By Brett Callwood
What had previously been a fairly uneventful city council meeting on the evening of Tuesday, January 9 became contentious towards the end when Mayor Tasha Cerda informed Council Member Wanda Love that a ‘Cease and Desist” had been served, should she check her inbox.
The action stems from the fact that Mayor Cerda’s boyfriend, Anthony Dixon, is standing for City Council in the March election, and Love posted statements online alluding to the idea that Dixon is not a Gardena resident.
Earlier in the meeting, during public comments, Dixon stood up to say that he is a Gardena resident and he wants to run a clean race. At that point, without any context, it seemed like a strange choice of words but more was revealed later.
During the Council Directives portion of the meeting, Francis asked City Attorney Carmen Vasquez if it would be a conflict of interest should Cerda and Dixon both be seated on the City Council.
“I can answer that now,” said Vasquez. “It is allowed by law, and there is nothing that prohibits it by law. The government code is very limited. Nor does the City have the ability to prohibit it.”
Francis pushed on, questioning the “ethical virtue.”
“The state law and the government code does not prohibit it because it has not found that there is that issue,” said Vasquez.
It was during the Council Remarks portion at the very end that things became more inflamed. Love closed her remarks by asking, “When did telling the truth become a lie.”
“I don’t have a candidate in this race and I don’t mean to offend anyone,” she said. “My goal in this race is to educate the community and the public on how we conduct business in the city. If I offend anybody by any of my comments or statements, I do apologize. That’s not my intent. My intent is to do what I was elected to do, and that’s to look out for the 60,000 residents that I represent sitting on this council. That ends my report.”
Cerda, speaking next, offered a swift reply. “It’s been mentioned a couple of times about this social media post that went out about the ‘mayor’s boyfriend running for City Council and doesn’t live in the city’ – it’s wrong for any of us as elected officials, as leaders, to put false information like that out,” she said. “People expect for us to be above all this nonsense like that, and they trust that we’re going to put [out] accurate information. So I am aware that, Council Member Love, you have been served via email from an attorney, that you are to ‘cease and desist’ from that, and if you haven’t seen it yet, it’s already in your email. But I just think it’s wrong to continue doing that, and I know that action will be taken against you financially as well, and being sued, if that type of behavior continues.”
“That’s a tough act to follow,” said Mayor Pro Tem Mark Henderson, speaking next.
The offending post appears to have been removed, but Love took to social media to say, “Gardena residents, I was served legal papers telling me to cease and desist, regarding my previous post about the mayor’s boyfriend running for City Council. This is going to be an interesting campaign season.”
She later posted, “Ask yourself why was it that serious for them to come for my post with legal papers?
Dixon is one of two non-incumbent candidates in the March election, alongside Aimee Yamada. Henderson and Francis are the two sitting members of council up for reelection.
Dixon’s address is listed as a PO Box, though that isn’t uncommon; Council Member Francis also lists a PO Box as her address on the candidate log.
Dixon is no stranger to these pages, having appeared in a 2020 story about the fact that his uncle is late civil rights leader John Lewis.
“Growing up, my brothers and I, we always just looked forward to when uncle John and aunt Lily came to town,” Dixon told writer Ronald Penh back then. “But as we got older and we realized who my uncle (is), not only who he is, but what he’s done for so many people, and just for the civil rights movement and stuff like that, that always became an ‘oh wow.’”
The GVN reached out to Dixon, Mayor Cerda and Council Member Love for comment but, at the time of going to press, have received no reply.
