By Mark Gutglueck
An outside entity has seized control of at least a portion of San Bernardino County’s election process, according to sources inside and outside the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Office.
Over the weekend of August 11/12 evidence emerged suggesting that registrar’s office employees have made selective and inconsistent determinations with regard to the signatures gathered by some of the would-be candidates in this year’s races that match the San Bernardino County Republican Party chairman’s stated intent with regard to controlling who fills certain elected positions.
The San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters serves as the county’s election’s office.
Under its own rules, those of the California Secretary of State, as well as the California Elections Code together with practical necessity, the filing period for municipal candidates seeking to participate in November general elections opens in mid-July and closes during the second week of August with the proviso that if an incumbent in any given race does not file for reelection, the filing deadline is extended for five days. Thus, this year’s calendrical sequence dictated that the filing period opened on Monday, July 15 and the deadline fell on Friday, August 9.
Among San Bernardino County’s 22 cities and two incorporated towns, the City of Loma Linda and the county seat of San Bernardino hold or initiate their municipal elections in the primary, held in March in presidential election years and June in gubernatorial election years. All other cities and the towns of Apple Valley and Yucca Valley hold their election in November.
This year, in Hesperia, within that city’s district 5, incumbent Councilman Larry Bird chose not to seek reelection. In Highland, incumbent District 1 Councilman Jesse Chavez-Cordova took out papers to run for reelection but decided not to return them. In Twentynine Palms, District 2 Councilman Joel Klink elected to not seek reelection. In each of those cases the filing deadline for others interested in filling those posts was extended to August 14 at 5 p.m.
Prior to August 9, Rachel Arzu, Joshua Augustus, Ted Bohanon, Gregory Hogan, Bill Jensen, Jose Nikyar, April Ramirez and Ashley Stickler had completed their filings with their respective city clerks, who had sent the candidacy papers to the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Office to verify that at least 20 of the signatures of what were purported to be registered voters residing within those applicants’ respective council districts were valid, thus qualifying all eight as competitors in the November 5 contest. Arzu was challenging incumbent Highland District 3 Councilwoman Penny Lilburn, who is that city’s appointed mayor. Augustus was running against incumbent Rialto Mayor Deborah Robertson. Bohanon was vying against Apple Valley District 1 Town Councilman Larry Cusack. Hogan was running in the wide-open contest to represent Highland’s District 1. Jensen is seeking the open post as Hesperia District 5 city councilman. Nikyar is looking to fill the newly created position of District 4 representative on the Ontario City Council. April Ramirez is seeking the Twentynine Palms District 2 city council position. Stickler, the District 1 incumbent on the Rancho Cucamonga City Council is running to be retained in that position. Arzu, Augustus, Bohanon, Hogan, Jensen, Nikyar, Ramirez and Stickler were among more than four dozen candidates for city council throughout the county who had completed their filings well ahead of the deadline and who were informed that they had qualified as candidates.
On August 10, however, word was provided by the registrar of voters office to the Hesperia, Highland, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga,  Rialto and Twentynine Palms city clerks and the Apple Valley town clerk that Arzu, Augustus, Bohanon, Hogan, Jensen, Nikyar, Ramirez and Stickler had actually come up short in terms of the number of valid voter signatures endorsing their candidacies.
In the cases of Hogan, Jensen and Ramirez, the consideration that the incumbents who currently hold the posts they are seeking – Chavez-Cordova as District 1 Highland councilman, Bird as Hesperia District 5 councilman and Klink, as District 2 Twentynine Palms City Councilman – were not running for reelection meant that the filing deadline was extended for those considering whether to compete in those contests. All three, Hogan, Jensen and Ramirez, were informed of the inadequacies in their previous filings and were able to use the added time to go out and find enough valid signatures of bona fide registered voters to add onto their already-existing string of signatures to validate their candidate applications.
For Arzu, Augustus, Bohanon and Nikyar, however, the outcome was far less sanguine. Despite having been told that they were in the race to run and perhaps win or perhaps lose, they were informed that they were no longer in the race. Insofar as the incumbents in the races Arzu, Augustus and Bohanon were in were running and had qualified their candidacies and the race Nikyar was involved in had no incumbent, the filing deadline had elapsed, they were informed, and they were out of luck. Given the consideration that they had been lulled into a state of complacency by having been previously told that their candidacies had been qualified, the county registrar of voters office informed them that they “may file a legal challenge to request relief from the courts,” but that “Any legal challenges must be resolved by August. 29, after which no changes can be made to the ballot.”
In Rancho Cucamonga’s District 1, a somewhat similar, though nevertheless different circumstance was at play. Unlike Arzu, Augustus and Bohanon, who were challengers and Nikyar, who was a hopeful, Stickler is an incumbent. Initially, she had been given indication on July 29 that her candidacy had been qualified. It was not until the weekend of August10/11, after the filing deadline of August 9 had elapsed that she was informed by Rancho Cucamonga City Clerk Services Director Linda Troyan that her candidacy for reelection had failed. Because of her status as an incumbent, Stickler’s failure, as it were, to qualify her candidacy as of August 9 had the added implication of extending the filing period for any registered voter living within Rancho Cucamonga’s District 1 to file paperwork to become a candidate. Indeed, prior to the August 9 filing deadline, Erick Jimenez, who in five previous election cycles had run for city council, had taken out candidacy papers. He had not turned them in by the August 9 deadline, however, which, at that time, seemingly ended his 2024 electoral bid. Over the weekend, however, with the declaration that Stickler’s candidacy had foundered over the invalid signatures issue, new life, seemingly, was breathed into the Jimenez campaign. He went out, redoubled his efforts, competed the paperwork, including getting the requisite 20 or more valid signatures of District 1 voters endorsing his candidacy and on August 14, the very last day possible, his candidacy was qualified.
In the meantime, Stickler had conferred with the Sacramento-based law firm of Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk, of which Brian Hildreth is a partner. On Thursday, August 15, Hildreth and another lawyer with Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk, Katherine Jenkins, filed suit on behalf of Stickler in San Bernardino County Superior Court in the form of a petition for a writ of mandate, calling upon Rancho Cucamonga City Clerk Janice Reynolds and San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Stephenie Shea to “include petitioner’s [i.e., Stickler’s] name as a qualified candidate for member of the city council, District 1, in the City of Rancho Cucamonga, at the November 5, 2024 general election and to take all necessary and appropriate, steps to place petitioner’s name on all ballot materials related to the November 5, 2024 election.”
The situation with regard to the District 1 council race in Rancho Cucamonga is an extremely delicate, indeed problematic, one, which is threatening to rip the cover off an element of governance in San Bernardino County those at the top rungs of power would rather were left undisturbed.
Four days before the close of the filing period on August 9, Luis Centina, a political figure in the Rancho Cucamonga community, had qualified his candidacy in that city’s District 1, setting up what looked to be a head-to-head match-up with Stickler.
Cetina, who had been a member of the Cucamonga Valley Water District Board of Directors, in 2022 sought the position of San Bernardino County Second District supervisor, placing first among four candidates in the balloting corresponding with the June primary election, qualifying for a runoff against his fellow Republican, former Fontana City Councilman Jesse Armendarez.
While municipal, county and local district and agency races in California are by law considered nonpartisan contests, in San Bernardino County all politics are heavily influenced by party affiliation. Indeed, since 1966, San Bernardino County has been a Republican stronghold, as at that time the number of Republican voters within the 20,105-square mile jurisdiction outnumbered their Democrat Party-affiliated counterparts and continued to do so for 43 years, even as most of California returned to being a Democratic state. In 2009, for the first time in a generation-and-a-half, the number of registered Democrats in San Bernardino County eclipsed the number of Republicans. Nevertheless, San Bernardino County has remained over the last 15 years firmly in the grip of the GOP, one of the last bastions of Republicanism in the Golden State. Among the county’s 24 city and town councils, 17 have more Republican members than Democrat members. Four of five county supervisors are Republicans. Eighteen of the county’s 24 mayors are Republicans. While the assembly members and state senators representing San Bernardino County in the California legislature and the members of Congress representing San Bernardino County in Washington, D.C. are evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, that is because several of those districts overlap into Los Angeles, Orange or Riverside counties, where the Democrats are more dominant. In San Bernardino County, the lion’s share of the votes for state and federal lawmakers go to Republicans. All of this is despite the clear advantage in sheer numbers the Democrats have over Republicans in San Bernardino County terms of registered voters.
At present, in San Bernardino County, among the jurisdiction’s 1,184,823 registered voters, there are very close to four Democrats for every three Republicans, with 473,432 or 40.0 percent affiliated with the Democratic Party and 357,927 or 30.2 percent registered as Republicans, while 248, 517 or 21.0 percent have no party affiliation and the remaining 8.7 percent are registered with the American Independent, Green, Libertarian, Peace and Freedom or other more obscure parties.
Year in and year out, election cycle after election cycle, going back nearly six decades, the San Bernardino County Republican Party, as an organization/institution, has simply outperformed the San Bernardino County Democratic Party – collecting more money when it comes to fundraising and filling campaign coffers and political war chests, coordinating electioneering efforts on behalf of its candidates, conducting polling to determine what issues voters are likely to respond to, generating supportive campaign literature in the form of handbills, fliers, mailers and then delivering them by post or by hand, generating attack mailers against their opponents and sending them to voters through the U.S. Post Office, printing and posting yard signs and utilizing all other forms of candidate advertisement, including billboard, television and newspaper ads, radio spots and both website and social media engagement, thereby succeeding in driving more Republicans than Democrats to the polls on a consistent basis, while succeeding, at least in some circumstances, in capturing crossover support for Republican candidates from some Democratic voters.
With the turn of the 20th Century to 21st Century at the dawn of the Third Millennium in 2000 and going forward over the last nearly 25 years to the present, the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee, led by a series of chairmen and a chairwoman – Bill Postmus, Robert Rego, Curt Hagman, Jan Leja and Phil Cothran, Sr. – has ruthlessly and efficiently outhustled the Democrats when it comes to political fundraising and applying the mother’s milk of politics to ensure that its chosen candidates are elected to and remain in office. The most recent of these San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee chairman – Cothran – established himself, ironically, more than three decades ago as a major backer of one of Fontana’s Democratic figures, then-Fontana Councilman Dave Eshleman, who later became Fontana mayor. Cothran, Fontana’s most successful insurance broker who saw his insurance agency grow with Fontana over the last 40 years, acclimated himself to local politics with Eshleman but gravitated toward his Republican roots with a series of Republican officeholders in Fontana over the years, including Ben Abernathy, the city’s former police chief; John Roberts, who remains on the city council as one San Bernardino County’s second-longest continuously serving local officeholders; Frank Scialdone, another former Fontana Police Chief who later served on the city council and ultimately became mayor; Janice Rutherford, who initiated her political career on the Fontana City Council before moving onto the position of San Bernardino County Second District Supervisor; Acquanetta Warren, who served eight years on the Fontana City Council before she ran for mayor in 2010 and remains in that post, at the head of the city council’s four-Republican member ruling coalition; and Jesse Armendarez, who was formerly a Fontana City Councilman and in 2022 succeeded Rutherford as the member of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors overseeing the county’s Second District.
Cothran acceded to his position of authority and power with the county Republican Party because of his willingness to put his money where his mouth is, having used his personal wealth to bankroll one Republican candidate in Fontana after another and then, as he took on more prominence beyond Fontana, other Republicans. He remains particularly closely identified with Fontana, as he is counted among Warren’s closest associates and a key member of her political machine, a key element of which is her substantial political war chest, which perennially is endowed with over $100,000 and swells to $250,000 or more in those election years corresponding with the gubernatorial cycle, from which she makes disbursements not only to run her campaign but to support any of a number of her political allies, both in Fontana and elsewhere.
On the Fontana City Council since 1998 as one of Warren’s key supporters is Cothran’s son, Phil Cothran, Jr.
It is noteworthy that the Republican domination of politics in San Bernardino County carries with it command over the machinery and exercision of government, extending to the election process. In a very real sense, to the victor fall the spoils, and with four Republicans in control of San Bernardino County’s governmental structure, which includes the registrar of voters office, it is not surprising that steps have been taken to, if not guarantee a Republican advantage in the electoral process within the county, then to ensure that there is no possibility of an advantage accruing to the Democrats.
In July 2018, the board of supervisors, acting through then-San Bernardino County Assistant County Executive Officer/Chief Operating Officer Leonard Hernandez and bypassing San Bernardino County Chief Operating Officer Gary McBride, forced then-Registrar of Voters Michael Scarpello to resign, less than four months before the November 2018 election. Scarpello, who had been hired by the county in April 2011 while he was working as the director of elections in Denver, Colorado, had been credited with coordinating and streamlining the election process in far-flung San Bernardino County, which historically had been a challenging one, and effectuating speedy and reliable tallying of results with no outstanding glitches as had been the case under preceding registrars. While no official rationale for Scarpello’s abrupt departure was given, what emanated from the county’s top echelon was that Scarpello was jettisoned because the county wanted to avoid the fallout from his dictatorial personality and what was described as a “tyrannical domination” of his staff in running a taut ship and effectuating the county elections division’s high efficiency and productivity. That explanation, coming as the extremely intensive demand of an election was approaching, lacked credibility and a deeper background exposition was that the Republican-majority board of supervisors had learned that Scarpello was a lifelong Democrat and they did not want him overseeing the electoral process.
Hurriedly, the county put in Scarpello’s place Bob Page, a one-time journalist who had served as the chief of staff to both Republican Supervisor Jon Mikels and Democrat Supervisor Josie Gonzales, then as a principal management analyst and what the county termed a “transformational governmental administrator” with the county’s human resources department. Page was designated the interim registrar of voters while the county was conducting a nationwide search for Scarpello’s replacement, but as it turned out, he was at the helm as registrar throughout the 2018 election cycle and was deemed to have done a more than adequate task as the county’s chief elections officer and he gradually fell into the position as actual registrar as the recruitment drive for a new registrar simply faded out. During the time he was registrar of voters, Page oversaw the November 2018 general election corresponding with the California gubernatorial race, three separate elections of the board members for the San Bernardino County Employees Retirement Association, a special election in the City of San Bernardino’s District 3, an election of board members in the Twentynine Palms Water District, elections in the Victor Valley High School District, the West Valley Water District, the Cucamonga Valley Water District, the 2020 Presidential Primary, the 2020 Presidential General Election, a special vote on the annexation of property into Apple Valley and the gubernatorial recall election against Gavin Newsom.
It was during Page’s tenure as registrar of voters that questions, which had perhaps previously existed but which remained unexpressed, began to emerge about outsiders’ access to the internal operations at the registrar of voters office. Among those issues, in particular, was concern that Bill Postmus, who had been the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee Chairman in the 2004-2006 timeframe, was obtaining inordinate access to registrar’s office personnel, files and processes. Postmus, a member of the board of supervisors from 2000 until 2006, the chairman of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors from 2004 until 2006, and San Bernardino County Assessor from 2006 until 2009, saw his political career implode in scandal, after which he was charged and convicted on 14 political corruption charges, all of which were felonies, including criminal governmental conflict of interest, which barred him for life from holding public office in California. He thereafter founded a corporation based in Wyoming, the Mountain States Consulting Group, what was essentially a political money laundering operation, a device by which politicians can engage in pay-to-play trade-offs without getting caught and being stigmatized with criminal convictions as he had been. Mountain States Consulting Group takes money originating with individuals or companies with a stake in governmental decisions, launders that money through his company and then provides that cash, either as political donations or payments in some other form to the politicians making those decisions. Postmus employs Mountain States Consulting Group as a cutout, insulating the recipients of the money – the politicians – from those who are providing the money. When Postmus properly executes on this mission, it protects the politicians from the perception that their votes are being purchased, which has political benefits, while serving to lessen to a considerable extent the possibility that the politicians he is funneling money to will be subject to law enforcement examination and/or prosecutorial action for engaging in what in the final analysis are quid pro quos, out-and-out bribes or kickbacks. Postmus also utilizes Mountain States Consulting Group to employ politicians or those considered to be up-and-coming in politics with phantom assignments, providing them with a way to hold body and soul together without actually having to work, freeing them up to engage in campaigning or other electioneering activity to advance their political prospects, standing or careers.
In this way, Postmus managed to remain as a power broker in San Bernardino County political circles. After Phil Cothran was elected in January 2021 to the position of San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee chairman, he consented to having Postmus serve with Dakota Higgins as the co-coordinator of the central committee’s fundraising efforts.
Reports abounded throughout 2021 with regard to meetings involving Page, as the county registrar of voters, and Cothran in his capacity as central committee chairman.
According to elements within the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters office, they were being put under tremendous pressure to accommodate Republican party demands that would redound to the benefit of Republican candidates in both partisan and nonpartisan races. Efforts by the Sentinel using the California Public Records Act to get access to the meeting calendars of several high-ranking county officials, including then-County Administrative Officer Leonard Hernandez, Chief County Operation Officer Luther Snoke and Registrar of Voters Bob Page, were rebuffed by the county, which asserted it was legally justified in preventing the release of such documentation.
With the 2022 election season approaching and the registrar of voters office in January 2022 making preparations for the February 2022 filing period for the June 2022 Primary election, word emanated from the registrar of voters office that Page had engaged in a meeting in which both Cothran and Postmus were in attendance.
On February 7, 2022, just as the intensity of activity was mounting in the registrar of voters office with regard to the filing for the June election, Orange County announced it was hiring Page to serve as its registrar of voters.
In making his departure to Orange County, Page said he above all else wanted to approach government affairs with integrity.
On February 9, 2022, the Sentinel sent an email to Page, inquiring about the meeting involving Cothran and Postmus. In a same day response, Page tersely wrote, “There was no such meeting.”
Page departed for San Bernardino County on March 9, 2022, beginning officially with Orange County on March 10, 2022.
Michael Jimenez had been the county librarian. He was promoted by then-San Bernardino County Chief Executive Officer Leonard Hernandez to deputy executive officer in 2021, in which capacity he oversaw the economic development, fleet management, library, museums, registrar of voters, and workforce development departments and divisions. With Page’s departure, Jimenez took on the assignment as the registrar of voters, managing to see the county, its cities and towns, districts and smaller agencies through the June 2022 and November 2022 elections.
Stephenie Shea, who was employed until 2013 as an administrative secretary with the Hemet Unified School District and came to San Bernardino County as an administrative analyst first with its community facilities district and then within county administration until 2022, accompanied Jimenez to the registrar’s office that year as the assistant registrar. She has now succeeded Jimenez as the registrar.
Shea appears entirely unacclimated to the world of rough and tumble, bare-knuckled, ruthless politics that is practiced by her ultimate political masters on the board of supervisors or the established politicians and their consultants, handlers, and managers it is now her assignment to regulate. That reality and the degree to which it could be manipulated by established and sophisticated political operators was put fully on display with the yet unresolved crisis relating to the eight candidacies that were qualified in late July and early August, disqualified over the weekend of August 10 & 11 and are now hanging in limbo.
That the likes of Cothran are ruthless was put on display in 2022. His reputation and status as the head of the San Bernardino County Republican Party who is dedicated to promoting GOP candidates tells an incomplete story, as for Cothran there is a hierarchy within the Republican Party itself, one which leaves certain politicians positioned on the inside track or in a vaunted elected position and others relegated to being also-rans destined for the political scrap heap.
Such was the case in 2022 with Luis Cetina in the race for Second District Supervisor.
In the not-too-distant past of a generation ago, the Second District consisted of the West San Bernardino County cities of Upland and Rancho Cucamonga and the western half of the San Bernardino County Central Valley City of Fontana, along with the mountain communities of Mt. Baldy, Lytle Creek, Wrightwood and the foothill community of San Antonio Heights just north of Upland.
With the redistricting that followed the 2010 Census, the Second District lost south Upland to the Fourth District and Wrightwood to the First District and picked up some of the western communities in the San Bernardino Mountains such as Lake Arrowhead and Crestline among other shifts, but retained its primary identity as a creature of the west end of the county. With the most recent redistricting following the 2020 Census, among other adjustments, the Second District shifted eastward in one respect to include not just the west half of Fontana, but its entirety, while simultaneously giving up the San Bernardino Mountain Communities and Lytle Creek. With a population of 217,561, which makes it the county’s second largest city, Fontana being wholly integrated into the Second District opened the way for it to become, virtually overnight, the dominant factor in the district rather than the less-than-significant appendage to the jurisdiction it had been previously. Janice Rutherford, whose political career had begun with her election to the Fontana City Council, was nearing the end of her third term as Second District supervisor, meaning she was barred by term limits from seeking reelection in 2022. Early on in her time as supervisor, she and her family had moved from Fontana to an upscale neighborhood in Rancho Cucamonga, which had put her closer to the essence of what had embodied the Second District, at least in the past. She had launched her political career and advanced it as a Republican. As her time as supervisor was drawing to a close and she began contemplating who it was that she would endorse to come in and build upon her legacy, she had gravitated toward Luis Centina, a Republican living in Rancho Cucamonga and a member of the Cucamonga County Water Board of Directors for nearly ten years at that point.
That clashed with Cothran’s intent and vision, which included using the redistricting that occurred that year and Rutherford’s terming out to not just perpetuate the GOP hold on the county by making sure a Republican was elected to succeed her but to ensure that the post on the county’s ultimate decision-making panel was filled with someone in step with the team of Fontana politicos who had formed the basis of his takeover of the central committee. That meant, in practical terms, Jesse Armendarez.
Indeed, two years previously, in the 2020 election that took place before the county redistricting that followed that year’s census which moved Fontana’s east side out of the Fifth District into the Second District, the three-headed factional syndicate of the county GOP central committee, Warren’s political machine and Cothran’s independent expenditure committees had united behind Armendarez in his run for Fifth District county supervisor. Armendarez, who owns a successful real estate brokerage, had ingratiated himself with Warren in the same way that Cothran had: his ability to spend his own money investing in her political career, which extended beyond simply endowing her political war chest but bankrolling the electoral efforts of those she aligned herself with or endorsed. In 2014, Warren had rewarded Armendarez by using her political reach to get him elected to the Fontana Unified School District Board of Trustees. From that vantage, Armendarez in 2016 launched himself onto the Fontana City Council, again with Warren’s help, as he defeated one the two opponents Warren had on the council, Lydia Salazar-Wibert.
The effort to elect Armendarez to the board of supervisors in the Fifth District over Democrat Joe Baca in the 2020 election came up short, as the Democrats in the Fifth District enjoyed an overwhelming advantage ratio of more than nine Democrats to every four Republicans in that blue-collar jurisdiction, then consisting of east Fontana, Bloomington, all of Rialto and Colton, Muscoy and the west side of San Bernardino.
In 2022, Cothran, Team Fontana and their allies were not going to see a repeat of that in the Second District. They were determined to allow nothing to stand it their way, and that included the presence of another strong candidate in the race, this time a Republican in the form of Cetina. Indeed, nothing would stop the Armendarez juggernaut, including the fabled 11th Commandment, the dictate which enjoins members of the Party of Lincoln: “Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican.”
Indeed, speak ill of Centina the Republicans led by Cothran did.
In the June Primary, Cetina and Armendarez shared the ballot in the Second District with three others, DeJonae Shaw, Eric Coker and Nadia Renner. Under San Bernardino County’s charter, a candidate for county office can win the post outright with a majority vote in the primary, with the rules of competition being that in those primary races where no single candidate tallies at least 50 percent plus at least one vote, the two top finishers are to face each other in a runoff in the November general election. In the campaign for the June polling, both Cetina and Armendarez did enough to distinguish themselves from the rest of the pack, as the three others were not well financed enough to put up a very strong celebration of their candidacies, though Shaw, a unionist Democrat had enough backing to make clear to voters her unionist and Democratic party leanings. That propelled Shaw to a relatively strong third-place finish, with 10,616 or 20.2 percent of the overall 50,082 votes cast in the race, well ahead of Coker, who managed to pull in 4,030 votes or 8.05 percent and 3,624 votes or 7.24 percent for Renner. Neither Armendarez nor Cetina, both of whom knew the five-way division of the vote in the primary made it quite unlikely that any single candidate could capture a majority of the of vote, went all out in the primary against each other or the others, considering the contest to be a tune up for the big bout that was to come in November. Rather, they campaigned toward getting a plurality of the vote rather than a majority. In the primary, Cetina had bested Armendarez, but not spectacularly, capturing 16,532 votes or 33.01 percent, slightly more than a marginal victory over his opponent’s 15,280 votes or 30.51 percent.
What occurred over the next four months is no secret among local Republicans: Cothran utilized his control over the Republican Central Committee as well as political action committees he controls to sponsor and promote the candidacy of Jesse Armendarez for Second District supervisor, doing so in a very gentlemanly way in the finest tradition of the Republican Party that informed the Second District’s voters of all of Jesse Armendarez’s positive attributes and accomplishments as a member of the Fontana School Board and Fontana City Council, his success as a businessman, along with glimpses into his personal life as a husband and father. Simultaneously, Cothran utilized the political action committees he controls to carry out one of the more well-funded opposition campaigns in county history targeting Luis Cetina. The money Cothran expended in this effort – limited to the Second District which is essentially one-fifth of San Bernardino County in terms of the number of voters – was only slightly less expensive than the attack campaign Bill Postmus mounted on the incumbent Donald Williamson in the countywide 2006 campaign for county assessor. It was unprecedented in San Bernardino County in terms of its ferocity and the outright depth of its scurrility, making attacks that were personal, political, and philosophical, ones that dwelt on interpretations made in the most negative of light with regard to often routine governance votes made by Cetina as a member of the Cucamonga County Water District Board of Directors, ones that in fair comparison were no different or indistinguishable from votes on routine governance matters made by Armendarez in his capacities as a school board member or city council member. Using cheap but clever shots that were unrelenting right up to the week before the election and sent from political action committees or attributed to independent expenditure committees which were, ostensibly, unrelated to the Armendarez campaign so that the candidate could publicly and plausibly make a claim of being above the fray of dirty politics, the attack campaign demonized Cetina so thoroughly that it erased the 1,252 and 2.5 percent advantage he had registered over Armendarez in the primary contest.
After the write-in ballots and ballots cast at the Second District’s voting precincts on November 8, 2022 were tallied, Armendarez had prevailed, with 48,104 or 53.64 percent of the 89,677 votes cast, outdistancing Cetina, who managed to bring in 41,573 votes or 46.36 percent.
The campaign against Cetina, who had previously been seen as one of the up-and-coming Hispanic Republicans that the GOP was going to need to cultivate if it is to make meaningful inroads against the dominant Democratic Party throughout California, had pulled out virtually every last one of the stops in how negative it had been. This was all the more remarkable when it was considered that it had been quarterbacked by Cothran, the leader of the Republican Party in San Bernardino County, someone who would need to live with the consequences of that action in political campaigns moving forward. Moreover, there was a Republican institutional issue with what Cothran had engaged in. Under the bylaws of the central committee and the rules of the California State Republican Party, a member who actively campaigns against another Republican can be expelled from the state party structure or the central committee or both. To Cothran at the time, the imperative to get Armendarez elected trumped those rules or his need to abide by them. What was needed to bring that about would be for someone with standing in the party or the central committee to make an issue of it and bring the matte to a vote, either before the central committee as a whole or its internal executive committee. While the outcome before the central committee’s executive committee with regard to such a motion might be unlikely to result in Cothran’s ouster given that as chairman he has tremendous sway over the composition of the executive committee and has stacked it with his allies, the initiation of just such a formal process, questioning Cothran’s destruction of a Republican candidate, within the context of an organization that is devoted to the promotion of Republicanism and Republicans, would potentially knell the decline and conceivable end of his chairmanship.
That the attacks Cothran vectored on Cetina during the 2022 Second District race has created a good deal of enmity between Cothran and Cetina is an uncomfortable reality for the entire county Republican Party and the central committee. Any hope Cothran had that the loss Cetina was handed in 2022 would have devastated him and convinced him to simply fade out of the San Bernardino County Republican panorama was misplaced. In the March 2024 Primary Election, Cetina ran for and was elected to one of the seven positions on the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee from the Second District. Cetina remains a viable force in the party, and Cothran now considers it propitious to prevent Cetina, who forsook his position on the Cucamonga County Water District Board of Directors to run for supervisor in 2022, from capturing any elected position from which he might politically militate against him or undercut his current authority within the Republican Central Committee beyond what he can already do as a central committee member.
In 2022, following the death of Rancho Cucamonga Councilman Sam Spagnola, Cothran and the remainder of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee supported Ashley Stickler in her bid to succeed the late councilman and serve out the remaining two years on his council term. Ross Sevy, who is the deputy chief of staff for Republican Congressman Jay Obernolte, the second vice chairman of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee and who ran on a slate for the central committee with Cothran, served as the manager of both the Armendarez and Stickler campaigns. In addition to giving Stickler his own personal money for her campaign, Cothran has vectored money from his political action committee to her and induced Mayor Warren to provide her money as well.
Nevertheless, there is concern among Cothran, Warren, functionaries within Warren’s political machine and the primary participants in the political action committees and independent expenditure committees controlled by Cothran that within Rancho Cucamonga’s First District, Cetina represents an irresistible political force. When he entered the Rancho cucamonga District 1 race and moved quickly toward qualifying his candidacy, panic set in within Cothran’s circle. Cothran and his advisors began brainstorming, casting about for some way to neutralize his candidacy, which appeared to be on a trajectory to end Stickler’s tenure on the Rancho Cucamonga City Council.
A report reaching the Sentinel was that with it appearing that the election in the First District would be a straight head-to-head contest between Cetina and Stickler, the idea of getting a Latino candidate into the race to split the Hispanic vote might be a viable means of attenuating Cetina’s political progression. A logical stand-in would be Erick Jimenez, a District 1 resident who had five previous runs for the city council under his belt. Jimenez’s consistent string of losses, however, appeared to have dimmed his political ambition and more than two weeks into the candidate filing period, he had not taken out papers to do so. Seemingly out of nowhere, with less than a week in the filing period remaining and both Cetina and Stickler having qualified their candidacies, Jimenez pulled papers. Having waited so far along in the filing window to act, however, and needing to complete the paperwork including getting no fewer than 20 valid signatures of endorsement from residents living within the First District, Jimenez was unable to act with sufficient alacrity to complete his application and get it together with sufficient signatures to turn it into the Rancho Cucamonga city clerk’s office by the August 9 deadline to qualify his candidacy.
The following day, however, came the announcement from the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Office that eight different city council candidates from around the county whose candidacies were previously declared as qualified for the November 5 ballot had in fact failed to qualify their candidacies. What was suggested, though not explicitly stated, was that at least some of the signatures endorsing those candidacies were determined to be invalid.
Curiously, three of those eight cases involved the relatively rare circumstance where the incumbent in the race had not filed for reelection, extending the deadline for the submittal of candidate papers by five days, giving those three unqualified candidates the opportunity to amend their submissions, i.e., obtain enough additional valid signatures, to salvage their electoral bids.
What ensued with regard to the Rancho Cucamonga District 1 race came across as if it had been scripted by Cothran.
Stickler’s failure to have qualified her candidacy was deemed grounds to extend the filing period another five days, which as it turned out, proved sufficient time for Jimenez to revive the effort that had on August 9 ended with too few endorsement signatures. On the day of the deadline, August 14, he handed over to the city clerk’s office paperwork that was complete enough in all of its particulars to satisfy both the city clerk and the registrar of voters that he was eligible to compete for the District 1 position on November 5.
Simultaneously, though Stickler’s candidacy had been disqualified, the Rancho Cucamonga City Clerk’s Office extended her the courtesy of issuing her time to remedy the signature deficiency that had been identified over the weekend of August 10 & 11. She submitted the new signatures on August 13.
On August 15, the day following the final deadline of August 14, in San Bernardino Superior Court, attorneys Brian Hildreth and Katherine Jenkins filed a petition for a writ of mandate on behalf of Stickler.
Hildreth and Jenkins did so, according to the petition, “on the grounds that respondents, after the last day for filing for Rancho Cucamonga City Council, declared that petitioner has not submitted the sufficient number of valid signatures on her nomination papers for her candidacy to the Rancho Cucamonga City Council, District 1, despite having been previously informed by the Rancho Cucamonga City Clerk that she had submitted enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot. On Saturday, August 10, 2024, late in the evening, respondent registrar of voters informed the city that it had reevaluated all nomination petition signatures and that petitioner did not, in fact, meet the nomination requirements because there were not enough valid voter signatures on her nomination petition. On Monday, August 12, 2024, the Rancho Cucamonga city manager informed petitioner of this finding and forwarded her the updated statistics by email. By this date, it was too late for petitioner to cure any deficiency in her nomination papers. Typically, if a nomination paper is determined to be insufficient, or a candidate fails to obtain the correct number of valid signatures on his or her nomination paper, the elections official issues a supplemental signature petition to the candidate on which the candidate may collect additional nomination signatures. (Elec. Code, § 10221(b.) This supplemental petition must be filed no later than the last day for filing for that office. The last day of filing for petitioner’s office was Friday, August 9, 2024. (Elec. Code, § 10220.) However, petitioner was not made aware of the purported deficiency issue until Monday, August 12, 2024, after the deadline for filing supplemental nomination papers pursuant to Elections Code section 10221. Therefore, petitioner had no time to collect and submit additional valid signatures to respondent city clerk before the legal deadline to do so.  Immediately upon learning of the issue, petitioner did quickly obtain a supplemental nomination paper from the city, and on August 13, 2024, submitted 9 additional valid nomination signatures to respondent city clerk. However, without an order of this court, respondents will be unable to verify and accept these supplemental signatures, so that petitioner’s name will be included as a qualified candidate for member of the city council, District 1, in the City of Rancho Cucamonga, at the November 5, 2024 general election. This petition seeks to correct any error, omission, or neglect of duty that has or is about to occur. Petitioner therefore seeks an expedited order of this court requiring respondent city clerk to verify and accept the supplemental nomination paper submitted 0n August 13, 2024, and to include petitioner’s name as a qualified candidate for member of the city council, District l, in the City of Rancho Cucamonga, at the November 5, 2024 general election”
Hildreth is counsel for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the California Republican Party, and the Republican National Committee.
In reaction, the Rancho Cucamonga City Clerk’s Office posted on the city’s website a notification of the “List of Candidates” which featured in the District 1 race Stickler, Cetina and Jimenez. Affixed to Stickler’s name and her initial qualification date of July 29 were two asterisks, one of which referenced the encapsulation “Reevaluated by ROV: May not be qualified.” The other asterisk offered the clarification “Amended 8/13/2024: After reevaluation by the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters (ROV) of the nomination paper on 8/10/2024, the candidate did not have the number of valid signatures. The filing period is hereby extended to August 14, 2024 at 4:30 p.m.”
Thus, it appears that the City of Rancho Cucamonga is on a trajectory to permit Strickler, Cetina and Jimenez to compete against one another, which is the precise scenario the combined Cothran political action committees/Warren political machine had sought to bring about to further disenable Cetina politically.
The string of anomalies, all of which militated against Cetina and redounded to the advancement of Cothran’s agenda, appeared to those following the events to be too well-coordinated and deliberate to be coincidental, random developments.
Widely rumored was that a creative manipulation of the situation at the registrar of voters office to artificially extend the filing period for the office of First District council member in Rancho Cucamonga to create a three-way contest with Cetina facing not just Stickler, the Republican incumbent, but Jimenez, a Hispanic male who is a Democrat, as well. This mix of candidates with their ethnicities, genders and party affiliations was calculated to split the Latino vote to create an advantage for Ms. Stickler, it was suggested. County residents, some of whom were Cetina’s supporters and some who were not, charged that the manipulation was able to come about as a consequence of the registrar’s office having been headed for more than five years by a series of county employees, each of whom was on a vastly different career path completely unrelated to running an elections office.
This was bolstered by statements from registrar of voters office employees, who said they were caught flat-footed by the follow-on determinations that the candidacies of Arzu, Augustus, Bohanon, Hogan, Jensen, Nikyar, Ramirez and Stickler had been erroneously certified. It was pointed out that mistakes with the validating of signatures were far more likely to occur with the disqualification of valid signatures than the qualification of invalid signatures. That so many were spotlighted at once was an indication, the Sentinel was told, that pressure had been brought to bear on Stephenie Shea by individuals higher up in the county who were insisting upon the application of far more exacting standards with regard to the comparison of signatures than is the norm. That standard was very likely selectively applied to the eight candidates in question, the Sentinel was informed, because there are minor discrepancies with virtually all signatures submitted to the registrar’s office, and signatures are invalidated in only the most exceptional of cases. It was suspicious, two sources told the Sentinel, that of the eight candidates flagged for having invalid candidacy endorsement signatures, three of them were involved in races where the incumbent did not seek reelection, which extended the filing period, allowing those three candidates to scramble and obtain signatures in time to qualify their candidacies, thus minimizing the protest the registrar’s office is likely to experience as a consequence of the disqualifications. Among the election/reelection contests in the county’s 22 cities and two incorporated towns this year involving 46 races, eight incumbents are not seeking reelection.
Word on the street was that Stickler’s disqualification had been lumped in with seven others to reduce the perception that it had been selectively done, and that her candidacy was legitimately qualified on July 29 but that the registrar of voters staff went along with making what is to turn out to be an erroneous disqualification of her candidacy in order to extend the filing period for Jimenez. This expressed theory is supported by the consideration that of the eight candidates informed of their disqualification over the weekend of August 10/11 or early Monday August 12, Stickler is yet the only candidate to launch a challenge of the registrar of voters office’s disqualification of her candidacy.
Democrats and Republicans alike have expressed the belief that a succession of registrars up to and including Shea have allowed Cothran, as the chairman of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee, to control crucial elements of the election office’s function, extending to micromanaging the process of determining whether those attempting to qualify their candidacies in this year’s election have met the requirements for placement on the ballot.
The leadership at the registrar of voters office is primed, according to an extant narrative, to allow the race to proceed with Cetina, Jimenez and Stickler on the ballot and to make the assertion, if challenged, that it turned out Stickler was qualified all along, and it was a simple error by a single staff member that resulted in a handful of the signatures on her nomination being thrown out. As such, Stickler is to be assessed as qualified to compete against Cetina. Reports persist that Shea has also been instructed by Cothran, either directly or through his operatives, to say that, given Jimenez’s good faith efforts to qualify his candidacy upon being instructed by the Rancho Cucamonga City Clerk’s Office that the filing period was to remain open until August 14, he was functioning on the representations originating with the registrar of voter’s office that the filing period was extended, such that fairness dictates Jimenez be permitted to continue with his candidacy.
There is a parallel set of difficulties pertaining to the reaction within the Rancho Cucamonga City Clerk’s Office with regard to the rare and unsettling events surrounding first the qualification of Stickler’s candidacy followed by her disqualification as a candidate to what now appears to be her requalification. With the turn of events on August 10 & 11, Jimenez, whose application had concluded without any hope of certification with the elapsing of the August 9 deadline, redoubled his efforts at qualifying his candidacy upon being informed that the deadline was being extended, and he managed to follow through with the submission of his application and supply to the city clerk’s office a sufficient number of endorsing signatures just prior to the ultimate Wednesday, August 14 deadline. The Rancho Cucamonga City Clerk’s Office, on August 15, posted the notice that Jimenez’s candidacy for the District 1 position had been qualified. That posting further lists both Stickler and Cetina as qualified candidates, with the notation that Stickler’s submissions were “Reevaluated by ROV [and she] may not be qualified.”
It is perhaps noteworthy that the current term of the city clerk in Rancho Cucamonga, Janice Reynolds, expires this year this year and she has elected against seeking reelection. The only candidate to file to replace her is Kim Sevy, the wife of Ross Sevy, Stickler’s campaign manager. In fewer than four months, all of the employees of the Rancho Cucamonga City Clerk’s Office will be answerable to Kim Sevy.
Thus, at least one-third of the match-up to represent the First District in Rancho Cucamonga has now come down to what the determination of the judge who is to hear the petition for a writ of mandamus filed by Hildreth and Jenkins will be.
With the Rancho Cucamonga City Clerk’s Office having qualified Cetina and Jimenez for the ballot and having provided Stickler with a modified qualification while the matter hangs in the balance at the Superior Court, the odds appear in favor of the Rancho Cucamonga First District city council race being a three-way affair, which precisely matches Cothran’s intent of minimizing Cetina’s electoral prospects.
In the meantime, the county put out a statement that “The Registrar of Voters (ROV) is working closely with several city and town clerks to explain to local candidates an error that led five office-seekers to believe they had qualified for the November 5 ballot when they had not. On Friday [i.e., August 9], after the candidate filing period closed, the ROV discovered a clerical error that affected the evaluation of nomination petition signatures for city candidates. To ensure each candidate met their nomination petition requirement, ROV staff reevaluated all petitions for the city candidates. As a result of this reevaluation, eight candidates were determined to be impacted.”
The county statement continued, “This affected candidates in the cities of Highland, Rialto, Hesperia, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Twentynine Palms and the Town of Apple Valley. Five of the eight candidates did not meet their nomination requirements, and therefore, did not qualify as a candidate for the ballot. The ROV immediately communicated this change of status to these city clerks. These five candidates may file a legal challenge to request relief from the courts. Any legal challenges must be resolved by August 29, after which no changes can be made to the ballot.”
According to the county, “Three of the eight candidates had the opportunity to obtain additional signatures due to the extension of the candidate filing period through 5 p.m. Wednesday.  These deadlines were extended because the incumbents in those contests had not filed candidacy papers.”
No direct mention of what had occurred in Rancho Cucamonga, which was situationally different from the other matters in that Stickler’s disqualification extended the filing period for a candidate who had previously fallen short of certification and triggered legal action by Stickler, was made.
In its statement, the county made a sideways admission that less exacting scrutiny had been given to the endorsement signatures of the candidates in this year’s city council races other than the eight who were called out over the weekend of August 10 & 11.
“These findings were promptly addressed by performing subsequent audits to confirm the findings,” according to the county. “In the future, these additional audits will be added to our candidate filing processes and our petition signature review processes. The mission of the ROV is to conduct the county’s elections in a fair, accessible, secure, transparent, and efficient manner, upholding the highest level of election standards and accuracy, while always providing excellent customer service to the diverse population it serves. The registrar of voters values its partnerships with the city clerks and continues to provide its assistance throughout this process.”
From Cetina’s vantage, a combination of forces, from Republican Central Committee Chairman Cothran, who does not welcome his presence as a member of that body, to the Warren Political Machine, to the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Office to the Rancho Cucamonga City Clerk’s Office, are loading the dice against him.
If indeed Stickler qualified her candidacy on July 29, Cetina said, he is in a toe-to-toe political slugfest with her in November to see who will serve as the Second District Rancho Cucamonga councilperson for the next four years. But if, as was purported, she was found to have not met the endorsing signature standards in achieving that qualification, Cetina said, she is out of the running, which opened the door for Jimenez to have thrown down the gauntlet against him.
“But they can’t have it both ways,” Cetina said. “If Ashley Stickler is a candidate after all that has transpired with her being qualified, then not qualified and now qualified again, no one other than those who filed their candidate papers by the deadline should be in the race. If Erick Jimenez is now being allowed in the race, that can only have happened because Ashley Stickler decided not to seek reelection or did not complete her filing properly to be qualified.”
Cetina said, “The City of Rancho Cucamonga should update its list of candidates to correctly identify who the current qualified candidates are and end this confusion. Either Ashley Stickler is qualified, and the ballot should be finalized with her as the incumbent and me as the sole challenger or Ashley Stickler is not qualified and she should be removed from the ballot, and the race in November should be between me and Mr. Jimenez and anyone else who properly submitted nominations prior to the purported extended deadline of August 14, 2024.”
Cetina said it appeared that both the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters and the Rancho Cucamonga City Clerk’s office had allowed “Ashley Stickler to remain on the ballot without proper qualification while it simultaneously extended the time for other potential candidates to submit nomination papers following the August 9, 2024 deadline. Allowing both of those to occur is a violation of Elections Code §10221 and §10225.”  He said the city clerk’s office allowing Stickler to submit supplemental nomination papers with nine additional signatures on August 13, four days after the deadline for the incumbent to have filed all materials relating to her candidacy nomination, was improper and illegal. “Allowing Ashley Stickler and additional candidates who did not meet the original August 9, 2024 deadline to file the needed paperwork to get on the ballot is unlawful and I will challenge it in court,” Cetina said.
The Sentinel by email inquired with Shea relating to reports that she has met with Cothran and/or his representatives in recent months or had contact with him or them by phone or email.
In that inquiry, the Sentinel asked about recurrent indications that Stickler’s candidacy was legitimately qualified on July 29 and that she and her staff went along with making what is to turn out to be an erroneous disqualification of Stickler’s candidacy, so to extend the filing period for Jimenez.  With that inquiry, the Sentinel further sought from Shea confirmation or denial that she has been primed to allow the race to proceed with Cetina, Jimenez and Stickler on the ballot and to make the assertion, if challenged, that it turned out Stickler was qualified all along, and it was a simple error by one of her  staff members that resulted in a handful of the signatures on Stickler’s original nomination being declared invalid and thrown out, making her candidacy legitimate. The Sentinel sought to obtain from Shea whether she had been instructed by Cothran and his operatives, as has been alleged, to say that given Jimenez’s good faith efforts to qualify his candidacy and that he was functioning on the representations of members of her office that the filing period was extended, fairness dictates that he be permitted to continue with his candidacy.
The Sentinel inquired straightforwardly with regard to allegations that Cothran is calling the shots, or at least some of the shots, within the registrar of voters office.
The Sentinel asked of Shea how the double contradiction with regard to Stickler’s candidacy qualification came about. The Sentinel asked Shea if she and her office stood by the assertion that Stickler failed to qualify her candidacy or if she and her staff have now been persuaded by a second or third or fourth or fifth look at the signatures along with the legal threats by Stickler’s legal representatives, Hildreth and Jenkins, that she is actually eligible for the ballot.
The Sentinel asked Shea if the shifting with regard to the findings about the ballot eligibility of the candidates in Rancho Cucamonga’s First District race is part of a deliberate effort to create a contest in which Cetina’s prospects for election are compromised by having to face, in addition to the opponent he was gearing up for, a Hispanic male opponent who will split the Latino vote.
The Sentinel asked Shea if having Stickler and Jimenez in the contest is mutually exclusive. The Sentinel followed that question up with another, asking Shea if it was her position that Stickler, who had to qualify her candidacy by the August 9 deadline, and Jimenez, who had to have the filing deadline extended by Ms. Stickler not qualifying her candidacy by August 9, can both compete in this contest against Mr. Cetina.
The Sentinel asked Shea if Jimenez being on the ballot in the November 5, 2024 Rancho Cucamonga District 1 City Council race excludes Stickler from the contest and, conversely, if Stickler has indeed qualified to compete for reelection in November whether that means Jimenez is excluded as a candidate in the race.
The Sentinel asked if the Republican affiliation of four of the county’s five supervisors – Paul Cook, Jesse Armendarez, Dawn Rowe and Curt Hagman – and their connection and political association with Cothran had any impact on how the county elections office was being run, in particular with regard to any efforts within it to assist the Republicans in San Bernardino County in keeping an upper hand over their Democrat counterparts. The Sentinel asked Shea if she felt herself under pressure to run the registrar of voters office in a way that will maintain the primacy of the Republicans over the Democrats in San Bernardino County.
The Sentinel asked Shea if she feared for her job if she does not accommodate the Republican establishment and the powerful entities within it such as Phil Cothran.
Shea did not respond to the email.
The Sentinel emailed Rancho Cucamonga City Clerk Janice Reynolds and Rancho Cucamonga City Clerk Services Director Linda Troyan, inquiring as to whether there is one person, two people or three people in the First District race and if there are just two competitors in the race, who they are.
The Sentinel further inquired as to who qualified Stickler and who disqualified her. The Sentinel asked who – the city clerk’s office, the registrar of voters office or the California Secretary of State’s Office – is the ultimate authority as to whether Stickler is qualified or not.
The Sentinel asked, by Reynolds’ and Troyan’s interpretation of the electoral rules, whether it is allowable for both Stickler and Jimenez, or any other registered voter in the First District, to submit the endorsing signatures for his/her candidacy after August 9 and up until the extended deadline. The Sentinel asked for clarification as to whether Stickler did or did not meet the August 9 deadline and what extenuating circumstances would allow Stickler to not meet the August 9 deadline for submission of all relevant candidacy qualifying materials and still be able to submit signatures after the deadline. The Sentinel asked if those extenuating circumstances are or were at play in this case.
The Sentinel asked how Stickler could fail to meet the August 9 deadline, yet have the deadline extended.
If Stickler met the deadline, the Sentinel inquired, how is it that the deadline is being extended for others, Jimenez in particular.
The Sentinel asked whether it was a requirement that an incumbent not meet the set deadline for filing  for the deadline for non-incumbents to be extended.
The Sentinel asked Reynolds and Troyan if Stickler being in the race and Jimenez being in the race were mutually exclusive.
The Sentinel asked Reynolds and Troyan for a legal interpretation of Elections Code §10221 and §10225 that permits Cetina, Stickler and Jimenez to compete in the upcoming November 5 contest for the First District seat on the Rancho Cucamonga City Council.
Neither Reynolds nor Troyan responded by press time.
San Bernardino County Spokesman David Wert told the Sentinel that the final authority with regard to who is qualified to be placed on the ballot vis-à-vis races for the city council in any particular jurisdiction lies with the city clerk’s offices in those municipalities rather than the registrar of voters office.
“That decision is up to each of the individual city clerks,” Wert said.