Former San Bernardino Second Ward Counclman Benito Barrios’s quest for a political comeback hit a snag this week as Democrats in the county seat are militating toward throwing the entire weight of their party countywide into an effort to oppose his bid to recapture the post he lost seven years ago.
Barrios, a Marine Corps veteran who had parlayed the support he received from conservative backers in the city and hi association with then-up-and-coming San Bernardino political figure John Valdivia to obtain a berth on the council, for a time appeared to have a bright future in elective office, being able to time a run for county or state posts from the relatively strong position of an incumbent council member in the county’s most populous city. A host of calculated moves that turned out to be miscalculations and an a series of what otherwise would have been micro-scandals that would have had no appreciable impact on his continuing viability as a candidate if they had occurred separately rather than as an accumulation doomed him during the 2018 election cycle.
Now, he and his handlers and advisors consider the 2026 election season to be propitious for his re-entrance into local politics, as the woman who replaced him on the council must stand for reelection once more, having barely overcome a challenge in 2022. Though Barrios this time hopes to have one of the more powerful and influential entities in the San Bernardino community backing him, there remains a cohesive coalition of supporters preparing to go to work in the upcoming campaign for the incumbent.
Moreover, San Bernardino is a solid Democratic city and the Second Ward has the second highest concentration of Democratic Party members of the city’s seven wards. Even though municipal elections are not supposed to be partisan in nature, the overwhelming ratio of Democrats to Republicans in the Second Ward makes it highly unlikely that a candidate actively opposed by the Democratic Party can win in an electoral contest there.
In 2018, Sandra Ibarra, a community activist, and Cecilia Miranda-Dolan, the wife of another San Bernardino-based community and political activist, challenged Barrios in that year’s election. Barrios had the advantage of incumbency and for that reason was perceived as the favorite in the field. In his case, however, incumbency brought with it certain liabilities, as well.
In 2015, in what would have been a relatively minor incident if he had not been a member of the city council, Barrios was stopped by the police one night while driving on a suspended license. That, in and of itself might have escaped notice, but he phoned the San Bernardino police chief immediately thereafter, seeking the chief’s intercession. The call to the police chief and the call became known among certain city officials and word of it leaked to the press, which resulted in newspaper coverage of the matter.
Later in 2015, Barrios, while attending a city council meeting, used his cellphone while he was sitting at the council dais to arrange the sale of some guns he owned. Some of those in attendance at the meeting noticed that as the meeting was progressing, Barrios was disengaged from the action taking place during the meeting, including statements made by citizens addressing the council during the council meetings public comment section, while he was texting on his phone. Word of what he had done leaked out when the digital trail relating to the sale arrangements he was making, including time-date stamps of the communication relating to the guns he was offering for sale. There was local press coverage of the incident followed by other newspapers in California picking up on the story and then, to Barrios’s embarrassment and that of other city officials, national and then international news outlets. Part of why the matter garneredso much attention was that San Bernardino was plagued with some of the highest rates of gun violence in California and the nation.
The following year, during Donald Trump’s ultimately successful campaign for U.S. president, Barrios publicly endorsed the Republican hopeful. He did so, despite the consideration that overall in San Bernardino, Democrats are almost twice as numerous as Republicans by a 44.9 percent to 22.8 percent ratio and in the Second Ward, the disadvantage the Republicans are at is even more pronounced, with Democrats constituting 46.8 percent of that political subdivision’s registered voters, while just 19.0 percent of the ward’s voters are registered Republicans.
While he was in office in San Bernardino, Barrios joined with another retired Marine who held political office in San Bernardino County, Adelanto Mayor Rich Kerr, in advocating that local governments – in their cases San Bernardino and Adelanto – take advantage of the legalization of marijuana for intoxicative use that took place with the passage of that year’s Proposition 64, the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, to open marijuana dispensaries and generate tax revenue from the sale of the substance.
Indeed, both San Bernardino and Adelanto, along with the City of Needles, pioneered the legalized availability of marijuana in San Bernardino County, which historically had politicians in ascendancy who were staunchly in favor of the prohibition of marijuana and the strict, indeed ruthless, enforcement of California’s anti-marijuana laws.
The path San Bernardino and Adelanto took with regard to marijuana in the 2015-to-2020 timeframe did not lead some of the politicians in those cities to good places.
Kerr and his colleague on the city council in that desert city, Jermaine Wright, were eventually collared by federal authorities for trying to personally profit on the marijuana trade in their city after they made votes to permit dispensaries to open there and then accepted kickbacks from those entrepreneurs engaged in the sale or distribution of marijuana. They were both sent to federal prison.
While Barrios was never arrested nor even suspected of taking bribes in connection with his advocacy of commercial marijuana activity in San Bernardino, his calculation that being on the leading edge of California cities’ effort to tap into the marijuana sales and taxing bonanza might benefit him politically never panned out. While he did perhaps pick up a few votes of his constituents in 2018 because some voters in Ward 2 were all for marijuana legalization and availability, available statistics and a nonscientific analysis based on anecdotal information indicates that he actually lost more votes than he won as a result of his pro-marijuana stance, given the solid opposition to marijuana availability many in the ward expressed.
Similarly, Barrios did, perhaps, succeed in pulling in some Republican votes in 2018 as a result of his support for Donald Trump during the 2016 election and his public stance in 2017 in which he praised the president for his anti-crime initiatives, while appealing to the Donald Trump Administration to provide San Bernarino and Ward 2 with funding to combat crime. Simultaneously, however, his cozying up to the Republican administration did him far more harm – most likely close to universal harm – with Ward 2’s far more numerous Democratic constituents.
In the three-way race in the June 2018 primary, Barrios ended up with fewer votes than either Ibarra or Miranda-Dolan. He was knocked out of the running, and in the November 2018 run-off, Ibarra eclipsed Miranda-Dolan to gain the right to succeed Barrios.
Ibarra, who initially had the support of the San Bernardino Police Officers Association, saw that organization’s support slip away from her when she criticized the police department’s response to the rioting and looting that took place in San Bernardino and in particular in her ward that took place in the aftermath of the local protests that took place after George Floyd’s death at the hands of officers with the Minneapolis Police Department in 2020. So upset with Ibarra was the SBPOA that it threw its support behind Terry Elliott when Ibarra had to stand for reelection. In their head-to-head contest in June 2022, Ibarra narrowly captured reelection.
This year, Barrios is anticipating that the San Bernardino Police Officers Association will endorse him and provide him with substantial monetary support in the form of donations from it, its political action committee and its members, as well as from Republican donors and owners of the commercial marijuana operations around town which he had a hand in nearly a decade ago clearing the way for. He is hoping to be able to parlay that funding into a campaign next year in which he does to Ibarra what she did to him in 2018, see her removed as the Ward 2 council person.
The San Bernardino Democratic Luncheon Club, a group that consists primarily of politically active Democrats living within the City of San Bernardino and serves as the official chartered Democratic organization for the City of San Bernardino, collectively has misgivings about Barrios returning to the role of District 2 councilman. The club meets on a regular basis on Fridays to discuss political issues at the national, state, county and municipal levels and strategize with regard to action that can be taken at an immediate level among its members and those with whom they are in contact to advance the cause of the Democratic Party. Within the last two weeks, the members of the club voted unanimously to issue a do not support declaration against Barrios with regard to his candidacy for the Ward 2 city council position.
According to club members, they will actively campaign against Barrios and intend to request the San Bernardino County Democratic Central Committee ratify a similar declaration at its January 22, 2016 meeting. Club members are looking at the possibility of having other entities sharing goals and the same orientation with regard to public issues, such as the Inland Empire Labor Council AFL-CIO, join the effort to keep Barrios out of office.
The club’s declaration outlines a pattern of conduct the club says is “fundamentally incompatible with Democratic values, including support for Donald Trump, abuse of elected office, alliances with discredited local leadership like corrupt former Mayor John Valdivia. Benito Barrios’s record underscores his lack of credibility. For working families and voters, trust in representation is paramount. Barrios’s record shows disregard for that trust. San Bernardino and Ward 2 residents cannot have their hearts broken yet again in a city and ward that does not have any more hearts to give. And it will not happen again while we can still fight and speak out. We urge you to join us in rejecting Benito Barrios for San Bernardino City Council in Ward 2.”
The Sentinel’s effort to reach Barrios for his input, initiated today just four hours before press time when it learned of the San Bernardino Democratic Lunch Club’s declaration, was unsuccessful.