Former Miss Universe eyes run for Baja Calif. governor
Could a former Miss Universe become the next governor of Baja California?
Lupita Jones, the 1991 winner of the international beauty pageant, is considering the idea of running for the post now held by Jaime Bonilla Valdez.
An online news service, borderreport.com, published word that Mexico’s National Action Party (PAN) apparently is pursuing Jones, to be its Baja California gubernatorial candidate in the June 6 election.
This is part of a reported push by PAN to recruit female candidates to campaign for various elected positions.
Jones, whose full name is Maria Guadalupe Jones Garay, recently appeared in an online video in which she corroborates the rumor: “It’s not a secret that various societal groups and political parties are inviting me to run for governor of Baja California,” says Jones, 53.
In her four-minute public address in Spanish, in which she acknowledges that she has no experience in politics, Jones appears to be testing the public’s reaction to her possible candidacy for the office.
She says she is “reflecting profoundly about my state and what I could do if I had that responsibility.” Being a newcomer to politics is good, she says, because it would enable her to “sit with everyone and work as a team.”
After her reign as Miss Universe, Jones, of Mexicali, started her own pageant business and was responsible for choosing Mexico’s candidates for Miss Universe and other global beauty contests. She also has worked as a television producer and acted in some Mexican soap operas. In 2015, Jones was openly critical of Donald Trump, then part-owner of the Miss Universe pageant, after he made disparaging remarks about Mexican immigrants. She asked that Mexico withdraw from the 2015 event and urged a boycott of the beauty contest’s products.
Jones spoke of Baja California as the vanguard of
Mexico, with its robust border economy and advances in manufacturing, technology, the arts, culture and craft beer industry.
She made an appeal for public input.
“I am going to continue reading (your comments) and listening to you all. I have to make a decision. And I want it to be the best for Baja California,” she says.
“If I were governor I would do it to unite the people and bring to Baja California a new era.”
Romancing the park: An “underground” video set in Balboa Park is getting some traction on YouTube. It plays to the tune of “Put a Little Love in Your Heart,” except that the word “park” is substituted for “heart.”
It turns out that neither the Chamber of Commerce nor the San Diego Tourism Authority is behind it. It’s the passion project of a father-daughter team, Ray and Renee Yomtob, unabashed Balboa Park devotees.
They corralled numerous park lovers — friends and friends of friends — to sing, play instruments, dance and kick up their heels for the spirited fourminute performance shepherded by keyboardist David Yuter and captured on video by Sam Hoiland.
The Balboa Park Conservancy, in an online “Valentine Newsflash,” called the music video “the ultimate love letter and call to action.” The conservancy has been encouraging everyone to “Put a Little Love in Your Park” and to share their romantic Balboa Park stories with an email to love@balboapark.org.
Ray hoped to send a powerful message of harmony to the world during a time of disharmony, noted the conservancy newsletter. Renee is especially anxious to support the efforts of Balboa Park’s closed Starlight Amphitheater to bring live music back to the park.
This project was a good fit with her decadelong dream of creating a music video that showcases people from all walks of life.
Jumping ship: When the USS Midway Museum reopened this month after a temporary closure prompted by stay-at-home orders, one of its anchor executives wasn’t on board.
“I’ve recently retired from a 25-year ‘tour of duty,’ ” explains Scott McGaugh. He was a member of the museum’s founding board of directors and slipped into the role of marketing director as the museum opened in 2004.
But McGaugh has another military-related career — author of nonfiction books that share littleknown stories of wartime missions and past heroics of soldiers and sailors.
He has written several, including a New York Times best-seller, “Surgeon in Blue,” about an all-butforgotten Civil War surgeon who revolutionized trauma care on the battlefield. Most recently he penned “Honor Before Glory,” a daring World War II rescue of a trapped U.S. battalion by segregated Japanese American troops. Movie rights were purchased by an L.A. producer.
“It’s hardly retirement, I suppose,” McGaugh muses. After all, he is working on his 11th book. “The Brotherhood of the Flying Coffin” tells the story of combat glider pilots in World War II.
They delivered paratroopers, medical supplies and artillery behind enemy lines in gliders clad only in canvas. The pilots had no armor, no motors, no parachutes, no reinforcements — and no second chances, says McGaugh.