Anaheim Mayor Ashleigh Aitken is pushing back against accusations that she called her chief of staff a “dirty Mexican,” issuing her first direct denial as the controversy threatens to engulf City Hall.
Page A9From§Eachthe midnight edition — 26 September 2026
Three mayors are answering misconduct complaints from their own top staffers this month; Anaheim's mayor managed four lines.
As it ran on the front
Three mayors, three top staffers with formal complaints, and three denials that get shorter the closer you look at them.
Start in St. Paul. Police Chief Axel Henry filed a 73-page lawsuit this week alleging Mayor Kaohly Her called herself a "MILF," subjected him to sexual harassment, and then retaliated against him for objecting — the kind of complaint a city usually answers with a statement inside a day. A mayor with nothing to hide is not typically a mayor who stays silent.…
…(cont) Move to Anaheim, where the record runs the other direction. On September 23rd, a leaked letter surfaced accusing Mayor Ashleigh Aitken of calling her chief of staff a "dirty Mexican" and questioning her sexuality over lunch at Disneyland. Two days later, Aitken answered — four lines, on the record, denying it outright. Four lines is more than St. Paul managed. It is also, for an allegation this specific, not much of an answer: the mayor said no, and did not say what was actually said at that lunch.
Then Seattle, where nobody had to deny anything, because it happened on camera. On September 17th, Mayor Katie Wilson, giving a live interview about Flock license-plate cameras alongside Assistant Police Chief Nicole Powell, cut the chief off following an uncomfortable reaction to the question. The clip went viral on its own, with no leaked letter and no lawsuit required, because it looked exactly like what it was.
Line the three up and the pattern isn't that three staffers happened to file complaints against three mayors in the same month. It's that the answer shrinks to fit whatever the mayor can get away with not saying. St. Paul gets silence, because a lawsuit takes months to force a response. Anaheim gets four lines, because a leaked letter demands at least a sentence. Seattle gets nothing at all, because the mayor already answered the only question that mattered — by not letting her own chief finish it, on television, in front of everyone watching.
Three offices that would very much like this filed under coincidence. The actual denial is out there somewhere. It just isn't the one that made it onto the page.
“Three mayors, three staffers with formal complaints on file, and the longest denial anybody managed was four lines that never once said what was actually said at that lunch. When the person signing your paycheck gets to decide how many words the truth is worth, that's not an HR process, that's a word count. Nobody in any of those City Halls is losing their job over this — and it sure isn't the mayors.”
“Look, these are unproven allegations from disgruntled staff, and every mayor's entitled to due process before — well, Anaheim's mayor did respond, four lines, flat denial, that's a full accounting, that's — okay, four lines isn't exactly a full accounting, but at least it's something, which is more than St. Paul's put out, so by comparison that's basically a press conference. I mean, that's not — strike that, forget I said that.”
The receipts
The mayor of Anaheim allegedly called her chief of staff a "dirty Mexican" and questioned her sexuality during a lunch at Disneyland, according to a leaked letter.
Axel Henry's 73-page lawsuit accuses St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her of explicit sexual comments, unwanted physical contact and a retaliation campaign.
· WATCH: Gaffe-prone Seattle socialist mayor cuts off police chief in yet another awkward interview from the morgue, 17 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.