Shasta County Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis denounced the results of two investigations into misconduct allegations made against during a raucous press conference that drew supporters and critics of the elections chief who showed up to hear what he had to say.
Standing outside the Market Street elections office flanked by four American flags in downtown Redding on Thursday evening, Curtis categorically denied all findings from the investigations, and called up three off-the-clock election workers to corroborate his claims.
“I didn’t do anything that was in that report. None of it … it’s all just a hack job,” said Curtis.
Curtis also said he is skeptical of the methods of third-party investigator Oppenheimer Investigations Group, and will be suing them.
Oppenheimer Investigations Group was not able to be reached for a response before deadline on May 21.
Curtis said he will not sue the employees that made allegations against him because they “don’t make enough money” and he wants them to make more money. He then said the Board of Supervisors should use the money they had planned to use to defend the employees against a lawsuit from Curtis to instead give the employees a raise.
Over the course of the press conference, supporters and detractors of Curtis yelled out, interrupting Curtis and other speakers and getting into arguments among each other. The final stretch of the conference was almost entirely inundated with the voice of one Curtis critic, who had brought a megaphone to the event.
After finishing his opening monologue, Curtis proceeded to call up three elections office workers to give their own personal testimony, including an activist who supported placing the voter ID Measure B on the June 2 primary ballot, Laura Hobbs, District 3 elections commission supervisor Patty Plumb and an elections worker named Marjorie Andrews.
Hobbs said she witnessed the event in which Curtis had allegedly threatened to have an employee pulled out of their office by their hair, and claimed that Curtis had actually said: “I’m going to call personnel right now and have personnel remove them.”
The three election workers also defended Curtis’ character and argued that the investigations had not adequately taken into account the perspectives of all elections workers.
Raucous argument and hollering reached a boiling point as Curtis ended the press conference, concurring with these sentiments.
“We didn’t do anything and other people know it, and the county needs to investigate it and give all parties equal evaluation…” said Curtis.
Following the official end of the press conference, many onlookers stayed at the location, continuing to argue with and yell at each other.
Two separate investigations concluded Curtis’ conduct toward staff was at times unprofessional.
A county investigative report, written by Social Services Director Monica Fugitt, found substantiated evidence that Curtis threatened to “have an employee pulled out their office by their hair,” retaliated against an employee for participating in a workplace investigation, made statements that he would slap or punch and throat punch staff, and engaged in abusive conduct toward his staff.
A prior investigation, conducted by the Oppenheimer Investigations Group, found substantiated evidence of additional instances of workplace misconduct.
One such finding was that Curtis made a remark on election night last November that he was going to “spank” an employee and that he “used exaggerated violent imagery in the workplace.”
The report also found that Curtis had more than likely made appearance-based comments toward female employees.
Nonetheless, it was noted the evidence did not sustain that Curtis was solely responsible “for the broader workplace” tension in the Shasta County Elections Department since he took over in May 2025.
Shasta County’s internal investigation happened in April, while the Oppenheimer investigation launched in August 2025 and wrapped up in March.
Based on the findings of these two reports, Fugitt recommended at an April 28 special Board of Supervisors meeting that that panel censure Curtis, and that he either work in a separate location from staff or have county employees assigned to the elections offices to monitor his communication with staff.
The supervisors ultimately voted 3-2 to delay a decision on censure until after the June 2 primary election.
Since then, county staff have been assigned to the elections offices to monitor Curtis’ behavior.
“There will be one Personnel manager assigned at Market St, and one CAO staff member assigned to Court Street, each day. Those specific individuals who are assigned will vary but on any given day it will be no more than two,” Fugitt said in an email to the Record Searchlight on Monday, May 11.
Fugitt said there is no timeframe for how long personnel staff would be deployed to the two offices.
Drew Askeland covers Redding and Shasta County government issues, as well as anything else that needs reporting for the Record Searchlight and USA Today Network. Reach him at drew.askeland@redding.com or (530) 225-8247. Please subscribe today to support our newsroom’s commitment to public service journalism.
This article originally appeared on Redding Record Searchlight: Shasta elections chief denies misconduct findings, plans lawsuit
Reporting by Drew Askeland, Redding Record Searchlight / Redding Record Searchlight
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