By Mark Gutglueck
In a high risk bid to keep the wraps on the misdirection of federal and state money to a host of the deep-pocketed backers of a good cross section of the region’s politicians, San Bernardino County officials are seeking to intimidate a one-time politician into silence about the details of those monetary diversions.
At the center of the burgeoning scandal is former San Bernardino City Councilman Henry Nickel, who served seven years on the city council from 2013 until 2020, and who staged failed political comebacks in a 2022 run for San Bernardino mayor and another in 2024, when he narrowly lost his bid to re-assume his former place on the council dais representing that city’s Fifth Ward.
Despite his checkered political experience, Nickel yet retains a modicum of reach within the dual-sided realm of politics and government, as he was reelected to his fourth term as a member of the Republican Central Committee in March 2024 and is yet employed in an influential position with San Bernardino County.
Indeed, it is by threatening to relieve Nickel of his job with the county – an analyst in the county’s workforce development division – that some of the more senior members of county staff and a host of the most powerful and politically-well-connected members of San Bernardino County’s business community are hoping they can ensure his silence. Ironically, it is the lattice of interweaving political and business interests that previously supported Nickel in his rise to prominence and propelled him into position to learn many of the hush-hush aspects of those alliances that the political and governmental shotcallers now want to keep from the public.
This has created an increasingly delicate situation that has the potential of exposing some very ugly things about how government operates and the intersection of the interests of ambitious office-holders intent on remaining in place or ever lusting after higher office and the interests of the donors to their political war chests who have projects or contracts or franchises riding on the governmental decision-making process in which the office-holders participate. The longer the situation with Nickel goes unresolved, the greater the chances that his treasure trove of secrets and insider knowledge will be unearthed and exposed.
It goes without saying, or should, that Nickel has political ambition of his own, that he is a Republican and that he leans more toward the conservative side of the GOP than its progressive lee.
The first indication that Nickel, at that time an analyst with the Riverside County Transportation Commission, had been bitten by the political bug came in 2007, when as a resident of Redlands he ran for city council there. Undaunted by his loss in that race, three years later he sought, again unsuccessfully, the Republican nomination in the 63rd Assembly District. In 2012, he achieved his first political victory with his election to the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee. In 2013, having relocated to San Bernardino, he unsuccessfully vied for mayor. In 2014, following the resignation of Fifth Ward Councilman Chas Kelley the previous year, Nickel was elected to the city council in a special election. The following year, 2015, Nickel was reelected to the city council. In 2016, he was reelected to the County Republican Central Committee. In 2018, by capturing first place in the race to represent the 40th Assembly District in California’s open primary, he qualified to run in that year’s November general election, at which point he lost to the much more heavily funded Democrat, James Ramos. In 2020, he was returned to the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee when he ran without opposition.
At that point, Nickel’s political career was at its apex, and he seemed to have fully arrived as a member of the San Bernardino County political/social/governmental establishment. Along the way, at various stages of his time in office, he had formed useful alliances and had taken on multiple positions of authority. He was the chairman of the city’s ways and means committee and a member of the legislative review committee. He was a board member of the League of California Cities’ Transportation, Communication and Public Works Committee. He had further, as is often the case with public office holders, parlayed his political status into professional advancement, in his case becoming a functionary within another governmental entity, in his case the County of San Bernardino, functioning within the realm of economic development and job generation.
Stretching back into the 1980s, the City of San Bernardino had an economic improvement and job generating division known as the San Bernardino Employment and Training Agency (SBETA), which had been carved out of the San Bernardino County Workforce Development Department. The two sister agencies operated in parallel with one another and just two blocks apart in downtown San Bernardino. Less than two years before Nickel acceded to the city council, in August 2012, the City of San Bernardino had filed for Chapter Nine bankruptcy protection, and it would be nearly five years before the city would emerge from that status. While bankruptcy provided the city some alleviation of the pressure it was under from its creditors, various vendors and service providers, its financial picture remained a convoluted mess, as many routine municipal functions were neglected, such that by the time Nickel came into office, the city had accrued a backlog of uncompleted or nonexistent audits of various departments. Just days after Nickel was sworn in as councilman. then-Governor Jerry Brown’s administration placed a cash hold on the San Bernardino Employment and Training Agency as the city struggled to reconcile years of financial mismanagement and tangled finances resulting in delayed payments, nonpayment and insufficient accounting. This served as the alleged basis to shutter the San Bernardino Employment and Training Agency and transfer the funding and agency’s assets to the county and its workforce development department.
Nickel, a former financial analyst with the US Treasury Department, took the position that upon the city completing its overdue audits, it should re-assume control of its own workforce board due to the particular challenges of poverty, employment, and opportunity in the city. Along with three of his colleagues on the city council, Nickel formed a majority of the city’s decision-makers consistently opposed to transitioning the San Bernardino Employment and Training Agency and its function to the oversight of the County Workforce Development Board, which was dominated by political appointees largely disinterested in addressing the specific challenges confronting the city’s employers and residents.
Nickel was convincingly reelected to the city council in 2015, and he continued his opposition to transitioning the San Bernardino Employment and Training Agency to the county. Elected to the council in 2015 was newcomer Bessine Richard a long-time employer and jobs center manager for the San Bernardino County Workforce Development Board. The state and county finally forced the city’s hand in a March 2016 city council vote. Nickel led a 4-to-3 majority vote, with county employee and Councilwoman Richard abstaining, to sustain the San Bernardino Employment and Training Agency while the city completed its audits. The vote, however, was vetoed by then-Mayor Carey Davis, sealing the fate of the San Bernardino Employment and Training Agency. This resulted in the city transferring millions of dollars in funding and assets from its own employment and training agency to the county.
The San Bernardino County Workforce Development Department (SBWDD) and its board have long been intertwined with the peculiar political dynamics of the region. A recipient of lucrative pass-through federal Workforce Investment and Opportunity Act funds, the agency serves as a source for potentially lucrative private sector consulting, training, and real estate lease contracts.
Among those serving on that board over the last 24 years is the current San Bernardino Republican Party Central Committee chairman, Phillip Cothran, as well as the San Bernardino Republican Party Central Committee’s 1st vice chairwoman, Shannon Shannon. Over the last two dozen years, Cothran has served multiple terms as the San Bernardino County Workforce Development Department Board chairman.
Cothran is a highly successful insurance broker in the City of Fontana. Beginning in the late 1980s, he took a strong interest in local politics, one that augmented his involvement in Fontana social and business affairs and activities extending at that time to his membership in the Fontana Rotary Club, his position as hospitality director at the Fontana Water of Life Community Church, his sponsorship of the Miss Fontana Pageant and his position on the board of the Fontana Historical Society. His initial foray into politics was to support eventual Fontana Mayor David Eshleman in his successful maiden run for city council in 1990. Somewhat ironically, Eshleman was a Democrat and ultimately, Cothran was to make his mark in politics as Republican. By the mid-to-late 1990s, he was perceived as a reliable donor to Republican causes and candidates. He was a key backer of former Police Chief Ben Abernathy while he was on the council and he heavily invested in the political careers of former Police Chief Frank Scialdone, then-Councilwoman Janice Rutherford, who would go on to serve three terms as San Bernardino County Supervisor, and then-Councilwoman Acquanetta Warren, who has been Fontana Mayor since 2010, Republicans all. He has proven to be a key backer and fund raiser for the members of the Fontana City Council who have over the years composed the council majority that has dominated politics in Fontana as Warren’s ruling coalition: John Roberts, who has been on the city council since 1992 and was an important element of the council that broke what had formerly been a Democrat lock on the panel and is currently the second-longest serving local politician in San Bernardino County; Jesse Armendarez, who served a single term on the Fontana Council and has gone on to become Second District county supervisor; Cothran’s son, Phil Cothran Jr, perhaps Warren’s most reliable and abiding ally on the council; and Pete Garcia, who owes his political career to the guidance and backing of both Warren and Cothran.
Phil Cothran Sr built, at least formerly, his reputation as someone who not only embodied the pro-business approach and politically conservative ideology of the Republican Party and talked the talk, but someone who put his money where his mouth is and walked the walk. When he was not tapping into his personal wealth accrued as a result of his successful insurance brokerage to stand behind Republican candidates and causes, he could be counted upon to put the arm on another donor willing to uphold the Republican Party.
Another irony, given recent developments, is that Cothran was given a substantial boost in his rise to the top of the Republican Party by Nickel.
On June 7, 2016 Nickel was re-elected to one of three seats on the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee in the County’s 5th Supervisorial District. Finishing behind the top three in that race were Phil Cothran Sr and Jesse Armendarez, who was at that point a member of the Fontana School Board and who in November 2016 would go on to win a position on the Fontana City Council. In a gesture of party unity, Nickel appointed Cothran as his alternate to the Republican Central Committee shortly after his 2016 election to that organization.
At that point, Nickel had left the employ of Riverside County and was working as a part-time teacher with the Redlands Unified and San Bernardino City Unified school districts. In an effort to short-circuit any further opposition from him with regard to the San Bernardino County Workforce Development Department subsuming the San Bernardino Employment and Training Agency, county officials arranged to have him hired as an administrative analyst with the San Bernardino County Workforce Development Department.
Nickel quickly assumed responsibilities within the workforce development department overseeing procurements, department audits, monitoring and labor market analysis. Upon the Trump Administration settling into place in the early months of 2017, Nickel was entrusted with numerous special assignments, quickly establishing himself into a position of trust and authority within the department on the basis of his knowledge of contracting and understanding of the nuanced political dynamics of the region and in Washington, D.C.
Simultaneously, Cothran was rising within the ranks of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee while he was serving in the capacity of Nickel’s alternate representative in that assemblage, leveraging his relationships within both the Republican Party and with Democrats with whom he was simultaneously networking in his capacity as the chairman of the San Bernardino County Workforce Board, not to mention the deepest-pocketed donors to Republican causes and candidates throughout the county.
In his capacity as an analyst for the San Bernardino County Workforce Development Department, Nickel was tasked with monitoring the performance of those vendors and service providers who had achieved contracts with the department and the results obtained from those expenditures of public money. In many cases, the taxpayers were getting very little in the way of bang for their buck, Nickel discovered, as the contracts had not been awarded on the basis of qualifications but rather on political connections and the contractors’ demonstrated willingness to make contributions to the politicians at the top tier of the county governmental edifice.
Nickel saw a recurrent pattern of funding for the agency for which he worked coming in from the state and federal government being devoted to generating business opportunities for the politically well-connected, paying for the workforce development department’s contracts with companies that have owners or employees who are making substantial donations to various politicians, generally entrenched incumbents, in San Bernardino County.
Given that the overwhelming number of elected officials in San Bernardino County are Republicans, the vast majority of donations were being made to Republican officeholders by donors who were affiliated with the Republican Party. The truth was, Nickel soon came to realize, was those donors were not making donations out of philosophical or ideological motivation for the purposes of promoting the philosophy of the Party of Lincoln or conservative causes but instead because they expected something tangible in return for the donations in the range of $1,000, $2,000, $2,500, $5,000, $10,000, $20,000, $25,000 and $50,0000 they were making.
In his official capacity as an analyst, Nickel had come face-to-face with the reality that the way the county was operating in many respects featured politicians at the top of the pyramid and their donors engaging in, quite simply, a system of exchanges wherein they traded this for that or what might be termed quid pro quos, bribery, graft and out-and-out political corruption.
Nickel’s authority with the county did not extend to the approval or command processes. In doing his job, he simply made an accurate accounting of what he observed with regard to the department’s need for goods and services and the contracts to fulfill those needs. He was simply writing reports. The decision-making process with regard to the department’s contracting, leasing and procurement policies were being made at a level above him, presumably by those reading those reports.
In 2018, then-State Assemblyman Marc Steinorth, one of Nickel’s longtime Republican allies, opted out of his reelection contest to remain in California’s lower legislative house when Third District County Supervisor James Ramos, the former chairman of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, declared his intention to seek Steinorth’s position representing California’s 40th Assembly District. Ramos, a Democrat, was independently wealthy as one of the owners of the San Manuel Tribe’s Yaamava Casino in Highland, from which he reportedly drew between $17,000 and $18,000 per day in personal revenue. Steinorth elected to vie for Second District San Bernardino County supervisor, recommending that Nickel run against Ramos in an effort to keep the 40th District as one of the 25 of the Assembly’s 80 seats then held by a Republican.
Most political observers and those involved in electioneering activity in San Bernardino County, including Cothran, assumed Ramos, based on his financial advantage and name recognition, would handily win the 2018 40th Assembly District primary contest. Nickel found himself without much if any local financial support for his campaign, yet, through sheer tenacity and shoe-leather campaigning, received the most votes in the primary. Incensed and alarmed, Ramos poured cash into the general election, outspending Nickel nearly tent-to-one and beating Nickel in the November 2018 election.
Nickel’s status as the GOP standard bearer in the 40th Assembly District qualified him to be an ex officio member of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee, whereupon he relinquished his status as an elected member of that body. Thereupon, Cothran Sr was appointed to fill his role as one of the three elected members of the county Republican Central Committee representing the county’s 5th Supervisorial District, strengthening his ties to the party.
Since 1966, San Bernardino County has been politically dominated, to a greater and lesser extent and with only a handful of exceptions, by the GOP. For 43 years beginning in the months prior to Ronald Reagan’s election as governor that year, registered Republicans outnumbered Democrats throughout the expansive 20,105-square mile jurisdiction. In virtually every political office, from school boards to water district boards to fire boards to city councils to the county board of supervisors to the California Assembly to the State Senate, San Bernardino County boasted more Republicans as its representatives than Democrats. This reality persisted even as California beginning in the 1990s and then into the early 2000s slipped further and further under the control of the Democrats. In 2009, the number of registered Democrats throughout San Bernardino County eclipsed the number of registered Republicans. Despite that milestone, the Republicans maintained their upper hand in terms of the numbers of those affiliated with their party holding elected office at all levels. The Republican Party apparatus in San Bernardino County – the Republican Central Committee and its support network – simply and thoroughly outperformed the Democratic Party apparatus in San Bernardino County, consisting of the Democratic Central Committee and its support network. The Republicans were better coordinated and more cohesive in terms of their understanding of the electioneering process and executing a game plan with regard to political campaigns. The Republicans consistently and substantially outperformed their Democratic counterparts in raising funds to bankroll their campaigns and proved far more astute in utilizing that money to carry out polling and then formulating slogans and literature promoting their candidates, thereafter delivering those messages to the voters in the form of handbills, door hangers, mailers, yard signs, hit pieces attacking their opponents, newspaper advertisements, radio and television spots and billboards. In this way, the Republicans, despite being at a numerical disadvantage to the Democrats for nearly 16 years, have maintained their edge by driving Republicans to the polls in greater numbers than the Democratic vote turnout at virtually every election and by convincing voters who are registered as neither Republicans nor Democrats – those unaffiliated with any party or registered with the more obscure political organizations such as the American Independent Party, the Green Party, the Libertarians or the Peace and Freedom Party – to vote for Republican candidates. In this way, at present, despite 475,357 or 39 percent of San Bernardino County’s 1,219,203 registered voters being Democrats compared to the 376,016 or 30.8 percent of the county’s residents who identify as Republicans, a decided majority of the county’s elected offices are held by Republicans. Seventeen of the county’s 24 cities and incorporated towns have more Republicans than Democrats on their councils. Four of the five members of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors are Republicans. As to who represents San Bernardino County in the legislature in Sacramento and Congress in Washington, D.C., those numbers are evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. In most of the cases where portions of San Bernardino County are represented by a Democrat in the Assembly, the California Senate or Congress, that is the case because a strong majority of the voters in their districts outside San Bernardino County are Democrats and outweigh substantially the Republican contingent of those district’s voters within San Bernardino County.
In his role as a member of the Republican Central Committee, Nickel was constantly pushing for his party to maintain its advantage by aggressively promoting Republicans over Democrats in elections, even in local contests that were considered nonpartisan. He further advocated that Republicans and Republican officeholders or Republican hopefuls refrain from utilizing party money or that donated by Republican-affiliated donors in attacking other Republicans. There was growing concern among at least some of the Republicans that squabbles and rivalries between Republicans over who was to hold certain local offices were developing and that this internecine warfare, if it were not limited or held in check by then-San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee Chairwoman Jan Leja, would grow to the point that the GOP would lose its advantage throughout the county to the Democrats, who were gradually learning to coordinate their efforts to get more and more of their political horses hitched up to the same side of the wagon to pull in the same direction.
Nickel’s show of ambition in running for the Assembly, together with his emphasis on his conservative orientation and insistence that the central committee and its members adhere to the central committee’s by-laws, which required that central committee members demonstrate loyalty to the GOP by supporting Republican candidates over non-Republicans and most importantly over Democrats in any elective contests was appreciated by the traditionalist Republicans in the county. It did not sit well, however, with a growing contingent of Republicans, including Cothran, who would eventually commandeer control of the local party. Those accommodationist Republicans, who by 2018 had taken up some of the positions in the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee and included a small but significant number of the party’s donors and even some of its largest donors, had come to recognize that Democrat numbers were growing and that San Bernardino County’s establishment was undergoing a slow but steady transition. Despite Republicans having the upper hand over the Democrats in terms of the number of those holding local elected office, the Democrats were making minor incremental but steady gains in getting members of their party elected to county supervisorial, mayoral, city council and school district, fire district water district and other local agency board positions, and it was undeniable that a fair number of Democrats were becoming members of the region’s political establishment. Accordingly, these practically-minded Republicans took what they considered to be a pragmatic approach, one in which they sought to come to an accommodation with those Democrats, particularly if those Democrats proved amenable with going along with the donors’ first priorities, which were to ensure that on any votes by the board of supervisors, city councils, district boards or agency directors that impacted upon those donors’ money-making activities – i.e., projects, permits, licensing, contracts, franchises or the provision of goods or services to those governmental entities – decisions were made in favor of the donors or their companies. In some cases, this involved Republicans endorsing Democrat candidates over Republican candidates, which Nickel stridently decried.
Nickel’s quixotic stand against Ramos in the 2018 40th Assembly District race clearly demonstrated where he stood with regard to the divide between the accommodationsts and the traditionalists in the San Bernardino County Republican Party, and he thereby became a target of some powerful entities for bucking the region’s evolving political establishment.
In the March 2020 Primary Election, Nickel was reelected to represent San Bernardino County’s 5th Supervisorial District on the Republican Central Committee without opposition, and both Cothran Sr and his son, Phil Cothran Jr., likewise residents of the 5th Supervisorial District, were also elected to the central committee.
In the same election, Nickel vied for reelection to the San Bernardino City Council representing the Fifth Ward. While he had hoped to gain quick reelection by capturing more than 50 percent of the vote in the March race to avoid having to compete in a runoff in the November 2020 general election, five others had filed to run in the primary, turning it into a six-person race. Nickel handily qualified for the runoff as the top vote-getter with 35.45 percent of the vote. Capturing second, and the opportunity to face Nickel in the November runoff, was Benjamin Reynoso, a young Democratic activist, who was well off the winning pace with 25.48 percent of the vote.
Reynoso in the run up toward the November 2020 general election proved to be energetic, resourceful and imaginative in his approach to capturing the position of San Bernardino Fifth Ward councilman. As a unionist Democrat, he brought those credentials to bear in getting both union and party support, the former being more significant than the latter. Moreover, as a relatively recent college graduate who had been focused on progressive action while he had been at the University of Southern Mississippi, he recognized that the vote of college attendees could be turned in his favor quite readily. As the campus for California State University San Bernardino was located within the Fifth Ward, he set about registering the students living in that school’s dormitories to vote as San Bernardino residents. He thereby was able to capture well above 90 percent of the votes of those newly registered voters. Simultaneously, Nickel was unable to stir up the support from Republican-affiliated donors or the political establishment, which had a bone, or indeed several bones, to pick with him. Even the Teamsters Union Local 1932, which represented San Bernardino County government’s staff employees and counted Nickel as a member, endorsed his opponent. In the November 2020 race, Reynoso outpolled Nickel, 52.74 percent to 47.26 percent, dislodging him from office.
In January 2021, shortly after the members of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee were installed following their elections the previous year, Cothran, having been active in the local party hierarchy for nearly four years at that point thanks in good measure because Nickel had appointed him to the central committee as his alternate after the 2016 election, ran successfully for central committee chairman.
In 2022, Nickel tossed his hat in the ring in an effort to challenge scandal-plagued incumbent San Bernardino Mayor John Valdivia. Five others had similar ideas. Once again, the Republican Central Committee, over which Cothran was exercising substantial control, was lukewarm at best in backing Nickel. The even more inclusive San Bernardino County political establishment was hostile toward him. In the June 2022 primary Nickel managed to place no better than fifth among the seven candidates.
Last year, Nickel made a second political comeback attempt, running again for Fifth Ward councilman in San Bernardino. Hustling as always, he exacted revenge on Reynoso, managing a second-place finish in the five-person race by capturing 25.12 percent of the vote to Reynoso’s 20.94 percent. Both were behind another Democrat, Kim Knaus, whose 37.13 percent in the primary made her the odds-on favorite in the November 2024 general election match-up against Nickel.
Despite his efforts to bring in sufficient support to fuel a realistic campaign against Knaus, Nickel spun his wheels in making any headway with the network of deep-pocketed donors who normally bankroll establishment candidates. What is more, Knaus made headway in getting crossover support from some Republicans, including Republicans within the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee. In a demonstration of just how out of favor Nickel was with the political establishment and the accommodationist wing of the Republican Party, Michelle Sabino, a central committee member who had been elevated by Cothran to the position of Third District chairwoman on the committee’s executive board, actively engaged in efforts to support Knaus, including fundraising activity on her behalf. After Sabino’s activity in support of a Democrat running against not just a Republican but a member of the central committee was brought to Cothran’s attention, he did nothing to counter it nor to demote Sabino from the executive board nor expel her from the central committee, despite clear regulations within the central committee’s by-laws prohibiting endorsements or support of Democrats or any non-Republicans running against Republican candidates.
Isolated from any realistic support, Nickel managed to haul in 37.87 percent to Knaus’s 62.13 percent in the November 2024 race.
Less than a week after that contest, Nickel was ominously told that he was under investigation for some unspecified act or instance of nonperformance and that he was to report to San Bernardino County’s human resources office. Before doing so, he contacted the Teamster’s Union Local 1932, which dispatched a union steward to accompany him to the meeting with the county’s human resources division, which is headed by Leo Gonzalez. That meeting ground to a halt when the county’s representatives were unable to make any tangible specification of, or provide any evidence of, problematic performance on Nickel’s part. The episode appeared, when taken into consideration with the extraordinary effort Nickel had undertaken in a political campaign that had come to naught, to be a statement to Nickel that he should consider the wisdom of engaging in any further challenges of the county establishment or the political status quo.
Two months went by without Nickel having any further contact from county human resources.
Last week, on January 9, at its first regular meeting of 2025, the San Bernardino County Central Committee held its traditional discussion and vote to set the committee hierarchy for the next four years. A showdown had been brewing for some time, extending back for more than two years, over the traditionalist/accommodationist divide in the local party. Some central committee members have come to believe that the party has to be adoptive to the changing demographics in the county and adjust its approach to how the party should be sustained. As in virtually any organization, there is certain degree of inertia on the part of the central committee’s members who are willing to follow the leadership. Those factors have combined to create a situation in which roughly two-thirds of central committee, at least with regard to most issues, is content to comply with the directives that Cothran and his team have made with respect to how the county party has functioned for some time. There was, however, a fair amount of changeover of the committee’s membership in the March 2024 election, enough so that it was perceived that Cothran and those he has installed as members of the committee’s executive board would need to abandon their accommodationist approach and make a more aggressive effort in propounding what the committee membership settles upon as the party’s most important fundamental values. This extended to the potential of unseating Cothran as committee chairman if the changes the traditionalists were intent on effectuating were not achieved. By the same token, Cothran and his network had come to the meeting determined to keep the established order of operation and leadership team intact. This included lobbying of the central committee’s members aimed at getting the membership to stay the course with Cothran that was carried out by one county entrepreneur – developer James Previti – who has emerged as one of the more generous contributors to Republican causes and candidates in recent years.
At the January 9 meeting, the traditionalist forces pressed their case. They decried that Cothran, using the committee’s executive board as a tool, had already, more than 18 months in advance of the 2026 elections and prior to the most recently newly elected members of the central committee being in place, preemptively endorsed candidates for the next election cycle. Cothran and his loyalists, the traditionalists charged, had improperly restricted communications among members of the central committee by not forwarding emails sent through the SBGOP webmail and had staged the central committee treasurer’s reports only during closed sessions of the executive board, thereby preventing the committee membership from knowing how party money was being spent. Additionally, they said, Cothran had conducted an excessive number of closed meetings of the executive board from which the general membership was excluded and then attempted to enforce gag orders on members in attendance. Cothran had restricted the free distribution of information among members by refusing to compile and make available to the membership a roster of the central committee members and their contact information, thus isolating the membership, using what many of the central committees members characterized as a classic divide and conquer technique.
The traditionalists dwelt in particular on the lack of transparency with regard to the committee’s operations between April and December of 2022, during which time treasurer reports were not published and the membership was denied access to accounting records, which remain unavailable for examination.
The traditionalists made much of Cothran and his leadership team being unwilling to enforce the central committee’s bylaws which prohibit the use of Republican Party funding or Republican party-affiliated political action committee funds in carrying out attacks and what were termed “smear campaigns” on Republican candidates or in campaigns promoting Democrat or “progressive” candidates who were running against Republicans or “conservative” candidates. Cothran had insisted, they said, in a strict interpretation and enforcement of the committee’s by-laws when doing so would benefit candidates or causes he personally favored but had ignored the by-laws entirely when their application would damage those he was seeking to assist. Moreover, they said, Cothran had deviated from the by-laws when he allowed non-paying members of the committee serving as alternates to vote when he knew ahead of time that they would support his particular position on matters that came before the committee, but had used extra-parliamentary and arbitrary means to block the votes of legally appointed and dues-paying alternates he suspected were to vote against his agenda.
At one point, the traditionalists charged, Cothran and his team had manifested “an agenda separate from the Republican Party’s agenda. The current leadership has repeatedly brought to our meetings leftist union bosses as speakers,” it was openly stated. “These are activists who fully support Democrat candidates with their funds, votes and endorsements, and consistently oppose conservative
programs and policies.”
The traditionalists cut right to the heart of the connection between the wealthy set of political donors, who have millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars and even in excess of a hundred million dollars riding on the governmental decision-making process in San Bernardino County and have hijacked the central committee’s policies and candidate promotion processes, such that Cothran and the leadership echelon have made a series of decisions to virtually disassociate the San Bernardino County Republican Party from grassroots volunteers and organizations such at the county’s various Tea Parties, the California Republican Assembly, Republican women’s groups and smaller local Republican clubs from positions or roles of responsibility.
Poised in the middle of those challenging the leadership was Nickel.
Despite their show of determination, within the context of the Republican Central Committee, and most specifically within the context of the central committee’s January 9 meeting, the traditionalists simply did not have sufficient political muscle to force a significant change on the central committee as a whole or even, at a minimum, some reflection or soul searching about the direction the central committee is taking and its implication for the future of the GOP in San Bernardino County. Ultimately, Cothran and his leadership team were retained in place with the support of roughly 60 percent of the central committee membership.
This week, Nickel was once again contacted by San Bernardino County’s human resources. He was not given an opportunity, as he was in November, to be briefed on what the issue is or issues are in the “investigation” he and his performance as an administrative analyst are being subjected to. He was told, simply, that he was being placed on administrative leave and that he should be available by phone, text or email to be informed further as to any change in his status.
Nickel’s political activity, either as a candidate for office or his agitation for policy change within the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee, could not form any sort of legitimate grounds to terminate his employment with the county, though that indeed seems to be the reason his job as an analyst with the Workforce Development Department is in jeopardy.
By a process of elimination, the most likely issue upon which the human resources division could make a case against him hinges upon some questionable procurement or contracting arrangement involving a vendor, service provider, landlord or consultant who either was granted a contract which was not properly bid or competed for or who, after being awarded the contract, failed to perform or supply as required under the contract, particularly if the contractor/vendor/service provider/landlord/consultant was unqualified to begin with or was given unmerited favorable treatment because of some political connection to which Nickel can, ostensibly or actually, be connected.
That, however is problematic for the county in one if not more of at least three ways.
First, Nickel insists that in his function as an analyst for the San Bernardino Workforce Development Department he scrupulously adhered to the instructions of department higher-ups both in terms of his own function and the standards he applied. If something inappropriate, improper or illegal occurred, it would appear that he was merely carrying out the orders of those in the county’s command echelon, which would beget a whole host of questions the county and county officials would prefer not to be raised, let alone answered.
Second, assuming Nickel himself was knowingly and perniciously involved in rubberstamping or otherwise signing off on some contractual arrangement with a service provider or vendor whose generosity to the county’s political bigwigs paved the way for the donor to profit in some way to which the donor/contractor had no right would in and of itself open a can of worms that would implicate one or more officeholders, most likely on the county board of supervisors along with top-ranking officials in the Workforce Development Department including its director, Bradley Gates, along with Mike Jimenez, the deputy executive officer overseeing the Workforce Development Department, as well as Chad Nottingham, the assistant executive officer overseeing Jimenez, and potentially even Luther Snoke, the county’s chief executive officer.
Third, if Nickel is made to go down for something he either did or did not do, there will be nothing to prevent him from going out and unloading everything he knows, from the minor things right up to medium-range to the major and the gargantuan that he is privy to, including all that he witnessed in his capacity as a city councilman and capacity as a county employee, extending to the intense pay-to-play atmosphere that exists in San Bernardino County and the trade-offs made behind the scenes by decision-makers and the political donors investing in their political careers, investments which mature and manifest with public policies that benefit those willing to purchase profit at the expense of the electorate that entrusts the substance of their lives to those in a position to honor or abuse that faith.