Former Northern California mayor who denounced Newsom mask order resigns from council
A former Northern California mayor who stoked controversy last month with social media posts decrying Gov. Gavin Newsom’s mask mandate as illegitimate and unenforceable has stepped down from her City Council position.
Reinette Senum’s term as mayor of Nevada City expired at the end of June, but she had been elected in March to continue as a City Council member for the next four years.
Instead, she announced during Wednesday’s council meeting that she will not serve her 2020-24 term, as first reported by The Union, the local newspaper for Nevada City and Grass Valley.
Senum read her resignation letter early in Wednesday’s video conference meeting and posted a copy of the announcement to Facebook late that evening.
“I feel I can be of best service to humanity by focusing my energy on extending my reach to a broader audience, to individuals who are equally concerned by these same issues and questions, around the world,” she said.
Senum then told her fellow council members she will “kindly decline” the City Council position.
Following her announcement, the council, which rotates the office of mayor among members, voted Erin Minett in as mayor and Duane Strawser as vice mayor. Senum then left the Zoom call.
The “issues and questions” Senum referred to in her letter are government and public response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which is currently worsening across most of California.
The outgoing city leader wrote that Nevada City, Nevada County and their elected officials “can expect a massive legal backlash” for their handling of the coronavirus crisis, especially the facial covering mandate, which she views as overreaching.
Senum did not immediately respond to The Bee’s request for comment Thursday morning.
Newsom and the California Department of Public Health made it mandatory statewide beginning June 18 to wear masks in most indoor public places, with a very short list of exceptions mostly related to medical conditions that would make mask use unsafe.
Two days later, Senum penned a Facebook post saying the order could not be enforced.
“As you go about your day today, KNOW there is NO LAW that Orders you to Wear a Mask. Our Governor does NOT have that unilateral power to make such orders,” Senum wrote June 20. “Ask our local Police chief or officers. They will not, and cannot, cite ANYBODY for not wearing a mask because the law does not exist.”
The Nevada City Police Department also announced it would not be enforcing the statewide mask order, citing the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office’s earlier announcement that it would not do so as precedent.
Senum’s post divided her social media following, some of whom commented agreeing with Senum while others said her remarks were irresponsible and dangerous.
Despite her strong opposition to it, the former mayor voted in favor of Nevada City’s affirmation of Newsom’s directive at a previous council meeting, emphasizing the mask order’s exemptions as she did so.
“I have received many complaints from the public that business owners, employees, and the public, are not honoring these exemptions and are targeting and shaming an already traumatized public,” she wrote in her resignation letter.
In the letter, Senum also said she finds it “appalling that the hundreds of individuals who have reached out to me have been regularly ignore (sic) by their representatives; citizens and business owners who are in crisis.”
“None of this is being considered,” she said. “How can we ignore women, for instance, who have been muffled and raped and are now being re-traumatized when having to wear a mask? How can we not consider the repercussion of sending our children into a type of prison-like setting when returning to school?”
Senum was “deeply disturbed” by the governor’s announcement the state would withhold funding from counties that don’t comply with its COVID-19 orders, she wrote.
More than 100 public comments poured into the previous two City Council meetings calling for Senum’s resignation following those remarks, The Union reported Wednesday.
“While I am not stepping down, I am stepping up,” she said.
Minett, vice mayor at the time, released a statement regarding Senum’s controversial social media posts saying they were “her personal opinions, not the views of the city of Nevada City,” and Minett herself is “totally supporting the governor’s mandate.”
At the time of Senum’s initial comments last month, Nevada County had reported a total of about 75 cases of COVID-19 and one fatality from the coronavirus. The infection total has more than doubled in less than three weeks since then, to 155, according to the county’s public health data dashboard. No additional deaths have been reported.
The zip code containing Nevada City has reported fewer than 10 cases since the pandemic started. Nearby Grass Valley has reported 20 infections, and nearly 90 more have come in the Truckee area in the far east corner of the county, according to the health office’s data map.
Three patients across Nevada County were hospitalized with the respiratory disease as of Wednesday.
Not the first time Senum has faced public backlash
The coronavirus pandemic has not been Senum’s first source of controversy while in office.
Following the July 2016 shooting in which a sniper killed five police officers in Dallas, Senum sparked outrage by posting to Facebook that the shooting had been brought on by “America’s police force,” which she wrote had “obviously been given directives to go out there and kill,” The Union reported last month. Senum apologized and deleted the post amid intense criticism, but refused to resign her council seat.
Senum has also been a vocal opponent of 5G internet. In April 2017, she wrote a blog post for Medium titled “The 5G Network: What You Don’t Know May Kill You.”
This story was originally published July 9, 2020 at 10:08 AM.
