On My Mind: Yountville’s 2010 election gave us a mayor and a fortunate farewell
As the high-interest races for Yountville’s mayor and two Town Council seats continue to be a major focus of many local conversations, I can’t help but think back to November 2010.
Sixteen years ago there were three mayoral candidates: John Dunbar, Marjorie Mohler and Robert Stryk. Dunbar won with 559 votes and served as our mayor for 12 years. Mohler followed with 267; she was already on the council at that time and remained there until she was eventually elected mayor in 2022. Stryk, a total newcomer to Yountville, attracted only 177 votes and left town not too long after the election.
I remember Stryk presenting some of the senior women in town with fresh flowers shortly after he arrived.
I also recall he didn’t have a very good grasp of the town itself. When he first took out papers for mayor he was unaware that he was living outside of the town limits. He quickly picked up and moved into town to fix that problem.
His short tenure in town made him suspect as a carpetbagger. I remember a candidate forum where he was not well received and where the late Rose Solis advised him, “Why don’t you just leave?”
That he did, not too long after the election, and he eventually found his calling in — of all places — Washington, D.C., where he is now widely known as the “cowboy lobbyist.” He had no trappings of a cowboy when he was in Yountville, but it seems to work for him in D.C.
By 2023 his lobbying firm, currently known at Stryk Global Diplomacy, had over $18 million in total contract value recorded across multiple international foreign government agreements. He first grabbed attention as one of the top earners in the field during Donald Trump’s first presidential term, reporting $19.5 million in lobbying fees in those four years alone.
Stryk reports his current contracts are worth $31 million.
He has been profiled in two books: The Big Break by Ben Terris of the Washington Post and Devils’ Advocates by the New York Times’ Kenneth Vogel.
It’s possible you saw Stryk’s name in the San Francisco Chronicle recently, where he was mentioned in a story about the former mayor of Windsor, Dominic Foppoli, who was publicly accused by 13 women of sexual assault or misconduct and was ordered in a civil case to pay $12.6 million dollars to the plaintiffs.
The Chronicle and other news outlets said the victims were badgered into silence by “high-powered Washington lobbyist Robert Stryk.” One of the victims said Stryk told her he would release sex tapes and other embarrassing private disclosures if she persisted in accusing Foppoli of sexual assault.
Sending Stryk on his way may have been the best of all results of that 2010 election here in Yountville.
