SLO County Clerk Recorder resigns after a rocky five years

June 4, 2021

By KAREN VELIE

San Luis Obispo County Clerk Recorder Tommy Gong is resigning his elected position after securing a job in another county.

Gong’s last day has not yet been announced. The SLO County Board of Supervisors is then tasked with appointing a new clerk recorder to serve until Jan. 2023. At that time, the winner of the 2022 election will take the seat.

Then the assistant clerk recorder, Gong won his first election in Nov. 2014. During his tenure, Gong faced multiple challenges regarding his job and his family.

During the 2018 election, Gong’s office miscategorized one of the three seats that were up for grabs on the Los Osos CSD Board.

In 2019, a San Luis Obispo judge sentenced Sherry Gong, Tommy Gong’s wife, to about six months in jail for embezzling more than $32,000 from the booster club of the Atascadero High School band.

Then in the 2020 election, thousands of voters in San Luis Obispo received two vote-by-mail ballots, while other voters in rural SLO County found themselves removed from the voter rolls.

During a heated SLO County Board Of Supervisors meeting on May 4, in which supervisors debated election rules, more than 130 people called in to voice their opinions. One caller accused Gong of being a member of the Chinese Communist Party, prompting an article in the LA Times about anti-Asian sentiment and Trump supporters on the Central Coast.