Debate over Seaside City Council open seat spills over to online channels

Published 7:56 am Friday, January 23, 2026

By KATIE FRANKOWICZ

KMUN

A debate about a candidate for an open seat on the Seaside City Council has continued to rage online after leaders were split on who to appoint last week.

Brandon Kraft, a regional manager for a hotel management company, is one of two candidates vying for a temporary appointment to the Ward 4 seat. That seat has been vacant since former City Councilor David Posalski resigned in December. Whoever is appointed would serve through the end of the year. 

Kraft’s chance at the seat faltered after some city councilors raised concerns about a social media post from 2023 where Kraft seemed to joke about being on a government watchlist as well as comments he made in an interview with a local writer that they worried were homophobic. 

Now some residents have begun to circulate screenshots of posts they say Kraft published on his Facebook page over the years that reflect a far right ideology. 

City Council President Seth Morrisey has also weighed in. 

In a Facebook post published Jan.21, he rebuked fellow Councilor Seamus McVey, who had expressed concerns about Kraft’s appointment at a Jan.12 City Council meeting.

A constituent had emailed councilors ahead of that meeting asking if the two candidates for the Ward 4 seat had presented any background information. The email then referred to the meme Kraft posted to Facebook in 2023 that appeared to joke about being on a government watchlist.

McVey said that, for him, the post did raise concerns about who they might be appointing.

McVey and City Councilors Tita Montero and Heidi Hoffman supported the second candidate for the seat, Padraic Ansbro, a project manager and hypnotherapist. Morrisey, Mayor Steve Wright and City Councilor Chris Binnicker supported Kraft.

“Councilors who supported Mr. Kraft conducted themselves with professionalism and respect for the candidate they did not select,” Morrisey wrote in his Facebook post. “Unfortunately, Councilors McVey and Hoffman failed to maintain this same standard. Rather than focusing on Mr.Kraft’s qualifications, experience or policy positions, both councilors launched deeply personal attacks.”

He felt this violated the City Council’s rules of procedure and conduct guidelines.

“I call upon my fellow council members to denounce this conduct and to take formal action to address it,” Morrisey wrote.

Morrisey’s post received mostly supportive comments, but triggered pushback elsewhere. 

R.J. Marx, the former editor of The Seaside Signal whose Q&A-style interview with Kraft earlier in January prompted the initial concerns about homophobia, argued in a Jan.22 Substack post that the city’s elected officials should not be using social media to “criticize and defame fellow members of this governing body.”

Following the Jan.12 meeting, the former Ward 4 representative, Posalski, who is friends with Kraft, made Facebook posts of his own in support of Kraft and said McVey should be recalled. 

Kraft has denied the allegations brought against him. He told KMUN he is not on any government watchlists and the idea that he is homophobic is “laughable.”

He told The Astorian he does not have any memory of posting the things captured in the screenshots now in circulation online. 

The screenshots, shared with KMUN and The Astorian, show posts by a Facebook user named Brandon Kraft. In the screenshots, the account appears to have posted a link to an article by Prager University headlined “America has so little actual racism the left needs hoaxes to prove otherwise” accompanied by a picture of a noose. 

Prager University is a conservative nonprofit that creates content around conservative views of history, race and other topics.

Another screenshot shows a repost of a meme that features a photo of a white pickup truck with its front half covered in blood labelled “2021 Dodge Ram Protestor Edition.” 

In 2021, a man crashed his SUV into a crowd of protestors in Minneapolis, killing 31-year-old Deona Marie Knajdek and injuring three other people. Nicholas Kraus ultimately pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. 

A third screenshot shows a repost of a long block of text that reads, “You know folks, I never cared that you were gay, until you started shoving it down my throat, and I never cared what color you were, till you started blaming me for your problems, and I never cared about your political affiliation, until you started condemning me for mine.

“I really never even cared where you were born, until you wanted to erase my history, and blame my ancestors for your problems you know I never even cared if your beliefs were different than mine, until you said my beliefs were wrong, but now I care, my patience and tolerance are gone, and I am not alone in feeling like this, there are millions of us who feel like this …”

In the screenshot of the post, the user Brandon Kraft wrote in his repost, “Love this.”

Kraft told The Astorian he looked through his Facebook page and couldn’t find the posts captured in the screenshots, but that he did recall the article from Prager University. 

“It was a repost of a news story, if I recall, about the Jussie Smollett case and other cases similar,” Kraft wrote in an email.

Kraft noted that none of the screenshots include the years the posts were made and that his social media has been private for many years. He argued the screenshots are an attempt “to add fuel to the false accusations.”

“Someone is trying to play partisan politics that don’t belong on a city council,” he wrote. “We have civil matters to focus on.”

“This type of hateful targeting is not unexpected and is more character assassination attempts and simply distraction and noise from what we should be discussing,” Kraft added. “This is an appointed temporary position for Ward 4 that should be based on experience in merit and not inflammatory, accusations and character assassinations.”

People who took the original screenshots and others who have circulated them online have pushed back. They told KMUN they know some members of the City Council are also conservative, but that they are not pushing any particular political ideology as city councilors.

The Seaside City Council is expected to revisit the matter of the Ward 4 appointment at a meeting Monday night.