During the course of a 3-hour-and-50-minute meeting on Tuesday, January 7, the Rialto City Council considered and rejected the option of appointing the runner-up in the November 5, 2024 city council election to fill the void created when then-Councilman Joe Baca Sr was elected mayor with two further years remaining on the council term he was elected to in 2022.
The council ultimately chose political neophyte
In November, Ana Gonzalez, who has established herself as an energetic and dynamic community activist, finished third in a seven-person race for two posts. Gonzalez polled 7,209 votes or 17.4 percent, behind incumbent Andy Carrizales and former Councilwoman Karla Perez, who managed to bring in 9,270 or 22.38 percent and 7,900 votes or 19.07 percent.
Of note is that in this year’s council race, Rafael Trujillo chose not to seek a third council term and ran for mayor against incumbent Deborah Robertson, joining a field that included Baca Sr and Ché Rose Wright. In 2018, Perez had been the third-place finisher in a race for the council behind Joe Baca Sr’s son, Joe Baca Jr, and Councilman Ed Scott. In 2020, Baca Jr was elected to the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors. To fill the gap created by Baca Jr’s departure, the council at that time appointed Perez, reasoning that she merited the appointment by virtue of her being the community’s next top choice among the candidates for council over the previous several years who had not been victorious. In the 2002 election, Perez was displaced from the council, however, when Scott was reelected and Baca Sr was elected.
Baca Sr has had a long and storied political existence.
He initiated his political career in 1979, when he was elected as the first Latino to hold a position on the San Bernardino Valley College District Board of Trustees. He was thwarted at that time in his efforts to move up the political evolutionary chain by Jerry Eaves, a unionist Democrat, his quintessential rival. Eaves, who served as a Rialto city councilman from 1977 until 1980, Rialto mayor from 1980 to 1984 and as a member of the California Assembly from the 66th District from 1984 to 1992, continued to box Baca Sr in, turning back each of Baca’s challenges in the 66th District in 1988 and 1990. In 1992, when Eaves elected to leave the Assembly and make a successful run for Fifth District San Bernardino County supervisor and designate his protégé, then-Rialto Mayor John Longville, to succeed him in the Golden State’s lower legislative house, Baca handily defeated the well-financed Longville in the Democratic primary, going on to an easy victory in the heavily Democratic district in the November 1992 race. Baca remained in the California Assembly for six years. In 1998, termed out from the Assembly, he was able to transition and step up into the upper legislative house, succeeding Ruben S. Ayala in the California Senate’s 32nd District. Just a few months after Baca was elected to the California State Senate, California 42nd District Congressman George Brown Jr died. Baca seized the opportunity this provided and vied to replace Brown in a special election, ultimately winning. He won the seat more convincingly with 59 percent of the vote in 2000. After the 2000 census, Baca was reapportioned into California’s 43rd Congressional District, a majority-Hispanic district. He was re-elected five straight times. A so-called Blue-Dog, or conservative, Democrat, Baca served on the House Financial Services Committee, where he was a member of the Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance, and Government Sponsored Enterprises, and the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit; as well as on the House Agriculture Committee, where he was the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Departmental Operations, Oversight, Nutrition and Forestry. He was the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. He was a member of the Military/Veterans Caucus and the U.S.-Mexico Caucus.
In 2012, his reign as one of the most powerful political figures in San Bernardino County came to an end when Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire mayor of New York City, targeted him for removal from Congress to prevent him from siding with Bloomberg’s fellow gun-rights supporting Republican colleagues and opposing Bloomberg’s acquisition of more radio and television stations. When Baca opted to run for re-election to Congress in California’s 35th District in 2012 and Democrat Gloria Negrete-McLeod succeeded in getting second place in the open primary race for the 35th District post, Bloomberg poured more than $3 million into Negrete-McLeod’s campaign late in the 2012 political season, catching Baca Sr, who anticipated only a lukewarm campaign from Negrete-McLeod, flatfooted. Baca was defeated.
Two years later, Baca attempted to stage a comeback but, having lost the magic of incumbency, he was thwarted in the June 2014 primary when he ran for Congress in the California 31st District, again as a Democrat, placing fifth overall, with 11.18 percent in a seven-candidate race behind two Republicans and two Democrats, including the eventual winner, Democrat Pete Aguilar.
Having relocated his residence to Fontana, Baca the following month, July 2014, took out candidate papers to run against the incumbent mayor there, Acquanetta Warren in the November 2014 race. Baca Sr lost that race as well.
Baca determinedly vied for Congress again in 2016, running in the June primary against Aguilar, changing parties to do so, saying he had come to identify with the GOP in that it reflected his “core Christian” values. Baca managed to get only 12.45 percent in the primary and did not make it into the November runoff.
In August 2016, Baca changed his voter registration from Republican to no party preference and in 2018 returned to the Democratic Party fold. He ran for Congress once more, that time not in the 31st District, as he did in 2014 and 2016, but by again seeking the 35th Congressional District post he lost to Negrete-McLeod in 2012. The incumbent Democrat, Norma Torres, trounced him.
In the intervening years, his son, Joe Baca Jr, who had been elected to the California State Assembly in the 62nd District in 2004, and served for one term, had gone on to become a successful local politician as a member of the Rialto City Council. In 2020, Baca Jr was elected to the board of supervisors. Springing off the name recognition his son had built, in 2022, Baca Sr made an impressive political comeback by being elected to the Rialto City Council.
Last year, Joe Baca Sr fully surpassed his old rival, the by-then deceased Eaves, when he was elected mayor of Rialto. Baca Sr has now held all but one of the political posts Eaves held – Rialto City councilman, Rialto Mayor and California Assemblyman – and two posts Eaves never held – California Senator and U.S. Congressman. His progeny – Baca Jr – has served in the other elected post Eaves held, that of county supervisor.
Baca Sr’s elevation to mayor meant that he had to vacate his position as a member of the council.
Rather than hold another election to fill the post, which would have cost the city, officials said, in the neighborhood of $650,000 to conduct, they instead solicited applications.
Joshua Augustus, whose application to run for mayor this year was rejected by the city clerk and the registrar of voters because of endorsing signature inadequacies, applied. So did Joe Britt, who has run for city council previously, including in 2022. Guadalupe Camacho, a previous council hopeful who placed sixth in this year’s race, filed for consideration. Vickie Davis, who ran for city council in November, finishing fourth, sought the appointment. Elvis Garcia, a real estate agent, wanted the council to consider him. Lameisha George, a mental health counselor, applied. Javier Gomez asked the council to appoint him. Ana Gonzalez, who placed third in the November 5 election, applied. Jessica Justine Haro, who lives on West La Gloria Drive, applied. Rocio Martinez, about whom there is a certain mystery, applied. Edward A. Montoya Jr, a veteran, submitted his name. Kelvin Moore, who ran for the council in November and placed fifth, also applied. Ivan Ramirez, a financial analyst with the San Bernardino County Office of Administration, applied. Mike Story, Rialto’s former city manager, got into the competition to be appointed. Rafael Trujillo Jr, who sacrificed his position on the council by running instead for mayor, made his willingness to continue as a councilman known to the council.
Many people believed that Gonzalez should be given the nod, since she had expressed an interest in the post and had received more votes in the most recent election than any of the other candidates besides the two that had been victorious, Perez and Carrizales.
There was sentiment among some that Trujillo should be given the opportunity to remain on the council.
An argument was made that Story was knowledgeable about civic issues in a way that other applicants were not.
Britt and Camacho, Democrats both, had partisans backing them.
While Ivan Ramirez had his supporters who touted his knowledge of government, there were those who were against government employees overseeing the government employees running City Hall, in particular an employee of the County of San Bernardino.
Baca Sr’s vanquishing of Robertson was accompanied by his return to form as a campaign fund raiser. While in the Congress, he had been able to ward off, until he was challenged by Negrete-McLeod, effective competition because of the substantial amount of money he had in his political war chest, which came from many directions and from those with an interest in federal policy and legislation. During the decade he was wondering in the political desert after his defeat by Negrete-McLeod, he found himself at a disadvantage to powerhouse fund raisers such as Acquanetta Warren and Pete Aguilar, and he ran up against the cohesive local Republican Party political machine that works to keep Democrats out of office in San Bernardino County.
In his run for mayor, however, he tapped into a wellspring of money that fuels the county’s successful Democrats and dominant Republicans – provided by the building and real estate industries, land speculators and developers. Among those giving large amounts of money to Baca, many at rates of $4,000 to $5,500 at a pop, were John Dino DeFazio, the business partner of former County Supervisor and Republican Central Committee Chairman Bill Postmus; TMC Group Vice President of Development Michael Tahan; Balwinder Wraich; SG Realty Group; Lord Constructors; Jose Gutierrez of Village Realtors; Optimum Group; Jatinderpal Dhaliwal, president of USPetro, Incorporated; and Nachhattar Chandi. This led to concern among some that Baca Sr would be unwilling to welcome onto the council anyone he deemed unsupportive of the development community.
Gonzalez is currently the director of the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, which is active in attempting to force local jurisdictions to use exacting standards in approving environmental impact reports for various projects, in particular warehousing and manufacturing facilities. She is the immediate past president of the Chicano Latino Caucus of San Bernardino County and the past-president of Alianza Latina for Rialto Unified School District, a support group for parents and education advocacy for students. She previously served on the Rialto Budget Advisory Committee and is now a member of the Rialto General Plan Community Advisory Committee. She possesses a Bachelor of Arts Degree in liberal studies from Cal State San Bernardino with a minor in sociology.
Gonzalez has consistently questioned whether the warehouse development frenzy that has griped the Inland Empire over the last decade to a decade-and-a-half has made the highest and best use of the property upon which the warehouses are being built. She has suggested that not only is the glut of logistics facilities in the Inland Empire out of balance with other needed assets, but that the assertions by warehouse proponents that such facilities constitute positive economic development are deliberately misleading canards, as warehouse jobs provide relatively poor pay and benefits. Moreover, she has gone on record as arguing that warehouses are a net detriment to the communities in which they are located. Warehouses do more than exploit those who work there, Gonzalez has said. They also victimize nearby residents with their use of large diesel-powered semi-trucks that are part of those operations with their unhealthy exhaust emissions, together with the bane of traffic gridlock they create, she maintains. She has called for regulations that would increase to as much 2,000 feet the distance to be maintained between warehouses and homes, schools and parks.
With Gonzalez’s statements to the effect that developers often do the bare minimum to mitigate the impacts of the projects they pursue and her call that the city in its land use regulation process should extract from landowners and the developers who build on their property adequate compensation or offsets in return for project approval, Baca Sr was concerned that placing her on the city council and giving her both a forum to make her case and a vote to regulate development would be perceived as a betrayal of those who are once again investing heavily in his political career.
There was a natural clash between those who felt that Gonzalez, as the highest vote-getter among the candidates for the council in the November 5 election who did not achieve election, should be appointed and those who want to keep her from obtaining the bully pulpit of a council position.
Baca Sr, who has newly reinvented himself as the dominant decision-maker at Rialto City Hall and a politician who is again on the rise, was able to influence the three other members of the council away from promoting Gonzalez or advancing Trujillo, who had run against him for mayor.
Instead, the panel collectively gravitated toward choosing Montoya, the co-founder and executive director of the Rialto-based Brotherhood Bridge Foundation, which is described as a support network for veterans and first responders. Montoya, like Baca Sr, is an Army veteran who served overseas in Afghanistan and Iraq. Baca Sr, a Vietnam War-era soldier, served as a member of the 101st Airborne Division and 82nd Airborne Division.
The council unanimously chose Montoya to finish Baca Sr’s council term after Perez nominated him as the logical heir apparent. He is to be sworn in on January 14 at the beginning of that day’s council meeting.