Eight years after Blanca Gomez floundered her way onto the Victorville City Council, the county’s voters and those in the Victorville council district she was responsible for creating have shown her the door, closing what may or not be the last chapter of her far from ordinary political career.
Nearly from the outset of her tenure in office, Gomez clashed with all of her fellow and sister officeholders. A Democrat and social activist convinced that Hispanics have been historically oppressed by the white population in California and elsewhere in the United States, she was intent on crusading for the enablement and ascendancy of Latinos and Latinas at each turn. When confronted by those who question the premise at the core of her activism – that the predominant holders of political office are Anglos inveterately intent on exploiting Hispanics at every opportunity, she routinely took recourse in accusing those taking issue with her efforts and approach of having racist motivation.
Gomez’s difficulty with her colleagues and her colleagues’ difficulty with her stemmed in large measure from her misunderstanding with regard to the limitations of municipal authority and the requirements of protocol and parliamentary procedure, not to mention her belief that she had been elected to effectuate social change and ensure that Hispanics were accorded equal treatment within the community and not abused by their white oppressors rather than the business of overseeing land use issues, maintenance of local infrastructure and the provision of basic municipal services.
The situation was exacerbated by Gomez’s oftentimes antagonistic and contentious style frequently aimed at goading her colleagues, as when she draped herself in a Mexican flag during a council meeting.
Moreover, in addition to the enmity she inspired in the white members of the political and governmental establishment by her incessant insistence that they were bigots and racists, she found herself at odds with the three of the Latino officeholders she served with on the council, Gloria Garcia, Eric Negrete and Liz Becerra, who were making a go of abstracting themselves into the American, California and local political mainstream.
In late December 2016, less than two months after she was elected and roughly three weeks after she had been sworn into office, Gomez, wearing a shirt/blouse that was provided to her by the City of Victorville which bore an embroidered/printed emblem on it identifying her and her status as a Victorville Councilwoman, showed up at a rally in Rialto that was being put on by another Hispanic politician who had just been voted into office, Rialto Councilman Rafael Trujillo. Trujillo’s rally, which was being coordinated in conjunction with the League of United Latin American Citizens and the Training Occupational Development Educating Communities Organization, was intended to whip up support for officially declaring Rialto as a sanctuary city. Trujillo was calling upon his council colleagues and Rialto’s residents to have the city adopt a policy of holding undocumented immigrants immune from prosecution for violating federal immigration laws.
Trujillo’s crusade was unpopular with a segment of the population on a number of grounds, not the least of which was that the then-president-elect, Donald Trump, who had come into office during the same election in which Trujillo and Gomez were elected, had indicated he would withhold federal funding from any cities which took on the sanctuary mantle. In no time, Gomez found herself at loggerheads with all of the members of the Victorville City Council. While the two white men then on the panel – Jim Cox and Jim Kennedy – found themselves on poor terms with Gomez, she was held in even poorer regard by Garcia and Negrete.
Garcia was then the mayor, and Gomez found herself in constant clashes with her. For Garcia, Gomez’s motions and requests at inopportune times were distracting, improper and out of keeping with Roberts’ Rules of Order. Garcia found herself gaveling Gomez down on a constant basis. On occasion, Garcia would have Gomez removed from the meeting when the latter became argumentative.
Even more than the contretemps with Garcia, Gomez developed a deep personal enmity with Negrete. Like Garcia, Negrete found Gomez’s automatically defaulting to attributing any resistance to her ideas, suggestions or motions to racism to be both counterproductive and embarrassing.
In 2018, Gomez made a concerted effort to branch out politically beyond Victorville, broadening the political opposition against her. After the May 2018 death of then-Hesperia Mayor Russell Blewett, she used her cellphone to take photographs of the open casket at his funeral, prompting charges that she was being purposefully disrespectful toward him and his family as well as the entire community of Hesperia. Later that year, as Hesperia readied for what was to be its first by-district city council elections, on August 2, 2018 Gomez went to Hesperia City Hall to assist in registering two Hispanic candidates, Gonzalo Gurrola and Robert Lucero, for a city council run in that year’s election. Gomez’s intent, as someone who had successfully run the gauntlet of getting the requisite paperwork to run for political office in the white-dominated atmosphere of governance in California, was to make sure that Gurrola and Lucero were not bounced out of being able to run in that year’s election on some trumped-up technicality or technicalities. In making that attempt, however, Gomez wandered, Hesperia city employees said, into an area off-limits to the public, whereupon the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, which provides contract law enforcement service to the City of Hesperia just as it does to the city of Victorville, was summoned. Gomez grew confrontational, maintaining she was simply seeking to make sure that Gurrola and Lucero properly filed their candidate applications. Ultimately, Gomez was arrested for trespassing. The incident was captured on video, both by hand-held cellphones wielded by Gomez, those with her, Hesperia city employees and by the city’s security cameras. Gomez released that footage to the media to cast the arrest as being one that was an unjustifiable intrusion upon her rights as a citizen, whereupon the city also made still photos available to justify the official action. Ultimately, in that case, the district attorney’s office made a decision not to prosecute her.
Gomez’s activity in Hesperia betrayed her inherent misunderstanding of political and governmental circumstance, reality and strategy. Gurrola and Lucero were residents of Hesperia’s newly-formed District 2, in which an incumbent on the council, Bill Holland resided. It was Gomez’s intent to ensure that Holland, an Anglo, not remain as a member of the council and that he be replaced by a Latino. Already, two other Hispanic candidates, Larry Nava and Dan Ramirez, had declared their candidacies in the race. Gomez calculated that by qualifying four Latino candidates for the race, the chances of electing a member of La Raza would increase. In actuality, however, by loading the ballot with four Hispanics against the single Anglo Holland, the Latino vote was split and Holland, who captured 34.92 percent of the vote was reelected.
In the same 2018 election cycle in Victorville, Cox opted out of seeking reelection and the then-Republican Negrete was narrowly defeated in his bid for reelection, with another Republican, Debra Jones, and a Democrat, Rita Ramirez, capturing those two council seats.
In 2020, Gomez made an unsuccessful bid to represent the residents of Assembly District 33 in California’s lower legislative house during the March primary election. Gomez ran for reelection on the Victorville Council in the November 2020 election. Cox had opted out of seeking reelection that year, Garcia, who was yet the appointed mayor, sought the voters’ approval in having her return to office. Competing with Gomez and Garcia were 20 others, including Negrete. The voters reelected Gomez, seemingly giving her a triple endorsement in that Garcia was turned out of office in the election and Negrete was likewise defeated. Joining Gomez on the council were Democrat Leslie Irving and Republican Liz Becerra.
The 2020 Victorville municipal election was a major historical hallmark. For the first time in the city’s 58-year history, all five members of the city council were women. For the first time, a majority of its members were Democrats, those being Gomez, Ramirez and Irving. And four-fifths of the council – Hispanics Gomez, Ramirez and Becerra and African American Irving – were so-called recognized or protected minorities as defined by the California Voting Rights Act.
The circumstance should have represented a serious turnaround in fortune for Gomez, one which should have provided her with substantially more clout than it did. With here victory and the departure of both Cox and Garcia, Gomez after just four years on the council, had become its senior member. Victorville does not have a directly elected mayor. Instead, the council chooses from among its five members an individual to serve as mayor, generally for a period of two years. Traditionally, the city has made a practice of rotating the mayoralty to an individual with at least two-year’s experience on the panel who has not previously served in the capacity of mayor, based upon the appointee’s willingness to accept the post.
Logic and tradition dictated that following the 2020 election, Gomez as the most experienced member of the council who had not yet served as mayor, should have that honor bestowed upon her. Moreover, the Victorville City Council had a Democratic majority and this too, it seemed, favored Gomez in the 2020 mayoral sweepstakes. Nevertheless, in a remarkable display of sleight-of-hand and simultaneous backroom political horse-trading the full details of which are still not publicly known, city officials managed to cut Gomez out of the process when the council met on December 8, 2020 in keeping with the State of California’s social distancing mandates not in person but in an electronic forum in deference to the then-ongoing COVID crisis to swear in the new members and elect council officers to serve over the next two years. In addition to Gomez, through some never-explained technical glitch being locked out of the electronic hook-up among various city officials participating in the meeting, the two Republicans on the council – Jones and Becerra – entered into a pact with the newly elected Irving to deny Gomez the mayoral appointment. Instead, Jones was made mayor and Ramirez-Dean mayor pro tem.
Jones, with her support network, which included Becerra and elements of Republican-dominated law enforcement in San Bernardino County, created a form of a bulwark against Gomez. In the summer heat of 2021, with tempers flaring and patience for Gomez’s antics growing short, the combined social, political and law enforcement establishments moved in concert against her and her threadbare support system.
During the July 6 Victorville City Council meeting, a fracas broke out when city officials became warily regardful of Gomez’s ski mask-wearing significant other, Robert Rodriguez, who was in the citizen gallery. Mayor Debra Jones called for the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s deputies, who were on standby to maintain order at the council meeting, to take action, to which Rodriguez reacted vocally and loudly. This provoked a response from Gomez, as well. As a consequence, Rodriguez was forcefully removed from the council chambers by the deputies on the scene. No charges against him were immediately filed as a result of that encounter, but it did set up what occurred at the next Victorville City Council meeting.
Two weeks later, on July 20, 2021, at the next convocation of the Victorville City Council, Rodriguez was using his cell phone to video the proceedings. Also present at the meeting was Mayor Jones’ husband, Gene Jones. Like Rodriguez, Gene Jones was using his cell phone to video the council’s action and interaction with the public. When Mayor Jones demanded that Rodriguez desist in his videotaping without issuing a similar order to her husband and deputies approached Rodriguez to enforce the mayor’s order, Gomez came out of her chair behind the dais and went into the gallery. A tussle between Rodriguez and Gomez on one end and the deputies on the other ensued, with Rodriguez and Gomez being arrested.
Rodriguez, who did not waive his right to a speedy trial, went before a jury in December 2021, enduring an 18-day trial between December 2 and December 28. Conspiracy to disturb a public meeting and two resisting arrest charges against him were dropped. On December 29, 2021, he was convicted on the charge of disturbing the July 20 meeting, but was acquitted on the charge of disturbing the July 6 meeting. He was also tried on misdemeanor interfering with a business charge relating to a June 2, 2021 incident at the Panera Bread Cafe in Victorville in which employees there summoned the sheriff’s department after he, in the company of Gomez, insisted on vaping inside that establishment after they had finished their meal. At trial, that charge was converted to trespassing and he was convicted on that count. He was sentenced to 270 days in county jail on the misdemeanor convictions.
To some people, at least, the treatment accorded to Rodriguez came across as harsh and a bit out of proportion, with more than a few saying they believed he was being punished for his association with Gomez, which was seen as a warning to others that they might want to think twice about supporting her on any grounds and to any degree. Even among Jones political allies and Gomez’s opponents, the disparity between the treatment accorded Rodriguez and the manner in which Gene Jones was allowed to walk away, even though his comportment at the July 20 council meeting mirrored Rodriguez’s with his use of his cellphone to intimidatingly photograph the meetings attendees, was obvious. Gomez had managed to livestream what occurred before the authorities seized her cellphone when they arrested her. That footage, which later made the rounds of various social media, served as a demonstration, at least in the minds of some, that Gomez’s often overblown charges of racial bias against Hispanics within the context of San Bernardino County’s Anglo-dominated governmental and criminal justice systems were in fact true.
Gomez, waived her right to a speedy trial and the criminal matter continued to hang over her.
On February 21, 2023, Gomez was involved in yet another incident wherein she would eventually be accused of interrupting or disturbing a public meeting. After the city council on that day adjourned into a closed, executive meeting from which the public was excluded and then regrouped in public for the open session of the meeting, Gomez came down from the council dais and went to the podium used by the public to address the council.
Jones, who was then still the mayor, interrupted Gomez when the latter began speaking about a matter which she said had been discussed by the council during the just-concluded closed session. Jones spoke over Gomez to tell her that matters discussed in an executive session of the council, outside the earshot or scrutiny of the public, are considered confidential. Gomez, asserting that the principle of “freedom of speech” warranted her being able to address the matter, managed to accuse another member of the city council and a San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department captain of conspiring against her. The scene devolved from there, with Jones cutting off the podium microphone and ordering the deputies on hand at the meeting to keep order to remove Gomez from the meeting, resulting in the councilwoman’s arrest. The district attorney’s office, in reaction to a report on the incident filed by the sheriff’s office, filed a further charge against Gomez of disturbing a public meeting. Ultimately, that charge was consolidated with the existing charges against her.
The criminal cases against Gomez were not the only legal proceedings involving her and the Victorville/San Bernardino County political and social establishment.
On December 21, 2020, represented by San Diego-based attorney Marc Applbaum and his La Jolla-based law partner Bryan Gonzales filed that lawsuit, with Gomez as the plaintiff, in Riverside Federal Court, naming The City of Victorville, Victorville City Manager Keith Metzler, former Victorville Mayor Gloria Garcia, former Victorville City Councilman Jim Cox, Victorville Mayor Debra Jones, the Victorville City Council, Victorville City Attorney Andre deBortnowsky, Victorville Assistant City Manager Sophie Smith, Victorville City Clerk Charlene Robinson, Victorville Assistant City Clerk Marcia Wolters and Victorville Spokeswoman Sue Jones, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department and Hesperia City Manager Nils Bentsen.
The suit asserted that Gomez had been disenfranchised by current and former city officials “as a result of her alliances with pro-immigration and homeless nonprofit organizations” and that Gomez “is not allowed to either object or cast her vote in favor or in opposition to city council matters.” According to the suit, Gomez “is locked out of city council meetings and denied access to city business and documents in an arbitrary and capricious manner.” In addition, the lawsuit took issue with Gomez’s August 2, 2018 arrest at Hesperia City Hall, stating that she had been “wrongfully arrested” on that occasion. In relatively short order, however, both Applbaum and Gonzales entreated the court to allow them to be excused as Gomez’s attorneys. Their motion was granted and, with Gomez representing herself, the case languished for a year before it was dismissed.
In 2021, Gomez teamed up with a Northern California attorney, Scott Rafferty, in filing a legal challenge of Victorville’s at-large electoral system, doing so under California Voting Rights Act. In that action, Gomez alleged that Victorville was plagued with “racially polarized” voting by which minorities – specifically Latinos and African Americans – were disenfranchised politically because they were not represented by Hispanics and Blacks on the city council. Gomez and Rafferty, whose law practice was based in Walnut Creek, some 401 miles away from Victorville, pressed forward with the suit despite the consideration that historically Victorville was one of the few cities in Southern California where the long dormant Latino political giant had awakened. In the thirty years between 1991 and 2021, Victorville’s voters had elected a total of 20 council members, eight of whom – Felix Diaz, Rudy Cabriales, Angela Valles, Gloria Garcia, Eric Negrete, Blanca Gomez, Rita Ramirez and Elizabeth Becerra – were Latino or Latina and two of whom – Jim Busby and Leslie Irving – were African American.
Despite Victorville City Attorney Andre deBortnowsky’s insistence that the city had not engaged in racially/ethnically polarized voting, in the face of Rafferty’s effort to force the city to embrace ward system voting, he nevertheless recommended that the city knuckle under and accede to moving to ward system voting as Rafferty was proposing, since even were the city to roll the dice and prevail in resisting the changeover, it would not be able to recoup the legal costs of engaging in that defense, given the terms of the California Voting Rights Act. Under the Voting Rights Act, a city which contests a lawsuit alleging racially polarized voting which loses must pay the legal fees of the plaintiff. Nevertheless, under the California Voting Rights Act, a plaintiff who alleges racially polarized voting who does not prevail is not held responsible for the city’s legal costs, and the city, even if it prevails, must defray the cost of making such a defense.
Ultimately, the City of Victorville threw in towel and adopted by-district voting. This placed Gomez in District 3, along with Councilwoman Becerra.
Two of San Bernardino County’s star defense attorneys, Raj Maline and
David Goldstein, signed on to defend her in her criminal case. Yet her unwillingness or inability to cooperate with either in the defense they were seeking to construct for her ended up exasperating both, and they, in time, just as Applbaum and Gonzales before them, ditched her as a client.
Thus, Gomez was reduced to seeking out legal representation anywhere she could get it. She settled upon Vonya Quarles, an attorney and the co-founder and executive director of Starting Over, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing shelter, counseling, employment services, and legal assistance to the formerly incarcerated. Gomez, after an interminable set of delays, found herself having to at last go to trial at what for her politically was a most inconvenient and for her political rivals a very fortunate time, just as she was making a bid to remain on the city council in Victorville by competing against Becerra in the first ever District 3 race while she was simultaneously running for San Bernardino County assessor.
Represented by Quarles, a patron saint of lost legal causes based in Riverside County and Los Angeles County who is far less steeped in the ins and outs of San Bernardino County’s criminal courts than Goldstein or Maline, Gomez’s actual trial commenced on October 2 and played out over five days – October 2, October 3, October 7, October 8 and October 14 – in the Rancho Cucamonga Courthouse before Judge Michael Camber. Deputy District Attorney Zachery Mehr prosecuted the case. After the close of the trial on October 14, the matter was sent to the jury, which commenced deliberations at 9:11 a.m. 42 minutes later, at 9:53 a.m., the jury announced it had reached a verdict on all counts. After a break in the proceedings, the jury returned at 10:59 and the proceedings were reconvened. At 11:02 the verdict was read. The jury had found Gomez guilty as to counts 1 and 2, PC148(A)(1)-M: obstructing or resisting a public officer and guilty as to counts 3 and 5, PC403-M: disturbing a public assembly. She was found not guilty of Count 4, PC182(A)(1)-M: conspiracy to commit a crime.
On Tuesday, voters across San Bernardino County went to the polls, including those in all 14 of the precincts in Victorville’s District 3. As of noon today, with all votes cast at the polls and the incoming mail-in ballots that have arrived so far counted, Becerra is trouncing her opponent, with 1,931 or 64.13 percent of the 3,011 votes tallied to Gomez’s 1,070 or 35.54 percent. Ironically, Gomez’s successful effort to move Victorville from a city which selected its council members through an at-large voting process to by-district elections ultimately played her wrong, giving her Republican and philosophical opponents an opportunity to train all of their political fire on her, knocking her from her perch on the Victorville City Council dais.
In the race for assessor, with all 2,872 of the county’s precincts having reported and the mail-in ballots that have arrived so far being counted, Gomez is running fourth among four candidates with 55,073 or 14.5 percent of the 379,940 votes that have been counted. She is behind the frontrunner, former County Supervisor Josie Gonzales, with 160,513 votes or 42.25 percent; Assistant Los Angeles County Assessor Dara Smith with 105,677 votes or 27.81 percent; and former San Bernardino County Assessor Don Williamson with 58,180 votes or 15.31 percent.