If Stockton’s political campaigns of 2024 were a bad movie, this year’s City Council race is a sequel: “Ghost Candidate II: Jessica Toccoli.”
Toccoli, a teacher, is running to unseat Council member Michael Blower in District 3.
The campaign supporting her has been marked by repeated false claims and—this is crazy, even if it’s becoming normal in Stockton—a candidate for public office who avoids the public.
“Fishy” doesn’t begin to describe the claims against Blower. Mailers in support of Toccoli read as if a fiction writer made up smears to rattle moderate northside voters.
Examples:
- The mailers say Blower “backed policies allowing drag performers to read to children in public libraries and community centers.” That is simply untrue.
- The mailers say Blower supports “placing state-funded addiction recovery facilities and ex-con halfway housing into north Stockton neighborhoods.” Also untrue.
- The topper: One mailer falsifies Stockton Record stories. One image depicts a Record article headlined “Stockton becomes latest ‘Sanctuary city’ for immigrants” and says Blower voted to approve it. The real headline read, “Stockton becomes latest ‘compassionate city’ for immigrants.” Someone doctored the headline! They used Record fonts to make it look real. They did the same thing with the story’s lede, changing “compassionate city” to “sanctuary city” there, too. There’s a key difference between sanctuary and compassionate cities: sanctuary cities legally forbid local officials from helping federal immigration enforcement; compassionate cities proclaim all residents deserve equal treatment but don’t outright ban cooperation with federal agencies (the distinction, while significant, is somewhat academic in California, as the California Values Act bars local law enforcement from assisting ICE unless the suspect is a felon).
- Similar alterations appeared on another Record story, this time with a picture. The photograph The Record ran was replaced by a photoshopped picture of Blower.
This deceit is beyond the pale.
Who is Toccoli’s campaign manager? Toccoli has nowhere disclosed it. One thing that does appear clear is a campaign with hallmarks of one run by Council member Mariela Ponce in 2024.
Just like Ponce did, Toccoli avoids candidate forums. She has not filed her campaign 460s, the forms that are legally required in most cases, to disclose who gives her money and where she spends it. She has announced no public appearances, offers no campaign website and, before she launched her campaign, scrubbed all her posts from her Facebook page.
Public campaigning in support of Toccoli appears limited to attack mailers (which blew up in her face because of their homophobia) and lawn signs.
I sent her questions about her priorities. Toccoli did not respond. I asked if she saw and approved her mailers before they went out. Toccoli did not respond. I asked her who her campaign manager is. Toccoli did not respond.
According to voter registration records, Toccoli’s previous address was an apartment on Grand Canal Boulevard. That is in district 4, not 3. She moved into district 3 shortly before the deadline and reregistered before declaring her candidacy. Stockton voters tend to like candidates who come from the ’hood. She doesn’t.
Toccoli is running against Blower, a council member who votes against Mayor Christina Fugazi, and who stands up to the 209 Times, the subject of a civil grand jury report that concluded the people using the site “have consistently attempted to undermine the local democratic process.”
So far, Toccoli’s campaign shreds the norms of ethical campaigning, and she is going along with it. She’s shown zero transparency.
And if she gets elected? Well, look at Ponce. Ponce is a content-free shell of a Council member. She sits mostly mum through Council meetings. Voters might as well have elected a finger puppet.
If Blower is unseated, the result is most likely another vote in Fugazi’s majority. Bad idea. Under Fugazi, the Council has been an open sore of animosity and squabbling, politically motivated investigations and paybacks, fishy decisions and lack of transparency.
And mediocrity. That’s the real story here. Stockton and San Joaquin County are in the grip of ethically compromised mediocrities. With more of that, Stockton goes nowhere.
Michael Fitzgerald is on Twitter and Instagram as Stocktonopolis. Email: mfitzgeraldstockton@gmail.com.