Racism charges kept Ceres man from council appointment. Now he’s running for the seat
John Osgood filed Tuesday to run for the Ceres City Council, nine months after his appointment to a vacancy was rescinded.
The council acted after complaints that Osgood had made racist and sexist comments, including repeatedly using the n-word on his podcast. Mike Kline later was appointed to the District 4 seat, representing southeast Ceres, but is not running in the Nov. 8 election.
Daniel Martinez was the only other District 4 candidate as of Tuesday. He is a city planning commissioner and also applied for the appointment last fall.
The filing deadline is 5 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 17, for races where an incumbent is not running. It was Aug. 12 for other contests.
In an email Tuesday evening, The Modesto Bee asked Osgood to comment on his candidacy. He did not respond as of noon Wednesday.
Deadlock over appointment
Couper Condit was elected to the seat in November 2020 but resigned 10 months into his four-year term. The Nov. 9 meeting to appoint a successor came amid concerns raised about Osgood in The Bee and the Ceres Courier.
A motion to appoint Martinez failed 2-2, with Mayor Javier Lopez and Councilman Bret Silveira in favor and Linda Ryno and Jim Casey opposed.
Lopez then joined in the 3-1 vote for Osgood. The mayor acknowledged the concerns but said he wanted to avoid the cost of a special election and to move the council past its tendency for 2-2 votes.
Osgood had yet to be sworn in when Lopez proposed at the Nov. 29 meeting that the appointment be rescinded. The motion passed 4-0.
Samuel White-Ephraim, a leader with the Modesto-Stanislaus NAACP, was among the people urging that Osgood not serve.
“The type of statements that he’s made toward females and toward people with a different pigmentation of skin than his goes to show the mental capacity of his mind,” White-Ephraim told The Bee after the second vote. “Racism is a sickness.”
‘I’m allowed to chastise’
Osgood, a truck driver, defended his demeanor in a Nov. 10 interview with The Bee: “As an ordinary citizen, I’m allowed to chastise. I’m allowed to use words they don’t prefer. I’m allowed to use volume they don’t prefer.”
The upcoming election will feature contests for two other seats on the Ceres council. Casey is running against Todd Underwood in District 1, the northwest part of town. The incumbent is seeking a full four-year term after winning a special election to fill a vacancy in August 2021.
Filing remains open in District 2, the southwest. Ryno resigned from the seat in April, nine months before the end of her term. The candidates so far are Rosalinda Vierra and Paula Redfern.
This story was originally published August 17, 2022 at 12:34 PM.
