Planned Parenthood Affiliates of CA CEO Jodi Hicks, husband Paul Mitchell, VP Political Data, Inc. and owner of Redistricting Partners, with VP Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff, (Photo: https://x.com/jodihicks/status/1766578700902887896)
California Media Ignores Redistricting ‘Power Couple’ Jodi Hicks and Paul Mitchell
‘These two are about as high profile as you get in the Capitol community’
By Katy Grimes, August 15, 2025 4:39 pm
She is the CEO and President of Planned Parenthood Affiliates California. He is “setting the lines for Democrats’ mid-decade gerrymander of California’s congressional map.” Yet nowhere in two articles does Politico declare that Jodi Hicks and Paul Mitchell are married.
The Globe reported Thursday:
“California Governor Gavin Newsom had a DNC-style rally in Los Angeles Thursday, and invited potty mouth leaders of Planned Parenthood, the California Teachers Association, SEIU CA, Senator Adam Schiff, and other Democrat politicians to speak, all praising abortion, big labor, big teacher labor… Oh, and redistricting, as an after thought.”
It was comical to hear Jodi Hicks, CEO & President of Planned Parenthood say “we are doubling down on our values here in California,” and then whine that Planned Parenthood has had their federal funding cut. She was the only speaker to mention “redistricting” up front, but she did it in the context of the “anti-choice justices appointed to the Supreme Court.”
“You take away our freedom; we’ll take away your seats,” Hicks threatened Republicans.
Blah. Blah. Blah.
What is so much more interesting than Jodi Hicks’ abortion rhetoric is that she is married to Paul Mitchell, Gov. Newsom’s redistricting map creator tasked with creating five new Democratic members of Congress.
Named the #5 political power couple in Capitol Weekly’s Top 10 Capitol power couples in 2024, it’s no coincidence that Hicks was a prominent speaker at Newsom’s DNC-rally Thursday and Mitchell is drawing the news districts for the governor.
However, State political media appears reluctant to identify this power couple and their close proximity to Newsom, as well as their influence. Hmmm. Why?
Will McCarthy of Politico completely ignored the Hicks/Mitchell marriage in his profile piece on Paul Mitchell today:
“Mitchell was tapped this summer by the state’s Democratic leaders to engineer Gov. Gavin Newsom’s brazen attempt to match Texas’s mid-decade partisan gerrymander of its U.S. House map with one that gives Democrats offsetting gains in California.
But it seems pretty relevant in this developing redistricting story. Especially since Mitchell usually charges for his map making efforts, it will be interesting to see if, when, and where his outputs get reported as a contribution, a gift or an expenditure. Maybe Mitchell is just volunteering his time and expertise?
I sincerely doubt it.
This is Capitol Weekly’s description of the #5 power couple, noting that “It’s almost unfair how influential Jodi Hicks and Paul Mitchell are as a couple”:
Jodi Hicks and Paul Mitchell
It’s almost unfair how influential Jodi Hicks and Paul Mitchell are as a couple. Hicks is the CEO and president of the Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, arguably the state’s most active combatant in this era’s culture war over abortion. Her leadership on the issue stretches far beyond the boundaries of the Golden State, with her voice carrying considerable weight nationwide. Mitchell, as the vice president of Political Data, Inc. and owner of Redistricting Partners, is seemingly every California news outlet’s favorite election analyst. A top pollster, Mitchell has a knack for not only plumbing California election data for original insights, but also talking about them in an engaging, easy-to-understand way. These two are about as high profile as you get in the Capitol community. (Note: Hicks is on the board of Open California, the publisher of Capitol Weekly.)
In this Politico article, reporter Melanie Mason just can’t bring herself to tie Jodi Hicks and Paul Mitchell together either. Yet she goes out of her way to make sure readers know Jodi Hicks is not related to Rusty Hicks, chairman of the California Democrat Party.
“POLITICO spoke to some of the most influential forces in California politics — including both state parties, Planned Parenthood and a leading expert on the state’s Latino voters — to share their initial take on the 2024 election results, and the questions that they’ve not yet answered.”
Democrats’ ghoulish obsession with abortion has cost them significant votes with Hispanics.
Politico continues:
“Nationally, Democrats’ reliance on abortion rights as an electoral silver bullet clearly came up short. But Planned Parenthood California is pushing back on the narrative that a campaign centered on reproductive rights was entirely a disappointment.”
Here’s where Politico is negligent in reporting real political power relationships:
“It’s too early to have that type of knee-jerk reaction. We are two years post-Dobbs, where we’ve had a protection for almost 50 years [overturned], and I think we’re still reacting to what that means across the country,” said Jodi Hicks, the group’s president.
An exit poll commissioned by Capitol Weekly found that in three of the biggest House wins for Democrats — ousting incumbent GOP Reps. Mike Garcia and Michelle Steel, and holding the toss-up Orange County seat left vacant by outgoing Democratic Rep. Katie Porter — abortion was the top issue for voters who sided with the Democratic candidate.
The poll by Paul Mitchell of CA120 found that abortion rights was particularly motivating for certain non-Democrats who ended up backing the Democratic contender. It was the top issue for independents who voted for Democrat Derek Tran over Steel and for 50 percent of Republicans who voted for Democrat George Whitesides over Garcia.
Hicks (no relation to Rusty Hicks of the California Democratic Party) said her organization learned from 2022, when voters overwhelmingly backed a ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution but still elected incumbent Republicans in key House seats.”
That should have said, Hicks (no relation to Rusty Hicks of the California Democratic Party but married to pollster Paul Mitchell of Political Data, Inc. and owner of Redistricting Partners, and named the #5 Capitol Power Couple by Capitol Weekly) said her organization learned from 2022, when voters overwhelmingly backed a ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution but still elected incumbent Republicans in key House seats.
Perhaps even as interesting is this about Mitchell in Will McCarthy’s Politico article today:
In Sacramento, his data, and his approach, was seen as above reproach. That may not be the case soon.
“I had never done a partisan redistricting,” Mitchell said this week. “Until just now.”
What a cesspool.
A California native and Navy mom, Katy lives in Sacramento, CA.
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For crying out loud, is Katy Grimes the only reporter in the State of California who is reporting on this stuff?
This topic is a cesspool, all right — a cesspool within the CA cesspool, and the incestuous political power couples and their questionable doings and connections and tentacles are something we definitely need to know about. God knows California has enough of these sketchy and connected political “power couples” who are hardly ever what they seem to be on paper. In any case, either way, we need to know who they are and what they are up to, especially when we often find they are up to no good whatsoever.
Love (not) how Politico does the story as if it’s the whole story when they have omitted the most important part of it. Disgusting. I think the information about Paul Mitchell and his fine hand now revealed to be in this extremely controversial and suspiciously stinky redistricting process (for profit), never mind that he is married to Jodi Hicks with her whole revolting Planned Parenthood gig and its effect, means that he, and possibly she are —- if not DONE — then severely damaged. Certainly hope so. Guess we’ll see.
Pretty much just this outlet and California Insider. California Post is coming next year. We definately need more alt media with California focus..including big tech, SF, and LA specifically.
YES. Thank you. The Globe and Katy Grimes are still the BEST, but I forgot about California Insider, which brings excellent and earnest long-form interviews and information about never-reported but very important state matters. Excited about California Post coming next year!
Glad that Katy Grimes exposed this weird couple and the havoc that they’ve created in California. Unfortunately they live in Sacramento and their Democrat politics have contributed to the mess that the city has become.
Yes, I suspect Sacramento residents can smell as well as feel the “very bad energy” they emit. And they, as well as all Californians, experience its effects. Whether they know the rancid-smelling landfill source or haven’t quite figured it out yet.
Ashley Zavala was just on Channel 3 news asking two state lawmakers “Who is drawing up the map?” and both acted dumb and wouldn’t answer the question. Meanwhile, I’m speaking loudly to the TV (alright, I was borderline yelling) saying “Katy answered that question almost a week ago”.
And here I thought Ashley Zavala had it together.
She needs to read the California Globe.
It’s beyond sickening that the majority of California voters think killing unborn children is more important than energy prices, having jobs, reducing the cost of living, having safe streets, etc. This is what the state is doomed. The people who vote are beyond idiotic. Not that the elections here are exactly fair anyway.
Well this revelation needs to be spread far and wide! Notice how Newsom’s slimy friends are never too far away to do his bidding?
Can this be anymore autocratic?
So they take away a citizen lead congressional map and basically outsource it to a so called neutral party who gets paid to slice and dice so his wife can continue the slice and dice innocents!
They must all worship at the Altar of Baal!
Truly some sick stuff!
Newsom is plain evil!
The only thing more slimy than this “power couple” and their slimy businesses is that of the slimy Governor Newscum and his slimy Weinstein-trollop “First Partner’s” pornographic educational videos and their relationship to the State Educational system.
Wanna bet they spouse swap with each other, too??.
Wouldn’t be a stretch….
Other than the fantastic weather and natural beauty of much of the State, it’s an embarrassment to be a Californian under Democrat rule by these slimewads…
Spouse swap? Well, considering that they’re perverted Democrats and that Paul Mitchell’s mentor is Christopher Cabaldon, the Democrat State Senator who is an out and loud member of the alphabet rainbow mafia, Newsom probably swaps the First Partner for Mitchell, and the First Partner swaps Newsom for Hicks? That would be typical Democrat debauchery?
Three butchers and an innocent girl.
One literally carved up her nation.
One carves up her neighborhood.
One carves up families right off the bone, who live in her neighborhood.
Look at the photo above of the “power couple” yucking it up with cackling Kamala? As part of spirit cooking Democrat coven, they’re probably into some very dark activities? Besides the killing of innocent babies, no doubt Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California is involved selling of fetal tissue and baby parts for profit? Maybe the Democrat political coven are supplied with baby blood and adrenochrome for their rituals? No doubt he’s an expert at inverting truth and disseminating propaganda as the legacy media outlet’s favorite Democrat selection analyst? They’re a dark duo for sure.
No kidding, TJ. And correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Planned Parenthood also behind the scenes in the transgender nightmare practices of puberty blockers, mind-bending opposite-sex hormone injections, and Frankenstein’s Monster-like mutilating surgeries performed for “fun and profit” on mentally confused and emotionally overwhelmed minor children by some very sick people in the medical community who should immediately be stripped of their medical licenses?
Yep, Planned Parenthood provides “gender-affirming care” (mutilation and castration) including hormone therapy, to “transgender and non-binary individuals.” The American Principles Project, has accused Planned Parenthood of exploiting a “contraception loophole” to provide gender transition treatments to minors without parental consent in states where such consent is required, arguing that minors can access certain forms of contraception without parental notification. No doubt it’s a major profit center for Planned Parenthood?
No doubt!
Also missing, the fact that Jodi Hicks was the lobbyist for Senator Pan back in 2015 pushing to get SB277 passed — the bill that removed personal belief exemptions, allowing only medical exemptions, and sending the Medical Board of CA and the CA courts on a witch hunt to find physicians writing them and stripping them of their licenses and careers.
https://naturalblaze.com/2015/04/confirmed-lobbyists-calling-shots-for.html
Thank you, S for that important fact!
Not one mention from the MSM. They promote these 2 ghouls!
Why does state senator Leland Yee come to mind?
A internet search on Jodi Hicks’s background reveals that she’s a radical far-left ideolog and a strange piece of work. She publicly shared that she had an abortion at the age of 16. She detailed her experience in an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, stating that her mother drove her to the clinic, paid for the procedure, and cared for her afterward. She claims that she and her mother have never discussed the experience since, and she does not know if her father is aware of it. Good grief?
There is little information on her educational background other than her Facebook page which indicates that she studied at UC Davis and attended Colusa High School, graduating in the class of 1989. Based on her high school graduation year, she is approximately 55 years old as of 2025. Prior to joining Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California (PPAC) in 2019, she was a partner at the lobbying firm DiMare, Brown, Hicks & Kessler, LLC, focusing on health care, energy, and social justice issues.
Although she appears to be a White female, she identifies as a Chinese American woman (who knew that her last name Hicks was a Chinese surname?) and she has spoken out against anti-Asian racism, “particularly following the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings, emphasizing the intersection of racism, misogyny, and white supremacy.” She appears not to have spoken out against the multitude of racist attacks by Black youths against Asians that have occurred in the San Francisco Bay Area and across the country. Those attacks probably don’t fit into the Democrat agenda?
Despite Jodi Hicks’ apparent disdain for White people and White men in particular, she supposedly married Paul Mitchell who appears to be a White Male, but with him being a Democrat, who knows what race and gender he identifies as?
Paul Mitchell, who is 55 years old, is also a radical far-left ideolog like his partner Jodi Hicks. He has a Master’s in Public Policy from the University of Southern California, an undergraduate degree in Communications from American University, and an associate degree from Orange Coast College. An article in Politico revealed that Paul Mitchell was a late-blooming student at Orange Coast College in Southern California in the early 1990s, that he was a self-described “stoner” screw-up, and that he was an “energetic community college student who smelled of patchouli oil and wore hair so long he could tuck it into his back pocket.” The Politico article also has a photo of a young Paul Mitchell with his long blond hair down to his waist wearing a white t-shirt with a picture of Nelson Mandela on the front and “POWER TO THE PEOPLE” slogan below it. He appears to be in the family’s kitchen with his mother in the photo. He probably grew up as an obnoxious spoiled privileged brat in a wealthy Orange County household and suffers from excessive White guilt? (https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/15/california-gerrymander-paul-mitchell-00510786)
He’s been in Democrat political hack his entire working career. He interned in 1998 with Al Checchi’s campaign for California’s Democratic gubernatorial nomination. He worked as a legislative staffer for Democratic Assemblymember Nicole Parra and later in leadership roles for an educational non-profit called EdVoice. In 2010 he founded the firm Redistricting Partners at the behest of Christopher Cabaldon, his mentor who now serves as a Democratic state senator. He’s also the Vice President of Political Data, Inc. (PDI), a voter data firm that is exclusively Democrat-aligned as of 2021 that works with campaigns, nonprofits, cities, school boards and universities specializing in polling and survey data. His firm’s work often involves racially polarized voting analysis that supposedly helps agencies comply with the California and Federal Voting Rights Acts. LOL!
CNN, PBS and the rest of the Democrat propaganda media outlets regularly seek him out as a “national media as an expert on elections and redistricting.” No doubt he’s an expert on conjuring up fake polls and biased data for his Democrat cronies?
What a despicable pair these two are?
This is great, TJ. Good information —— and entertaining too!
Ugh, these people are disgusting.
And it never fails, the more disgusting they are the more smug they are.
TJ,
Again you are awesome to take the time and share your treasure!
They are just as I have suspected.
Interesting how Paul Mitchell’s life parallels Barack Obama’s. Stoner kid, transfer student….
Then boom power players in the Democrat party. It’s as if they are plucked out and groomed for their positions🧐
Paul Mitchell’s X account proudly proclaims that he’s “First Partner of CA Planned Parenthood with amazing
@jodihicks” along with “Cat 3 racer, Cat 1 dad.” There’s also photo of him posing next to a child. Not sure whether the child is his and it’s difficult to determine the child’s gender from the photo? It’s surprising that he might have a child with Jodi Hicks considering her fervent support of abortion and her admitting to having a prior abortion? It the child is theirs, just imagine the horrors that poor child might experience with questionable parents like them? (https://x.com/paulmitche11)
“He had complained, in his last week of publication, of wildfire smoke in Sacramento, but his final post with new non-automated content didn’t mention his own reaction to the smoke.”~Greg Diamond OJB~
Interesting commentary on Scott Lay. A political chronicler on California politics found deceased at home in Sacramento, September 2021, at age 48. He suffered from life long respiratory disease and was dealing with the smokey conditions caused by the Dixie Fire Complex.
https://www.orangejuiceblog.com/2021/09/scott-lay-of-inside-the-capitol-dead-at-48/
It sounds like Scott struggled with personal demons that created distance with even his closest friends (“he wrote eloquently and movingly about his travails as an alcoholic”) and that’s probably what contributed tohis dying at the age of 48 rather than the smoke from the fires? Paul Mitchell posted a tribute on X to Scott dated Oct. 10, 2021 in which he noted that “Scott would want only vaccinated guests” at his memorial service.
Democrats are such dimwitted loons.
“Getting into student government and getting into politics gave him a mission outside of himself,” Mitchell said, noting that when they first met, Lay volunteered escorting women into abortion clinics in the face of protesters. “Having that drive made him able to overcome a lot of his earlier health problems because he just had this focus and mission.”~LATimes~
According to this article, Jodi Hicks was the chief lobbyist for the California Medical Association several years ago and had a professional relationship with Pan. When she became pregnant, she chose Pan to be her daughter’s pediatrician. Hicks’ daughter then appeared in campaign ads for Pan when he decided to become a Sacramento politician.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/article2599647.html
Wow, Pan chose a campaign tactic that obviously demonstrates his relationship with his favored lobbyist Jodi Hicks while trying to downplay his years of experience as a politician in favor of an image as a working doctor. It also illustrates Pan’s very close ties to groups that lobby on health care matters. Highly unethical but not surprising for a Democrat? Good info!
Thank You Katy for your standing up for the truth. I will be circulating this article eveywhere. We are going to defeat this evil and rebuild California and our country. Today President Trump issued a statement on Truth Social saying he is going to issue an Executive Order to end Mail-In Ballots. Onward -Mindy Pechenuk, candidate for Oakland Mayor 2026
Hi Mindy Pechenuk!
It’s wonderful and amazing how you keep fighting for Oakland.
Trying not to get too excited about Trump’s E.O…… yet.
But it’s great news and we’ll see how it goes, and how quickly it goes, if it goes.
Which you gotta believe it will!
Hi -Thanks for your support and your fight! Take care, Mindy
Please go to this Cal. Assembly portal and tell these half baked legislators no to the redistricting scheme!
https://aelc.assembly.ca.gov/redistricting-public-comment
Paul Mitchell broke down the whole process of redrawing the congressional maps. He went through his thought process, what was important to him, how many hours he spent, who was on his team that helped him, and what he consume during that time creating the maps in episode 421 of capital weekly podcast. Aug 15 2025