The latest recall effort in San Bernardino presents the public with a confusing mélange of conflicting political and personal entanglements, leaving confusion as to who, precisely, wants to of the senior members of the city council removed from office.
This week, it was publicly announced that a group of city residents living in both the First and Fourth wards want to force a recall question against Councilman Ted Sanchez and Councilman Fred Shorett.
Sanchez was first elected to the city council in 2018 and was reelected in 2022. Shorett was elected to the council in 2009, reelected in 2013, reelected in 2018 and again in 2022.
Shorett’s early tenure in office was distinguished by his alliance with then-Mayor Patrick Morris, which was an unlikely pairing, given that Shorett is a Republican and Morris a Democrat. Nevertheless, the two were part of a narrow ruling majority on the council that formed when the city was under severe economic challenge, with consistent consecutive budget deficits in which expenditures eclipsed revenue. Morris, who was himself a longtime public employee as both a prosecutor in the district attorney’s office and then later a Superior Court judge, took what was for many a shocking stand against public employee unions, which for decades had effectively pressured previous mayors and city councils to grant them salary and benefit increases, despite the city’s shrinking income. Shorett joined with Morris in seeking to reduce city expenditures by freezing city employee pay levels and holding the line on benefits, which managed to stave off for a year or year-and-a-half an inevitable bankruptcy filing by the city in 2012. While Shorett found himself faced with the undying enmity of local public employee unions, he managed to get some level of credit for his efforts to maintain the city’s solvency and managed to stay in office for a decade-and-a-half.
Initially, Shorett and Sanchez appeared to be and actually were on a collision course, as Sanchez ran for office and was elected as an ally of John Valdivia, whom Shorett had beaten in the 2009 Fourth Ward election primary and who came into office in the Third Ward in 2012 as a candidate backed by the city’s firefighters’ union who advocated for increasing firefighter salaries and benefits. Valdivia served as a foil to Morris until he left office in 2014, and the differences between Valdivia and Shorett were legendary. Valdivia successfully ran for mayor in 2018, at which point, with the support of Sanchez and then-newly elected Second Ward Councilwoman Sandra Ibarra, Fifth Ward Councilman Henry Nickel and then-Sixth Ward Councilwoman Bessine Richard, Valdivia took firm control of the machinery of government in the county seat. Valdivia’s hold on the city intensified in May 2019, when Juan Figueroa, whom the mayor backed, was elected to finish out the nearly two years remaining on Valdivia’s term as Third Ward Councilman.
In relatively short order, however, Valdivia overplayed his hand, and one by one he lost the support of Ibarra, Nickel and Sanchez, as he was engulfed by scandal upon scandal relating to the pay-for-play ethos of his administration.
Ultimately, in 2022, Valdivia was ousted from the mayor’s post, having been beaten in that year’s primary by both former City Attorney Jim Penman and the city’s one-time human resources director, Helen Tran. Ultimately, Tran was elected mayor in the November 2022 election.
Under Tran, a Democrat, the San Bernardino ship of state has had less than smooth sailing as she took the helm of a council that consisted of four Republicans and three Democrats. Tran had hoped city affairs might be run in a stable and effective manner. Nevertheless, she was hampered by Robert Field’s  departure as city manager just before she acceded to office. Field had been at the helm of the city during the last two years of Valdivia’s mayoralty.
In December 2022, upon Trans ascendancy to mayor, the council members appeared to be on good terms with one another all around. Tran’s, Ibarra’s, Reynoso’s and Calvin’s shared Democratic Party affiliation put them on the same wavelength, and Sanchez, Figueroa, Shorett and Alexander were in no haste to engage in any sort of divisive partisan bickering that would potentially compromise their efforts at effective municipal leadership, particularly given that San Bernardino is an overwhelmingly Democratic city, with 48,317 or 46.4 percent of its 104,156 voters registered as Democrats and 22,944 or 22 percent registered as Republicans and 22,858 or 21.9 percent unaffiliated with any party and the remaining 8.7 percent registered with the American Independent, Green, Libertarian, Peace & Freedom or other more obscure parties. From December 2022 and through the first several months of 2023 there was an air of harmony on the council dais. Difficulties arose toward the middle of 2023.
Tran’s tenure in office began with a caretaker city manager in place, and at first subtle and then more pronounced differences surfaced among the members of the council with regard to whom the city should hire as its top administrator while the recruitment process was ongoing in the summer of 2023. This included a manifestation of collective schizophrenia when some members of the city council at first advocated and then rejected the idea of hiring the individual they had brought in as the interim city manager, Charles McNeely, as the full-fledged city manager. McNeely had served as city manager in San Bernardino from 2009 until 2012, his exit at that time marred by the city’s filing for bankruptcy protection a few months later. The fully retired McNeely agreed to take on the interim city manager’s post with the proviso that it was to be no more than a temporary assignment, and the council at that time was of the attitude that the competition for the long-term city manager post should be a fair contest, such that one of the candidates should not have the advantage of being in the position of  the serving city manager when the council’s decision on who should fill the post was ongoing. After a less than two months in the assignment, however, McNeely’s attitude changed, and he began to seriously entertain the notion of remaining as city manager for two, three, four or as many years as his health and acuity remained intact. This precipitated a divide on the council, as some members were amenable to permanentizing McNeely and others were opposed to doing so, based on the earlier decision not to allow the interim manager to compete for the job and/or the perception that McNeely, at the age of 71, was simply not up to the task and would not last more than a few years, at most, necessitating yet another recruitment process.
Once it became clear that McNeely was not going to solve the city’s long-term city manager dilemma, Tran sought to convince her council colleagues to hire her first choice for the post, David Carmody, who had been the city manager in West Covina, the city where she had gone to work as human resources director after she departed from the employ of San Bernardino in 2019. Tran made no headway in that regard.
In the early summer, the city council came to a near consensus about hiring Stockton City Manager Harry Black. That resolve fell apart when Black’s salary demands gave the council pause prior to his withdrawal over concerns about the confidentiality of the recruitment process.
Thereafter, inexplicable delays and stalling that took place in finalizing the council’s majority choice, arrived at in August 2023, to have Salinas City Manager Steve Carrigan manage the city. Those delays, however, led to Carrigan’s decision in late September to withdraw as a candidate for the post.
Ultimately, the city in October 2023 made a decision to hire Charles Montoya, such that a coordinated and forward-looking running of municipal affairs did not begin in earnest until November 2023, nearly 11 months after Tran was sworn into office.
As it would turn out, even that progression would turn out to be riddled with misdirection.
There was tension on the council between three of the council Republicans – Sanchez, Figueroa and Shorett – who began to vote on many issues as a block and two of the council’s Democrats – Fifth Ward Council Benjamin Reynoso and Sixth Ward Councilman Kimberly Calvin – who voted on virtually all issues of any substance in lockstep with one another. Sometimes, Reynoso and Calvin were joined by Seventh Ward Councilman Damon Alexander, a Republican, with regard to certain matters. Occasionally, Ibarra, a Democrat, came across to back Reynoso and Calvin, as well. More often, however, Ibarra leaned in favor of the policies favored by Sanchez, Figueroa and Shorett. Initially, a major issue for Reynoso and Calvin was the management style, approach and action of Montoya, whose hiring they and Alexander had opposed.
For Tran, who had seen her ability to initiate long-term policies compromised most of her first year in office by the city not having a full-fledged city manager in place, the prospect of having Montoya begin the process of planning, organizing, directing and controlling the city’s day-to-day operations and future was encouraging. Montoya had been previously employed as the city manager of Watsonville in California and the town manager of Florence, Arizona, as the city manager of Avondale, Arizona, the finance director and treasurer with the Town of Castle Rock in Colorado, and the chief financial officer for both Centennial, Colorado and for Jefferson County, Colorado.
There was some confidence on Tran’s part as well as that of Sanchez, Ibarra, Figueroa and Shorett that with his financial expertise, Montoya would be able to provide sound guidance while overseeing a city that had declared bankruptcy in 2012 and had not exited from that status until 2017, and was yet wobbly on its feet with regard to generating sufficient revenue to deal with the challenges of funding services to the county’s most populous city, one in which roughly 13.3 percent live below the poverty level, as defined by the U.S. government.
From the time he took on oversight of municipal operation in San Bernardino on the second-to-last day of October, Montoya set about impressing the city council with his can-do attitude and energetic approach, seeking to address longstanding issues that had been festering because of bureaucratic and political malaise and procrastination. He set about having staff analyze problems and challenges the city faced, often initiating preliminary action or laying groundwork for decisive moves to be taken in an effort to demonstrate his ability. This approach was appreciated by some members of the council, who felt decisive action with regard to certain problems was called for. It was further appreciated that Montoya was not adhering to the direction of one dominant member of the city’s decisionmakers, such as had been the case with former City Manager Bob Field and former Mayor John Valdivia.
In much of his approach, Montoya was presuming upon the acceptance of his action being done in good faith and that the mayor and both the individual council members and the council as a whole would view his taking action without their explicit consent, based upon his own independent judgment, as not only justifiable but not being disrespectful of their authority. Very early on, this approach created a schism on the council, with Councilwoman Kimberly Calvin and Councilman Ben Reynoso in particular believing that Montoya was overstepping his authority.
Montoya appeared to be safe in the niche he had created for himself, since there was a growing and intensifying estrangement between Calvin and at least three members of the council – Sanchez, Figueroa and Shorett – as well as the mayor.  As Montoya, too, was on the outs with Calvin, he and the council majority, primarily Sanchez, Ibarra, Figueroa and Councilman Shorett, along with Mayor Tran, generally hewed to one side, while Calvin increasingly found herself isolated or with the support, on-again and off-again, of Councilman Reynoso and Councilman Damon Alexander. It thus appeared that Montoya had carved out for himself a safe haven within the administrative quarters of City Hall, which had relocated from the actual City Hall to offices within the immediately adjacent Vanir Tower in downtown San Bernardino.
While Montoya was yet riding high in San Bernardino, he not only took full advantage of the deterioration of the Calvin’s relationship with Tran, Sanchez, Ibarra, Figueroa and Shorett, but sought to intensify it. While Montoya was yet the city manager, the city commissioned Laguna Niguel-based JL Group LLC to carry out two separate investigations. The first of these focused on Calvin directly and unequivocally, relating to what were alleged to be her improper dealings with city staff members, more precisely having direct contact with those employees rather than dealing with them indirectly through the city manager, i.e., Montoya. The second investigation focused on what were deemed, or suspected to be, leaks of confidential information.
Since the first investigation were carried out by JL Group was pointedly focused on Calvin, quite predictably, the relationship between JL Group’s investigators/management and Calvin soured immediately. The testy relationship between Calvin and the JL Group, which lacked subpoena power and thus was  dependent upon the cooperation of witnesses identified by the investigators, most of whom were in some fashion affiliated with the city or were city employees who were answerable to Montoya, again predictably led to investigatory conclusions that were in the main less than flattering toward Calvin. At the time that the JL Group was carrying out its investigation, Montoya had immediate access to the preliminary and final reports pertaining to that investigation. The hostility between Montoya and Calvin was no secret. Many city employees, who were directly answerable to and serving at the pleasure of Montoya, out of fear that their jobs were on the line if they did not cooperate with JL Group’s investigators, submitted to questioning and colored their statements to the investigators in a hue that might have been damaging to Calvin.
The mayor and city council, with Calvin, Reynoso and Alexander dissenting, took the extraordinary steps of publicly releasing the executive summaries of the final reports provided by JL Group, along with 18 expurgated pages of the report relating to the leaks of confidentiality. Those materials revealed the investigators’ conclusions that Calvin had improperly communicated with city staff and was the likely source of at least some of the leaks of confidential information.
At that point, Sanchez and Shorett were entirely exasperated with Calvin and made no effort whatsoever to mask their enmity, hostility and contempt toward her. Ibarra, Figueroa and Tran, while somewhat less demonstrative, had lost patience with her. All five in April used the JL Group’s findings as a public relations cudgel against Calvin, citing those findings as a pretext to initiate censure proceedings against her.
That ploy baffled many, as the previous month, in the municipal election corresponding with the March 5 California Primary, Calvin, who had failed to qualify her candidacy for reelection and therefore ran as write-in candidate, was turned out of office by the Sixth Ward’s voters. Similarly, both Reynoso and Alexander lost their bids for reelection.
Despite Calvin’s political fortunes having been eclipsed, she had expended tremendous energy and time over the previous six months inveighing against Montoya. In January, she had glommed onto an effort initiated by Montoya to have the city issue somewhere in the neighborhood of $120 million in bonds to finance various city capital improvements and infrastructure augmentations, including the seismic retrofit of the San Bernardino City Hall, which had been shuttered in 2017 because of concerns about its structural stability. Montoya’s move in this regard included his having signed, on December 12, 2023, a letter of intent, composed and dated December 4, 2023, to have the city enter into an exclusive relationship with the bond underwriting firm, Stifel Financial, Inc., to have it serve as the city’s financial advisor and underwriter with regard to the bond issuances Montoya was pushing. That arrangement with Stifel meant there would be no open public bid on the bond underwriting contract.
While Calvin’s efforts to vector the attention of the mayor and her council colleagues to what Montoya was hatching with Stifel was not immediately successful, she continued to push for an examination of the relationship between Montoya and Stifel, which had done financing work with a number of the other cities in California and elsewhere that Montoya had worked with over the years.
To a very real extent, Mayor Tran was convinced by not only Montoya but Sanchez and Shorett to ignore Calvin’s constant soundings of alarm and warning about the untoward relationship between Montoya and Stifel because, they said, she was hellbent on causing trouble and making the city look bad as part of her negative orientation sour grapes attitude at having been voted out of office. Simultaneously, both City Attorney Sonia Carvalho and Assistant City Attorney Thomas Rice, partners in the law firm of Best Best and Krieger, were lending credibility to the attacks on Calvin, as they downplayed the concern that she was enunciating about the potential long-term negative impact the bond issuances would have on the city financially.
In May came a string of revelations that virtually reorganized Mayor Tran’s thinking from top to bottom.
Then-Finance Director Barbara Germaine Whitehorne, who had been hired into that post in February 2021, 32 months before Montoya arrived, had grown curious about Montoya’s bond financing proposal, particularly as he had been excluding her from internal and external city communications involving a number of entities including corporate officers with Stifel and the city attorney’s office. Sparing time from her normal workload, which extended to preparing the city’s 2024-25 budget, she began to quietly churn the numbers that pertained to the bond issuance Montoya had unveiled in selected circles within the city’s confines, the need for debt service those issuances would create, breaking that number down into the annual drain it would represent and comparing that alongside the numbers in the annual spending plan she was working on. She was driven to a conclusion that the city would not be able to logically service that debt in either the short or long term. Exploring the matter further, it became clear that what Montoya was driving the city toward was having to pull $12 million out of its revenue stream to service the bonded indebtedness in upcoming 2024-25 and the city would thereafter have to devote $10 million annually toward that debt at a minimum starting Fiscal 2025-26, doing so continuously without respite for the next 29 years.
The week of May 1, before she left on vacation, Whitehorn confronted Montoya, telling him in plain terms, she said, “The city does not have that money.” She then provided the same information to the city’s team in charge of capital projects, including the City Hall retrofit.
Upon returning from vacation on May 15, Whitehorn met with Montoya, indicating her unwillingness to offer her support for the City Hall salvaging effort or the bond issuance. She said that Montoya sought to pressure her into changing her position by threatening to release, she said, “information damaging to my career into the public domain.” She responded by telling Montoya he would have to fire her to prevent her from opposing the bond issuances as a city employee. She quoted him as responding, “Oh, then I’ll just fire you without cause.”
Indeed, that is what Montoya did, arranging for Whitehorne to receive a pink slip later that day.
Whitehorne cleaned out her desk and left, but, catching Montoya unawares, returned for that evening’s city council meeting, where she gave the city council a blow-by-blow account of her confrontation with Montoya over the bond issuance proposal.
Simultaneously, questions arose over Montoya’s single-minded dedication to hiring Stifel. Almost overnight, the remainder of the city council began to focus on what Calvin had been irritatingly harping on all along: Montoya’s obstinate opposition to any kind of competitive bidding by a fuller range of bond underwriters. It was noted that Stifel had hit a rough patch, in which its annual net income for 2022 had been $625 million, a 20.83 percent decline from 2021 and that the financial doldrums for the company had persisted into 2023, when its net annual income declined 22.34 percent from what it was in 2022 to $485 million. Some had the perception that Montoya was militating more on behalf of Stifel than he was for San Bernardino. Some went so far as to suggest that he was feathering for himself a future nest by which he would be able to move into a lucrative position with the company after he was no longer city manager.
Boiling to the surface was that among the arrangements for the bond issuance that Montoya and Stifel were making was that Best Best & Krieger, the law firm in which City Attorney Carvalho and Assistant City Attorney Thomas Rice are partners in, was to serve as bond counsel, and that Carvalho’s and Rice’s colleague at Best Best & Krieger, Kim Byrens, was to serve as disclosure counsel. Typically, a bond counsel collects a fee somewhere between a quarter of a percent and one-half of a percent [.0025 and .005] of the bond issuance. Typically, a disclosure counsel is paid a fee equal to one-eighth of a percent and a quarter percent [.00125 and .0025] of the bond issuance. Thus, if the issuance of $120 million in bonds had proceeded as Montoya intended, Best Best & Krieger stood to collect a fee of somewhere between $300,000 and $600,000 and Byrens stood to make between $150,000 and $300,000.
The matter stewed for a while. The council called for a special meeting on May 22, one to be held behind closed doors and outside the view or earshot of the public, at which it was scheduled to engage in a “public employee performance evaluation… public employee performance dismissal [and] public employee appointment” relating to the “city manager.”
After hearing from a number of irate members of the public, the city council in private voted unanimously, citing no cause for the action. Pursuant to Section 11.7 of his employment contract, his termination without cause entitles Montoya to collect a specified severance equivalent to 12 months of his base salary, or $325,000. After months during which the council majority was constantly taking action in which it prevailed over Calvin’s dissenting votes or opposition, sometimes with and sometimes without the accompanying votes of Reynoso and Alexander, the full council and the mayor followed her lead.
Since Montoya’s departure, the half-gestated censure effort against Calvin has been dormant.
Going back at least a year, Mayor Tran has grown increasingly angry over what she considers to be a lack of respect. Those on the council have not recognized her crucial role as the city’s leader, she believes. What Tran is experiencing is an outgrowth of a reality that few, including herself, understand or at least in her case, understood. In actuality, the mayor in San Bernardino has far less political power than is commonly recognized. Throughout most of the 20th Century and into the beginning of the Third Millennium that was the case. It is even more true today. The San Bernardino City Charter that went into effect in 1905 did not, under normal circumstances, empower the mayor to vote. While the mayor presided over the city council’s meetings, controlling the gavel and the ebb and flow of debate and discussion, with a certain discretion over how and when votes were to be taken, only in such cases as there being a tie or with regard to the firing of personnel was the mayor allowed to vote. The mayor did have veto power, however on any vote of the council which passed by a 4-to-3 or 3-to-2 vote. In this way, it could be said, on issues of controversy or close differences, as long as the vote was framed properly, the mayor had two votes. Whereas the mayor’s political power under the 1905 Charter was rather limited, however, his/her administrative power was immense. The charter made him/her, with the city manager, a co-regent of the city in that he/she had the power to hire personnel. In 2015, the charter was redrafted and presented to the city’s residents the following year. Like the 1905 Charter, the mayor’s political reach remains limited in the 2016 Charter, which replicates the provisions of having the mayor preside over meetings, voting with regard to personnel decisions and possessing veto power on votes of the council wherein passage was by a single vote margin. But unlike the 1905 Charter, the 2016 Charter dispenses with the mayor’s administrative authority. Rather than the 1905 Charter’s council-mayor/city manager form of government, the 2016 Charter specifies a council-city manager form of government. The mayor no longer has the authority to engage with the city manager in making hiring decision of department heads and line employees, which are then confirmed/rubberstamped by the city council.
Since coming into office, Tran has essentially presided over city council meetings in which she has a modicum of control in managing the proceedings, but that has about been it. And in a very real way, her control has been limited, at best.
Her frustration at her circumstance has been tangible. She has requested that the entity she presides over be one that functions efficiently and in a dignified fashion. At the outset of city council meetings, she has repeatedly made a request, which goes, “Before we conduct city business, as a friendly reminder, as the elected leaders of the city we will endeavor to be respectful to each other, our public and especially our staff. Our behavior this evening sets the tone for how our residents, business community and others view our city. We must conduct city business with professionalism and respectful behavior to build trust, credibility and move our city forward We shall commit to these values and foster a positive and productive working environment that is conducive to achieving our goals effectively and efficiently.” Over the last several months, when making that statement, delivered word for word as if she is reading it from a script, there has been an ever more plaintive tone to her voice.”
Tran made a personal sacrifice in becoming mayor. To do so, she had to resign from a relatively lucrative professional assignment with the City of West Covina as the director of hurman resources there.
At the time she left West Covina in 2022, Tran was pulling down a salary of $142,031 with perquisites and add-ons of $13,335 per year plus benefits of $35,603 annually together with a $92,450 contribution toward her pension fund for a total annual compensation of $283,419.
As San Bernarino Mayor throughout 2023, Tran was provided with a salary of $48,654 plus perquisites and pay add-ons of $8,769, together with benefits of $23,122 and a $14,572.58 contribution to her retirement fund for a total annual compensation of $95,117.56.
Throughout the latter half of 2023 and the beginning of 2024, in the contretemps between, on one side Calvin and on the other Sanchez and Shorett and to a lesser extent Ibarra and Figueroa, Tran found herself gravitating more or less toward Sanchez and Shorett, two of the panel’s Republicans, putting her ad odds with her sister Democrat Calvin. While the closed session discussions that precipitated the council decision to release the JL Group’s investigation into the complaints relating to Calvin’s contact with staff members and what was characterized as leaks relating to last year’s city manager recruitment effort have remained under wraps and it is not clear whether Tran was in concurrence with that decision, it is known that both Sanchez and Shorett were pushing for that disclosure. On June 21, Steve Carrigan, the Salinas city manager who applied for the San Bernardino job, was selected and then voluntarily withdrew his application in September, sued the City of San Bernardino, claiming the city failed to maintain the confidentiality of the recruitment process, which either directly or indirectly led to his firing by Salinas shortly after he signaled he was not interested in the San Bernardino job. The strongest element of the suit Carrigan has brought, in which he wants at least $2.3 million, is the material contained in the JL Group report which blames Calvin for the leaking of that information.
The Carrigan lawsuit promises to be another black eye for the City of San Bernardino, consisting of events that took place under Tran’s stewardship of the city. Word is that following the revelations that came about during the final chapter of the Montoya saga, Tran now believes that she erroneously put her faith in the judgment of both Shorett, the senior member of the city council, and Sanchez, with Ibarra, the second longest serving member on the current council when it came to dealing with Calvin. As it turned out that Calvin was correct in her skepticism with regard to Montoya, sources say that Tran has come to see how Shorett’s and Sanchez’s antipathy toward Calvin resulted in them joining with Montoya in orchestrating the framing of Calvin with regard to the so-called “leaks” from the city manager recruitment effort. There is extant countervailing evidence to suggest that it was not Calvin or anyone in San Bernardino who actually allowed information about the identities of any of the 67 applicants for the job to slip out but rather a lack of security with regard to communications between the Berkeley-based headhunting/professional executive services recruitment firm, Koff & Associates/Arthur J. Gallagher & Company, that was conducting the city manager position application and evaluation process for the city. Tran, it is said, is livid with both Sanchez and Shorett, and a principal in JL Group, Jeffrey Johnson, with whom she previously had a close professional and political relationship, for having misled her into thinking that Calvin was acting irresponsibly and vindictively in her capacity as a city councilwoman.
In June, around the time that Carrigan filed his lawsuit against the city, a movement to hold Sanchez and Shorett accountable for the liability they had exposed the city to was materializing. There was a report that both would be served with recall papers at the July 3 council meeting. That date came and went, however, without either councilman being served with recall documents.
At this week’s meeting came confirmation that some order of a recall effort is under way.
During that portion of the July 17 meeting reserved for public comments, Sharon Negrete made her way to the podium.
“I, Sharon Negrete am here today to serve Fourth Ward Councilman Fred Shorett and First Ward Councilman Theodore Sanchez pursuant to Section 11020 of California Elections Code,” she said. “This notice of intention to circulate recall petition,” she said. “This is for you Fred. I’ll give this to the clerk.”
After providing the notices to City Clerk Genoveva Rocha, Negrete, alluding to the Lewis Carroll works Through the Looking Glass and Alice Wonderland, stated her belief that the city was plagued by the “ineffective leadership of our city council under your watch. We’re spiraling down a path of confusion and inaction much like the dissent into a bottomless rabbit hole. Our community deserves more than this circus act.”
Negrete did not specify who, beyond herself, was involved in the recall effort. Thereafter, assertions were made that the official initiation of the recall has yet to be made, as Negrete presented the documents to Rocha rather than to Shorett and Sanchez. After the meeting, it was related, an effort to serve both took place, but both moved too quickly to actually be served. A video surfaced the following day depicting what appeared to be two women attempting to serve Shorett, who was not visible in the video but was alleged to be inside his white pickup truck as it is backing out of a parking space. One of the women, carrying a packet in a large yellow-orange envelope standing to the driver’s side of the truck, attempts to approach the moving vehicle and engage with the driver, who does not allow himself to be inveigled into any sort of an exchange. After truck completes backing up and turns to pull away and down the aisle of the parking lot, another woman with a similar envelope is seen standing to the side of the truck on the passenger side. As the truck begins to move forward, the first woman throws the envelope into the bed of the pickup truck before it drives off.
The events of this week set off a frenzied set of speculations as to exactly who the recall proponents are and who is behind them.
Unfortunately, because the proponents failed to serve either Sanchez or Shorett properly, neither of them are in a position to provide the Sentinel or anyone else with their identities. Despite the Sentinel making a plea with the 13 other entities provided with the video of the effort to serve Shorett that those involved provide further information about themselves and the grounds they allege justify the recall effort, no documentation relating to the petition was provided, nor any explanation of what grounds are being cited for the attempt to remove Shorett and Sanchez from office.
The Sentinel’s effort to determine Negrete’s connection to any political figures or groups in San Bernardino or elsewhere turned up only that she is a former sheriff’s deputy with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department who has or had an address on North E Street in San Bernardino, is a resident of the Fourth Ward and is an activist or fundraiser with Southern California Animal Relief, known by its acronym SCAR and was appointed by the mayor and city council to the San Bernardino Animal Control Commission in July 2023.
There is some indication of bad blood between Shorett and Negrete in that on January 17 of this year, the city council, based upon Shorett’s recommendation, removed Negrete from the San Bernardino Animal Control Commission. The report and recommendation for the action, authored by Shorett, does not give a cogent reason for the removal other than saying that commission members serve at the pleasure of the council.
There were both suggestions and direct statements to the effect that Negrete was acting on behalf of Tran, though the Sentinel was able to find no evidence to support that.
Similarly, there are recurrent reports that Tran is the prime mover behind the recall, having come to the realization that she has squandered more than a year-and-a-half in office without any meaningful accomplishments, and that the lack of dignity maintained around what passes for City Hall has poisoned the atmospherics in San Bernardino Hall of Government. Three of members of council who have been in place throughout Tran’s tenure in office – Reynoso, Calvin and Alexander – are on their way out, based upon the outcome of the March 5 primary vote. Figueroa, whom Tran does not particularly care for, was reelected on March 5. She is prepared to coexist with him. At the same time, she is hopeful that Kim Knaus, one of her political associates, will capture Reynoso’s seat as a result of the November runoff she is engaged in with Henry Nickel, who was the Fifth Ward Councilman replaced by Reynoso in 2020. In the 7th Ward race, Tran is faced with what are for her two equally unpalatable choices: Treasure Ortiz and Jim Penman. The mayor has developed a testy relationship with Ortiz, who has been constantly critical of San Bernardino municipal government since well before Tran became mayor. Ortiz was one of the competitors for the mayor’s post in 2022, having finished in the balloting in fifth place, just behind the fourth place showing of the incumbent, John Valdivia. Tran dreads the prospect of having to share the council dais with Ortiz, who would be able to use the bully pulpit of a the Seventh Ward council post to continue to highlight governmental shortcomings in the county seat. Penman, the longtime city attorney in San Bernardino whose political ambition prompted him to run, unsuccessfully, for district attorney in 1994 and San Bernardino mayor in 2005, 2009, 2013 and 2022, was the finalist in the runoff against Tran in the last contest. By seeing Sanchez, with whom she rarely sees eye-to-eye, and Shorett removed from office, at some point next year Tran would be able to start from scratch with a city council that would consist of five new members, all of whom would very likely be looking toward her, as the city’s highest elected official, for guidance. For that reason, and the perception that both Shorett and Sanchez were major factors in the Montoya and Calvin censure debacles, numerous people in San Bernardino believe Tran is pushing the recall effort.
There is reason to dispute that assumption. Primarily, Shorett for the virtual duration of Tran’s mayoralty has considered himself to be aligned with her. Publicly, there has never been a cross word between the two. As recently as early June, Shorett, openly, candidly and publicly spoke about what a good job she had been doing, stating how she represented a vast improvement over her predecessor, Valdivia, and was more cut out for the mayoral assignment than the mayor prior to Valdivia, Carey Davis. That Tran would be in favor of removing from office one of her highest profile and most vocal supporters is hard to fathom. And while the ostensible relationship between Tran and Councilman Sanchez is no longer as positive as hers has been with Shorett, it would appear that just as Tran has much to lose by turning Shorett form an ally into an enemy, she has nothing to gain by becoming openly hostile toward Sanchez.
The political reality is that, statistically, recall efforts are rarely successful. If Tran signs on to an effort to remove Sanchez and Shorett from office or if she, indeed, already has and those moves do not succeed, she would greatly complicate her prospects to succeed as mayor from her on out. Having two antagonists on the council who are set to remain in place until the close of her current term in 2026 and who would be, like her, eligible and perhaps even likely to seek reelection to serve through to 2030, would be the height of folly. Getting on the wrong side of Sanchez and Shorett now would diminish her chances of effectively guiding the city for the remainder of her current term. If all three were to be reelected in 2026, that disadvantage would perpetuate itself.
There is an unreliable report that former Mayor Patrick Morris is pushing the recall. Morris is a Democrat and both Sanchez and Shorett are Republicans. Morris has no history to speak of with Sanchez, negative or positive. Despite their partisan differences, Morris and Shorett were allies during the 2010 to 2014 span when Morris was mayor and Shorett serving his first term on the council. That Morris would be fueling the recall effort against the duo appears doubtful.
Some have suggested that Treasure Ortiz is the hidden hand behind the recall effort against Shorett and Sanchez. Ortiz and Shorett despise one another, and the only question in that regard is whose antipathy toward the other is greater. Shorett has called Ortiz “despicable.” To Ortiz, Shorett is “a sad old man who is politically irrelevant.” Ortiz is only slightly less uncharitable toward Sanchez, calling him “an embarrassment.”
Nevertheless, Ortiz is far too engaged in her effort to capture the Seventh Ward post, her professional commitments as a lecturer in the public administration department at Cal State University San Bernardino and work at the Akoma Unity Center to be able to devote herself to coordinating a recall attempt.
Moreover, Ortiz finds herself at war with Tran. As such, it is beyond unlikely that the two would be simultaneously engaged in a political campaign which would have the shared goals impacting the San Bernardino City Council
Penman, who twice ran for mayor against Patrick Morris, by extension is one of Shorett’s political rivals. Still, as is the case with Ortiz, he is too involved in his campaign for the Seventh Ward to focus on a campaign not directly related to advancing his own political agenda. Were he too succeed in getting elected in November, it would be in his interest to bridgebuild and iron out any past differences with Shorett rather than engage in political activity which, if it did not prove successful, would leave him with an implacable enemy on the council who might steer others on that panel toward voting against his proposals.
A likely suspect for being the sponsor of the recall against Shorett and Sanchez is Scott Beard, a developer and would-be kingmaker who in 2013 spearheaded an effort to recall Penman as city attorney and simultaneously recall then-Mayor Patrick Morris, then-First District Councilwoman Virginia Marquez, then-Second District Councilman Robert Jenkins, then-Third District Councilman John Valdivia, Fourth District Councilman Fred Shorett, then-Fifth District Councilman Chas Kelly, then-Sixth Ward Councilman Rikke Van Johnson and then-Seventh Ward Councilwoman Wendy McCammack. Beard invested $146,210 in that effort, which proved successful only insofar as qualifying recall elections against Valdivia, McCammack and Penman for the ballot. Of those, McCammack and Penman were removed from office, while Valdivia survived the attempt to remove him.
Beard was a primary donor to Gil Botello, who ran against Sanchez in 2018, providing him with $2,500 donations at a time. He was also, however, a primary donor to Shorett in his elective and re-elective efforts at different points, despite having sponsored the unsuccessful recall effort against him in 2013.
Conflicting evidence suggests that Beard has the motive and means to seek to remove current members of the council in San Bernardino from office, but it is not clear whether he is availing himself of the opportunity to do so.
The Sentinel reached out to both Sanchez and Shorett to get their perspective on what is going on. Sanchez did not respond.
Asked who was driving the recall effort, Shorett said, “I don’t know for sure.
I have some inside information, which gives me reason to believe I know who is behind this or at least get close to having a good idea. I think there’s people involved in this who are, obviously, connected other political figures. Their fingerprints are on this.”
Asked if he could be more specific, Shorett said, “Not at this time. I’ll be responding appropriately as to what the regulations are.”
Shorett said he did not want to go off half-cocked or overreact, as there was some indication that the recall proponents might not follow through with what they have started.
“I don’t think it will succeed,” Shorett said, “either with regard to me or Theodore [Sanchez]. There is reason to believe it is not going forward. I would bet a small amount of money that it will not go forward. There are reasons why I think the recall process itself is unlikely to come to complete fruition, but I’d prefer not to be heard saying that I think it will fail, because that just might motivate those who are behind this to prove me wrong. I am taking this seriously until I don’t have to. I haven’t been properly served at this point, if what the lawyers are saying is accurate. I am going to assume that whoever is behind this knows what they are doing and that eventually I will be given proper notice of the intent to circulate a petition to remove me. The threshold they have to meet is fairly low. They have to follow the proper procedure. They can’t serve me through the city clerk’s office, but they must coordinate what they are doing with the city clerk and give me an opportunity to respond with, I believe, up to 200 words.”
Shorett said it looked like enough people to force the issue were in place to work the process against him.
“I am told there are 30 people or what purports to be 30 people who have signed one petition or set of petitions and six people who have signed as proponents on another and then I think 11 more and 10 more, then 7 more and four more,” Shorett said. “If all that they have done is truly what it purports to be, then what they have done is more than adequate and we are soon to be off to the races, I guess.”
Those coming after him are not fully grounded in political reality and are going about things in a less than practical way, Shorett opined.
“I think there are a lot of citizens who don’t understand the role of a city council member.,” he said. “They want you to be a combination of Jesus Christ and someone who will go out and fix potholes and grow trees in a city where people have a whole lot to complain about. I suspect that some of these people didn’t really know what they were signing. From what I know, I don’t think many of these people know me. There may be a few for sure that I recognize if you were to recite me their names. I know some of them don’t care for me. Sharon Negrete is obviously disgruntled. I can give you the names of a few others if I think hard about it, ones who have not been happy with my performance or aspects of it.”
Pressed on what it is that is motivating the recall proponents, Shorett acknowledged he has not fulfilled the expectations of some of his constituents in the Fourth District and antagonized some residents of other districts as well as “some of my colleagues.”
Calling the grounds for the recall “frivolous… ridiculous [and] petty,” Shorett said, “This is going to use up a lot of resources and it will create a lot of distraction. It has the potential, anyway, of ruining the reputation of the city. There is a better way to go about these kinds of things. I will need to run for election in another two years, which means a campaign that will be in full swing in just a little over a year. They should conserve their money and their effort and use it then. This is just another example of the toxic politics in San Berardino. It is not good. Like me or hate me, whether you think I’m doing a good job or a bad job, there is a better way to deal with this There is going to be money spent on their side and I can guarantee you there will be money spent on my side that could be used for a way better purpose.”
In addition, Shorett said, if the recall proceeds to a vote, it will cost the taxpayers money.
“There is not time to get enough signature to get this on the November ballot, which would then bring the city and the taxpayers into it,” Shorett said. “They will have to pay to hold a special election. This is no way to run a railroad.
And he is not going to just roll over and die, either, Shorett said.
“I have some people who are supportive,” he said. “I was elected once and then reelected three times after that for what is now a total of 15 years.”
The recall proponents have delusions of grandeur, Shorett said.
“If there were a successful recall of the two senior members of the council and we had to move out of office you’d have almost a completely new council next year,” he said.
He has a trick or two up his sleeve and a tried-and-true formula to withstand what is being hatched against him: constant vigilance and hard work, Shorett said.
“I’ll listen to what these people who want to remove me from office have to say and then I’ll go out and run a campaign telling people why I should be allowed to stay in office,” he said. “There are obviously some people out there who for sure don’t like me. There were people who showed up at the meeting to let me know that. It was the first time they have been at a meeting for months or in some cases years. For every meeting they’ve been at, I was in attendance for, I don’t know, 40 meetings or 60 meetings or something like that. Now, they are going to put some effort into getting me out of office. I’m going to match that effort with what I do.”