Anaheim Mayor Ashleigh Aitken faces a 25-page staff claim alleging drunken city functions, harassment, a racial slur and retaliation weeks before reelection.
Anaheim’s chief of staff has put the mayor under a harsh public spotlight with a lengthy workplace claim that the city itself released, forcing the mayor and City Council into a closed-door review just as voters prepare to decide her future.
Reporting details a 25-page complaint from Chief of Staff Berenice Ballinas accusing Mayor Ashleigh Aitken of showing up intoxicated at city functions, making crude remarks about sexuality, using a racial slur, crossing personal boundaries, and then retaliating when those concerns were raised. The city released the claim on a Thursday. The mayor and council were set to take it up behind closed doors the next morning.
The timing is blunt. Aitken is seeking reelection in November against two political newcomers, and the allegations landed just weeks before that vote. Public officials who demand trust from taxpayers do not get to shrug off a document of this size when their own city puts it out.
One of the central episodes in the claim centers on an April 2025 City Council meeting. Ballinas says Aitken appeared “visibly impaired by alcohol” afterward and needed transportation home.
Ballinas drove. The claim says the ride involved former City Manager Jim Vanderpool’s car. Inside that vehicle, Ballinas alleges, the mayor searched the car and personal belongings and snapped photographs. What those photos supposedly captured remains hidden behind redactions in the released document.
Voters and staff alike can read the sequence without help. A mayor leaves a council meeting impaired enough, in her chief of staff’s account, that she cannot get herself home, then turns a colleague’s car into a search-and-photo scene. That is not routine civic life. It is a breakdown of basic self-control in a public role.
Another episode in the claim unfolds at a Team Anaheim dinner. Ballinas says Aitken became physically affectionate with a person whose name is redacted. The mayor’s husband then removed her from the gathering.
Before that exit, Ballinas claims, the mayor knocked over a bicycle, damaged its mirror, and fell into the street. Ballinas says she warned the husband that Aitken “was not OK.” His alleged reply was short: “Don’t we all?”
That answer, if accurately reported, treats impairment as ordinary. City leadership is not a private party where everyone is presumed half-gone. Residents pay for sober judgment, not a culture that shrugs when the person holding the gavel cannot stay upright.
Scandals that force parties to disown their own candidates often start with the same pattern: private excuses colliding with public records.
The claim next moves to a June 10 birthday lunch at Disneyland’s Club 33. Ballinas says Aitken drank for hours, kept drinking afterward, and repeatedly questioned her about her sexual orientation.
Later, at the 1901 Lounge in Disney California Adventure, Ballinas alleges the mayor pressed a Disney Cast Member on whether he was gay or straight and asked for details about his dating life. The claim also attributes to Aitken a description of God as “her imaginary friend.”
Workplace power is not a barstool. A mayor grilling staff and service workers about private sexual matters, after hours of drinking, is the kind of conduct that destroys trust inside a city hall long before any ballot is printed.
When Democrats later scramble to replace scandal-hit figures, the underlying lesson is the same: personal excess becomes institutional damage.
Ballinas’s document also alleges Aitken used a racial slur in front of former City Manager Jim Vanderpool. Aitken had previously denied allegations that she made racist or homophobic remarks. The new claim puts that denial back under pressure with a named setting and a named witness in the room.
A mayor’s words set the tone for an entire workforce. If a top aide is willing to put a slur allegation in a 25-page filing the city then releases, the issue is no longer gossip. It is a personnel and governance problem on paper.
Ballinas says she raised separate concerns about a nearly $17,000 Qatar trip, police overtime, and city employees who allegedly helped with Aitken’s prayer breakfast during work hours. After those objections, she claims, the mayor’s office retaliated by withholding a salary raise.
A state Fair Political Practices Commission review of the Qatar matter was declined, according to the claim’s surrounding reporting trail. That decline does not erase the retaliation allegation. It simply leaves the personnel fight inside city hall, where a chief of staff says she paid a price for speaking up.
Clean government requires a safe path for internal warnings. When the warning is followed by a frozen raise, staff learn the wrong lesson fast. Taxpayers should not have to wonder whether silence is the only career-safe option around the mayor’s desk.
Political machines that try to cut loose troubled nominees on a deadline discover how costly delayed accountability becomes.
Aitken’s attorney, Lawrence Lennemann, declined to discuss the allegations in detail and said the claim “speaks for itself.” That is a lawyer’s phrase, not a public accounting. A 25-page workplace filing released by the city deserves more than a closed session and a shrug if the mayor wants the public’s confidence restored.
No arrests, charges, or formal findings of proven misconduct are established in the available account. What is established is the document, the city’s decision to release it, the scheduled closed-door discussion, and a detailed list of alleged incidents spanning a council meeting, a civic dinner, a Club 33 lunch, and a Disney lounge.
Voters have watched similar storms drag parties down with the public when leaders treat serious claims as nuisances instead of duties.
Anaheim residents are entitled to a city hall that runs on clear heads and professional boundaries. A mayor who wants another term should answer these claims with facts, not fog, and a workforce that raised alarms should not fear a missing paycheck for doing so.
Public office is not a private club with an open bar tab, and voters still get the last word when the bill comes due.