This Unholy Mess

Though there is strong competition from the many aspects of Supervisor Alfredo Pedroza’s conflict of interest activities as Napa County’s 4th District supervisor, in my view the runaway candidate for saddest, strangest story in Napa politics over the past few years is Belia Ramos’s battle to maintain both her policy independence and her children’s privacy while serving as Napa County’s 5th District supervisor. It is a sprawling, byzantine epic, but if Napa County citizens are interested, many of the salient facts involved in the saga have emerged and are now generally available to the public.
It’s important to note that some pieces of the puzzle are still missing and will remain so perhaps forever, or at least until the completion of an FBI investigation that includes political activities of the powerful Napa County Farm Bureau and its former CEO, Ryan Klobas, who died of an apparent suicide on January 16, 2024. Though the Bureau has been openly critical of Supervisor Ramos since late 2019, it has remained unusually quiet since that tragic event, and understandably so when one considers that its transformation into a hyper-political entity during Klobas’s tenure brought it an FBI subpoena in late February as well as a remarkable lack of success in electing its endorsed candidates in recent Napa County elections.
The short version of Supervisor Ramos’s odyssey is anchored in her estrangement from The Farm Bureau and prominent wine industry figures over a period of years, triggered by her independent stances on many issues, particularly those involving vineyard and winery development. Of these figures, two stand out in particular, having previously been numbered among her friends: Debra Dommen, Vice-President of Government and Industry Affairs for Treasury Wine Estates; and Jeri Hansen, now President and CEO of the Napa Chamber of Commerce.
In an obvious act of political revenge, these two took part in publicizing a 2-year-old document from a Solano County Social Services agency that painted a dark picture of Supervisor Ramos’s family life. Their attempts failed doubly, given that Ramos was re-elected in March of this year and that a Napa judge has since ruled in her favor in the continuing nasty child custody battle between her and her ex-husband.
The clash between Supervisor Ramos and Debra Dommen came into full public view recently, at a meeting of the Board of Supervisors on December 3. The agenda of the meeting included a vote on a winery project owned by Treasury Wine Estates, where, as already noted, Dommen is employed as Vice-President for Governmental Relations and Industry Affairs, and was listed as project sponsor. Ramos took the floor prior to the vote, announcing that she was recusing herself, based on what she said were no less than eight instances of criminal conduct on Dommen’s part, targeting Ramos and her children.
A further complication in the tale is that the Solano County Social Services document in question was sent to Register Executive Editor (now Publisher) Dan Evans on January 20, 2024, the source clearly hoping the smear would be published as a matter of “public interest.” Mr. Evans waited until well after the March election, but on July 2 did publish details of the document while not revealing the identity of his source.
Though some people wrote in support of Mr. Evans’s decision, I felt it was a poor one for several reasons: one, this was a complicated, private family matter that in no way implied violation of the public trust or any sort of disqualifying misconduct on Ramos’s part; and second, it seemed to me particularly objectionable to publish such an obvious smear attempt that put a spotlight on her children while allowing the source to remain anonymous. Though in a July 12 editorial Mr. Evans wrote that he protected the children’s identity by not including their names and genders, I still feel that that is not a valid argument in a community as small as Napa.
It follows that if Supervisor Ramos’s children could not be accorded true anonymity in this ugly mess, it is certainly fair that the source providing the document to The Register should be identified. As of October 29 of this year, that information became available in the transcript of a deposition which is part of a family court case brought by Supervisor Ramos against her ex-husband. I confess to being a little shocked when I read it, but it turns out that the source was Jeri Hansen, President and CEO of the Napa Chamber of Commerce. I doubt that I’m alone in finding myself less than proud to be part of the Napa community when such a cheap shot can be launched anonymously at a public official by a prominent Napa citizen. Certainly not our finest hour.