The Podcast Hosts Who Filed Against the People They Recalled

The Setting: Coachella's candidate filing period for one open city council seat closes today, Aug. 12, with the Nov. 3 general election already remade by a recall campaign that began outside city hall. The Speaker: Jesus Gonzalez and Vicente Zamora, co-hosts of the Instagram and podcast account More Than Politics Coachella Valley

Gonzalez and Zamora spent the spring building an audience out of council-meeting attendance and criticism of city leadership, then turned that audience into a recall effort against Councilmembers Denise Delgado and Yadira Perez, collecting more than 30 signatures before formally filing notices of intent in June. The recall cited unaddressed transportation needs for the city's senior population, but scrutiny fell just as quickly on the organizers themselves — Gonzalez is the son of a former Coachella mayor indicted on bribery charges in the 1990s, and neither man would rule out a council run of his own.

By July, that run had a name. Gonzalez filed to challenge Delgado directly for mayor, joining a field that already included interim Mayor Frank Figueroa and newcomer Frankie Molina, whose campaign has centered on the same data-center controversy Gonzalez and Zamora built their show around — the council's approval of a Stronghold-linked data center project tied to a developer the SEC ordered to repay $1.5 million in misappropriated investor funds. Zamora, meanwhile, filed for the city council seat his own recall petition was aimed at emptying.

The city extended that seat's filing window to today, giving any other resident until 5 p.m. to join him on the ballot. Whatever else happens between now and November, the race for Coachella's next mayor is being run, in part, by two men who spent the year arguing the current one shouldn't hold the job.