Caring for Babies With Aids - Ginny Foat

In her younger years, Ginny Foat organized a motorcoach ride for Martin Luther King'southward March on Washington. She later served as president of California NOW, a leading feminist arrangement, and went on to work for 1 nonprofit after another, including Caring for Babies with AIDS.

But by 2003, more than than a decade after buying a abode in Palm Springs, Foat was a relatively unknown foot soldier for Democratic causes. She sat on a local upkeep task force and was considering a run for the City Council.

George Zander, a former chairman of the Democratic Political party in Seattle, remembers asking her a fourth dimension-honored political question over lunch: "Are at that place any skeletons in your cupboard?" She suggested he read her autobiography, chosen "Never Guilty, Never Free."

Foat doesn't think the chat, but she has faith in Zander's recollection.

"That book is still in the library," she said, "and information technology gets checked out all the time."

For good reason. Rarely is she — and the news that surrounds her — boring.

The Ginny Foat story is long and circuitous and it stretches over great heights and depths. In 1983, she was a source of national intrigue when Louisiana authorities put her on trial for the murder of an Argentine businessman. Her second husband and accuser, John Sidote, had previously been bedevilled of manslaughter. The defence force destroyed him on the correspond his alcoholism and the inconsistencies in his story. A jury ultimately acquitted Foat.

Today, she is a 12-twelvemonth veteran of the Palm Springs council, surrounded in the community by fierce opponents and defenders. The rabidness but grew after she announced her candidacy for mayor in June. 2 months later, a majority number of members of the Desert Stonewall Democrats, an influential LGBT group, approved an endorsement from their political action group by two votes, according to chair Ruth Debra.

Foat has besides earned the favor of the metropolis'south ii biggest donors. Fred Noble, a renewable energy developer, gave her $five,000 out of his own pocket and another $v,000 through D&Eastward Land Co. He also dropped $2,281 to paint and make clean her entrada headquarters and bear a survey.

Harold Matzner, chairman of the Palm Springs International Picture Festival, gave her $66,412 — half of the money that she'south raised in 2015.

Foat can be brash at times — throwing on sunglasses and dangling keys in front of a microphone at a public meeting — only she can also be a source of reason. In 2012, for instance, she was i of two councilmembers who questioned a deal that would take given millions to Wessman Development at the expense of some other programmer. Foat objected on grounds that Wessman's plans for the property weren't clear. Three years later, the country at the base of Tramway Route remains as information technology did then — empty.

"Information technology only didn't feel right to me," Foat said.

During her first campaign for the council in 2003, she charged that city representatives had no underlying vision and likened the city regime to sand in the wind, blown well-nigh past run a risk and whim. She called for the formation of a new legislative body that would function equally a neighborhood council and let residents speak with a louder vocalism.

Foat finished tertiary that year with 15 percent of the vote. But cheers to a voter-approved modify to the urban center lease in 2001, she was automatically appointed to fill Ron Oden'due south seat as he transitioned into the mayor'due south post.

In 2005, two years afterwards Foat pushed the thought, the city began formally recognizing 39 organized neighborhoods nether the umbrella One-PS.

This tops Foat's list of accomplishments today, simply she'due south also proud, she said, of her function in creating a new animal shelter that doesn't euthanize unwanted pets and prevents convenance to keep feral populations under control.

She as well points to her role in spearheading a homelessness subcommittee through the Coachella Valley Association of Governments that led to the construction of Roy'due south Desert Resource Center. Although more than 2,000 people take been put into permanent housing, she wishes more cities would chip in money then that the facility could live upwards to its purpose of providing child care and task training.

If elected mayor in Palm Springs, Foat wants to bear the $150 million hotel and retail downtown redevelopment project to fruition while keeping a close center on the park and event space plans. She also wants to look for federal dollars that would help diversify housing so that people who piece of work here can live hither.

That's a fairly common talking point among candidates, simply where Foat differs on development matters is the urban center'due south economic incentive program. Whereas rivals see it as a giveaway to developers, Foat sees it every bit an investment that helps heave city coffers.

But she also believes that the projects side by side in line warrant another expect as the metropolis moves ahead.

On Sept. ane, the FBI served warrants at Urban center Hall and on Mayor Steve Pougnet equally part of a public corruption inquiry that's being overseen past the U.S. Attorney'southward Function in Riverside. It followed months of reporting based on the financial relationship between the mayor and Union Abbey, a little-known business firm tied to developer Rich Meaney.

Observers were quick to question what Foat knew and when she knew it, but she offered merely vague replies.

Foat now says she idea Pougnet had money invested in a Meaney-housing projection known as the Dakota and that Pougnet had been recusing himself from meetings as early on as 2011 for this purpose. She idea there might also have been some consulting work he did in Orangish County, but she wasn't sure. She never asked him about the true nature of his piece of work, she said, because she believed that to be the job of the city attorney.

"It is not a councilmember'due south responsibility to continue track of the conflicts of interest of everyone sitting on the quango," she said.

Before long afterwards announcing her candidacy for mayor, detractors began circulating documents showing that she owed more $32,000 in back taxes, from 2010 to 2012, on commercial property downtown.

It was during those years, Foat responded, that her wife got ill and gave upward her mortgage business. Burke Rix Consulting, a local PR firm, had also hired her for lobbying work in Sacramento, but that too concluded.

Foat said she's in the process of refinancing the property to pay off the taxes. Her financial situation improved in 2011 when she became the executive director of the Mizell Senior Heart. She was paid close to $90,000 last year.

Since then, she'south been conscientious to recuse herself from public funding votes affecting the center, only the position still raises eyebrows. The discussions at mayoral forums have increasingly focused on her history and her record. At that place have even been interruptions from the audience and name-calling from other candidates.

Foat volition occasionally swipe back. Some times she'll dismiss the criticism completely. Other times she'll offer a well-executed riposte and entreat listeners to consider how complex government really is.

Through it all, she remains defiant.

"I have ever, for some reason, attracted major critics, just I don't sit here today equally a wealthy adult female," she said. "I sit hither today every bit a woman who knows that I've done a lot for people, and people will never know all the things I've washed for other people.

"But I know."

Jesse Marx is The Desert Sun political reporter. Reach him at jesse.marx@desertsun or @marxjesse on Twitter. His public PGP primal can be found at keybase.io/jessemarx.

Mike Schaefer on Palm Springs: 'We grew upward together'

Mayoral bio

Name: Ginny Foat

Age: 74

Occupation: Mizell Senior Center executive director and sitting Palm Springs councilmember whose term expires in 2017

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Source: https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/politics/elections/2015/10/03/candidate-profile-ginny-foat/73310320/

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