staged a press conference near a school <\/a>and a church, alarming officials at both.<\/p>\nThe Diocese of Fresno issued a blistering statement that read in part:<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Campos independently and irresponsibly chose the location for the press conference and used the Catholic Church and the school as props in his theater of politics.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, would-be colleagues and others have scrambled to block the sex offender\u2019s path to office:<\/p>\n
Fresno City Councilman Miguel Arias proposed a city ordinance to bar registered sex offenders for running for council; the council\u2019s president, Mike Karbassi, said he\u2019d refuse to seat Campos if voters elected him; and a Merced assemblywoman has sponsored statewide legislation to keep sex offenders out of elected office.<\/p>\n
![\"Rene](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/www-rene-campos-com-122201898.jpg\")
Rene Campos is a registered sex offender and is running for public office. rene-campos.com<\/p>\n
In a world with reality checks, none of this would be necessary: The 40-something Campos would read the room.<\/p>\n
Nearly everyone, save Campos himself, seems to realize he\u2019s unqualified to oversee public safety and other core functions in a city with more than half a million people.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s possible, we suppose, that Campos was rehabilitated by the 27 days he spent in jail for his crime, despite recurrent poor judgment since his release.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s possible that now, he genuinely wants to serve his community.<\/p>\n
Whatever the case, he should end his quixotic council bid, and accept that sex offenders simply have no place in elected office.<\/p>\n
If redemption is his goal, he should find another way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s a reason we seldom see registered sex offenders running for public office: They lack judgment, they\u2019re unpopular,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[7,723,989,112,114,113,3001,975,23734],"class_list":["post-204945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-california","tag-crime","tag-elections","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news","tag-legislation","tag-opinion","tag-sex-offenders"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Rene](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/2018-booking-photo-related-child-122744231.jpg\")
Rene Campos in a 2018 booking photo. California DOJ<\/p>\n