Failed Council Candidate Darian Bojeaux Lectures Beverly Hills Voters

Darian Bojeaux wants Beverly Hills voters to reject Judy Manouchehri. Her October 2 email, circulated to a large group of community members shortly before mail-in ballots are mailed, makes that clear. What it does not provide is adequate support for several of the accusations she uses to make her case.

Distributed under the Residents Against Overdevelopment banner, the email opens by warning about politically motivated false rumors. That is a reasonable concern. It also sets a standard Bojeaux's own message should meet.

Instead, readers receive an account that mixes observable events with disputed legal conclusions, accusations about intent, and predictions about financial consequences. The distinctions matter, particularly when the purpose is to influence an election.

Bojeaux is entitled to oppose Manouchehri. But an opposition email does not become a reliable account simply because its author invites corrections after sending it.

Bojeaux's own electoral record also deserves attention. In the 2022 Beverly Hills City Council election, she finished seventh among 11 candidates, receiving 834 votes, just 4.35% of all candidate votes cast. She has every right to express an opinion, but voters gave her own bid for leadership little support. Now she asks them to accept her judgment about who deserves to govern their schools. That record should give residents reason to question the political authority she assumes. An email list is not a public mandate, and a failed campaign does not make its author the community's referee on leadership.

Consider the litigation claims. Bojeaux describes the dispute over the BHUSD board vice presidency as extremely expensive. Yet her email supplies no dollar amount, billing records, or accounting of what the district has actually paid.

She then suggests there is likely a large insurance deductible and predicts a huge rate increase. Neither claim is accompanied by an insurance document, a verified deductible, or a renewal quote. Readers are being asked to react to a financial forecast without the information needed to evaluate it.

If Bojeaux has those records, she should produce them. Otherwise, the costs she predicts should be clearly identified as speculation.

Her assertion that electing Amanda Stern would have settled the lawsuit also requires support. The email provides no settlement agreement or documented terms establishing that this action alone would have ended the case. Calling a proposed outcome simple does not establish that it was available on the terms described.

Bojeaux also presents the disputed bylaw issue as an established violation. Her email identifies no court ruling resolving that question. Readers deserve to know which statements describe allegations and which describe findings.

The most heated passages concern Manouchehri's supposed motives. Bojeaux accuses her of orchestrating a public humiliation and characterizes her conduct as malicious and deceptive. Those are serious judgments. The email does not establish the intent behind the conduct.

A public disagreement can be criticized as unfair, poorly handled, or unnecessarily harsh. But asserting that someone deliberately planned to humiliate a colleague requires more than an angry interpretation of a meeting.

The same problem appears in Bojeaux's discussion of public comment. She criticizes the placement of non-agendized comments and the removal of remote participation, then attributes those practices to Manouchehri's desire to make participation difficult.

The policies deserve scrutiny. So do their adoption dates, the votes approving them, and the explanations offered for them. Bojeaux's email does not supply that account. It moves directly from criticism of a procedure to an accusation about one person's intentions.

Her school-performance argument also leaves substantial questions unanswered. Bojeaux cites a decline in a U.S. News ranking and places it alongside Manouchehri's tenure. But she does not identify the comparison years in the text, explain the underlying data, or establish why the change should be attributed to Manouchehri.

She acknowledges improvements in students meeting or exceeding state standards, but gives readers little basis to assess those gains alongside the ranking claim. A serious evaluation of district performance should examine both, with dates, sources, and context.

The enrollment claim deserves the same treatment. What period is being measured? What explanations have been examined? What decisions does Bojeaux contend caused the decline? The email states the conclusion without presenting the analysis.

Perhaps the most serious accusation concerns the district's response to racism. Students, parents, teachers, and alumni raising those concerns deserve a careful account of what was reported, what action was requested, how officials responded, and what failures are alleged.

Bojeaux instead offers a broad charge of unresponsiveness and references additional litigation. That is insufficient detail for readers to assess such a serious claim. The existence of litigation does not, by itself, establish the allegations being litigated.

Throughout the email, Bojeaux demands professionalism, fairness, and respect from elected officials. Those are proper expectations. Accuracy and substantiation are proper expectations of someone distributing accusations about them.

Her closing invitation to report inaccuracies does not shift that responsibility onto everyone who received the message. Checking serious claims should precede circulation.

Darian Bojeaux should publish the documentation behind her financial assertions, identify the basis for her settlement claim, distinguish disputed allegations from established findings, and provide a complete comparison of the academic measures she cites.

Until then, voters should read her message as an argument against Manouchehri whose central claims still require scrutiny.

Bojeaux asked residents to reject Judy. Residents should first demand that Bojeaux support her case.