The Next Henchman
Miguel Arias Comes to MCC
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In our exposé, “Rewarded Mockery,” we documented how Madera Community College’s Director of Marketing and Communications, Cory Burkarth, was placed on administrative leave after he arrived at a Halloween costume contest dressed in a deliberate, body‑shaming mockery of MCC Academic Senate President Todd Kandarian. Five administrators, including President Ángel Reyna, judged his costume best in show, knowing Burkarth was mocking Kandarian. Far from apologizing for rewarding Burkarth’s cruelty, they have reportedly been ordered by high-ranking District administrators: “Whatever you do, don’t apologize.” That directive perfectly aligns with Chancellor Carole Goldsmith’s model of leadership: when confronted with clear wrongdoing, deny, stonewall, and never take responsibility.
We won’t re‑litigate every detail here, but we will state the operational reality: when an administrator’s conduct becomes radioactive, Goldsmith does not correct course; she swaps out the face, often for someone far worse. This time, that replacement has a name: Miguel Arias.
In a move that should alarm every employee at the State Center Community College District (SCCCD), Goldsmith and Reyna are replacing Burkarth with Fresno City Councilmember and political operative Miguel Arias as MCC’s Director of Marketing and Communications. [image below]
Arias’s hire follows a pattern we have documented repeatedly: those with a proven history of retaliation and enforcement, like Vice Chancellor Robert Frost, are elevated and protected to stifle faculty voices, while those who defend faculty are isolated, silenced, or driven out.
Arias is not being hired for his marketing acumen or his commitment to higher education; he is being hired to do what he has done throughout his career—serve as a fixer and a henchman for embattled leadership, silencing dissent, managing perception, and executing the retaliatory agenda of Goldsmith and Reyna.
1. The Email That Proves His Loyalty
On November 26, 2025, Arias responded to an email we sent to Central Valley leaders announcing faculty’s unanimous votes of no‑confidence in Goldsmith. Arias’s reply leaves no doubt where his allegiances lie. He addressed his response directly to Keith Ford and Dr. Gerri Santos, as if they had authored the message.
Note: Previously, we stated that Dr. Gerri Santos is not a member of The SCCCD Insiders. Our practice has been to neither confirm nor deny suspicions about our membership, but it is necessary here to break that rule and announce that Keith Ford, like Dr. Santos, is not one of our members. It is nonetheless very telling that the same people Goldsmith has accused of being our members are so boldly designated as such by Arias in his response.
In the email, Arias rushes to defend Goldsmith and summarily dismisses faculty’s unanimous no‑confidence votes as mere “character assassination,” deploying the combative style that has defined his political career. [image below]
Arias wrote:
“Keith Ford and Gerri Santos,
After completing my third food drive this week—which began immediately after a three-hour meeting at 7 a.m.—I returned to the office to prepare for next week’s council meeting and to respond to constituent emails. Upon doing so, I was disappointed to find an email that can only be described as an attempt at character assassination.
As a former State Center trustee and a longtime supporter of the district, I find this deeply disheartening. It is beneath the dignity of the work we all claim to value.
As your labor negotiations with the State Center Board continue, I sincerely hope you choose a more constructive and respectful approach than the one reflected in this message—and in other anonymous attempts.
Our city and the thousands of college students you serve and profess to care about deserve better.
Please, do better.
Miguel Arias”
This email is remarkable for several reasons. First, Arias went out of his way to defend Goldsmith despite having had no official role in the District since departing as a trustee in 2018. Second, his tone is openly dismissive and condescending, scolding faculty leaders as if their unanimous no‑confidence votes were beneath “the dignity of the work we all claim to value.” Third, and most importantly, it reveals that Arias does not see faculty as partners in shared governance, but as problems to be disciplined when they challenge power.
This email shows that, like any good henchman, Arias’s loyalty flows upward to those in authority, while his contempt flows downward toward those who dare to hold that authority accountable. Moreover, he pointedly copied Goldsmith and Vice Chancellor Christine Miktarian on his response, as if auditioning for the very role he is now being slotted into.
Obviously, his audition was successful.
2. Mark Arax’s Portrait of Arias
To understand what MCC is getting in Miguel Arias, it is necessary to turn to the detailed investigative work of journalist and author Mark Arax. Arax, an award‑winning former Los Angeles Times reporter whose work has appeared in The New York Times and the California Sunday Magazine, published a January 2019 exposé titled “Meet Michael Hanson’s Fixer” that offers a devastating portrait of Arias’s tenure at Fresno Unified School District.
Arax’s investigation revealed that Arias openly described himself as Superintendent Michael Hanson’s “fixer” and “keeper of the secrets.” He boasted to coworkers, “I’m the guy who knows where all the bodies are buried,” and “I’m the guy who cleans up all of Hanson’s messes.” Arax reported that Arias’s role included:
Hiding the district’s alarming rates of truancy and dropouts from the public;
Digging up dirt on the superintendent’s critics or intimidating them at their places of employment;
Misappropriating public funds and funneling money to a powerful family to buy political favor; and
Covering up the entire scheme.
Let’s explore the details of Arax’s portrait of Arias.
2.1. The Hostile Work Environment Complaints
The most damning section of Arax’s piece recounts formal hostile‑work‑environment complaints filed against Arias while he directed Parent University at Fresno Unified. Two female supervisors, one African American and the other Hmong, alleged a pattern of intimidation, angry verbal outbursts, and demeaning, inappropriate language by Arias.
An internal investigation confirmed several of the allegations, yet Arias reportedly refused to change his behavior. The “solution” was not to discipline the aggressor but to transfer one of the harassed staffers away from him, only for Superintendent Hanson to promote Arias months later to communications chief, placing him once again in a supervisory role over the same victim.
Current and former Fresno Unified employees described Arias’s pattern this way: he’ll blow up out of nowhere, storming up and down the halls talking to himself; his language is “very inappropriate.” Sources quoted Arias saying, “I’m an angry Mexican. Don’t mess with me. I know where all the bodies are buried.”
If this sounds familiar, it is because it mirrors precisely the dynamic we documented in “The Chancellor’s Henchman,” where Vice Chancellor Robert Frost operates as Chancellor Goldsmith’s enforcer at SCCCD, and is protected, promoted, and kept in place despite serious concerns about his treatment of employees.
2.2. The Vang Pao Funeral Scandal
Arias is no stranger to Goldsmith’s favorite activity: misappropriating funds. Perhaps the most disturbing episode Arax uncovered was Arias’s role in funneling Fresno Unified funds to underwrite the February 2011 funeral of Hmong General Vang Pao. Fresno Unified trustee Tony Vang needed help paying for the printing of memorial programs; using K‑12 funds for a private funeral, however, would violate public‑finance laws. Superintendent Hanson wanted Vang kept happy and loyal. Enter the fixer.
Arax reports that Arias sought more than $10,000 in Fresno Unified money to cover the printing costs. When longtime public information officer Susan Bedi refused to sign off, warning it would be a misappropriation of public funds, Arias simply went around her. The exact amount he ultimately secured and the internal budget line it came from remain closely guarded, but the general’s family publicly thanked Fresno Unified by name in the funeral program, confirmation that district money found its way into the event.
As one source told Arax, the district’s budget is so large that “ten, twenty, or thirty thousand would be easy to hide. All Miguel had to do was go to someone at the top, and the money would appear and then disappear. Like magic.”
2.3. Information Suppression and Retaliation
Arax’s most personal encounter with Arias came when he and his Fresno State journalism students requested basic public records on Fresno Unified’s truancy rates. After discovering that the numbers Arias released understated truancy at Fresno High by roughly half, they began referring to him as the district’s “chief of dis‑information.”
When presented with accurate figures showing that nearly two‑thirds of Fresno High students were habitual truants, Arias did not dispute the math; instead, he demanded the names of the staff who had provided the data:
“Where did you get those numbers from? I need to know who your sources are. They just committed a crime.”
Arax replied:
“A crime? You consider handing over factual information to a journalist a crime?”
Arias answered:
“It’s a crime to spend staff time doing unauthorized work. You need to give back those documents.”
He then launched a witch hunt, questioning staff at several high schools to identify who had processed the truancy data, and, as Arax recounts, the pipeline to accurate numbers quickly dried up.
When Arax’s exposés were finally published, Hanson struck back through Arias, who sent a formal complaint to the Fresno State dean of arts and humanities accusing Arax and his students of endangering the safety of Fresno Unified students and staff in their effort to obtain information, a claim the dean’s inquiry did not substantiate. Arias’s tenure at Fresno Unified established his reputation; his subsequent career on the Fresno City Council from 2018 to 2026 cemented it. Our research team has compiled a comprehensive dossier documenting thirteen major controversies spanning legal investigations, ethics complaints, public claims, and allegations of improper conduct. The pattern is consistent: Arias operates at the edge of acceptable behavior, tests legal and ethical boundaries, makes inflammatory accusations without evidence, and uses his platform to attack opponents while protecting allies; when caught, he dismisses criticism as politically motivated and doubles down.
Now, who might that remind you of?
3. Unverified ICE Raid Claims
In June 2024, during a Fresno City Council meeting, Arias announced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was planning a “massive” immigration raid at the Cherry Avenue Auction that weekend and urged the immigrant community to stay away. No raid ever occurred, and no evidence of ICE activity at the site materialized.
The unverified warning devastated vendors financially. Vendor Susana Osuna reported losing about 90 percent of her income, and other flea markets across the Central Valley saw attendance drops of up to 50 percent. When pressed to reveal his source, Arias refused, claiming instead that his warning had “averted a mass immigration raid in our community”; the economic fallout was so severe that vendors circulated petitions demanding his resignation.
In January 2026, Arias issued a second public warning about large‑scale ICE raids allegedly coming to Fresno and Bakersfield, only to reverse himself the next day by saying a source told him officials had changed their plans. To date, no independent verification has surfaced for either the supposed operation or its sudden cancellation, reinforcing a troubling pattern: Arias is willing to make explosive, unverified claims from the dais, let others absorb the damage, and then walk his statements back without accountability.
4. Other Major Controversies
Arias’s career is marked by a consistent pattern of ethical complaints, investigations, and public controversies. Below, we have provided a non-exhaustive list of examples:
Carpetbagging and conflict of interest: As an SCCCD trustee, Arias was investigated by the DA’s Public Integrity Unit and the FPPC over residency questions and a potential conflict of interest tied to a foster care agency whose board he served on. The complaints alleged that Arias was not domiciled in the Fresno district he represented, but rather in Mendota. Although those matters were ultimately closed without charges, his reaction is telling: he dismissed the ethics concerns as “character assassination” by “ultra‑conservative folks,” using national polarization as a shield against local accountability. The same move appears in his November 2025 email, where he brands faculty’s evidence‑based no‑confidence votes against Goldsmith as “character assassination” and orders them to “do better;” language lifted straight from his long‑standing playbook.
Battery citations: In May 2020, anti‑lockdown protesters went to Arias’s downtown Fresno condominium; video shows him coming out and physically shoving protesters on the stairway and knocking a phone away. Fresno Police cited him for three counts of misdemeanor battery, though the District Attorney later declined to file charges, concluding prosecutors could not disprove his claim that he used reasonable force to remove trespassers from private property.
Pay‑to‑play lawsuit: In September 2021, developer Cliff Tutelian sued Arias and the City of Fresno, alleging Arias demanded a $12,000 campaign contribution in exchange for help on a downtown parking lot development deal. A judge dismissed Arias from the case for lack of sufficient evidence, but the allegations introduced “pay‑to‑play” into the public vocabulary around his district and reinforced concerns about how he wields discretionary power.
Private‑jet ethics violation: Arias accepted a private‑jet flight from Las Vegas to Fresno with Mid Valley Disposal CEO Joe Kalpakoff while participating in discussions about the company’s multi‑million‑dollar city contract. He later told the FPPC he personally reimbursed the cost, but billing records show his check was not posted until the day before the council was set to vote on the contract extension, raising unresolved questions about gift limits and conflicts of interest.
Brown Act and the secret budget committee: Arias was a central figure in Fresno’s secret budget committee, which negotiated tens of millions of dollars in budget changes outside public view until the ACLU and First Amendment Coalition sued the city for violating the Brown Act. Only after litigation and public embarrassment did he pivot to limited “transparency” reforms, a familiar pattern of slow‑walking openness until forced by outside pressure.
The mask purchase: During COVID‑19, Arias drove more than $160,000 in city mask purchases to a single vendor, MPG Global, which no city department used, with at least one transaction exceeding his individual contracting authority. The pattern prompted allegations that he violated Fresno’s purchasing rules and triggered a DA review, which was ultimately closed without charges in part due to “insufficiency of the evidence associated with the lack of cooperation from a witness in the DA’s investigation.”
Personalized attacks and political retaliation: Arias has repeatedly used public office to launch inflammatory, often unsubstantiated accusations at perceived enemies—from DA Lisa Smittcamp, to a county supervisor he falsely accused of creating a “hostile work environment,” to local business leader AJ Rassamni, whom he accused of shaking down merchants even as multiple business owners contradicted him on the record. The through‑line is consistent: Arias deploys information and accusation as weapons, not as tools for truth or accountability.
Wire fraud leak: In 2020, the City of Fresno was victimized by a sophisticated phishing scam that resulted in the loss of over $600,000 in public funds via fraudulent wire transfers. The incident was a major embarrassment for the city administration and triggered an FBI investigation. While the investigation was active and sensitive, details of the fraud were leaked to The Fresno Bee, which compromised the federal investigation, potentially tipping off the perpetrators before law enforcement could freeze assets or track the network. Arias did not deny being the source of the leak. In an interview, he justified the disclosure by arguing that the administration was using the investigation as a “pretext” to hide the financial loss from the public and the council.
5. The Goldsmith-Reyna-Arias Triangle
So Goldsmith and Reyna have a problem. They need someone to run communications who will not only execute their corrupt agenda but aggressively defend it against faculty opposition. They need someone who has demonstrated loyalty to embattled leaders, knows how to suppress information, attack critics, and operate in the shadows. They need a henchman, and Miguel Arias’s entire career has been an audition for exactly that role.
Goldsmith’s leadership model, as we have documented repeatedly, depends on a tight inner circle of loyalists who will execute her corrupt and retaliatory agenda without question. In “The Chancellor’s Henchman,” we showed how Vice Chancellor Robert Frost was handpicked by Goldsmith despite not being one of the three finalists recommended by the search committee; his history of clashes with faculty and classified professionals at other institutions made him the ideal candidate and he hasn’t disappointed at SCCCD.
President Reyna operates the same way at MCC. In “Rewarded Mockery,” we detailed how he not only condoned Burkarth’s Halloween mockery of Academic Senate President Todd Kandarian, but personally served as one of the judges who awarded Burkarth first place for that display of cruelty. Vice President Marie Harris has likewise functioned as one of Reyna’s key operatives, repeatedly acting as a henchwoman for Reyna and Goldsmith to stifle faculty voices and punish those who speak up.
Arias fits seamlessly into this management culture. His November 2025 email to us defending Goldsmith and belittling faculty’s unanimous no‑confidence votes shows the same contempt for shared governance and the same instinct to retaliate against critics rather than listen to them. He brings a documented track record as a fixer who operates in the shadows, moves money in ways that invite ethics complaints, suppresses inconvenient information, and targets whistleblowers and opponents. In fact, he is perfect for Goldsmith’s administration.
Most importantly, Arias’s career advancement has consistently depended on his willingness to do the dirty work others will not. At MCC, that will mean turning his skills against faculty who have already delivered six votes of no‑confidence against the administration, and making sure those voices are contained rather than heard.
In a previous article, we warned that:
“[Goldsmith] is now fully unencumbered and unaccountable. Approaching retirement, Goldsmith stands to act with virtual impunity, even more than before. She is unafraid of repercussions and unanswerable for future violations or misconduct.”
Arias’s impending appointment is daunting evidence that our warning was not hyperbole. It was an accurate prediction.
Once again, Goldsmith has moved first and informed the Board later, quietly bringing in Arias before any formal approval at a public meeting. He has already been attending meetings at MCC and working on campus for at least two weeks, effectively installed in the role before trustees or the public have had any meaningful opportunity to weigh in. Time and again, Goldsmith has concealed major personnel decisions from the Board until they arrive as faits accomplis; this is yet another entry in the same playbook.
Worse, the position was never posted. Instead of conducting an open search, Goldsmith simply appointed a reportedly unqualified candidate with a well‑documented history of controversy, ethical questions, and retaliation, handed him a district computer and email account, and only then left it to the Board to rubber‑stamp what had already been done.
As the saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” The saying does not tell us whom to blame when someone insists on being fooled at every opportunity—but at this point, the Board’s persistent deference makes clear that being misled by Goldsmith is no longer an accident; it is a choice.
Moreover, as we reported, witnesses at Edward Madec’s criminal hearing revealed that Yessenia Carrillo—Arias’s niece and a civil attorney at Liebert Cassidy Whitmore, which represents SCCCD—contacted them to discuss their testimony just before the criminal hearing. Madec’s attorney called this “tampering with criminal witnesses;” the judge called it “highly unusual.” Carrillo is also the president of the Central Unified School District Board of Trustees. Delivering Goldsmith’s agenda at all cost regardless of ethical obligations has become a family affair for the uncle-and-niece duo.
6. What You Can Expect
If Arias is installed at MCC, employees should prepare for several predictable developments based on his documented record:
Escalating attacks on whistleblowers: employees who speak publicly about rampant retaliation, cronyism, or harassment should expect to be cast as political actors rather than professionals raising legitimate concerns. Arias has a long history of branding criticism as partisan “shenanigans” and “character assassination,” then going after the messengers by investigating sources, filing formal complaints against critics, and using his office to damage their reputations.
Narrative management over truth: Arias’s career shows he routinely uses selective leaks, half‑truths, and unverified warnings to control the story, even at the expense of community trust and economic harm. At Fresno Unified, he was caught releasing truancy data that understated the problem by half and then hunted down the staff who provided accurate numbers to a journalist. At City Hall, he issued unverified ICE raid warnings that devastated vendors and then claimed credit for “averting” raids that never existed. In a communications role at MCC, the same tools will be available to him to frame faculty concerns as political attacks and portray administrators as the victims.
A deepened culture of fear: At Fresno Unified, staff learned that reporting Arias’s conduct led not to his discipline, but to their own reassignment. At SCCCD, faculty have already watched Goldsmith, Reyna, and Harris retaliate against Academic Senate leaders who dared to speak up. Multiple formal complaints at Fresno Unified documented Arias’s pattern of intimidation, angry outbursts, and aggressive language, and his physical confrontation with protesters in 2020 showed he is willing to escalate to force when challenged. Installing a figure with that history into MCC’s communications office would reinforce the message already circulating on campus: speak up, and you risk being isolated, discredited, or targeted. But that is nothing new at MCC, where the administration has a documented history of protecting repeated aggressive behavior by those who align themselves with, and speak on behalf of, leadership—even when the individual has a known record of violence and a mugshot to prove it.
Further erosion of oversight: Arias’s comfort operating in the shadows of open‑meeting laws and ethics rules, exemplified by his central role in Fresno’s secret budget committee and an ongoing FPPC probe over his private‑jet flight, signals that he is not someone who will champion transparency or good governance. Instead, he is likely to abet Goldsmith, Reyna, and Harris by providing a veneer of compliance while preserving the substance of secrecy and retaliation. His November 2025 email made clear that he views faculty participation in governance not as a partnership, but as an obstacle to be managed when it threatens those in power.
7. A Word for Supporters
Let’s be clear: Miguel Arias is not being hired for his marketing expertise or his commitment to higher education. Reportedly, Arias doesn’t even meet the minimum qualifications for the position based on the job announcement that Burkarth was hired under. He is being hired because he has spent two decades perfecting the role of political enforcer: protecting embattled leaders, suppressing inconvenient information, and retaliating against critics.
The evidence is overwhelming:
Mark Arax’s investigation documented Arias’s role as a fixer at Fresno Unified who misappropriated funds, hid data, and retaliated against whistleblowers.
Formal complaints at Fresno Unified confirmed a hostile work environment characterized by intimidation and inappropriate language.
His tenure on the Fresno City Council is marked by repeated controversies, ethics complaints, and allegations of improper conduct.
His November 2025 email defending Goldsmith and attacking faculty leadership demonstrates exactly where his loyalties lie.
The pattern is clear. The intent is obvious. Arias is being brought in to do to MCC faculty what he did to Fresno Unified staff: silence them, intimidate them, and advance an administrative agenda regardless of the cost to students or institutional integrity.
The problem, as always, is that the seven people elected to safeguard this District against figures like Arias will almost certainly approve his appointment, because their political expediency, and in some cases their own future ambitions, depend on keeping Goldsmith’s machine intact.
Goldsmith and Reyna’s decision to bring in Arias tells you everything you need to know about their priorities. As we predicted, they have chosen to double down on the very tactics that earned them votes of no‑confidence, and the Board of Trustees continues to ignore repeated warnings about administrators who retaliate and create toxic work environments. The Arias hire is yet another decision that will almost certainly end in costly litigation that taxpayers, not the administrators responsible or the Trustees, will be forced to fund.
To employees at MCC: you have already shown extraordinary courage in delivering six votes of no‑confidence. Do not let Arias intimidate you. Document everything. Keep contemporaneous notes of meetings, emails, and instructions. If you experience retaliation, or even the threat of it, contact us immediately.
To everyone else in the District: show up tomorrow at the Board of Trustees meeting and demand better. Demand a real, open search for this position and a truly qualified candidate, not another henchman quietly installed to do Goldsmith and Reyna’s retaliatory bidding. Stand in solidarity with MCC faculty, who have endured years of escalating retaliation for speaking up. Saying “it’s not happening to me, so I won’t protest” is both shortsighted and false. No one is exempt in a system built on intimidation and retaliation. You don’t gain immunity by staying silent; you face seasoned adversaries who retaliate when it is your turn to be inconvenient.
Every Academic Senate and union leader across the District should stand with and behind MCC faculty and publicly oppose this appointment at tomorrow’s Board of Trustees meeting. Your presence and your voice are the only protection you can count on.
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