Also known as ‘Daisy the Venice Healer,’ the candidate channels a life of trauma and survival into an unpredictable bid for City Hall
When Lindsay Davis holds court on Third Street Promenade, flipping her skateboard, declaring every passerby a superhero and offering to “boop” strangers on the nose, she could easily be dismissed as an eccentric street performer.
But when the cameras stop rolling and the audience is gone, the Santa Monica City Council candidate –– also known as “Daisy the Venice Healer” –– is entirely calculating about her strategy.
“Politics is performance,” she tells The Sun. “People have a huge reaction about me, so it doesn’t matter what side they’re on — they’re giving me publicity.”
Her “all-eyes-on-me” strategy reached its peak at the North of Montana Association (NOMA) candidate forum last weekend.
Seated alongside incumbent council members and seasoned political contenders, Davis stole the spotlight, fist-bumping her opponents and pitching indigenous-inspired governance circles to a mix of bewildered and amused voters.
“Do you know how happy I was that people would just listen to me on that stage?” she reveals in an exclusive interview. “They gave me a mic, and they wanted to hear what I had to say about the city. I was in heaven.”
Clips of her appearance quickly turned the otherwise routine municipal gathering into a viral spectacle. But dismissing Davis as a mere novelty, misses the far more uncomfortable reality driving her candidacy.
Beneath the glitter, playfulness, and outrageous visions of orbital space elevators lies a life story that reads like a harrowing map of California’s compounding social crises.
Davis isn’t pontificating about trauma, homelessness, or mental health from an academic armchair. She is speaking from the raw, lived experience of having survived them.
Life on the Outer Edges
Davis, now in her early forties, was born in Connecticut as Charlene Fodor. From a distance, she appeared to have a charmed and privileged childhood. Her mother, Susan Davis, was an accomplished opera singer. Her father, Eugene Fodor, a world-renowned violinist.
Arthur Davis, her grandfather, served as the United States Ambassador to Paraguay under President Ronald Reagan.
“I remember we had a butler,” she says. “I pushed zero on the phone, a butler answered, and you could order cookies and milk.”
Behind closed doors, however, a more serious storyline appeared to be developing.
Davis says she was sexually abused by a now deceased family member as a child. (The Sun has not been able to independently verify this claim.)
“I was sent away to New York City when I was like five,” she says. “I was in a mental hospital. They didn’t diagnose autism then, but you could say I was acting autistic.”
By 11, Davis says she had her first experience blacking out from alcohol. A decade later, she discovered cocaine.
To support her habit, Davis says she began trading her companionship for money with men she refers to as “sugar daddies.” Three of them fathered children with her.
“One paid me 14,000 a month in child support,” she remembers. “Another one gave me a quarter of a million dollars, and signed a parenting contract. The third one was a dud. He just gave up his rights.”
In 2018, while on a drug and booze-fueled date with a different man, Davis was arrested and charged with prostitution. Her children were placed in foster care.
“It was heartbreaking,” she recalls. “I tried to get them back. I tried to visit them.”
Davis says she recently reconnected with her older son on his 18th birthday. She hopes to do the same with her younger son next year. “My daughter got adopted by strangers,” she says.
The experience of losing her children, Davis says, prompted her to get sober and reinvent herself as ‘Daisy’ almost eight years ago. “I was just such a broken woman,” she remembers. “I was like, ‘I am going to start over.'”
Life Today
Today, Davis is taking classes at Santa Monica College and living on a state-subsidized $220 monthly budget in a $56-a-month studio apartment two blocks from the Ocean. She relies on full “wraparound” care, weekly EMDR therapy, and caseworker support to keep her grounded.
Davis describes herself as “California sober” and maintains a unique view on her recovery.
“At two years sober, I decided that money was the real addiction,” she says. “I decided I wasn’t going to do anything for money anymore.”
“My long-term solution is to live through the exact universal needs-based systems I’m creating in Santa Monica so I know they work. I plan to live off $220 a month, and I want to find a way to donate my whole $1,600 council salary [if I am elected].”
This is where her candidacy presents Santa Monica with a provocative dilemma.
In a city where affluent voters endlessly debate the unhoused crisis from behind survey data and policy whiteboards, Davis offers an unfiltered, first-person vantage point from the absolute bottom of the socio-economic ladder.
If local voters were to look past the performative “Playboy Jesus” armor, they would find someone whose daily survival depends on the exact municipal infrastructure council members oversee. Davis believes her dependence on these housing, behavioral-health and social-service systems gives her a perspective most candidates do not have.
From Lindsay to Daisy
For Davis, shedding her past wasn’t just a political pivot; it was a matter of psychological survival. The name “Lindsay” carried the heavy baggage of family secret-keeping, addiction, criminal arrests, and the devastating loss of her children.
Stepping into the persona of Daisy provided a fresh start designed to channel her lived trauma into public service.
“Step one is you gotta be honest. You can’t make people scared to be honest,” Davis explains, reflecting on her choice to speak openly about her past. “I’ve done a lot of healing. I say it matter-of-factly because I want others who have a story where they’ve been hurt to know it can be normalized.”
Instead of hiding the record that would sink a conventional candidate, Davis wears her survival like a badge of honor. To her, “Daisy the Venice Healer” isn’t a fake character, but an upgraded identity — one built to mother a new “family” after losing the ability to raise her own.
“As far as I’m concerned, Daisy the Venice Healer is the local neighborhood superhero,” she says. “And that’s my full-time job: mothering the whole beach.”
The Santa Monica City Council is made up of seven members. Three seats –– including the one belonging to current mayor Caroline Torosis –– will be decided in the November 3 election.
Davis believes she will have a seat on the next dais, but already has a back up plan in case things don’t work out.
“Technically, this is just practice for the presidential election,” she laughs. “I definitely plan on winning that.”
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Editor’s note: This feature story does not constitute an endorsement of any candidate.
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