Critics of Huntington Beach Mayor Gracey Van Der Mark have called her many things during her short but chaotic political career. She has been accused of antisemitism because she once created a YouTube playlist titled “Holocaust hoax?” that featured videos questioning the Shoah. A racist, for using the term “colored people” to refer to Black attendees at a racial justice workshop in Santa Monica where she and Proud Boys showed up .
A puppet of forces looking to cleanse Surf City of liberal anything. A homophobe, for supporting measures that banned the flying of the Pride flag on city property and any municipal celebration of Pride month , and for pushing for a purge of LGBTQ+ titles from the young adult section of the Huntington Beach Public Library she found indecent. Vendida , for being a Latina supporter of Donald Trump .
None of these words was on my mind after our one-hour conversation last month. Instead, what bubbled up was buchona . Originally used to describe the wives and girlfriends of Mexican cartel members, buchona has transformed into shorthand for Latinas who wield power and are not afraid to flaunt it.
That’s the Van Der Mark I encountered the moment we met in her small fourth-story office at Huntington Beach City Hall. The 50-year-old wore a form-fitting denim zip-up jumpsuit straight outta Stagecoach. Her hot pink nails matched the J.
Crew trench coat wrapped over her chair, and the coat of the same color hanging from her office door. Completing the.
