In Huntington Beach, Politics on a Plaque

New York Times

25-02-2025

They call themselves the 'MAGA-nificent 7.' They once posed for a picture inside City Hall wearing red caps with the slogan 'Make Huntington Beach Great Again.'
But the Huntington Beach City Council, in Southern California, had even more MAGA in store. The seven-member body, all of whom are Republicans, decided to turn a seemingly humdrum municipal task — commemorating the 50th anniversary of the city's central public library — into a political statement, using their favorite acronym.
The council-approved design of the plaque describes the library in this bold-letter fashion:
Magical Alluring Galvanizing Adventurous
'This is a historical moment,' said Councilwoman Gracey Van Der Mark, who came up with the idea for the plaque. 'And if people do not think America is great and don't want to make it great again, they're in the wrong country — because millions of people risk their lives to come to this one country.'
The wording of the plaque has thrown Huntington Beach — an Orange County surf town with 192,000 residents that's about 30 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles — into the national spotlight. But the dispute is part of a yearslong battle over the city's political and cultural identity.
Huntington Beach has become one of the reddest cities in one of the bluest states in America. Both before and after voters in November ousted the last three remaining Democratic members of the Council, city leaders have pushed a series of Trump-style policies and tangled in court with state officials.
They passed a voter ID law. They banned nongovernmental flags from being flown on city property, after previous council members voted to fly a rainbow flag during Pride month. They prohibited Covid-related mask and vaccination mandates. They amended the city's declaration on human dignity to eliminate references to hate crimes, recognized the 'genetic differences between male and female' and adopted a resolution supporting the Texas governor's move to deploy the National Guard to the southern border. They voted to scrap a number of commissions, including a human relations committee that was created after two hate crimes perpetrated by white supremacists in the 1990s.
Michael Gates, the elected city attorney who spearheaded several legal battles against the state, left the position this year and joined President Trump's Justice Department. The city sued the state over its 'sanctuary state' law, which prevents the police in many cases from holding people at the request of federal immigration agents. California, meanwhile, has sued Huntington Beach over its voter ID law and its refusal to adopt a plan for new housing mandated by the state.
The recent push to the right has set off a vocal backlash from liberal residents, independents and anti-Trump Republicans. The disputes are at odds with the sunny setting and typically chill vibes of a city with 10 miles of open beach, a protected estuary and a rich surfing scene.
Former Councilman Dan Kalmick, a Democrat who lost re-election last year, said he had heard from people who put their houses on the market because of the city's pro-Trump leanings. He himself has contemplated leaving the city he's called home for 20 years.
He and other critics of the Council said that city leaders were trying to distract from more serious problems, including a budget deficit forecast for the coming years and accusations that they mishandled the settlement of a lawsuit by the organizer of the city's annual air show.
'These people are going to 'own the libs' into bankruptcy, and it's absolutely wild,' Mr. Kalmick said, referring to the city's financial challenges.
Kim Carr, a former councilwoman and mayor, said that council members understood that once the public started to 'look under the hood,' they would find 'that the city is a hot mess,' adding: 'We're missing the point of what the City Council is supposed to do. It's not about these performative antics.'
The public works director and other department heads left in recent years as the Council has rallied behind the MAGA agenda. Those opposed to the Council had their biggest moment so far last week.
At a packed City Council meeting, a former N.F.L. player and resident, Chris Kluwe, called Mr. Trump's Make America Great Again movement a Nazi movement. Before he stepped up to the dais, Mr. Kluwe, who was a punter with the Minnesota Vikings, announced he was engaging 'in the time-honored American tradition of peaceful civil disobedience.' As he stood in front of the council members, he was pulled to the ground and arrested by the police.
Days later, an opposition group called ProtectHB, newly energized by Mr. Kluwe's headline-making protest, gathered at a member's home for a letter-writing and public-speaking workshop over refreshments and a cheese spread. Outside, a lawn sign read: 'Chaos culture wars — and — higher costs. Are we great yet?'
'We're becoming nationally known as kind of like Nazi Central, and, as a city that depends on tourist revenue, that's not good,' said Dave Rynerson, a member of the group who has lived in Huntington Beach for 28 years. Friends from out of town have reached out to ask him what's going on in his city, he said.
Council members defended their initiatives and their agenda, calling Huntington Beach a proudly red city and dismissing the outrage over the plaque as coming from a vocal anti-Trump minority. They blamed previous Councils for the deficit and said that the casual way their opponents were using the Nazi label was offensive to the Jewish voters who supported them and Mr. Trump in November.
Mayor Pat Burns, who serves as one of the Council's seven members, said that national political matters had affected the quality of life in the city.
'I had a buddy who said, 'What's going on in Texas has nothing to do with what's going in Huntington Beach,'' the mayor said, referring to the Council resolution supporting the Texas deployment of the National Guard. 'I'm going, 'Like hell it does.' You think those people are staying in Texas? You don't think those migrants are sitting there saying, 'Hey, let's go to California.''
The political realignment of the Council began in 2022, when Republicans won a four-member majority.
'We had some people who said they were Republicans, but they always voted against what we wanted, so we turned a 6-1 to a 4-3,' Ms. Van Der Mark said, describing the Council's makeup before the November election, which made it 7-0.
Ms. Van Der Mark keeps a giant mock-up of the library plaque in her office. Last week, it leaned against a bookshelf lined with library books — sticky notes marked the pages with what she described as pornographic material. Nearby was a framed picture of Mr. Trump with his fist in the air after his attempted assassination at a Pennsylvania rally last year.
Like other public libraries across the country, Huntington Beach's library has been at the center of political division. Last year, the Council considered privatizing the library's operations, a move met with widespread opposition. And Ms. Van Der Mark led an effort to create a parent review board to remove books deemed inappropriate from the children's section of the library, including some of those she keeps in her office.
The plaque's unveiling is planned for April. It's still only in the design stage; the Council has raised $8,000 in private donations to make it.
The Council seemed to make an attempt at bipartisanship in the plaque's design, though the meaning was unclear. The plaque reads: 'Through hope and change our nation has built back better to the golden era of Making America Great Again!' 'Hope and change' and 'built back better' appear to be references to slogans tied to former Presidents Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Councilman Chad Williams, who was elected last year, said he did not view the slogans as political. He said the plaque was meant to represent the public library's moment in time.
'The golden era we're in right now is an era of making America great again,' he said. 'And so it just so happens that the 50th anniversary coincides with the era we're in.'