According to state election codes, candidates are required to live in the area where they seek office — so how is Breese now running in Trustee Area 3 when his family’s home is in Trustee Area 5 and he previously planned to run in Trustee Area 2?
Where does he actually live?
According to SLO County voter registration data obtained by The Tribune, Breese recently changed his voter registration to a new address, which also dictates where he can run for election.
The data shows that Breese originally registered to vote in 2022 at his parents home on White Tail Place in Trustee Area 5. On July 23, 2024, he changed his registration to a home on Red Cloud Road in Trustee Area 3, according to the voter registration data. The exact reason listed on the data is “Re-registration due to address change.”
“We found it very interesting that his voter registration shows that it just changed in July,” Katz said. “Never once did he ever make reference of living in Trustee Area 3 until a month prior to announcing his candidacy. Anybody with a brain can admit that is highly suspicious.”
But Enney told The Tribune there is a very good reason for this: Breese has been renting a room at the home on Red Cloud Road in Trustee Area 3, paying rent and living there at least part-time since June, he said.
According to the Federal Election Commission’s online donation records for the Republican Party of San Luis Obispo County, the property on Red Cloud Road belongs to a woman named Sharon Johnson.
Enney confirmed that he and Johnson have been engaged since last spring and that the home on Red Cloud Road has belonged to her since 2022.
Johnson is also Enney’s largest campaign donor. In 2023, Johnson made at least three donations to Enney’s campaign totaling $2,102, according to the county’s campaign finance records. She has also donated at least $100 to his campaign in 2024. The FEC records also show that Johnson donated $3,000 to the SLO County Republican Party in June.
According to Enney, Johnson is currently splitting her time between living at her own house on Red Cloud Road and Enney’s ranch by Hog Canyon and has been for the last year.
The couple first approached Breese about moving into Johnson’s home at the beginning of this year and later signed a two-year lease starting on June 1, Enney said.
Enney offered to share the lease with The Tribune, but did not immediately provide the agreement. The Paso Robles Daily News reported that Breese provided a copy of the lease to the site.
Enney said Johnson plans to move out of her home full-time on May 31, at which point Breese would move in as a full-time renter.
According to Enney, Breese is currently spending “three or four nights a week there” while Johnson is away, but the complaint alleges that “neighbors have not seen him there.”
Katz said she “heard it from two different individuals who had two different friends live in the area,” that they have never seen Breese in Johnson’s neighborhood.
Meanwhile, Breese has recently been spotted at his family’s home on White Tail Place by neighbors who have seen his truck parked there overnight, Katz said.
Enney said he doesn’t know where Breese spends the rest of his time, but that he has had a car at Johnson’s since July and spends at least a few nights a week there.
Breese told the Paso Robles Daily News that he wanted to move out of his parents’ home, so he signed a two-year lease at the Red Cloud house. He said he spends four to five nights a week there and the other nights at his girlfriend’s family house or his parents’ home, where he also works in their home office for his family’s construction firm.
According to the Paso Robles Daily News story, Breese sought clarification on the residency requirements for candidates from San Luis Obispo County Schools Superintendent Jim Brescia in January.
Breese also told the Paso Robles Daily news that the Red Cloud home has security cameras that can confirm his residency there and that he has not heard anything from the DA’s Office.
Breese did not provide the same information to The Tribune when asked.
Enney said the arrangement has nothing to do with Breese’s candidacy.
“Hunter has not hidden his desire to be on the school board,” Enney said. “The fact that he is running is his independent decision. This gives him the opportunity, though.”
Jim Cogan, a current sitting Paso Robles school board member for Trustee Area 1, found Breese’s change in residency odd.
“It looks like Enney and Breese have gone to great lengths to set Breese up to run in Trustee Area 3 at Enney’s fiancee’s house,” Cogan told The Tribune. “I don’t know if it’s election fraud, but it’s definitely weird.”
“If Breese wants to be on the school board so badly and he lives in Trustee Area 5, then why not just run for that seat?” Cogan said. “It’s also up right now. Why engage in all this questionable behavior to run for a different seat that’s up at the same time?”
The Trustee Area 5 seat is currently held by fellow conservative McCoy, who’s running for reelection on a slate with Enney and Breese.
While the status or results of the DA’s investigation remains unclear, Cogan has a question for voters: “Can people willing to skirt the line or actually commit election fraud be trusted with our students’ future?”
But Enney maintains that Breese has not done anything illegal or even close to it.
Similarly to Powell — who is accused of election fraud in Arroyo Grande for similar reasons — Enney said he could not identify any legal definition for residency that requires Breese to spend any specific amount of time at one address versus another.
Enney said that because Breese has officially left his parent’s home and resides at Johnson’s half of the time, he is in line with the law.
“I don’t see the DA pursuing this unless Hunter breaks the lease,” Enney said.
Enney sees the complaint against Breese as a “political vendetta” without any basis. He called Katz an “extreme left- winger” who has “been after” Breese since 2022.
“She’s got a vendetta against him,” Enney said. “She’s got a vendetta against me.”
This story was originally published October 16, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
CORRECTION: This story has been updated to reflect the name of the complainant, Camille Katz, who previously spoke to The Tribune under the condition of anonymity, and that Sharon Johnson donated $2,102 to Kenney Enney’s 2023 campaign
