Since the early spring of 2025, a large, loud, and strident network of progressive-Left activists, organizations and outlets has emerged in Fullerton, working in concert against three council members who won’t toe their line. More than a year of constant attacks from these individuals and groups has, in the view of a number of observers, negatively impacted the city’s civic culture and how businesses see Fullerton.
Those council members are Mayor Fred Jung, a right-of-center independent; Jamie Valencia, a centrist Democrat; and Nick Dunlap, a conservative Republican.
The effort picked up steam in mid-2025, as Jung geared up to run for the county Board of Supervisors.
A few weeks ago, Fullerton Mayor Fred Jung and Councilmember Jamie Valencia were served with notices of intent to recall them – the targets of a network of progressive activists, consultants and organizations seeking to bring city government under their sway.
Jung’s sin was caring more about economic growth and public safety than ideological fetishes like legal defense funds for illegal immigrants. The same goes for Valencia, who earned their ire by refusing their demands on the same issues.
“This new cabal began to materialize seemingly out of nowhere in spring of last year, as I was gearing up to run for Supervisor,” said Jung.
So who is this new Fullerton cabal?
Elijah Manassero And Fullerton Transparency
If this cabal has a face, it is the youthful visage of Elijah Manassero and his “Fullerton Transparency” project.
According to its website, Fullerton Transparency “is dedicated to shining a light on the decisions that shape our city. We break down complex policies, track political influence, and provide residents with clear, accessible information so that Fullerton’s future is guided by its people, not by special interests.”
In practice, its real focus seems to be hammering Jung, Valencia and Dunlap – especially Jung – with an endless stream of invective and accusations.
In mid-2025, as Jung prepared an ultimately unsuccessful run for the OC Board of Supervisors, Manassero began writing opinion pieces for the Fullerton Observer, a liberal local newspaper, and using public comments at council meetings to lambaste Jung.
Soon after, he launched Fullerton Transparency – his vehicle for disseminating video clips of himself and his allies blasting Jung, Valencia and Dunlap during council meetings.
Many observers of Fullerton politics understandably assumed that, at least until the June 2026 primary, Manassero and Fullerton Transparency served as proxies through which the campaign of Jung’s opponent, Connor Traut, could attack Jung on his home turf.
According to Jung, few people paid attention to Manassero at first. That changed when Fullerton Transparency posted a video on Instagram of Jung being ambushed by a process server in the Orange County Power Authority parking lot. Jung was being sued by liberal former Fullerton Councilwoman Jan Flory over his supervisor candidate statement.
“I had no idea I was being recorded — [the server] had a body camera, and someone else was filming from elsewhere in the parking lot,” recalled Jung.
The video quickly topped 1,000 views and kept climbing.
Jung suspects Buena Park Councilwoman Susan Sonne, a Traut ally, tipped them off, because the ad hoc committee meeting he was there to attend wasn’t public.
“How would anyone know about a non-noticed meeting unless it’s somebody from the [OCPA] board? Certainly the staff wouldn’t tell anybody if I’m going to be there,” said Jung.
“So who would that have been? Well, the chair of that agency is Buena Park Councilwoman Susan Sonne, who is a staunch, ardent supporter of supervisorial candidate and now mayor of Buena Park, Connor Traut,” said Jung.
“After I was served, staff told me that Sonne had called earlier that day to ask if I was going to be at the ad hoc committee meeting in person,” Jung noted. “I mean, it’s not hard to draw the conclusion there.”
Manassero admits he was tipped off in advance by a “confidential source” that Jung would be served in the OCPA parking lot and went there to video it.
“I was the person filming Mr. Jung when he was served,” Manassero acknowledged. “A confidential source informed me in advance that the service was going to take place, and I went there to document it.”
“I had no role in determining when, where, or how Mr. Jung would be served, and I did not participate in planning or coordinating the service itself,” said Manassero.
Manassero said Sonne was not the confidential source. Asked separately about Sonne, he said, “To my knowledge, I have never met Ms. Sonne.”
We asked Connor Traut if he was Manassero’s confidential source. Traut replied, “No,” and said neither he nor his campaign played any role in the parking lot ambush.
Asked whether Traut was his confidential source, Manassero said, “I’m going to maintain the confidentiality of my source and won’t confirm or deny individual names.”
Susan Sonne did not respond to our questions.
Traut’s campaign finance disclosures do not list Manassero as an employee, and we found no documented financial or organizational connection between Traut’s campaign and Manassero or Fullerton Transparency.
Asked if he knew Manassero, Traut responded, “I know who he is.”
Who funds Fullerton Transparency? Manassero said he does, adding that “a handful of followers support the page through Patreon, where no individual contributes more than $10 per month, as well as through a recent merchandise offering.”
When constituents have long-running grievances with their local elected officials – especially when it is on an ongoing basis for more than a year and half – it’s not uncommon for them to meet in person to air them.
Has Manassero ever done so with Jung or Valencia personally?
“I’ve never had a personal conversation with him,” said Valencia.
“Never,” Jung told us.
The Fullerton Cabal Feedback Loop
Sustaining such a constant barrage of negative publicity against Jung, Valencia and Dunlap requires planning, execution and a system.
That system is a feedback loop. First, the cabal’s house organ, the Fullerton Observer, publishes an article or editorial – it can be hard to tell the difference – attacking one or more members of the Jung/Valencia/Dunlap majority. Sometimes the activists themselves, like Manassero, write the articles.
Next, Manassero and his allies take to the podium during public comments to assail the council majority over that article. Manassero then promotes videos of these attacks on social media, and the Observer reports on them in its next issue.
It’s a perpetual propaganda-motion machine: creating the outrage, reporting on it, recording themselves being outraged about what they reported, then feeding the video into Instagram.
“Starting To Eat Into Fullerton Itself As A City”
Valencia says the cumulative impact of these ceaseless rhetorical barrages by activists led by Manassero and Fullerton Transparency has damaged the city’s reputation in the business community.
“They have caused a lot of damage in Fullerton,” said Valencia. “Businesses don’t want to come here because they don’t think our city has a good reputation for businesses.”
Andrew Gregson, longtime president of the North Orange County Chamber of Commerce – founded in 1893, it represents businesses in Fullerton, Buena Park, La Palma and Stanton – agreed, saying the activists’ rhetoric and tactics, while protected speech, have become corrosive to Fullerton’s civic and business climate.
“It’s really starting to eat into Fullerton as a city,” Gregson said. He said at least four businesses have decided against opening or expanding in Fullerton because of the atmosphere, with one out-of-town owner citing the city’s “unsettling environment.”
Gregson said the activists have gone beyond rhetorically targeting Jung, Valencia and Dunlap at council meetings and crossed into personal harassment, citing a 2025 incident in which one of them hostilely confronted Valencia at a city-sponsored Veterans Day event she attended with her young son.
“They may not realize it, but they’re hurting the city in a deeper capacity,” said Gregson.
Fullerton Forward PAC
Another piece of the cabal pie is the “Fullerton Forward” political action committee, formed earlier this year.
Fullerton Forward is run by longtime political consultant Steven Sherry, head of business partnerships for Turn It Blue Digital, a political advertising firm whose website says its mission is to “help Democrats & Progressives get elected.”
So far this year, Fullerton Forward PAC has raised $26,290.62 and spent $16,827.12, according to its most recent campaign filing. The PAC’s website claims it is “powering a better future for Fullerton by raising funds and strategically investing in campaigns, initiatives, organizations, and local businesses that strengthen our city and bring our community together.”
According to its campaign reports, however, nearly every dime of that “investment” has gone to pricey events, overhead or Sherry’s consulting fees – such as a $4,560.80 payment to Sherry for fundraising.
Among the expenditures:
- $4,507.02 for a March 26, 2026 kick-off party at Madero 1899 Cantina Y Cocina where Fullerton progressives got to “discover our vision while enjoying cocktails and local food.”
- $1,000 in contributions to the Democratic Party of Orange County; one can infer the PAC only wants to move Fullerton Forward in a Democratic direction.
- $1,147.46 for a wing-ding at Take Five for Fullerton progressives to enjoy “an evening of live jazz from special guest Ron Kobayashi, traditional Lebanese appetizers, and real talk about what’s ahead for our city.
- $772.50 to Sherry’s firm Turn It Blue Digital for Internet services.
On September 26, Fullerton Forward PAC hosted a “Pour It Forward – Sip, Savor and Support” party where local progressives ate, drank and learned about the PAC’s “upcoming election projects.”
What are those projects? One may be the $1,872.50 in digital ads supporting left-wing Democrat council candidate Jozef Maldonado in District 5 – a small portion of its funds, and its only spending on actual voter contact.
In other words, only 11% of the PAC’s spending has gone to voter contact.
The PAC’s most recent filing reports only $9,463.50 in cash on hand as of September 19 – before the Maldonado ads and whatever was spent on the “Pour It Forward” party.
That won’t leave much for “upcoming election projects.” Then again, those don’t appear to have been a priority for Fullerton Forward.
Who is paying for all this progressive partying?
Half the donors gave between $100 and $500 each. By far the biggest donor is Joel Maus, a businessman and bicycling enthusiast who has given $10,500.
Second is Helen Higgins, at $2,425, a progressive Democrat who writes many checks to progressive Democrat candidates in Fullerton and regularly lambastes Jung et al. at council meetings.
Other donors include:
- Aaruni Thakur, a signatory proponent of the Jung recall campaign
- Jodi Balma, the Fullerton College political science professor who does double duty as partisan Democrat activist and independent expert quote source for the Voice of OC.
- Matthew Truxaw, a leader of the Fred Jung recall campaign
- Wonnapa Natanom-Harrold, a leader of the campaign to recall Jamie Valencia.
- Kitty Jaramillo, a progressive gadfly defeated by Valencia in 2024 and signer of the Valencia recall petition
- Elizabeth Hansburg, former Planning Commissioner
- Linda Gardner, a member of the Fullerton Forward PAC Advisory Board and longtime Fullerton Democrat activist. Her late husband was a vocal advocate for bicycling and biking trails.
- Nan Natanom-Harrold, another progressive activist, signer of the Valencia recall petition and regular member of the Jung/Valencia/Dunlap vilification troupe.
- Wendy Florin – a signer of the Jung recall petition
- Stephanie Valdes – a signer of the Jung recall petition
Fullerton Forward PAC donors overlap significantly with donors to the council campaigns of Democrats Shana Charles and Jozef Maldonado and with the leadership of the Jung and Valencia recalls. They can reasonably be seen as simply different manifestations of the same collective of progressive activists.
At its August 18 meeting, the council deliberated over selecting a waste hauler. The cabal was out in force, accusing the council majority of being bought by campaign donations from Valley Vista Services.
Sherry, in full snark mode, phoned in during public comments to complain that Valley Vista Services’ president had contributed $15,000 to a Bushala-run PAC.
“I run another PAC in the city called Fullerton Forward and I don’t see any checks for $15,000 there, David. And so it seems a little lopsided on who you’re supporting at the city level,” Sherry said snidely.
Given the mismanagement of his PAC, there may have been more than a little sincerity in Sherry’s snark.
Orange County Congregation Community Organization
A key part of the new cabal is the Orange County Congregation Community Organization, better known as OCCCO. Two OCCCO staffers, Jason Phillips and Blandy Morales, signed the recall petition as official proponents and have participated in the Three Minutes Hates organized by Manassero.
Phillips is also a chaplain for the Fullerton Police Department.
OCCCO presents itself as a “congregation-based” organization of “community organizers” with a social justice bent. But OCCCO is more than a run-of-the-mill Religious Left group: it is an intensely political 501(c)3 that is deeply involved in the broader progressive political project.
OCCCO boasts about promoting “civic participation” – i.e. political activism – and its website claims that in the last year it had “8000 conversations with low-income and undecided voters to promote voter turnout and at least 500 deep-canvassing conversations in Anaheim, Fullerton and La Habra.”
In other words, OCCCO is a voter-turnout operation whose efforts benefit progressive-Left candidates and campaigns. When most people think about how nonprofits can help the disadvantaged climb the ladder of opportunity, they think of job training, rent and food assistance and other services that help struggling families get ahead.
That isn’t how left-wing groups like OCCCO see things. They believe the poor get ahead through ever more government services – and therefore “the people” must build political power through organizing and voter mobilization to wring more government services from taxpayers.
Despite the scrappy, grassroots image it cultivates; OCCCO is well-funded. Its Form 990s show annual revenues in the $1 million to $1.2 million range, mostly from the broader progressive “charity” complex and sometimes from government (it received more than $500,000 in taxpayer funding in 2022).
Among OCCCO’s funders is The San Francisco Foundation, which uses its $1.9 billion in assets to support “left-of-center issues such as expansionist immigration, abortion support, environmentalism, racial activism, low-income housing, and LGBT issues,” according to InfluenceWatch.com.
Another funder is the Californians for Justice Education Fund, which InfluenceWatch.com characterizes as focused on “identity politics” and “race-based policy/activism.” Other large progressive donors include The California Endowment, which backstops left-wing advocacy groups statewide, and local NGOs such as The United Way of Orange County, the Orange County Community Foundation and the Anaheim Community Foundation.
Last year, with grant money from progressive behemoth The Tides Foundation, OCCCO launched a “long bridging” canvassing operation in Anaheim Hills, where most of that city’s GOP voters are concentrated. The twin goals of such operations are gathering political intelligence on issues of importance to Anaheim Hills voters and using the human touch to break down presumed hostility to progressive-Left activism. OCCCO builds a database of potentially sympathetic or reachable voters that can be shared, along with acquired intelligence, with allied progressive groups.
OCCCO has now brought this “bridging” campaign to Fullerton – just as the Jung and Valencia recall campaigns will presumably be gathering signatures.
OCCCO’s partner in these “bridging” campaigns is UC Berkeley’s radical Othering & Belonging Institute – which in turns gets its funding from giant left-wing funders such as George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The California Endowment, The James Irvine Foundation, and others.
Aaruni Thakur
Another member of the cabal is Aaruni Thakur, a progressive activist with an interesting political career.
He was elected to the Fullerton City School District Board of Education in 2018 and 2022, running unopposed both times to represent Trustee Area 1. Then, on September 10, 2025, he abruptly resigned without explanation. He is one of the proponents of the attempted Jung recall.
Several months earlier, he had been implicated in a 2024 scheme to run a man named Scott Markowitz as a fake Republican in Council District 4 and siphon votes from conservative Republican Linda Whitaker to tilt the race to progressive activist/gadfly Kitty Jaramillo.
The scheme was exposed by the Friends for Fullerton’s Future blog, and Markowitz pleaded guilty to falsifying his candidacy paperwork, admitting he had not collected the signatures he claimed, under penalty of perjury, to have gathered.
While Ajay Mohan, a former OC Democratic Party staffer was publicly fingered as the manager of Markowitz’s fraudulent candidacy, Fullerton businessman and political activist Tony Bushala alleged in a May 27, 2025 letter to District Attorney Todd Spitzer that the real mastermind was Thakur:
“The individual who circulated Mr. Markowitz’s petition, but whose name did not appear on the petition, was Aaruni Thakur. I have been informed by Ajay Mohan that he was recruited to assist in creating the fraudulent Markowitz campaign by retrieving nominating papers from the Fullerton City Clerk. According to Mohan it was Aaruni Thakur who procured the necessary signatures for Mr. Markowitz, who then signed the nomination papers, falsely stating he had circulated them himself,” Bushala wrote.
This wasn’t Thakur’s first involvement in campaign chicanery.
In 2020 – while serving on the school board – he ran unsuccessfully for Fullerton City Council in District 4 against incumbent Bruce Whitaker. However, the address where he claimed to live was outside of the trustee area he represented on the school board. That home was also half the size of the 3,229-square-foot, five-bedroom house where he actually lived.
Jung recalled the episode.
“He and I ran together for different council seats in the city of Fullerton. He ran in District 4 against Bruce Whitaker, and I ran in District 1,” said Jung. “I remember hearing very clearly from folks in the community that he lived in District 1, where I live. In fact, his home is not far away from my home.”
Jung recalled seeing Thakur’s car parked in the driveway of the house where “everyone tells me he’s living in District 1” – which was not the address where he claimed to live as a council candidate.
Thakur’s voter registration history shows him to be a nomad within the 92833 ZIP code: he has registered at seven different addresses since he began running for office in Fullerton. Yet he invariably returns to the 3,229-square-foot home on Root Street, where his wife is also registered – and where he has been registered three separate times.
In October 2025, a few weeks after resigning from the school board, Thakur re-registered at the Root Street house yet again – outside the trustee area he had represented. This raises the question of whether Thakur ever really lived in Trustee Area 1 while on the school board.
Jan Flory
One of the stranger chapters in this saga came last year, when former Mayor Jan Flory, another partisan Democrat, sued Jung over parts of his supervisor candidate statement. The judge ruled in her favor, but the weird part was Flory’s justification for suing: she told the court that if Jung were elected supervisor, she would be harmed because she couldn’t lobby Connor Traut on county contracts or be appointed to a county commission that paid a stipend.
Sound strange and vaguely corrupt? Yes. Yet Flory put it in black and white to diminish Jung’s election prospects:
“[Jan Flory] has publicly endorsed Jung’s primary electoral opponent (Connor Traut) and has taken the potentially politically unpopular step of challenging the false and misleading parts of Jung’s ballot designation and candidate statement. If published in the official election material, Jung is more likely to win the election.”
“As a political opponent, Petitioner (that’s Flory) is unlikely to be appointed by the Supervisor to any of the County’s 85, boards, commissions and committees; whereas as a highly-qualified and prominent supporter of Traut, she may well earn an appointment. Membership on a board or commission not only comes with political advantages, but pecuniary advantages as the County “pays certain board and commission members stipends for attending meetings.” Other benefits—for which “it would be extremely difficult to ascertain the amount”—could accrue to prominent supporters of a winning candidate, including opportunities to be hired as staff counsel or prestige in the community as a lawyer or lobbyist.”
When asked if he had made any promises of appointment to Flory, Traut replied, “No.”
Flory has presumably abandoned any future electoral ambitions, having stated in a court filing that she sued Jung because his victory would prevent her from profiting from her political connections.
Jody Vallejo
Jody Agius Vallejo is one of the cabal’s more colorful characters – though probably not intentionally.
Vallejo is an academic and self-proclaimed “expert” – specifically, a professor of Sociology and American Studies and Ethnicity at USC and an associate director of its Dornsife Equity Research Institute (ERI) which “seeks to use data and analysis to contribute to a more powerful, well-resourced, intersectional, and intersectoral movement for equity.”
She is one of those progressive-Left activists who blurs or ignores the distinction between legal and illegal immigration and helps lead efforts in North OC to prevent federal authorities from deporting illegal immigrants.
Vallejo demands to be taken seriously but is notorious for her behavior at public events – at the most recent Fullerton State of the City, she heckled Mayor Fred Jung.
Last month, Vallejo and another progressive open-borders activist spoke to the Laguna Woods Democratic Club about illegal immigration and ICE deportations. Referring to her activism in support of illegal immigrants, Vallejo said. “People ask us if we’re scared…worried about being persecuted or arrested.”
“We’ll see what happens after this video gets posted on YouTube,” she answered histrionically.
That ought to be a red flag: thinking she might be “disappeared” for saying at a Democratic club exactly what thousands of other left-wing activists openly say about border enforcement, illegal immigration and deportation policy – without consequence and with the full institutional support of the media, academia and the nonprofit-industrial complex.
Support for illegal immigrants colors her political beliefs and actions. She believes, for example, that illegal immigration lowers crime rates. In her binary world, you’re either “welcoming” (i.e. pro-open borders and anti-deportation), or you’re “exclusionary” (you support enforcing immigration laws).
It even infuses her support for the recall. Vallejo told the Laguna Woods Democrats. “Two of our city council members were served recall notices tonight…partly because people were angry because they did not support immigrants via funds for legal services and basic needs.”
Not that Vallejo’s racialist politics isn’t flexible in the face of political necessity.
At the August 18 council meeting, a parade of Korean-American residents denounced the Jung recall during public comments.
This show of ethnic solidarity so bothered Vallejo that she took to the podium herself. Sounding more like a colonizer than a champion of racial equity, Vallejo criticized a Korean-American resident for having the temerity to contact other Korean-Americans who had signed the recall petitions and urge them to reconsider – while slamming this person for not similarly engaging non-Korean recall proponents.
Lecturing members of a “marginalized community” about whom they can talk to? Isn’t the Dornsife Equity Research Institute, of which she is associate director, supposed to be “working towards social, racial, economic and environmental justice” instead of oppressing immigrants?
Catalysts For The Recalls
According to Jung and Valencia, two issues in particular fueled the new cabal’s appetite for targeting them with recalls.
One was the reopening of Wilshire Avenue in restaurant-heavy downtown Fullerton. A section had been closed during COVID so hard-hit restaurants could offer outdoor dining.
“By the time I took office, though, the pandemic had ended, but the closure hadn’t,” Jung recalled. “A vocal group of residents wanted to keep the street permanently closed. I told them I was actually open to that idea — but only if it was done right.” He pointed to Santa Barbara’s State Street as a model.
“It’s closed to cars. There are bollards, good lighting, active businesses, and constant foot traffic — people walking, biking, skating, kids playing. It feels alive,” said Jung.
“Wilshire wasn’t like that at all. The original closure was thrown together with electrical tape and police caution tape. There was still no real lighting.”
“Meanwhile, a group of community activists showed up with a petition — about a thousand signatures, most from outside Fullerton – asking to keep the street closed permanently,” said Jung.
However, Jung also said small business owners on Wilshire complained the lack of car traffic was hurting businesses.
“So I decided to get real data. It turned out the closed section of Wilshire was averaging less than 30 visitors a day – while Amerige, the next street over, was seeing over 1,000 cars a day.”
“That made the decision clear for me,” said Jung. “Weighing those numbers, I voted to reopen Wilshire Avenue.”
The other catalyst came in 2025, when progressive groups like OCCCO lobbied the council for $250,000 to pay legal expenses for illegal immigrants caught up in ICE enforcement.
“ICE is a federal entity. They supersede anything we do as a city,” Jung said. “So this notion of, well, you’re gonna take a city who’s already got budget issues, and somehow we’re gonna carve out $250,000 for an immigrant fund, I just found that to be nonsensical.”
Valencia also cited the defense fund as a major catalyst for the recalls.
Valencia opposes ICE’s aggressive tactics and says she made a good-faith effort to work with groups like OCCCO, Solidarity, Pathways and Radiant Futures, among others.
“I wanted to figure out how we could get resources to the community during that time of the ICE involvement, and help impacted families with shelter, food, clothing and other means of support,” said Valencia.
Valencia and Jung voted to put the city on record supporting the ACLU’s lawsuit challenging alleged warrantless immigration stops and arrests, and to file an amicus brief.
But what the groups wanted was the $200,000 illegal immigrant defense fund. Both opposed going that far, citing the city’s tight budget.
“And then they all attacked me – because I didn’t give them that $200,000 that they really wanted,” said Valencia.
Recall: A Real Threat Or A Comedy of Errors?
California law prescribes a detailed process for qualifying a recall election, including properly drafted petitions. So far, the Fullerton City Clerk has twice rejected the cabal’s recall petitions for errors. A third, corrected petition was recently submitted.
Thus far, the support for the recall appears confined to the proponents. Labor organizations are either opposing it – including the Teamsters, the Fullerton Police Officers Association and the Fullerton Firefighters Association – or staying neutral.
In recent years, the Democratic-controlled state legislature changed recall law to eliminate the replacement-candidate ballot. Without replacement candidates campaigning to turn out pro-recall voters, recalls have become harder to win. This change is one of the reasons a 2023 recall against Santa Ana Councilmember Jesse Lopez – amply funded by the Santa Ana police officers union – failed.
Some recall supporters have characterized their efforts as electoral do-overs. Recall supporter and Fullerton Forward donor Karen Llareda said as much at the August 18, 2026 city council meeting::
“As for you Councilwoman Valencia? You won by 53 votes. 53 votes. And that was primarily due to someone spending a lot of money to misrepresent your opponent who was actually qualified to do the job. This recall is an effort to correct a very unfortunate wrong.”
“I think that speaks volumes about the real purpose of this recall,” said Jung. “From their disjointed, disingenuous and hastily written petitions to their vicious tactics – when you strip away the rhetoric, these recalls are really about reversing elections this cabal lost – including a race in which their allies stand accused of trying to rig with a fake candidate.”
Ultimately, this matter comes down to whether their passions are shared by Fullerton voters at large.
We recently caught up with Councilmember Valencia while she was knocking on doors and asked what concerns she was hearing from residents.
“They raise the topic of our roads that need to be fixed, our infrastructure that needs to be updated and just helping the overall city and creating some revenue, generating jobs,” she said. “City stuff.”
Asked whether anyone had brought up the recall, Valencia shook her head.
“Not a single person,” she replied.
That may be the most telling measure.
