In a rematch between the two losing candidates in the 2020 race for District 4 in Barstow, Carmen Hernandez competed and prevailed this week against Martha O’Brien, with the prize this time being the District 1 council position.
Council terms in Barstow, as elsewhere, run for four years. Hernandez and O’Brien were able to run again in just two years because of the shift in district lines that came about with the redrafting of the city’s electoral map in 2021 following the 2020 census.
Councilman Tim Silva, who has been on the Barstow City Council for nearly 16 years, is the current District 1 representative. He opted out of running for reelection.
Hernandez was an incumbent council member in 2020. She was challenged at that time by O’Brien and Marilyn Dyer-Kruse. When the dust had cleared, Kruse came out on top, with 570 votes 37.25 percent. Hernandez was turned out of office, having come up a bit short with 549 or 35.88 percent. O’Brien trailed both, with 411 or 26.86 percent. This time around in District 1, Hernandez, who in June wangled an appointment to the Barstow Community College District Board of Trustees to replace Trustee Tim Heiden after his December 2021 death left his Area A position on the board vacant, again bettered O’Brien, having polled 302 votes or 57.85 to the also-ran’s 220 votes or 42.15 percent.
Up for election as well in Barstow this year was District 2 Councilman Jame Noble. He was opposed by Terri Peralta. In the initial returns reported by the registrar of voters’ office on Tuesday night at 8:30 p.m., a half-hour after the polls had closed and with just the mail ballots that had come in by that point being counted, Peralta had assumed the lead, with 218 votes or 50.11 percent to Noble’s 217 votes or 49.89 percent. At 10 p.m., a single polling place vote had come in, that being for Peralta. She was up 219 to 217. At midnight, another vote came in for Peralta. She led 220 to 217. At 4 a.m., 21 votes from the polling precincts came in for Peralta and 36 came in for Noble. The incumbent thereby took the lead, 253 to 241. He has not relinquished it since. As of 4 p.m. today, Noble had 379 votes or 51.21 percent and Peralta had 360 votes or 48.71 percent.
Put before Barstow voters on Tuesday was an initiative, Measure H, which asked if the city’s residents wanted to give up their direct vote on who should serve as mayor in favor of splitting the city into five council districts instead of its current four and then having the council designate one of those five members, on a rotational basis, as mayor. As of 4 p.m. today, Measure H was being rejected by a margin of 939 votes or 41.42 percent for the change and 1,328 or 58.58 percent against it.
-M.G.