Boycott over donations closes restaurant
SANTA CRUZ » A long-time Chinese food restaurant has shuttered, perhaps permanently, in the face of a boycott and heated online backlash after a website publicized the owner’s 2016 political donations to a former Ku Klux Klan leader.
Roger Grigsby, owner of O’mei Szechuan Chinese Restaurant, said on Wednesday that he made several donations adding up to $500 to the U.S. Senate campaign of Louisiana’s David Duke during his unsuccessful 2016 run. Duke served as a KKK leader from 1974 to 1978. Grigsby said he has been dealing with “political terror” and an “attack” on his business as word of his donations has spread from an alternative news site to a business review site to neighborhood discussion boards and blogs.
“They spread the gossip, they spread it as if it’s truth. All the things they called me: white supremacist, neo-Nazi, KKK — it’s all bull…,” Grigsby said. “My girlfriend and my former wife were both Chinese. Anybody who knows me, it’s like the United Colors of Benetton in our restaurant. We’ve had every ethnicity.”
Grigsby’s donations, publicly available information through the Federal Election Commission, were brought to light on Aug. 16 by community news site The San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center, at Indybay.org. The issue of Grigsby’s donations comes in the wake of the Aug. 12 violent clashes between a white nationalist rally and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, that left one dead.
Grigsby, who also made several donations adding up to $500 to the “Trump Make America Great Again Committee,” according to public campaign disclosure listings on the U.S. Federal Election Commission website fec.gov, defended his support of Duke’s campaign. Duke, he said, is unfairly characterized by the news media as a “hate caricature.”
“He is defending the civil rights of European-Americans, whites, defending them from attacks against them,” Grigsby said of Duke. “If you can’t see that in the media, I don’t know what to tell you. The very word, ‘ white supremacist’ is an attack. Nobody calls Mexicans and blacks and Chinese ‘ Nazis.’ They only call white people ‘ Nazis.’ The idea there is to make guilt by association of two words. White people and evil Nazis.”
Duke has served as founder of the now- defunct European-American Unity and Rights Organization and served a term as a Louisiana state representative in 1989. He is also a convicted felon, having served a 15-month federal prison sentence and paid a $10,000 fine after pleading guilty in 2002 to mail fraud and false tax return filing charges.
In recent days, signs noting O’mei’s closure after 38 years due to “slanderous and malicious internet rumors” have been spread across the business’ windows. Grigsby said he is dividing his time between supporting about five employees with their unemployment claims and flagging negative online comments about the business.
Bonny Doon resident and mystery novel author Nancy Lynn Jarvis is one of O’mei’s customers who finds herself emotionally torn by the news, calling the business a Santa Cruz institution. Jarvis said she has been a loyal O’mei customer since it was located on campus at UC Santa Cruz, Grigsby’s alma mater. Jarvis’ fictional Regan McHenry Real Estate Mysteries characters, Regan and Tom, have stopped by O’mei for meals in her books. No more, she said.
“There is simply no way that I can ever go back there; I feel slightly nauseous when I think about all the money that was contributed there that could potentially end up where it did,” Jarvis said. “So, I’m done and I’m glad it’s closed. I feel really sorry for the peo- ple working there, because obviously they’re going to have to find other jobs. That’s the only down side I can see.”
Jarvis said she waited nearly a week after hearing rumors of Grigsby’s political donation and did a significant amount of personal research before be- lieving the news.
Santa Cruz resident Ronnie Record, also a former O’mei customer, announced his intention to boycott the restaurant on neighborhood site Nextdoor.com and Facebook last week.
“To be clear, I regularly do business with and consider myself friends with individuals who identify as Conservative/Republican/ Right Wing politically,” Record wrote on Facebook. “I respect their views and value their perspective. I do not believe it would be a good thing to boycott businesses just because their political view may differ from mine. This is a matter of a business owner supporting one of the most prominent leaders, members, and promoters of the Ku Klux Klan, a domestic terrorist organization.”
Casey Beyer, president and CEO for Santa Cruz Area Chamber of Commerce, said he has seen the Santa Cruz community react strongly against busi- nesses whose leadership take a political stance differing from the larger community, though usually related to more localized issues. He said he also has seen businesses remain silent on political issues, to avoid such a spotlight. Taking a controversial position, Beyer said, opens businesses to a backlash.
“I think the real sad testimony is what we see happening across the country with individuals expressing their point of view, which I don’t agree with at all, but then the counter-protesters creating violence and anger, which we saw in Berkeley this weekend,” Beyer said. “How does that resolve the conflict of hate, when you’re actually using violence to get your message across?”
O’mei is not a member of the Chamber of Commerce or the Santa Cruz County Business Council, according to both organizations’ leaders. Business Council Executive Director Robert Singleton said people have to “own where they put their money.”
“Individuals have the right to make politically poor choices but they will bear the repercussions of those poor choices, especially if they’re making a public stance or giving money toward a public figure,” Singleton said.
Grigsby, 67, described himself as the restaurant’s “basically retired” owner who had been keeping the business open primarily for his approximately nine or fewer employees. Grigsby said several of his wait staff employees quit after hearing of his campaign donations, then went on to post negative comments to O’mei’s Yelp page.
“They basically have killed O’mei,” Grigsby said. “I didn’t know the backlash would happen, because I didn’t know there would be that many stupid people in Santa Cruz who would actually believe this stuff. But I guess my beliefs were proved wrong. When I say ‘stupid,’ I mean ignorant.”