The Seaside City Council is down two councilors after one was recalled and another resigned.
At a council meeting on March 23, City Councilor Heidi Hoffman announced she was resigning effective April 15 because she is moving to Astoria.
“No, I am not resigning in protest of the recall vote,” she said, referring to the March 17 recall election of City Councilor Seamus McVey, who represents Ward 3.
“I think when a small group of people can target somebody,” she began, then sighed and raised one hand in a short, dismissive wave. “Enough of that. Seamus, you know how I feel.”
“I do,” McVey replied.
This week, Clatsop County released official results that upheld the initial results from March: McVey has been recalled, with 185 votes in favor of his recall and 144 votes opposed.
The petitioners behind the recall claimed McVey was elected under false pretenses and had been secretive about his past criminal record and a name change. Supporters, meanwhile, described the recall push as a “vendetta.”
McVey denied the allegations against him. When the official recall results were released this week, KMUN reached out to McVey for comment but did not receive a response.
However, at the Seaside City Council meeting on March 23 where Hoffman announced her resignation, McVey told city councilors he has been open about his past and condemned what he called the “mudslinging, name-calling and slanderous” behavior of some in the community.
Still, he said the voters had spoken and he would respect that — though he wondered about who would want to fill his vacant seat given what he had just gone through.
“Y’all, we’re volunteers at a city level,” McVey said. “There’s no reason we should be getting death threats for the work we’re doing. We’re all on the same side trying to improve this community and we might come at it from different angles but we all have the same goal: To make this community better.”
“I hope that one day we’ll get there, or we no longer feel the need to tear each other down with lies, with hatred, with deceit,” he added. “We can do better.”
McVey was elected in 2024, beating opponent Mark Hopman. His term was set to run through 2028. On March 23, McVey said he felt he had achieved the goals he campaigned on: better conditions for the homeless, increased housing supply and a crackdown on illegal fireworks in the city.
“I may be losing this seat, I don’t have to hang my head,” McVey said. “I can go out proud that I’ve accomplished quite a bit.”
McVey said he will remain involved with city discussions and issues, but from the other side of the dais.
Mayor Steve Wright said he feels bad about the situation and is concerned about people using recalls as a tool to remove someone from office because they disagree with them about an issue or have a personal problem with them.
“We have a seven-member council for a particular reason,” he said, “and that’s so we can have different viewpoints and hopefully come to agreement on whatever is going to serve the broader community of Seaside.”
“You don’t like somebody, let them serve out their term and then…elect somebody else,” he added.
In 2024, R.J. Marx, the former editor of The Seaside Signal, filed a petition on behalf of the group Freedom To Read Seaside to recall Ward 1 City Councilor Steve Dillard after Dillard raised concerns about materials available at the Seaside Public Library.
Dillard claimed the library was providing sexually explicit materials to minors and called for age restrictions on certain books at the library.
Voter turnout was relatively high and an overwhelming majority voted to remove Dillard from his seat. Voter turnout for McVey’s recall was lower and the vote was closer, but the result was the same.
“We’ve had somebody that was…more far right and somebody that was more far left,” Wright said, referring to Dillard and McVey respectively, “and I think we just need to use those differences to come to common conclusions and figure out what’s best for the city.”
McVey’s recall follows more immediately after a tumultuous appointment process to fill a vacant seat on the council that began last year and stretched into January.
The council was split between two candidates, Padraic Ansbro and Brandon Kraft, and Kraft faced allegations of homophobia and bigotry and concerns about what some in the community worried was a far right agenda. Some of those concerns stemmed from a Substack post written by Marx.
A majority of the council chose Ansbro — Wright was the tie-breaking vote. But comments McVey made during the process about memes that Kraft had posted on social media several years prior sparked indignation among people already involved in the recall effort against him and furthered calls for his removal.
Like McVey, Wright also worries that all the recent contention and controversy could discourage people who might be interested in filling empty seats on the council now.
“People are gonna look at that and say, ‘You know, is this someplace I really wanna be?'” he said.
There are several options when it comes to filling McVey and Hoffman’s vacant seats.
The Seaside City Council could move forward with an appointment process. That could take several months. Councilors may also choose to do nothing and wait for the November election.
The city council will discuss next steps at a meeting on April 27.
Wright wouldn’t state his preference, but he noted that doing nothing and waiting for November keeps the city council out of the process and puts it in the voters’ hands.
“I don’t know that any of us really want to go through what we went through the last time,” Wright said.
However, this could open the door to a busy election and, possibly, lead to significant changes on the council lineup.
Ansbro’s appointment only runs through the end of the year and all of the remaining councilors’ terms — including Wright’s — are up for election in November. Wright told KMUN he plans to run again.