In an April 18, 2013, column in the Chico News-Review, Editor Robert Speer writes of an encounter with former Chico City Council candidate Toby Schindelbeck:

He’s outta here: I ran into erstwhile City Council candidate Toby Schindelbeck last week at Chico Sports Club. He thanked me for my March 7 column supporting his effort to have the City Council consider his Second Amendment resolution, and we agreed that the council hadn’t handled it well. Then he told me he’d sold his two Nutrishop stores and was moving to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho—that very weekend, in fact.

On his Facebook page, he tells why he’s moving. He and his wife “really loved Chico,” he says, and “when the opportunity came for me to run for council and try to make a difference locally, I jumped on it and did my best. But, Chico does not want to change. The majority seem to be just fine with a liberal majority ruining our great city, and it was no longer the quality of life that we moved here for. Coupled with the Democrat supermajority in the Legislature that happened at the last election, I knew it was time to move on.”

I like Toby and respect his passion. He stirred things up and tried to make democracy work according to his lights. But I’ve lived here a lot longer than he did, and I’ve seen liberal councils and conservative councils come and go, and none of them have been able to ruin Chico. So far, anyway. Full column here.

DFO: Schindelbeck, of course, has been embraced by conservative hardliners in Coeur d'Alene, despite being relatively new to our community, as a guiding light to expand their influence among elected officials. He ran for the state Legislature only a year after landing in town. And now he's running for the City Council. Some of the themes he test-drove in Chico, Calif., seem to be re-emerging in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. We'll see soon if even Coeur d'Alene is too, ahem, liberal for Mr. Schindelbeck.