Jim Desmond wants to represent California's 48th Congressional District. On July 12, he posted a thank-you on Facebook to a local official who had spent the day knocking on doors for his campaign.

"Your leadership and commitment to our community mean so much."

The official was Jessica Alexander, now the mayor of Temecula. And her "leadership" has a specific public record attached to it — one Desmond either didn't check or didn't mind.

What she said

In April 2021, during a Temecula city council meeting, Alexander — then a councilmember — objected to COVID-19 mask requirements by comparing herself to Rosa Parks.

Not as a passing metaphor. As the whole argument:

"[Parks] finally took a stand and moved to the front. I'm getting pushed to the back of the bus. I'm telling you, I feel like I'm getting pushed to the back of the bus."

Rosa Parks was arrested in 1955 for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger under laws that segregated Black Americans by force. Alexander's comparison was to being asked to wear a piece of cloth over her face during a pandemic that killed more than a million Americans.

Residents of Temecula and Murrieta told her exactly what they thought. Several called for her resignation during public comment. The comparison got picked up nationally; Stephen Colbert said it took away his appetite.

She doubled down

The Rosa Parks line wasn't a one-time slip that she walked back.

Weeks later, in a May 4 email, Alexander referred to COVID-19 as the "China virus." When the local press asked about it, she defended the phrase:

"I used the words China virus … because that is where it came from."

Her own colleagues on the council did not let it pass.

Councilmember Matt Rahn called the reference "exceptionally offensive" and "surprisingly thoughtless."

Then-Mayor Jocelyn Yow called the comments "dangerous" and "ignorant," saying they "stigmatizes and harms our community."

Alexander did not apologize for either statement.

And it kept going

In June 2023, when Temecula's mayor read a Pride Month proclamation, Alexander physically walked away from the dais rather than sit through it.

In her statement explaining why, she wrote:

"We will eventually see MAPS (Minor Attracted Persons) be recognized under this flag, I hope this is your line in the sand?"

That is the claim that LGBTQ+ people are a gateway to legitimizing pedophilia — a smear with a long, ugly history and no evidence behind it, aimed at her own constituents.

Why Desmond specifically

Politicians get photographed with a lot of people. A rope-line handshake isn't an endorsement of everything someone has ever said.

This wasn't that. Alexander spent a day working for Desmond's campaign, and Desmond went out of his way to publicly thank her and praise her "leadership." That's a choice about whose help you want and whose reputation you're willing to stand next to.

It also lands on a nerve for Desmond in particular, because his own pandemic record is not clean.

While serving as a San Diego County supervisor during the deadliest public health crisis in a century, Desmond used his podcast and conservative media appearances to tell people the danger wasn't real. In May 2020, he claimed San Diego County had seen only "six pure, solely coronavirus deaths" — dismissing the nearly 200 other San Diegans who had died with underlying conditions like diabetes, cancer, or COPD. The claim traveled nationally and was picked up by Joe Rogan.

By that August, San Diego County had recorded more than 600 COVID deaths.

Voice of San Diego also reported that Desmond repeatedly waved off the county's own public health messaging as "hysteria," and "openly advocate[d] that catching the coronavirus is a good thing, because healthy people will build up antibodies" — which the outlet noted was "entirely speculative" and unsupported by CDC guidance at the time.

So when Desmond campaigns alongside a politician whose signature contribution to the mask debate was comparing herself to Rosa Parks, it isn't an odd pairing. It's a consistent one.

The standard

Voters in California's 48th District are entitled to know who a candidate keeps close and what he'll tolerate.

Desmond had an easy option here. Alexander's comments are years old, thoroughly documented, and were condemned at the time by members of her own city council. He could have said the words are not how he sees things.

Instead he thanked her for her leadership.

We deserve better.

Source

Reporting by American Journal News (July 31, 2026), with original reporting from CBS News Los Angeles, The Press-Enterprise, and Valley News.