When fighter jets roar over the Huntington Beach Pier this Friday, the Pacific Airshow will mark ten years in Huntington Beach. Few local events have had a rockier ride. In four years, the show survived an oil spill, a City Council that cut off its support, a lawsuit, a state audit fight and a federal government shutdown depriving it of key participants like the USAF Thunderbirds. It also outlasted every antagonistic Democrat who once sat on the council.
Elliott Turns Airshow Into “Surf City’s Crown Jewel”
The show began in 2016 as a Breitling-sponsored event that drew hundreds of thousands to the beach. In June 2018, Huntington Beach native Kevin Elliott took it over and rebranded it. Elliott is a pilot, and his company, Code Four, produces large events.
Under Elliott the show grew. The Air Force Thunderbirds headlined in 2018, 2019 and 2022. Recent shows have drawn more than half a million visitors, and in 2023 Elliott took the brand to Australia’s Gold Coast.
For years, City Hall treated the show as a partner. The city credited Elliott up to $110,000 a year in parking revenue from airshow weekend toward his permit, parking and public safety bills. Boosters cited a Visit Huntington Beach report that put the 2022 show’s economic impact at about $70 million.
HB City Council Democrats Declare War
The trouble started in October 2021. An offshore pipeline leak sent oil toward the shoreline, and the city canceled the show’s final day. Elliott said he lost millions and refunded ticket holders out of his own pocket.
At that time, the Huntington Beach City Council was controlled by a cohesive liberal Democrat majority. After controversial celebrity Councilman Tito Ortiz resigned a few months into his term in 2021, the council appointed liberal attorney Rhonda Bolton. That gave Mayor Kim Carr, Dan Kalmick, Natalie Moser and Bolton a 4-3 majority.
In September 2022, Elliott asked the city to credit all incremental airshow parking revenue against his bill (the Council put the rate up from $15 to $30 for airshow weekend), with no cap. The council refused 6-1 and revoked the parking credit entirely. Carr characterized the parking revenue credit as subsidizing a private business and that the event had to stand on its own. Supporters of the vote noted the city gave no similar breaks to other big events.
Republican Councilmember Mike Posey countered that the parking revenue credits provision was as temporary (indeed, it is under the agreement that was ultimately arrived at between Eilliott and the city).
From Elliott’s point of view, he was seeing a pattern of hostility to the show and his company, not a budget decision. After all, the Airshow brought the city tremendous favorable publicity as a tourism destination and pumped tens of millions into the local economy. He viewed the parking vote as part of a campaign to shut the show down, beginning with the oil-spill cancellation. He said the city had essentially told him to get lost.
The Air Show On The Ballot
The fight spilled into the November 2022 election. Four council seats were up. Carr gave up hers to wage a failed challenge to state Senator Janet Nguyen’s re-election. Republicans Posey, Barbara Delgleize and Erik Peterson were termed out.
The Republican Party and conservative activists united around four-candidate slate, led by former state Senator Tony Strickland and including Casey McKeon, Pat Burns and Gracey Van Der Mark. Dubbed the “Fab 4”, they campaign on a promise to “save” Huntington Beach from the liberal council majority’s mismanagement, and save the airshow.
While Code Four provided the sound and some signage for a slate rally at the pier on Oct. 27, Elliott did not contribute to the campaigns of the Fab 4 council candidates despite incessant rhetoric to the contrary.
READ: GOP/Business “Unity” Candidates Sweep Huntington Beach Council Elections
All four won, routing the opposing Democratic-backed slate of former Councilmember Jill Hardy, school trustee Gina Clayton-Tarvin, Planning Commissioner Oscar Rodriguez and Ken Inouye. With Carr’s seat now held by a conservative, the Democratic majority was gone. Kalmick, Moser and Bolton, whose seats weren’t up until 2024, were relegated to a three-member minority.
The Legal War
A few weeks prior to that election, in October 2022, Elliott sued the city and Carr personally, claiming the 2021 cancellation breached his contract and that the parking vote was retaliation. According to Elliott, the city bypassed the proper process in canceling the show, and still charged his company fees, leaving it with substantial losses.
The city initially moved to have the suit dismissed, but the new conservative majority chose to avoid a needless and costly legal battle and settled the matter instead. In May 2023, the city agreed to pay at least $5.4 million, plus up to $2 million from any recovery from the oil company. It also forgave 2021 fees, refunded 2022 payments and restored the parking credit.
At a Pier Plaza news conference, Strickland declared, “Ladies and gentlemen, we saved the airshow!” He cast the payout as a bargain, arguing that an event bringing $70 million annually into the local economy was worth it. He also said the previous council had been hostile to both business and the airshow.
“Anything that brings in $70 million to our local economy, that’s worth it,” Strickland said, in reference to an economic impact report on the 2022 airshow commissioned by Visit Huntington Beach.
The Democrats Take Aim At Elliott
The Democrats’ public objections centered on money, but their sour grapes were also directed toward Elliott himself.
Kalmick called the settlement a terrible deal and questioned the ties behind it. He told LAist he had “substantial questions about the relationship between the four newly elected council members, the city attorney and Elliott.”
Engaging in a bit of guilt-by-association, Kalmick pointed to Facebook photos from the 2022 show of Elliott and his wife posing on the beach with the Fab 4 candidates.
Elliott dismissed Kalmick’s swipe, pointing out that he invites candidates of both parties to the show every year, along with friends, family and even his old first-grade teachers, which included Carr, her family, Kalmick, his family and even Kalmick’s father, who serves as a council member in Seal Beach.
Carr, now off the council, tried to paint the new council majority’s decision as cronyism. “I do understand why the new council majority would settle,” she said. “[Elliott] is their friend, their ally.”
Moser said she had told colleagues in closed session that the deal was criminal. “This looks like corruption to me … It doesn’t smell right,” she said.
Bolton, a litigator, said the city paid a fortune over one lost day, based on a claim that had already been dismissed.
She rejected the idea that she was playing politics, and tried to blame City Attorney Michael Gates and the Fab 4 for politicizing the issue – even though Bolton and her council allies had made their move against Elliott and the Air Show long before the “Fab 4” candidates declared for city council.
None seemed to recollect their role in instigating the battle.
The majority pushed back. Van Der Mark accused critics of using litigation as a political weapon, timing investigations to hit the majority right before an election.
Elliott himself stated he had never been politically inclined, telling the Voice of OC: “Unfortunately, the event did become politicized as a result of that campaign to an extent. It became more of a political lightning rod than it should’ve been.”
Then state Senator Dave Min, a hyperpartisan Democrat and inveterate publicity hound, secured a state audit of the settlement in 2024. This fits in a recent pattern of Sacramento Democrats weaponing the State Auditor and using it to harass disfavored organizations and enterprises.
The city fought it in court until a judge ordered cooperation in August 2026. The audit remains pending.
The Council Democrats Go Down To Defeat
The council Democrats’ war on the Pacific Airshow became their Waterloo in November 2024, when Kalmick, Moser and Bolton were all defeated by a candidate slate backed by the council’s conservative majority. This win by the conservative “HB3” slate of Chad Williams, Butch Twining and Don Kennedy left conservatives holding all seven seats. When Strickland left for the state Senate in 2025, the council appointed conservative Andrew Gruel to replace him.
A 25-Year Home In Huntington Beach
In September 2025, the all-conservative council locked the show in, giving Code Four exclusive rights to stage the airshow in Huntington Beach through December 2035, plus three optional five-year extensions – which could keep the show in the city until 2050.
READ: Huntington Beach City Council Approves 25-Year Agreement With Pacific Airshow
The airshow gets exclusive use of public parking and RV camping spaces, plus extra days for setup and teardown. The airshow keeps all parking and camping revenue until 2030, when the city gets $10 per car space and $100 per RV space, adjusted annually for inflation.
Code Four pays for all event operations, logistics, staffing, equipment, promotion and cleanup; obtaining all required permits and licenses, and carrying insurance; safety and evacuation plans (developed with the city); promotional opportunities for the city.
The city agreed to cover environmental (CEQA) reviews for the first 10 years; waive fees for public safety, permits, beach maintenance, utilities and road closures; staffing the parking areas; and defend the airshow against CEQA lawsuits.
Riding Out The Shutdown
Days before the 2025 show, the federal government shut down. Ten U.S. military acts pulled out, including the Thunderbirds and the F-35A Demo Team.
Elliott said he was disappointed but “very excited about our lineup.” The show went on with the Canadian Forces Snowbirds (Canada’s premier military aerobatic flight demonstration team), Britain’s RAF Falcons and vintage World War II-era bombers like the immortal B-17 Flying Fortress and a B-29 Superfortress – the plane that dropped the atomic bombs on Japan, ending the war.
Democrats Gone – Pacific Air Show Still Standing
This year’s show runs Oct. 2–4, and the U.S. military is back. The lineup includes the USAF Thunderbirds aerobatics squadron, an F-22 Raptor Demo Team, and tankers from Edwards Air Force Base. A MiG-29 and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman were announced as late additions. NASA research aircraft – five F-5s, an F-15 and an F/A-18 – will participate in the show.
The Democrat city council members who declared war on the Pacific Airshow are all gone, vanquished by Huntington Beach voters. The Airshow, on the other hand, will be in town for the next quarter century, at least.
