Tom Fulks: The Four Horsemen of the ‘SLOpocalypse’ — have they no shame?

A number of our local elected officials should be embarrassed, but that would require a measure of shame — which fled the scene right after they were elected, if it was there to begin with.

There’s Pastor Dan Dow, the sanctimoniously partisan district attorney; Peter Sysak, the socially obtuse, ousted chair of the Cuesta College Board of Trustees; Ian Parkinson, the I-can’t-be bothered-with-COVID sheriff; and Jordan Cunningham, the Maui-junketing, ambulance-chasing assemblyman.

None of these Four Horsemen of the SLOpocalypse is self-aware enough to recognize hypocrisy when it bites them on the backside.

All are up for re-election in 2022. And all are mind-melding with the radical, COVID-19 dismissing, knowledge-rejecting, democracy-killing, fantasy-is-reality cult calling itself the Republican Party.

That would be the party pushing the most seditious, anti-American political sabotage since the South tried to secede from the Union, supported by 18 states and 126 members of Congress — they who signed on to the Constitution-assaulting election lawsuit waylaid, for now, by the U.S. Supreme Court.

There’s always a next time, Trumpsters no doubt believe, to overthrow American democracy and govern by autocracy.

Locally, this dangerous, authoritarian mindset is best personified by Dow and Sysak, both recently rebuked publicly and humiliated professionally. Oddly, they don’t appear personally abashed. Feeling mortification and disgrace appear not to be coded into their DNA.

Superior Court Judge Matthew Guerrero disqualified Dow — and his entire office — from prosecuting activist Tianna Arata and her fellow Black Lives Matter protesters, citing Dow’s many ill-considered, politicized public remarks.

In the same vein, Sysak was recently censured by his fellow Cuesta College trustees and denied re-election to his chair’s position.

The censure came because of Sysak’s inability to read the room: more than 100 people each at three separate meetings objecting to his tone-deaf public antics similar to Dow’s (hyper-partisanship, political extremism, poor judgment).

The public’s backlash was inflamed by Sysak’s obdurate and unapologetic refusal to understand the community’s outrage at his homophobic, misogynistic, bigoted personal Facebook posts.

While Sysak and Dow draw embarrassing public rebukes, other public officials vie for honors in COVID-related hypocrisy and irresponsibility.

Locally, as COVID rages, hospitals fill and deaths mount, Parkinson and Dow declare they’ll not enforce local public health safety measures to prevent its spread. Parkinson joins a growing list of county sheriffs across the nation refusing to enforce anti-COVID measures based on personal ideology.

Then there’s Cunningham, an ineffective back-bencher in the Legislature fond of lobbing snarky insults at the governor’s attempts to blunt the pandemic, while offering no solutions of his own.

After flouting plague-related travel bans to attend a political junket on Maui a while back, Cunningham repeatedly tweets mockery at the governor’s efforts. When called out by constituents, Cunningham blocks them on Twitter. I’d link to Cunningham’s tweets to illustrate, but I’m one of the banned.

Even more malignly, Cunningham is now thoroughly politicizing the pandemic by getting involved as a lawyer representing COVID scofflaw Kennedy Club Fitness, the recalcitrant local gym chain that abjectly, defiantly refuses to close indoor areas.

Having been fined by the city of San Luis Obispo and refusing to pay, and reprimanded by Arroyo Grande officials, Kennedy Club is daring to be shut down, setting themselves up as victims of government oppression, martyrs to “freedom,” darlings of the COVID deniers.

Jordan Cunningham: Assemblyman by day, crusading pettifogger by night, happy to exploit human suffering so long as they spell the name right.

Like our feckless assemblyman, the other locally elected thin-skinners reject criticism.

Pastor Dan – who also blocks constituents and deletes critical comments on social media — took to his official county website to criticize the judge’s sanction and deny any responsibility for wasting taxpayer money on a case that can’t be prosecuted by his office.

“There is absolutely no conflict in this case,” Dow declared, before claiming victim. “To the contrary. While I have been personally attacked on many occasions since the arrests in these cases, I have continued to conduct my duty in a manner that is above reproach … .”

This right after the court reproached him. Dow ended his whiny denial by demanding, comically: “This is a full and complete statement and is not authorized to be paraphrased or used in part only.”

Sysak, too, claims victim: He’s the subject of a smear campaign by “socialists” for simply offering “ideas for discussion” on his Facebook page.

Parkinson and Cunningham have yet to be officially chided for following their personal beliefs as opposed to carrying out their constitutional and humanitarian obligations.

Perhaps they’re betting they’ll pay no price for placing politics above constituents while we increasingly get sick and die.

They may not. These professional office seekers we often elect well may be reelected, barring some unforeseen infusion of will, skill, wisdom and concerted effort by their hapless Democratic opponents.

This says a lot about the disconnect between voters and local government, but I sense — wistfully, perhaps — the public is waking up to the damage caused.

Until we stop voting against our own self-interests, we’ll remain saddled with elected “leaders” incapable of shame who do more harm than good.

Tribune Columnist Tom Fulks serves on the San Luis Obispo County Democratic Central Committee.

This column has been updated to reflect Assemblyman Cunningham’s position on COVID-19; while he objects to some of the lockdown measures ordered by Gov. Newsom, he has never been a COVID “denier.”

This story was originally published December 19, 2020 at 7:22 AM.