Clovis Mayor Vong Mouanoutoua and Mayor Pro Tem Diane Pearce launched campaigns for the upcoming vacancy to represent District 5 on the Fresno County Board of Supervisors.
Clovis councilmembers urged colleagues not to launch personal attacks on social media during the election campaign.
The call came as Clovis Mayor Vong Mouanoutoua and Mayor Pro Tem Diane Pearce are vying for an expected vacancy on the Fresno County Board of Supervisors.
This November marks the first time the Clovis City Council will transition to a district-based voting system from at-large. Seven candidates, as of Aug. 4, are running for council seats in the three races.
At last evening’s meeting, Councilmember Drew Bessinger said he’s concerned that a colleague is normalizing misbehavior, such as name-calling and casting aspersions on opponents’ character in social media campaigns.
“Diane, we need to back off from calling people ‘woke,’ ‘weak,’ and ‘RINO,’” said Bessinger during the councilmember comment section at the end of the meeting. “The voters expect more from us. I think if we start attacking each other publicly, not on the issues, but making personal attacks, then everybody is going to assume that this is normal and that it’s okay.”
RINO is an acronym for “Republican In Name Only,” which is often used as a political criticism or aspersion.
Mouanoutoua and Pearce are registered Republicans, but they disagree on the county’s half-cent transportation sales tax Measure C, which is expiring next year. The renewal proposal has sparked heated countywide debate among various interest groups.
On social media, Pearce called the Measure C a “30-year tax scam” and said Mouanoutoua, who sat at the county’s negotiating table to represent Clovis, “has joined the extreme left in pushing,” wrote one post. In other posts, she referred to supporters of the transportation tax as “Vong’s radical allies” and called them sick.
“We can all be responsible for our language and how we choose to address those things, and I’m happy to be responsible for that on my end,” Pearce said on Monday evening. “I think we have a situation with what started out as a measure, but it’s obviously gotten much larger than that, and I think our community and the voters deserve to hear where people stand on that.”
Pearce said that when some transportation tax advocates rallied in the community with inappropriate slogans and criticized the current county supervisors, she felt it was her responsibility to speak out.
“We have an opportunity to use language that describes issues, but words like ‘sick,’ ‘disgraceful,’ and ‘wacko’ and ‘hijacked,’ those are all just social media performance words, and we deserve better,” said Councilmember Lynne Ashbeck.
Ashbeck and Bessinger have announced their support for Mouanoutoua. Bessinger is currently running for reelection for his third term on the council.
When an elected official uses inappropriate language, it reflects poorly on the entire council and the community, Ashbeck said.
“It’s very destructive. It has ruined relationships. It’s terrible,” she said. “People don’t talk like that. They are seriously wanting civic leaders.”
As mayor, Mouanoutoua was the last to speak. He outlined the benefits he had secured for Clovis during the Measure C negotiations, such as the flexibility for Clovis to use the tax dollars to build more trails instead of bike lanes in Old Town Clovis.
“As elected, we have to be accountable for what we say, not because we want to win something or because we got the news in front of us, but because it serves you. It serves you and allows our staff to do the right job,” Mouanoutoua said.
Mouanoutoua delivered a speech on God, tolerance and love in response to Pearce’s criticism that he had joined people who held different political views to promote Measure C’s renewal. He said he thinks about “What would Jesus do” when he receives personal attacks. If social media were around, Christ would have been chastised because “he stood with prostitutes, he stood with people who took money, he stood with murderers,” Mouanoutoua said.
“Diane, I see you as a sister in Christ. My daily prayer is to always see you as that, to always treat you as such, to respect and to go, ‘you can do that.’ But the harder thing for me is to go, how do I love you continually? How do I love those who disagree with me continually?” Mouanoutoua said. “We can do these things because it matters to us, and what matters is the truth.”
This story was originally published August 4, 2026 at 4:43 PM.
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Leqi Zhong is the Clovis accountability/enterprise reporter for The Bee. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley with a Master’s degree in journalism. She joined The Bee in 2023 as an education reporter. Leqi grew up in China and is native in Cantonese and Mandarin.