A resident-run PAC is causing an identity crisis for a Bay Area town

When Clayton’s newspaper closed shop last summer, the small, 4-square-mile East Bay city turned into a news desert overnight. What remains is the Diablo Gazette, a monthly publication, and a local news site called Clayton Watch — run by a recently formed political action committee.

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Clayton Watch has inserted itself into the politics of the town of 11,000 through its website, which refers to itself as “Clayton’s Most Trusted News Source,” and as a PAC, by supporting and opposing candidates running for public office. Gary Hood, one of the group’s co-founders, told SFGATE it is fighting to preserve the town’s identity as a quaint and affordable community compared with its more progressive, populous neighbors. 

Critics of the group, meanwhile, say it is walking a fine line between journalism and something more incendiary. 

Last July, Clayton Watch wrote about the Clayton Pioneer’s closure, with a parting shot at the publication: “As Clayton moves forward, we hope the next chapter of local news will be rooted in honesty, fairness, and responsibility.”

Whether Clayton Watch has filled the void with those qualities is up for debate.

“They claim to be a PAC,” said Tamara Steiner, the former owner of the Pioneer, “but they’re nothing more than playground bullies with word processors.”

An old town with new ideas

Three decades ago, Hood and Bill Walcutt, a former mayor of Clayton and real estate broker, became friends. They agreed they couldn’t “let the city run rampant with budget and over-building,” Hood told SFGATE. Hood said that he was concerned over whether the Clayton Business and Community Association, a local nonprofit that organizes events, was “controlling the direction” of the city council. Clayton Watch proceeded to get involved, putting out flyers and ads against candidates they felt were a part of what he called the “boys’ club.” After hitting the $1,000 spending threshold, they were required by the California Fair Political Practices Commission to become a PAC. 

Hood, a longtime Clayton resident, told SFGATE that the group’s agenda is simple: to keep Clayton the way it is. The group has about a dozen volunteers who help out, he said.

“We want Clayton to remain Clayton. We don’t want to become San Francisco. We don’t want to become Oakland,” he said. “It’s a quiet town, small community. Don’t bring that progressive agenda here. If I wanted to move to San Francisco, I would.”

When asked examples of that agenda, he mentioned increased taxes and a failure to address homelessness.

“I’m not anti-tax, but prove to me what you’re spending taxes on,” he said, mentioning concerns of widespread fraud in the state. “The homeless thing has gone on way too long. Everybody’s getting taxed to death. We’ve had enough of that.”

In another thought, before he mentioned keeping Clayton the way it is, he said: “Some people are trying to bring gay, lesbian things and bring in parades. They want every house to have a Pride flag in their yard.” 

Unlike its more populous neighbors in Concord, Antioch and Walnut Creek, Clayton has maintained its small-town identity since incorporating in 1964. The residents of Clayton live there, in part, for the idyllic scenery. The city abuts Mount Diablo, where there are miles of trails for cycling and hiking. Until recently, the city was also home to one of the state’s oldest saloons. There is even a local trail tax to help keep up the land. Elected officials told SFGATE that the city skews older and is full of families and retirees, and that people live comfortably, with a median income of $175,000, according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau statistics. The city also leans blue, as about 42% are registered Democrats and another 30% are Republicans.

As Clayton faces outside pressures, like abiding by the state housing mandate — it was given a final compliance warning in March — a budget in deficit, and concerns over a high turnover rate within the city staff, it’s also confronting dilemmas around the town’s identity.

Steiner, the owner of the Pioneer, said she closed the publication after becoming ill. Residents on all sides acknowledge that the paper’s absence has created a vacuum in the city. Steiner believes Clayton Watch has stepped into that space, but not in the way a newspaper should. Hood, however, says it’s less of a newspaper and more of a source of information. 

“This isn’t a rag magazine deal,” Hood said. “We wanted to become more organized and raise more money.” Clayton Watch has garnered more than 300,000 page views since it launched in 2024. The California Fair Political Practices Commission said in an email that PACs are not prohibited from calling themselves a news source.

Depending on who you ask, the perception of Clayton Watch differs.

“They support their candidates,” Steiner said. “Their candidates rely on them.” Those politicians include Mayor Jeff Wan and Councilwoman Kim Trupiano, who are both up for reelection, and Planning Commissioner Maria Shulman. Hood said they don’t have the money to help fund their campaigns, so instead they spend their money on the cost for the website domain and flyers.

Others see less of an issue with what Clayton Watch is doing.

“I don’t know why it’s a PAC. It’s almost a newspaper, informing people on the facts. That’s what it is. It’s always truthful,” Vice Mayor Richard Enea said. “… They have a lot of readers, they speak the truth, but I don’t always agree with them.”

The site allows readers to post comments, a feature Hood said he monitors closely. Others, however, question who is actually posting, speculating that many of the comments come from the group’s own supporters, rather than actual members of the community.

Unlike traditional media outlets, most of the stories published on its website are missing a byline. Sometimes they are written by Hood, but most are simply attributed to Clayton Watch.

‘They have fought dirty’

For some elected officials, Clayton Watch has become impossible to ignore.

“I don’t go on their site, they mean nothing to me. I have also been the brunt of their attacks,” said Councilmember Holly Tillman, who was elected in 2020 and said she has been a frequent target of the group’s criticism since then. Tillman said every time Clayton Watch posts something negative about her, she will counter it on her Facebook page. She said the group has long opposed housing developments, senior housing and apartments in Clayton.

“They just wanted to leave the downtown area like it was,” she said, adding at another point: “Clayton Watch are meddlers.”

The group pays particular attention to Tillman, who considers herself the only Democrat on the city council and is the only Black person on the council. Clayton Watch posted selected video clips of Tillman addressing her council members: “I know you don’t like me because I am a progressive and I’m a Democrat,” she said in one video that the PAC titled “Bridging the Divide — Nobody Likes Me.” Clayton Watch also posted videos of Tillman speaking about the “patterns of segregation” in the city, which Clayton Watch then described as “false statements.”  

Hood said he “used to really like” Tillman but believes she has changed over the years. When asked to provide an example of how she has changed, he said Tillman has since changed her tune on police, after initially campaigning that she was critical of police and sharing stories about Clayton being unsafe for people of color during the wave of national protests in 2020.

“She was trying to push an agenda that didn’t belong here, she talks about Clayton being racists, the police profiling, people being afraid. She felt our police profiled, but now she’s lovey dovey with police,” Hood said.

Fewer than 1% of Clayton residents are Black, according to census data, and conversations around race took place within the community during that time, which some local officials participated in. 

“I don’t respect what she’s trying to do,” he said. “She’s trying to bring that racism stuff into Clayton. … She was trying to push an agenda that didn’t belong here.”

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He added: “She thinks she’s going to be the governor someday.”

“I’m always perceived as the angry Black woman,” Tillman told SFGATE. “They write about me as the two sides of Holly Tillman. I don’t care if you attack me. Do it, it just makes you look like a fool. And it just garners me more support. I’m not doing anything wrong. I don’t lose sleep over Clayton Watch. They don’t like me. I’d be concerned if they did like me.”

Trupiano says that Clayton Watch has “positioned themselves as an alternative voice” to the Clayton Pioneer. She called the website a “library of content” for the community.  

“I think sometimes they’re off-base and don’t have all the facts. I’m not living on Clayton Watch,” she said. She added: “I don’t think they have supported candidates over the years, not that I can remember.” Clayton Watch told SFGATE that it will endorse Trupiano for city council.

Trupiano said the issues Clayton Watch had with Tillman dated from years ago: “I want to look ahead, not behind,” she said, pushing back on the notion that the city is divided by partisan politics. She added: “I shut out the noise.” 

Steiner, the former editor and owner of the Pioneer, told SFGATE that Clayton Watch is “very reactive” and that there is a “personal element” to its mission. Her concern is that the group has a Trump-like approach to disseminating information. 

Former Mayor Peter Cloven, who is running for reelection this year, said Steiner may have had her biases, “but what she was publishing was facts and that annoyed the hell of Clayton Watch.” He went further to say that Clayton Watch defends the work of Mayor Jeff Wan, who was elected in 2022: “Since Jeff became mayor, he did everything to reduce all transparency,” Cloven said. SFGATE reached out to Wan multiple times for comment but did not hear back.

Cloven said the council members that benefit from Clayton Watch “know they’re doing it on their behalf, but they will say, ‘I have no control over what they do.’ They stay at hands’ length and let Clayton Watch them do their dirty work for them.”

David King, the publisher of the Diablo Gazette, a magazine that prints about 22,000 copies a month, told SFGATE that Clayton Watch is “very slanted” and tends to go “into finger pointing.”

“He’s not distorted by changing the facts,” King said, referring to Hood. “He’s distorted by focusing on what he doesn’t like, by highlighting flaws and errors someone made, while someone else he likes, he talks about their good points.”

King said that he first became acquainted with Hood after Hood bought an ad online, before he ever formed a PAC. King said that Hood spent $880 for an ad against then-Mayor Peter Cloven, which King likened to “kind of a hit piece.” At the time, King asked him to tone down the language of the ad, which he did. Clayton Watch sometimes jumps on statements made by city council members “to make someone look bad,” King said.

“They’ve got some respect because they do show up at council meetings and they fight for causes, like them or dislike them,” King said. “They have fought dirty.” A 2024 article from the Gazette described the group as having “conservative positions” and a “displeasure with” certain council members. They were also described as using “divisive tactics by distributing flyers containing misinformation.”

Still, King says the influence Clayton Watch wields mostly seeps into political circles of the town, rather than among everyday residents. 

“I play on a bocce team in Clayton, and the name Clayton Watch never comes up on the street in my presence,” he said.

A city at odds

Steiner said the town’s political divisions extend beyond Clayton Watch itself.

“We have MAGAs on one side who don’t want high rises, and we have the people who will follow state mandates saying we don’t have a choice,” Steiner said.

Those state housing mandates have become one of the biggest sources of tension in Clayton. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom has been strict on the housing mandate, which requires cities to have their own affordable housing plans in place: “No city gets a pass,” he said recently after suing a number of cities that were not meeting planning benchmarks. Clayton was one of 15 cities or counties that were not in compliance and received a final warning from the state in March. 

The city is now in compliance, according to a dashboard published by the California Department of Housing and Community Development, but for many residents, complying with the law has not ended the debate over whether the city needs and wants more housing.

“I was a policeman for 30 years,” Vice Mayor Enea said. “You can’t stop laws. I’m in agreement with it because it’s the law, but I would fight it if they tried to do it again. I don’t think they should force anyone to build.”

Huntington Beach is the most notable example of a city in public protest against Newsom’s housing push. The major distinction there, however, is the size and influence of Clayton compared to that of the Orange County city that’s an indisputable MAGA stronghold. Cloven said Clayton lacks the political leverage to challenge Sacramento.

“Clayton can’t afford to be Huntington Beach because California would laugh at us and lick us off like a plate,” he said. “We’re irrelevant population-wise.”

Cloven also said many residents pay little attention to local government until Clayton Watch posts about it. “About a quarter of the residents are retirement age, and the rest are mostly families just trying to get by,” he said. “They’re oblivious and ignorant to local politics. Clayton Watch piques their interest the most.”

“They are hardcore MAGA folk,” he continued. “Whether or not they call themselves MAGA is ridiculous. Just because they don’t wear a red hat doesn’t mean they don’t support Trump.”

Clayton Watch has inspired offshoots. Just north of Clayton, another resident-run group called Solano Watch popped up less than a year ago. Like Clayon Watch, the group posts publicly on Facebook to its almost 700 members about ongoing issues in the community. Hood said he offered them help when he was approached about how to set up their website. 

Hood knows the influence the group has. “If you wanted to pack City Hall, I could probably do it,” he said. And although it has been perceived as divisive, he rejects the idea that Clayton Watch exists to proliferate any negativity. 

“We’d love to heal the divide,” he said. “We’re not doing this because we’re enjoying it.”