Trump Envoy Richard Grenell Texted South Bay Voters to Skip 'Radical Lefties'

It backed Rob Saemann and Elka Worner for Hermosa Beach's council and told voters to stop at two picks of three.

Former planning commissioner Kent Allen was among the Hermosa Beach Republicans whose phones lit up Monday with a text whose sender introduced himself as Ambassador Richard Grenell, a neighbor.

The message asked them to vote for incumbent Rob Saemann and Elka Worner for City Council and warned them off "the three radical lefties" on the ballot, Easy Reader News reported Wednesday. The text seemed aimed at likely Republican voters, Easy Reader said, and it showed up the same day ballots were being mailed.

Grenell isn't a typical voice in a South Bay beach-city race. President Trump appointed him ambassador to Germany in 2018, and he later ran the Kennedy Center until he resigned in March, according to Easy Reader. He's now the U.S. presidential envoy for special missions and the founder of a group called Fix California.

Hermosa Beach will fill three council seats, each for a four-year term, on Nov. 3, according to the city clerk's election page. Six candidates are running. The ballot asks voters for three choices, but the text told them otherwise: "you can vote for just two." A vote that stays blank doesn't go to anyone else in the field.

The text didn't name the "lefties." Easy Reader said it meant the race's three Democrats: incumbent Ray Jackson; Maggie Bove-LaMonica, who has served three terms on the Hermosa school board; and Eric Horne, a wildfire analyst and vice president of the Beach Cities Democrat Club.

Its two picks were Saemann, a Republican seeking a second term, and Worner, an independent and retired journalist who lost a council race in 2024. The text named Saemann twice and misspelled him once.

One candidate didn't come up at all. Incumbent Dean Francois, an independent, isn't on the text's list, and a voter who follows its stop-at-two advice won't vote for him either.

Bove-LaMonica told Easy Reader the text was "a Trump MAGA politician name-calling and taking a partisan position in a non partisan race." Horne told the paper he found it ironic to get that label from a Trump appointee, and he pointed to Grenell's time running the Kennedy Center. Jackson answered on Facebook.

The ballots are already in Hermosa Beach mailboxes. They ask for three council members, and the text asked voters to help fill two.

Source: hermosabeach.gov, retrieved October 8, 2026.