By Mark Gutglueck
The match-ups in the 2026 San Bernardino Municipal Election have a stark connection with personalities and issues extending back to 2018, which include items have been hashed through in that and every election since then.
Despite what many consider to be its foremost feature – John Valdivia’s effort at a political comeback – the entire affair has been remarkably quiet.
One of the recurrent issues that is being played up with greater emphasis than before is the persistent homelessness crisis.
Another element is the role the police department is continuing to play in San Bernardino politics.
Vying in this election are five candidates who were on the ballot in 2018 along with one member of the council that year who departed rather than seek reelection.
In a replay, of sorts, to what occurred in 2022, Mayor Helen Tran is running for reelection against five challengers, including former Mayor John Valdivia. In 2022, it was Valdivia who was the incumbent and Tran the challenger. The 2022 June Primary Election contest for San Bernardino mayor included former City Attorney James Penman, subsequent Seventh Ward Councilwoman Treasure Ortiz, former Fifth Ward Councilman Henry Nickel, Gabriel Jaramillo and Mohammad Khan.
Valdivia, who four years previously, in 2018, appeared to be a juggernaut who represented the future of San Bernardino politics when he had the leap from Third Ward councilman to mayor, had virtually self-destructed over the course of his first mayoral term, collecting massive political contributions which fattened his political war chest but simultaneously trading promises of city council action to benefit those donors, igniting a pay-to-play scandal that rivaled the depths of the graft-tainted dealings elsewhere in the county, including those in which the members of the county board of supervisors were enmeshed in, indeed a prodigious achievement in the annals of San Bernardino County’s historical political corruption. If Valdivia’s propensity for bribe-taking was not enough to destroy his political prospects that year, his interaction with three women who had been members of his mayoral staff – Myrna Cisneros, Karen Cervantes and Jackie Aboud – sealed the deal. Cisneros, Cervantes and Aboud, represented by attorney Tristan Pelayes alleged Valdivia persistently propositioned them, seeking to pressure or lure them into having sex with him and then retaliated against them when they refused. Ultimately, the case Pelayes filed against Valdivia and the city were settled for a collective total of $1.2 million. In the June 2022 election, Valdivia finished a distant third and along with Ortiz, Nickel, Jaramillo and Khan, had to sit out the November 2022 run-off between Tran and Penman, in which Tran prevailed.
Tran, a darling of the Democratic Party establishment, is the first woman of Vietnamese extraction to become the mayor of a large American city. In this way, she is considered by the Democrats as “the great Yellow hope,” a personage who in the next decade might accede to substantially higher office, beginning with the California legislature, perhaps Congress and maybe even the governorship, given her base in Southern California combined with her appeal to the Asian community in the Bay Area. Despite high expectations, Tran experienced rough sledding in her first two-and-a-half years as mayor. A primary factor was the inability of the council to get on the same page and coordinated with regard to hiring a city manager. Bob Field, who had been hired by the city council as city manager essentially on the strength Valdivia’s recommendation and who had proved himself to be exceptionally loyal to Valdivia, resigned in the weeks just prior to Tran’s swearing in. For two years straight, the Tran administration seemed to be cursed with an inability to achieve a managerial stasis, burning few no fewer than four city managers, including one who was paid $870,000 without ever occupying the an office in the city’s administrative suite located outside of City Hall, which has been shuttered since 2017 because of seismic stability concerns. The shuttered City Hall has served as a metaphor for city government, which during Tran’s tenure had very little in the way of tangible accomplishments, primarily because there was no management authority on staff to plan, organize direct and control city employees.
Tran’s inability to get on track has induced three relative newcomers to politics – Ivan Garcia, Amy Malone and San Bernardino Planning Commissioner Ronnika Ngalande – and two old hands – Valdivia and Rick Avila – to throw their hats into the mayoral ring.
Political handicappers and the smart money see this as a race that is essentially reduced to a contest between Tran and Valdivia which Tran is likely to win.
Based upon the campaign finance documentation provided by the City of San Bernardino city clerk’s office, which in many cases did not appear to be up-to-date, Avila filed shows documents showing he had formed a campaign committee, but there is no indication he had obtained any donations toward his campaign. Nglande has accumulated $5,055 in donations since the beginning of the year, has spent $3,871.43 so far and has $1,183.57 left with which to continute to wage her campaign. Malone, who had no money in her campaign committee account when the year started, has filled in her campaign coffers with $31,994.45 since, consisting primarily of $20,669.00 in loans she had made from her personal finances to her elective effort. She has spent $24,274.73 on her electioneering effort thus far, and has $7,719.72 with which to continue.
Garcia had raised $22,265.65 as of May 25 and had spent $32,493.94, accumulating a debt as of May 16, 2026 of $22,391 As of May 25, he had $7,138.47 with which to continue to wage his campaign. He was able to engage in the spending he did, primarily through loans he had made to his campaign from his own personal finances.
In 2018, Valdivia started that campaign year with $77,046.15 and obtained $485,550.40 in donations over the next 12 months, while spending $551,796 throughout the year on his campaign. At one point nearly halfway between his 2018 election and his 2022 defeat, as of January 1, 2021, Valdivia had $216,953.59 in his political war chest. In 2022, Valdivia took in $107,800.47 before his defeat in the June primary. He spent $570,879.05 that year, more than half of which went toward legal fees as he was fighting the perception that he was on the take and receiving bribes.
Curiously, this year, Valdivia has opened a campaign fund account for his current elective effort, but has not taken in any money, at least according to the documents he has filed with the city clerk’s office. It appears that he is relying on his supporters and third-party independent expenditure committees which are ostensibly uninvolved in his direct campaign to indirectly support him.
Tran appears to be well out in front of the competition in terms of campaign funding. She had $146,180.10 in her campaign account as of January 1. As of May 16, she had collected another $75,992.26 in donations and had by that date spent 191,910.04 on her reelection effort, while yet retaining $31,321.62 to engage in further campaigning.
Just how serious Valdivia is in jumping into this year’s race is an open question. His reputation took a shellacking over the four years he was in office, diminishing his current electoral prospects. Based upon his election to the mayoral post in 2018 and his energetic fundraising efforts both before, during and after that contest, he seemingly has a perfect understanding of how important financing is in a political context. That he is not engaging in intensive fundraising in support of his current campaign is curious.
Valdivia’s ascension to the mayoral post in 2018, when he unseated then-incumbent Carey Davis, was accompanied by first-time victories of two of the current incumbents, First Ward Councilman Ted Sanchez and Second Ward Councilman Sandra Ibarra, who are now seeking their second reelection.
Virginia Marquez, who was the First Ward Councilwoman at that time and was not on good terms with then-Third Ward Councilman Valdivia, opted out of seeking reelection in 2018. Running in the June 2018 Primary for reelection was then-Second Ward Councilman Benito Barrios, who was aligned with Valdivia. Despite the overall favor the city’s voters held Valdivia in that year, Barrios was unable to firmly grab his coattails to remain in office. Somewhat surprisingly, Ibarra and another candidate challenging Barrios, Cecilia Miranda-Dolan, outpolled Barrios in the June primary, which qualified them for a run-off in November, which Ibarra narrowly won. In a four-way contest in the First Ward in June, Sanchez and Gil Botello qualified for the November final. Of note, while Miranda-Dolan and Botello were the top vote-getters in the June races, they were bettered by Ibarra and Sanchez when it counted in November. Also reelected that year in the city’s Fourth Ward was Fred Shorett, who had been on the city council since 2009. Shorett was not favorably disposed toward Valdivia.
Though Valdivia had supported Barrios in the June election, he sent signals in the aftermath of the primary that he was leaning in favor of Ibarra in the November 2018 run-off and was looking forward to working with Sanchez as well. When Sanchez and Ibarra prevailed, Valdivia sought to, in his words, “show them the ropes and mentor them.” For a time, Sanchez and Ibarra were aligned with Valdivia and three others on the council, Fifth Ward Councilman Henry Nickel, Sixth Ward Councilwoman Bessine Richard and Juan Figueroa, who was elected to the council in a special election held in May 2019 to choose a replacement to fill out the final two years of the term Valdivia had been elected to in 2016 to represent the city’s Third Ward on the council after he had been obliged to resign from that post to be come mayor. In this way, in the initial stage of his tenure as mayor, Valdivia held sway over the city by means of a ruling council coalition he led, which enabled him to overcome the dissent of the two councilors who did not see eye-to-eye with him, those being Fourth Ward Councilman Shorett and Seventh Ward Councilman Jim Mulvihill. As 2019 progressed, however, and Valdivia proved insensitive to issues the individual members of the council were raising in response to the concerns of their constituents while simultaneously militating both behind the scenes and publicly on behalf of his major political donors, one by one Nickel, Ibarra and Sanchez became estranged from him, leaving Valdivia without the requisite votes on the council to effectively pursue his political and practical agenda in terms of exerting control over San Bernardino’s municipal governance. Combined with the aforementioned scandals involving his inappropriate behavior with and action toward some of his female staff members, his effectiveness and prestige as mayor of the city that is county seat and the county’s most populous city plummeted.
In the 2020 election cycle, Mulvihill and Nickle, by that point two of the seven members of the council who were at odds with Valdivia, and Councilwoman Richard, one of the mayor’s two remaining allies, were defeated in their reelection efforts. Mulvihill’s, Nickle’s and Richard’s replacement by, respectively, Damon Alexander, Benjamin Reynoso and Kimberly Calvin presented, at least ostensibly, an opportunity for Valdivia to construct a positive working relationship with all three, thereby again taking firm control of the city’s political helm. Unfortunately for Valdivia, he was not able to close a political deal with any of those three, finding himself to be as much as at odds with both Reynoso and Calvin as he had been with Mulvihill was yet with Shorett. Alexander proved willing to work with and occasionally support the mayor, but only on a case-by-base and selective basis. In this way, throughout nearly three years of his term as mayor, Valdivia remained in place and was presenting to the outside world that he was among San Bernardino County’s most dynamic politicians, but the reality was that he was being frustrated at virtually every turn by six of the seven officeholders he had to work with.
Meanwhile, the members of the city council were having to contend with a harsh reality that had been dogging San Bernardino’s elected leadership going back for generations. As the Inland Empire’s most mature city – having been incorporated in 1867 and in existence as a Spanish and Mexican settlement before that – as well as the center of governance for the county, San Bernardino has accumulated a corps of governmental employees over the course of more than a century-and-a-half that carry substantial influence. By the 1930s, provisions were being put into the city’s charter that were favorable to city employees, including ones that conferred on them substantial job security and committed funding and resources in a way that prioritized, in many ways, city employees over the city’s residents. This was most particularly true of the city’s public safety employees in the police and fire departments, and these arrangements, layered into the city charter, increased the cost of government. As public employee unions throughout California and in San Bernardino strengthened in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and beyond, the financial burden placed upon the city intensified, culminating in the city’s filing for Chapter Nine bankruptcy protection in 2012. It had been the hope of some, including Patrick Morris, a former Superior Court judge who was mayor at the time, that the bankruptcy filing might break the lock of control the city’s employees, through their unions and the state pension system that they participated in, had over the city.
In its 2012 bankruptcy filing, the city of San Bernardino faced a projected annual deficit of $45 million against anticipated annual revenue of roughly $130 million into the city’s operating general fund. The idea was that since the city had income of roughly 65.4 percent of what it needed to keep on as a going concern, the bankruptcy court should work out a protection and payment plan by which each of the city’s creditors would receive, more or less, 65.4 percent of what they were owed by the city. That, however, was not how it worked out. Instead, through intensive lawyering by the California Public Employees Retirement System and the unions for the city’s employees, payments to the city’s employees in terms of their salary and benefits as well as to sustaining their pension system was prioritized over other financial obligations the city had. In essence, the bankruptcy court established a system whereby a line of the city’s creditors was formed with the employees and the institutions they were involved in – the unions and their pension system – were given places at the front of the line. Those nearest the front of that line were made 100 percent whole by the city, while those further back in the line received progressively less of what they were owed. Two of the entities at the back of the line were Germany’s Commerzbank and New Jersey-baed Ambac Assurance Corporation, which together held roughly $100 million in pension obligation bonds issued by the City of San Bernardino. After withholding regular bond payments to Commerzbank and Ambac for nearly four years, the city offered to pay those investment houses one percent – one cent on the dollar or just about $1 million of the $100 million those companies had sunk into the city’s bonds. After a fierce round of negotiations, the city agreed to up its buy-out from the bonding arrangement for $40 million, stiffing the two companies to the tune of $60 million.
San Bernardino’s bankruptcy episode, which lasted from 2012 to 2017, is illustrative of the power of the city’s employees, their unions, allies and other advocates. After the city had been pushed into insolvency because of overgenerous salaries and benefits provided to city employees, city officials were unable, or unwilling, to have the employees share in the austerity the city had to engage in to right the city’s listing financial ship.
One element of the employees’ power consisted of the employee unions’ intensive and extensive monetary donations to the electioneering funds of the mayoral and city council candidates they supported as well as to the political action committees carrying out attacks on the candidates they opposed.
The San Bernardino Police Officers Association and the San Bernardino Police Management Association supported those candidates they characterized as “pro-law enforcement.” The term pro-law enforcement, as defined by those unions’ members, is a willingness on the part of the politician or politicians in question to ensure that police officers are provided with salaries and benefits that are “competitive” with what the larger law enforcement agencies and police departments in California. The degree to which high pay/generous benefits employment package for police officers is considered to be the primary criterion in determining whether a politician or group of politicians are pro-law enforcement consists of the experience of San Bernardino city officials, including members of the city council, who participated in the collective bargaining process with members of the police union in an effort to arrive at an employment contract with the San Bernardino Police Officers Association. When the city representatives offered a certain percent salary increase accompanied by a modest set of benefit enhancements, stating that those terms would allow the city to stay within the amount of money budgeted for police operations while simultaneously hiring and employing more officers to increase the overall presence of police on the streets and patrolling problem areas, the lead negotiator for the union responded, “Fuck that. We have enough officers as it is. Just pay us more.”
The police unions also rate the city’s elected leadership based upon whether the mayor or council members are or are not willing to criticize the department or its performance or that of its officers.
In years past, the police union, once supportive of then-Mayor Morris, who before becoming mayor had been a prosecutor in the district attorney’s office and a Superior Court judge, grew at best lukewarm with regard to his continuation in office when, prior to the city’s bankruptcy, he called upon the city’s unions to agree to engage in concession bargaining and rescind the raised it had been provided in arriving at what was then the city’s current employment contract with union in order to reduce the city’s deficit spending and avoid bankruptcy. The union was highly supportive of Valdivia, who publicly asserted that city officials’ references to the degradation in San Bernardino’s financial situation was merely a ploy to deny the city’s police officers and firefighters the raises they deserved.
Similarly, the San Bernardino Police Officers Association has opposed Shorett in two of his three previous re-electoral campaigns, primarily because of his position that the city should refrain from salary and benefit increases to all city employees until its deficit is resolved.
Sanchez has from the outset of his political career evinced unequivocal support for the police department, both in terms of supporting the San Bernardino Police Officers Association’s and San Bernardino Police Management Association’s salary demands and praising the department’s and its various officers’ performance.
Ibarra captured the San Bernardino Police Officers Association’s endorsement in 2018. Less than two year’s later, she found herself on the outs with association and the department generally when, in the immediate aftermath of the rioting and looting that took place in San Bernardino on the night/early morning of May 31/June 1, 2020, she criticized the police department for not being more aggressive in preventing the destruction of storefronts and collaring the looters who then entered commercial businesses and made off with merchandise. That rioting followed a protest rally over the May 25, 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of police officers in Minneapolis that had taken place the afternoon of May 31 and which evolved into mob violence. San Bernardino Police had exercised restraint in dealing with the nighttime crowds that were migrating from one area of the city to another, breaking windows, covering buildings with graffiti, throwing rocks and bottles, lighting fires and occasionally engaging in mob attacks on individuals. Along Highland Avenue, a portion of which is in Ibarra’s Second Ward, commercial buildings with glass frontages were breached and dozens or even scores of those in the crowd of protestors went in to those establishments and stole items.
Ibarra’s criticism angered members of the department, who maintained they were merely complying with orders from the department’s higher-ups to avoid escalations that carried with them the danger of extensive violence and possible lethal confrontations.
The grudge members of the department had against Ibarra perpetuated itself for two years, which translated into the San Bernardino Police Officers Association and the San Bernardino Police Management Association searching for a candidate to oppose Ibarra in the 2022 election cycle. The officers and their superiors ultimately settled upon Terry Elliott, the department’s chaplain, who, it was claimed, was a resident of the Second Ward. Elliott was propped up by the police unions, which sprung for a campaign, consisting of yard signs, mailers, radio and television spots, along with phone bank messaging supporting him and an attack ad blitz against Ibarra. Nevertheless, Elliott’s campaign failed in the face of press revelations that he had an extensive criminal record which included his indictment on 11 counts related to swindling individuals out of over $230,000 through misrepresentations involving a church and a nonprofit organization and that he had been involved in a host of other forgeries and theft from churches.
The police department, its personnel and that of the unions representing its command echelon and its officers suffered an even more substantial blow to their collective reputation when it was revealed that Elliott was not actually a resident of the Second Ward and that members of the union had assisted him in perpetuating this fraud upon the city clerk’s office and the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters.
Despite the best efforts of the department management’s and the police officers’ unions to promote Elliott and undercut Ibarra, the incumbent prevailed in the 2022 Second Ward race, with 795 votes 51.46 percent to Elliott’s 736 votes or 47.64 percent.
This year, after a hiatus of eight years, the two members of the council who left office in 2018 – then First Ward Councilwoman Virginia Marquez, who voluntarily stepped down and did not seek reelection, and then Second Ward Councilman Benito Barrios, who was shut out in that year’s June primary, are seeking to make a return to politics.
In Marquez’s case, she has chosen to take on Sanchez based on both idealistic and opportunistic grounds. Marquez is a classic liberal, one who identifies with the Democratic Party’s leftmost principles. First elected to the council in November 2009 and sworn into office in 2010, she was an ally of then-Mayor Patrick Morris, a Democrat and former Superior Court judge who had made a reputation for himself by advocating, while he was presiding judge of the county, for what in his day was considered the progressive concept of creating a “drug court” where narcotics possession offenses were prosecuted on a separate track from other crimes. Marquez associated herself with, and supported, as well, Morris’s effort to balance the city’s budget by reducing or at least flattening municipal salaries, in particular those for public safety employees – firefighters and police officers. She was at odds with Valdivia before he was mayor and was considered to be part of the city’s bedrock of opposition to him after he was mayor.
Municipal offices are officially considered to be nonpartisan posts, but in San Bernardino County, party affiliation is a major consideration in virtually all elections.
Sanchez, a conservative who formerly identified as a Republican, has changed his party affiliation to Democratic. Nevertheless, he stands at the furthest rightward side of the Democratic Party and is a solid pro-law enforcement politician, a loyal backer of the San Bernardino Police Department. He has gotten crosswise of some of his most vocal constituents in the Second Ward, many of whom are liberal Democrat. He has been criticized as well because of what is seen as the city’s steady deterioration that began with the 1994 shuttering of Norton Air Force Base, contributing to the gradual closure of many businesses that once flourished in the county seat and vacant residential properties that have become blighted. When the relationship between Sanchez and Valdivia deteriorated in the 2020-21 timeframe, Valdivia made pointed criticisms of Sanchez in which he tied the councilman to the condition of the First Ward. Subsequently, when Valdivia was succeeded by Tran and Sanchez did not line up with Tran as an ally or part of the ruling coalition on the council she was seeking to establish, Trans’ Democratic and philosophical allies co-opted the attacks the Republican Valdivia had made on Sanchez, blaming him for the economic malaise gripping the seventh of the city he represented. By 2024, factions within the city were undertaking to coordinate recall efforts against Sanchez and Councilman Fred Shorett. It was subsequently learned that Mayor Tran was quietly encouraging the attempt to recall both from office. Recall proponents proved unable to get the requisite number of signatures on a petition to place a recall question on the ballot against either Sanchez or Shorett.
Also opposing Sanchez in this year’s election is Ron Alvarado and Omar Williams.
While Sanchez carries the endorsement of the city’s police employee unions, Ron Alvarado has identified himself on the ballot as a fraud investigator. Alvarado is loosely affiliated with those who sought to recall Sanchez last year, and some suggested that he was in the race to assist Marquez by drawing votes – essentially pro-law enforcement votes – from Sanchez. Transparent California does not show Alvarado to be a fraud investigator for a public agency in California going back 11 years. A challenge of his description as a fraud investigator was made, but the official qualified candidates list from the city clerk’s office certified his ballot designation as “government fraud investigator.”
Alvarado has engaged in sloganeering suggesting that he is, and his would-be constituents should be, dissatisfied with the status quo in San Bernardino government. “We have been left behind for too long,” Alvarado’s campaign material states. “This time we move forward, not backwards!”
Joining Barrios in the effort to unseat Ibarra this year is Christian Shaughnessy, whose ballot description is “housing specialist.”
Shaughnessy has demonstrated himself over the last year-and-a-quarter to be an ally of Seventh Ward Councilwoman Treasure Ortiz. Ortiz, who sought appointment to the board of supervisors in 2018 when San Bernardino County Third District Supervisor James Ramos was elected to the California Assembly with two years remaining on his term representing Highland, east San Bernardino, Grand Terrace, Loma Linda, Redlands, Yucaipa, Yucca Valley, Twentynine Palms, Big Bear Lake and their environs. Ortiz then emerged in early 2019 as one of Valdivia’s primary detractors and ran unsuccessfully to take his place as representing the city’s Third Ward on the council. She was among those running for mayor against Valdivia in 2022. Unsuccessful in that bid, she ran for Seventh Ward councilwoman in 2024, having relocated to that area of the city. She was victorious. Her tenure, however, has been marked by testy relations with the mayor and all of the other members of the city council. More recently, Ortiz has developed a more favorable relationship with Tran, who did not support the other members of the city council when they voted to censure Ortiz in March of this year.
Thus, Shaughnessy’s candidacy is seen as part of a longshot bet by Tran and her supporters to install on the council a ruling coalition ready and willing to work with Tran. If Shaughnessy can displace Ibarra and Marquez can overcome Sanchez, the only remaining question would be whether Fred Shorett, who has represented the Fourth Ward since April 2009, after being elected in a special election. Shorett is the longest serving member of the city council and is currently part of a relatively reliable council coalition that includes Sanchez, Ibarra, Third Ward Councilman Juan Figueroa and Fifth Ward Councilwoman Kim Knaus, which represents a 5-to-2 majority on the council. That ratio is significant, as on most issues other than hirings and firings and legal matters, the mayor does not have a vote. The mayor does, however, can vote on council action that ends in a tie, and she does have veto power on votes that end up in 4-to-3 or 3-to-2 decisions. The five votes Sanchez, Ibarra, Figueroa, Shorett and Knaus in the vast majority of council actions prevail with puts those votes beyond the reach of Tran’s veto power. Tran can rely, generally, on the support of Sixth Ward Councilman Mario Flores and, from time to time, on Ortiz. Nevertheless, she and her present coalition lack the political muscle to really take command of governance in San Bernardino. In this way, getting at least two among Sanchez, Ibarra and Shorett out of office is crucial to Tran’s plan to have a dynamic second term as San Bernardino Mayor.
Shorett has led a charmed political life. After capturing the Fourth Ward post in the 2009 special election, he narrowly hung onto that spot in the November 2009 election, and was reelected more convincingly in the 2013 election in a three-way race, although with slightly less than 50 percent of the vote. In 2018, after the city’s elections were moved from odd-numbered years to even-numbered one, Shorett managed to squeak by with a win, overcoming challenger Alexandra Beltran, who pulled in a startling 3,701 votes or 49.95 percent to Shorett’s 3,709 votes or 50.5 percent. In 2022, running against two others in the June Primary, Teresa Parra Craig and Vince Laster, Shorett captured 2,188 votes, which comprised 54.25 percent of the total 4,033 votes cast, so he did not have to engage in a run-off that November.
This year, Shorett has drawn four challengers – Jesus “Chuy” Medina, a rehab project coordinator; Vince Laster, who ran against Shorett four years ago; Erick Marquez, a tax preparer; and Joseph Salas, a teacher. With five candidates splitting the vote and based upon past results in the Fourth Ward, it is unlikely that Shorett or any candidate will obtain the 50 percent plus one vote minimum to decide who will serve as the Fourth Ward councilman over the coming four years in the June 2 primary. What is likely, again given past results, is that Shorett will qualify for the November run-off against one of his challengers. Shorett previously faced and beat two of the four – he trounced Laster four years ago. Eight years ago, Medina was a candidate in the June 2018 primary, a contest in which he placed behind Shorett and Beltran.
In past races, Shorett, who despite being a Republican supported Morris in his effort to reduce the city’s deficit by trying to hold employee costs down, had the disadvantage of being opposed by the police department employees’ unions, which resented his readiness to support contracts that denied them raises and benefit increases. In 2026, however, Shorett has the endorsement of the San Bernardino Police Officers Association.
In the mayor’s race, given what appears to be Tran’s substantial fundraising advantage by which she has on the order of four times as much money as all of the other candidates combined to pay for her electioneering effort, the question that is now of some moment is whether – with Garcia, Ngalande, Malone, Avila and Valdivia crowding her in the mayoral field – Tran will be able to accumulate a majority of the vote on June 2 to put the 2026 electoral cycle behind her, or whether she will need to engage in a campaign this summer and into the fall to remain as mayor, instead of turning her attention forging the alliances on the council she needs to oversee the city effectively.