TULARE – Controversial Tulare Mayor Carlton Jones isn’t one to shy away from a fight and Thursday night he started one with the entire Central Valley agricultural community. The former MMA boxer (1-4 record) turned politician entered into a Facebook conversation with the founder of the “My Job Depends on Ag” movement Erik Wilson where the mayor claimed agriculture not only caused an increase in cancer and disease rates in the Valley but was also a waste of natural resources.
Wilson said he didn’t even know he was chatting with the mayor of Tulare until the next morning. Wilson said, “If it were the mayor of Berkeley I wouldn’t pay it any mind, but the mayor of a Central Valley city in the heart of agriculture?”