A City Council member has called for an investigation after the mayor’s chief of staff accused her of racist remarks and inappropriate questions about her sexuality.
A leaked mediation letter accusing Anaheim Mayor Ashleigh Aitken of calling her chief of staff a “dirty Mexican” and repeatedly questioning her sexuality, some of it allegedly during lunches at Disneyland’s exclusive Club 33, has triggered a formal call for investigation from the city council, just weeks before Aitken faces voters for a second term.
The council moves
City Councilmember Natalie Meeks requested a probe into the allegations on Sept. 22, one day after TimesOC first reported on the confidential letter sent by Berenice Ballinas’s attorney to the city. City Attorney Robert Fabela declined to answer questions about how the investigation would proceed, how long it might take, or whether findings would ever be made public.
The city’s public response so far has been minimal. Spokesman Mike Lyster offered only a brief statement: “We’re reviewing the issues raised. We want to respect all involved, with nothing else to share at this time.” Aitken herself did not respond to calls or texts seeking comment.
That silence is drawing its own criticism. At Tuesday’s council meeting, residents and local activists publicly condemned the mayor and called for transparency. “Mexican and Latino families are not a lesser class of residents in Anaheim,” resident David Duran told the council.
The letter also names former City Manager Jim Vanderpool, who resigned earlier this year amid scrutiny over his ties to Anaheim resort interests, alleging he too repeatedly questioned and commented on Ballinas’s perceived sexual orientation. It further alleges retaliation: city officials withheld a raise Ballinas had already been approved for after she raised concerns.
A generational reckoning
The reaction from young Latino organizers in Orange County has been sharper than the city’s own response. Chispa, a group focused on mobilizing young Latino voters across the county, issued a statement calling the alleged remark a betrayal of the very community Aitken represents. “When an elected official uses language that degrades Mexicans, they are sending a message to every Mexican child and family they represent about whose dignity matters,” the group said. “There is nothing dirty about being Mexican. What is shameful is using our identity as an insult.”
For Chispa and similar groups, the timing carries its own weight. The statement noted that the allegations are surfacing as immigrant families across Orange County are already on edge over intensified federal immigration enforcement, arguing that a sitting mayor allegedly using a racial slur against a member of her own staff lands differently in a moment when many residents already feel targeted because of their ethnicity. “Now Anaheim’s political leadership needs to show what it actually stands for,” the group said.
That framing puts pressure on Aitken beyond the mediation letter itself. For a Democratic mayor whose 2022 win was seen partly as a generational shift for a city that is majority Latino, silence in the face of youth-led organizing carries a different political cost than it might have a decade ago. Whether that translates into organized turnout against her in November remains to be seen, but the swiftness and specificity of the response, arriving within days of the letter’s disclosure, suggests the story is unlikely to stay confined to City Hall procedure.
A campaign under pressure
The timing could hardly be worse for Aitken. She is seeking a second term in November against two lesser-known challengers, physician Dr. Imran Sharief and business manager Alfredo Rodriguez, in a race that had drawn little national attention until now.
Aitken was elected in 2022 as Anaheim’s first female mayor and the first Democrat to hold the office since 2002, backed in part by EMERGE California, an organization that trains Democratic women to run for office. Ballinas, notably, sits on that organization’s board, a detail that complicates any attempt to frame the allegations as a partisan attack from outside Aitken’s political network.
The allegations also land in a city still working to rebuild public trust. Aitken’s predecessor, Harry Sidhu, resigned in 2022 amid an FBI corruption probe tied to the sale of Angel Stadium and was later sentenced to prison. Aitken campaigned in part on restoring accountability at City Hall. The current controversy raises the question of whether her own administration will be held to the same standard she once demanded of her predecessor’s.
For now, the political fallout is still unfolding on two tracks: a city investigation with no public timeline, and a mayor seeking reelection without having said a word.
