Loaded mayoral candidate partakes in Paso Robles debate: Video

October 22, 2012

One of six candidates for Paso Robles City Council who participated in a Wednesday evening forum at the Paso Robles Inn appeared intoxicated when he arrived about 15 minutes late wearing a T-shirt and flip-flops.

Mayoral candidate Jeff Rougeot smelled of alcohol and became aggressive on several occasions, lashing out at an audience member who laughed, and the event’s moderator, former Congresswoman Andrea Seastrand. See forum video at www.CPRN2012.com.

Video by DANIEL BLACKBURN, JOEY BLACKBURN/Central Coast News Agency

Mayoral candidate Jeff Rougeot


Loading...
46 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Another website picks up the Jeff Rougeot disaster at the CPRN2012.org candidate forum:


http://nomarket.org/odd-news-california-vote-drunk-for-city-council/


If you really want to send local government a message, elect the sorry drunk.

And…

He’s not smart enought to rob you.


I don’t see what the big deal is with Jeff having a few cocktails prior to the meeting. By the looks of all the decisions the current council has made, it appears to me they have been drinking more than Jeff!


Can one of you sheeple please explain why if Jeff was so horrible and people were afraid of him why no one left? Better yet, why not one out of 70 so called attendants and participants of a public forum didn’t have the courage to just ask him to leave? Or even better yet! Drunk in public is against the law, and all it would have taken is a simple call to have him removed so that the forum wouldn’t be a total waste. Did any one do that? Nope.


The fact is Jeff is a drunk, and needs to go to jail or rehab, but the bigger point of this whole thing is that all the people at the forum just laid down and didn’t do a thing about it. It’s ironic that it was at a forum about “change” too. That is the real problem with individuals, communities, and society in general these days. We see it in politics and now in this video we see it when a group of people let themselves be subject to one guy’s drunk in public episode.


That many people were afraid of a 130 pound white guy wearing flip flops? Wow.


We would rather run home and jump into a faceless chat room like this and put on our hero pants and talk real big. I understand that this applies to me at this point as well.


I was called a Stalwart protector and accused of wanting to “shoot the messenger” in my first post.

The fact is, that the compressed and edited version of the forum video being put on Youtube and referred to as “entertaining” is shameful. Is it news or is it entertainment? Like I implied before, it’s gonna be the youtube video that will be used to entertain and end up hurting his children not the two hour version on CPRN.


Jeff’s blunder is not entertaining at all. Neither is the fact that that many people let it happen.

There will be no progress when we resort to a private chat room to talk after the fact about public issues.


CPRN is a great thing and Paso needs it dearly. That would have been a great forum, it was apparent that there was tons of effort and money put into it. Unfortunately Duane and Fred were no shows and the entire 70+ people there let the whole thing get hijacked by the “Rougeot Show”!


The City of Paso needs help, as do people like Jeff Rougeot. That forum showed both.


I was at the forum, and no one that I could see was afraid–that’s the entire right half of the audience. Afterwards, I talked to Andrea Seastrand and she didn’t seem to be afraid, either. The candidates speaking didn’t seem to be afraid. No one that I talked to after the forum was afraid. So, this “afraid” thing is news to me.


To me, this woman who appears to be a city council groupie (see below) is more disturbing because her behavior is not “normal”.


I was sitting on the left half of the aisle, near where Jeff did some of his aggressive striding. I wasn’t “afraid,” but I saw people flinch away from him as he stormed by.


So now it is the fault of the forum organizers for not handling the situation in a different way?

Forum organizers are not his babysitters. If you’re such a big supporter of Jeff’s, why weren’t YOU there babysitting him?


You are trying to make this discussion about everything else but the results of Jeff’s inappropriate behavior at the CPRN2012 Candidate Forum.


You weren’t even there, yet you have suddenly become the expert on how to handle a drunken, aggressive, disruptive write-in candidate at the forum.


Blackanchor, had you attended the Forum you would know the Jeff Rougeot did not “hijack” the event. In fact, one of the most memorable and brow raising revelations to come out of the Forum was Nick Gilman’s comment about the investigation into Lisa Solomon. He said he never read the investigation report and the report was never given to him! Yet he voted in favor of the $250,000 payout of taxpayer’s money.


Did any of the City Council read the actual report?


If the Council members did not receive the Solomon investigation report, and in time for them to review it before they made their vote in closed session to approve the sweet deal James App concocted for Solomon, then the council members were not fully informed when they voted.


It also means App purposely did not distribute the Solomon investigation report, which the council members had every right to review before they voted to approve the $250,000 deal for Solomon.


Is it possible to reverse a council decision in such circumstances?


Speaking of strange behavior, does anyone know why there is a woman who attends every council meeting, every planning meeting, every event, and often speaks before the council but is totally ignored by the councilmen and city manager and keeps doing this year after year. Does anyone know why she does this? What is her purpose?


Seriously. You can’t imagine why someone would attend council and other meetings?


Whether or not the City Council and City Manager “ignore her” has nothing to do with a person’s reason for attending public meetings.


In fact, some local governments have specific agreements with the city council that they NOT respond to speakers who are giving their 3 minutes of opinion.