In five of the 23 municipal races being held in San Bernardino County on November 5, five former officeholders are attempting a political comeback.
In Barstow Tim Silva, who was a member of the city council for 16 years between 2006 and 2022 but did not seek reelection two years ago, is now running for mayor.
In Hesperia, former Mayor and Councilmember Bill Jensen, who held office from 1998 until 2006, having been reelected in 2002, elected not to seek reelection in 2008. He attempted to return to office in a comeback in 2016 but was unsuccessful, making this his second attempt at a political comeback.
In Montclair, Carolyn Raft, who was on the city council from 1992 until 2020 when she ran unsuccessfully for mayor, is running to return to the city council.
In San Bernardino, Jim Penman, who served as San Bernardino’s city attorney for 26 years until his recall from office in 2013, is vying to represent the city’s Seventh Ward, two years he qualified as a runoff candidate for mayor but fell short in that effort.
In Victorville former City Councilman Eric Negrete, who served a single term on the city council from 2014 to 2018, is making a bid to return to office this year. This marks Negrete’s second such attempt, as he fell short in the 2020 election, in which a logjam of 22 candidates sought election to three open at-large positions. This year he is running as one of two candidates in District 5 in what is the city’s second by-district election.
Silva said he believed the most significant of his accomplishments while he was a member of the council consists of “having been able to get infrastructure improvements the city needed completed. Next, I would say bringing the Barstow Fire district into the city as the municipal fire department.”
The primary accomplishment he looks toward achieving if he is elected mayor, Silva said, was bringing new development to the city, which he said was already in progress, given the progress already made toward the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Company’s Barstow International Gateway Project, which is to consist of just under 4,500 acres of integrated rail facilities that are to transfer goods from international to domestic containers. The project represents a $1.5 billion investment in the community, which will ultimately create what are anticipated to be 20,000 new jobs intended to address logistics and supply chain issues relating to the importation of foreign goods to the United States.
Silva said if he will “stay on top of that. I would expect that to be my primary focus as mayor.”
He said that as mayor, he believes he will have greater reach in shaping Barstow’s future than he did as a councilman.
“The mayor is just one of five votes on the council, but he is someone who has more contact with the city manager, city staff in general, developers and the business community, so I think the mayor has more of an impact on the city than other elected leaders,” he said.
He is distinguished from the other candidates for mayor, Silva said, “by my experience and leadership.”
Jensen said that one of his most notable achievements during his eight years in office related to the city’s “reallocation of $2 million within the city budget towards the Hesperia city pavement plan, which continues to benefit the city’s infrastructure to this day.” Further, he said, his “strategic advocacy efforts also led to a significant increase in property tax revenue along the entire freeway corridor within the city limits, securing vital funds for ongoing and future infrastructure improvements.”
If returned to office, Jensen said he will focus on promoting “growth, prosperity, and inclusivity by fostering a business-friendly environment that attracts investment and creates jobs, improving public safety, enhancing infrastructure, and promoting economic development.”
He is distinguished from his competitors, Jensen said, by his understanding of the city’s unique challenges and opportunities, his experience in office, his private sector experience in the real estate industry and as a business owners and his demonstrated “ability to effectively address complex issues and drive positive change.”
Raft said that her accomplishments could be discerned “by just looking around Montclair at what happened under my 28-year watch. Whenever anyone asked for help, I assisted them and if what they asked wasn’t something that fell under my jurisdiction, I would send them to where they could get help and follow that up with phone calls to make sure they were attended to by whoever had the knowledge or authority. That explains my popularity for the seven terms I was elected.”
Raft said that if she is reelected, her intent is “to bring back the dignity and the honor to council. People should keep their eyes and ears open over the next few weeks as the campaign goes forward to hear about the person who took my seat. My opponent in this race cost the city over $700,000 in a sexual harassment lawsuit settlement. The people of this city know my reputation. The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin said I was local government’s most fiscally responsible representative when I was in office.”
Penman said one of his major accomplishments as city attorney consisted of his having hired former police department and probation department personnel as investigators and then unleashing them on the city, thereby effectuating the closure of, he said, “over 500 drug and gang houses” that were proliferating in the city at the time. He then repurposed those investigators into looking into suspected areas of political corruption involving elected and appointed officials as well as city staff members, he said. Those investigations in virtually every case were originally focused on misdemeanors but in many cases unearthed felonies, which his office did not have the authority to prosecute. In those cases, Penman said, through his development of working relationships with the district attorney’s office and the California Attorney general’s Office, cases were brought against the offenders, who were brought to justice through the courts or were otherwise forced to resign or were terminated.
He said that upon coming into office as city attorney, the city was plagued with 198 lawsuits, most of which he characterized as “nuisance suits,” ones initiated by plaintiffs and their attorneys who had expectations that the city would settle short of trial, despite the vast majority of those suits’ lack of validity. Penman said he remedied the matter by instructing his staff attorneys to prepare for trial in all those cases, at which point the number of suits dropped to well below 100. He thus substantially reduced the legal payouts the city was making, he said.
With then-Mayor Judith Valles, Penman said, he took note of the large numbers of parolees living in half-way houses in San Bernardino and determined that the head of the State of California’s Parole Board was, in his words, “dumping parolees from LA County in our neighborhoods. We confronted the chairman of the state parole board and got him to admit what was happening.” According to Penman, with the assistance of then State Senator Robert Presley, he got an agreement from the State of California to put a cap on the number of parolees to be sent to San Bernardino, and over the next several months and years, the number of parolees in the city reduced down to that number.
Penman said that if elected in November, he will point out to the mayor and city council that it is mishandling the homeless crisis in San Bernardino and that there are ways to remove the dispossessed from the city’s parks. First, he said, the city has the legal grounds to remove the homeless from the parks after 8 p.m. in the summer and after 5 p.m. in the fall, winter and spring, as long as it does not throw out their belongings and stores them for 30 days to allow them to be recovered. The city can then use it codes and state law to arrest the homeless as trespassers and transport them to the West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga. The arrestees will be free to return to San Bernardino by walking the 20 miles back to the city. Some may do so, he said, but after several such arrests, most will elect not to return, he said. Moreover, he said, he supports having the city create an alternative temporary housing location for those homeless who persist in remaining in San Bernardino at the site of the former School of Hope, located off of 6th Street between Waterman and Tippecanoe Avenue, on property owned by the city’s water department. He further said the city should replicate what he did previously in eliminating blighted properties that serve as a magnet for the homeless. That consisted of utilizing the city’s $1,000-per-day fines against banking institutions that had foreclosed on properties but did not keep them up to code after the eviction of the residents living there. This, Penman said, would prevent squatters from setting up residence on the properties.
Penman said he was distinguished from his opponent in the race by his “integrity and prior experience in public office.”
Negrete said his major contributions to the City of Victorville during his first term on the city council consisted of having “worked tirelessly to enhance public safety, promote economic growth, and improve the quality of life for all residents.”
His intent, if elected in November, is to work toward “enhancing public safety by building a new police station, hiring more deputies, and implementing robust counter-crime measures.”
Moreover, he said, he intends to focus on “fostering a business-friendly culture, so we can attract new enterprises and stimulate economic growth.”
He positively contrasts with his political opponent in this year’s election, Negrete says, as a consequence of his “blend of professional expertise, personal resilience, and community dedication.”