In five of the six San Bernardino County governmental constitutional positions up for election in the June 2 Primary, the incumbents prevailed.
Looked at in another way, in another way, in all six of those contests, the candidate favored by the county’s social and political establishment won.
Up for reelection this year were Sheriff/Coroner-Public Administrator Shannon Dicus, District Attorney Jason Anderson, Treasurer-Tax Collector/Auditor Controller Ensen Mason, Assessor/Recorder/County Clerk Josie Gonzales, Second District County Supervisor Jesse Armendarez and Fourth District Supervisor Curt Hagman.
On Tuesday night, after the ballots contained in the ballot boxes from all 2,065 of the county’s precincts had been counted, which consisted of the votes cast by 224,573 or approximately 18,19 percent of the county’s 1,234,386 registered voters, Dicus, Armendarez and Hagman had come out on top, having captured more than 50 percent of the votes cast in their races to avoid having to take part in a run-off in November. Moreover, Anderson and Gonzales were reelected to upcoming four-year terms, essentially by proclamation, insofar as they faced no opposition.
Mason was the lone incumbent who failed to hold onto his position.
Of the 192,318 votes cast in the sheriff’s race, Dicus claimed 126,186 or 65.61 percent, outdistancing Joe Silva, a former deputy, who registered 65,921 votes or 34.28 percent in his favor. In the district attorney’s race, 164,066 or 99.76 percent of the 164,462 voters who participated in that vote marked their ballots in favor of Anderson, while 396 wrote in someone else. Mason logged 81,462 or 42.95 percent of the 189,665 votes cast in the head-to-head treasurer-tax collect/auditor-controller race, which translated into his being turned out of office as of early next year, as his opponent, Rancho Cucamonga City Councilman Ryan Hutchison garnered 108,010 votes or 56.95 percent. Under the county’s electoral standards, having secured more than half of the vote in the primary means there will be no run-off in November. Gonzales, with 162,762 or 99.65 percent of the 192,318 votes cast in the assessor/recorder/county clerk confirmation in which 567 voters endorsed write-in candidates not on the ballot, will serve another four years.
Armendarez, staved off having to compete again in November by polling 24,347 votes or 58.63 percent of the 41,530 votes cast in the Second District supervisorial race, comfortably outdistancing Fontana City Councilman Jesus “Jesse” Sandoval, with 10,132 votes or 24.4 percent, and Joe Alvanez, whose 7,007 votes or 16.87 percent was good enough for third place.
Hagman, who was first elected to the board of supervisors in 2014 after having served as a member of the California Assembly for six years and as a council member and mayor of Chino Hills prior to that, ran for reelection as supervisor in the county’s Fourth District for the third time this year. Despite the consideration that at the time he was first elected to the board supervisors he was bound under the terms of Measure P, put in place by the voters in 2006, to a term limit stipulation of three four-year terms, Hagman ran in Tuesday’s race and was elected to what will be his fourth term as supervisor. Hagman’s defiance of the terms of Proposition P was justified by the consideration that the county’s voters, in 2020, voted to pass Measure K, which called for reducing the supervisors to a single four-year term. Measure K passed by an overwhelming margin of more two-to-one, with 516,184 votes or 66.84 percent in support to 256,098 votes or 33.16 percent opposed. Instead of allowing Measure K to go into effect, the board of supervisors directed county counsel, the county’s top attorney, to challenge it in court. While the case against the measure was pending, the enforcement of its provisions were suspended.
In the meantime, an alternative initiative pertaining to supervisors’ term limits, Measure D, was placed on the 2022 ballot. It reestablished the number of terms a supervisor could serve to three four-year terms. It passed by a margin of 241,894 votes to 173,582 votes, or 58.22 percent to 41.78 percent.
Ultimately, after two years of being held in abeyance 2020 Measure K and its single term limitation was determined by the court to be valid in all respects. Despite the courts ultimately determining that Measure K, as passed by the voters in 2020 was valid and that it had passed by far more votes and by a greater percentage than Measure D, Measure K was never put into effect.
No one disputed the legality of Hagman seeking reelection this year. It appears that he will begin to serve his fourth consecutive term later this year.
The most fiercely contest county position up for election this year was that of treasurer.
Unlike Dicus, Anderson, Gonzales, Armendarez and Hagman, as treasurer and particularly as auditor, Mason does not fit comfortably within the county political or social establishment.
In 2021 and carrying over into 2022, Mason began focusing on three issues which did not endear him to others at the county level holding high political office.
One such matter was that of the county recorder’s office imposing a fee of $10, the proceeds from which then passed along or made available to the district attorney’s office to be used to fund real estate fraud investigations and prosecutions. Under California Government Code § 27388, the district attorney’s office is to log the money coming in, how it is used and what cases the money is used toward and is also to submit an annual report delineating that. Mason noted that the district attorney’s office for nearly two decades had failed to meet the § 27388 requirements and had not an annual report as to the outcome of any real estate fraud cases the office took up for at least 19 years. Mason’s public statements about this situation and his insistence that no more of the funds collected upon property sales at the recorder’s office would be passed along to the district attorney’s office until the required reporting was completed going forward cast District Attorney Anderson and his predecessor, former District attorney Mike Ramos, in a poor light.
Around the same time, Mason brought to general public attention that a significant number of those who had purchased from the county properties seized in tax lien sales were not recompensing those homeowners or landowners who had lost their homes or properties as a result of those tax foreclosures for the equity they had accumulated in those homes or properties minus the money from the sales used to satisfy their tax debt. Chapters 7 and 8 of the California Revenue and Tax Code delineates a precise process by which properties that have more than five years of tax delinquencies are subject to seizure by the county and sale to the highest bidder for the purpose of satisfying the payment of the property owner’s past due taxes. Mason noted that according to Chapter 7, under the tax lien/foreclosure process, a property owner losing his house or land is, at least theoretically, entitled to all proceeds from the auction sale that exceed taxes/penalties due plus costs. In pointing this out, Mason engendered the enmity of some of the members of the board of supervisors who had received hefty contributions from those who were engaged in obtaining properties through the tax foreclosure process and who were engaged, it appeared, in some order of a ruse with county officials to keep the foreclosed-upon homeowners from receiving recompense for the equity they had accumulated through their ownership of the properties they lost.
Mason characterized what was taking place as an abuse of the governmental process and the authority of the board of supervisors.
The degree to which Mason managed to disengratiate himself with the political establishment by dwelling on issues relating to the district attorney’s office’s failure to make a strict accounting of some of the revenue provided to it and the way in which those obtaining real estate in tax liens and the county itself was holding onto money that should have rightly gone to those who had lost their homes or property was insignificant in comparison to the bitterness he engendered by inserting the treasurer and auditor’s function into what he perceived as a conflict of interest between the board of supervisors and the union that represents the county’s sheriff deputies.
In 2021, that union, the Safety Employees Benefit Association, known by its acronym SEBA, sought to create a medical care trust for retired deputies. The county’s deputies and higher ranking officers already receive a pension – calculated at 3 percent of each retired deputy’s/officer’s highest annual salary times the number of years the deputy/officer was employed by the department. Those pensions are paid through the county’s retirement system, SBCERA – the San Bernardino County Employees’ Retirement System. What the Safety Employees Benefit Association was attempting to do was to create what is known as an “other postemployment benefit,” referred to by the acronym OPEB, which would pay for the health plans for those retired sheriff’s department employees in addition to their pensions.
The board of supervisors, all of whom have received substantial political contributions from SEBA and who were also endorsed by the deputies’ union in their run for office, were in favor of simply approving the creation of the other postemployment benefit for retired sheriff’s department employees. In gearing up to approve the other postemployment benefit for the Safety Employees Benefit Association, the board of supervisors made no arrangement for funding the program, deferring into the future the provision of money that would be used to pay for the health insurance the retired sheriff’s deputies/officers were to receive. This meant that ultimately the money to pay for the medical care trust program, instead of being defrayed by contributions from deputies/officers who were still working, would come out of the county’s general operating budget or the county’s financial reserves.
Mason, in looking to what the proposal would entail, the projections of what it would cost and what funding at that time was available and what future funding was projected to become available, calculated the actuation of the program would create what would amount to a liability, i.e., debt, of over $1 billion that the county would be saddled with in the future. Mason informed then-County Executive Officer Leonard Hernandez and Assistant County Executive Officer Diane Rundles, who oversaw the county’s human resources division, that he believed the requirements of his job as county treasurer/tax collector/auditor/controller required, at the very least, that he make a report, entailing a full public disclosure of that future debt/liability prior to the board of supervisors’ consideration of the approval of the creation of the medical trust program for retired deputies/officers.
This greatly complicated the proposal to approve the program, making it impossible for the board of supervisors to simply rubberstamp it.
His insistence on making a report of the liabilities of the program and its financial consequences prevented the creation of the other postemployment benefit and resulted in the Safety Employees Benefit Association and its members perceiving the board of supervisors as having double-crossed them by not rewarding the deputies with the creation of the medical care trust program to benefit them in return for the hefty political contributions the deputies’ union had made to the supervisors to assist in their election campaigns. In fact, Mason said, what the board of supervisors was attempting to do with the postemployment medical care trust program for the county’s sheriff’s employees involved the supervisors in a classic quid-pro-quo – a kickback, a payoff, bribery, corruption – a conflict of interest of the first order.
Mason managed to achieve reelection in 2022 without SEBA or the members of the board of supervisors reacting to his action in quashing the postretirement medical care trust program for the county’s sheriff’s employees, largely because that action had taken place too late for them to coordinate a campaign against him that year.
This year, however, it was different. There was networking among sheriff’s deputies, the Safety Employees Benefit Association, members of the board of supervisors, the supervisors’ political supporters and to county administration to organize a campaign against Mason. Central to that effort was Hutchison’s candidacy, which was perceived less by the lion’s share of those who lined up behind the Rancho Cucamonga councilman’s campaign as an effort to make Hutchison treasurer-tax collector/auditor-controller as it was a means of removing Mason from the office.
Throughout 2025, Hutchison collected $269,584 in donations, such that he started this year with $264,747.69 in his electioneering fund. The donors he tapped into were a comprehensive combination of the politicians at the apex of San Bernardino government, such as members of the board of supervisors, and the donors those politicians have consistently relied upon virtually from the time they came into office.
That money was far in excess to what Mason had collected into his campaign coffers going into 2026.
The forces arrayed against Mason then seized on the Mason’s longstanding professional experience as a financial professional before and after he was elected to choreograph a coordinated attack on him. Beginning in January, individuals associated with the members of the board of supervisors – in the main businessmen with companies or interest in the county – lambasted Mason, a licensed certified public accountant, for having retained ownership of his company, Mason Financial Services, which he founded in 2014 and provides clients advice with regard to money/wealth management, and investing, after he was elected county treasurer in 2018. Those speaking to the board, using prepared statement, questioned whether or outright alleged Mason’s functioning as a financial advisor in the private sector presents a conflict of interest with his role as county treasurer and auditor. They charged that this constituted something tantamount to insider trading and that Mason was manipulating the value of stocks by his control of the county’s $17 billion plus investment pool, whereby he would counsel his private sector clients to invest in a given stock ahead of his shifting of county money into those very stocks, boosting their value. Mason denied the accusation, pointing out that the county did not deal in the volatile stock market, where the potential for profit is high but there is tremendous risk, but maintained its wealth by purchasing far more secure but less profitable bonds. Despite his denials, the board of supervisors, in a prepared response to the accusations made against Mason, called upon the office of county counsel, county government’s stable of in-house attorneys, to undertake an investigation into the circumstance involving Mason. That investigation, though completed by mid-May, has not yet been summarized into a report. From January 1 through May 16 of this year, Hutchison collected another $366,871.76 for use in his campaign, spending $336,581.87 during that same span. A good deal of that campaign consisted of attack mailers targeting Mason, several of which alluded to the county’s investigation of him and the accusations that had triggered the investigation.
On election night, with all of the ballots from the county’s total 2,065 precincts counted, Hutchison emerged as the clear victor. The Rancho Cucamonga Councilman had 108,010 of the 189,665 votes cast in the race up to that point, or 56.95 percent, to Mason’s 81,462 votes or 42.95 percent. As of Wednesday June 5, 2026 at 4 p.m, the counting of the incoming mail-in ballots put the count at 133,977 votes for Hutchison or 56.83 percent of the 235,753 ballots at that point counted to Mason’s 101,776 votes or 43.17 percent. As of 4 p.m. today, Hutchison stands at 59020 or 57.17 percent of the 278,157 votes cast and counted so far to Mason’s 119,137 or 42.83 percent.
Mason told the Sentinel he has accepted what has happened.
“I’m a mathematician and enough of a realist to know that an aggregate 10 point or more spread is too much to overcome,” he said. “I was pretty bitter the first two days. I’ve taken a few days off for some rest. I’m resigned to it.”
He added, “It is a corrupt system. I did everything I could. It was $2 million from everyone that has a stake in that corrupt system against my $100,000. They used that $2 million to put out things that were irrelevant to the real issues and to make things up about me that were completely untrue. Their ‘facts’ were entirely fabricated. They violated just about every rule in the book. I think what they did was immoral, but that is what happens, I suppose, when you crooked people who are in control.”
Hutchison was unperturbed by Mason’s take on what had happened. He took pride in having been endorsed by Sheriff Dicus, District Attorney Anderson, Assessor Gonzalez, all five members of the board of supervisors, Barstow Mayor Tim Silva, Rancho Cucamonga Mayor Dennis Michael, Grand Terrace Mayor Bill Hussey, Montclair Mayor John Dutrey, Chino Hills Mayor Brian Johz, Upland Mayor Bill Velto, Fontana Mayor Acquanetta Warren, Victorville Councilman Bob Harriman, Rancho Cucamonga Councilwoman Lynne Kennedy, Hesperia Councilman Josh Pullen, Apple Valley Council members Cut Emick and Keri Leon, Ontario Councilman Alan Wapner, Rancho Cucamonga Councilwoman Kristine Scott, Victorville councilwoman Corrine Mora, Rancho Cucamonga Councilwoman Ashley Stickler, Rancho Cucamonga City Clerk Kim Sevy, Fontana City Councilmen Phil Cothran Jr and John Roberts, Upland Councilman Carlos Garcia, Grand Terrace Councilman Jeff Allen, Chino Hills Councilman Ray Marquez, Hesperia Councilwoman Allison Lee and Highland City Councilman Larry McAllen. He had the endorsement of the Safety Employees Benefit Association, the San Bernardino Police Officers Association, the Redlands Police Officers Association and the
Rancho Cucamonga Firefighters Association as well as former Assemblyman Thurston Smith. It is inconceivable, his supporters said, that the corruption Mason referenced was real, given the support evinced for Hutchison by so many august, accomplished, honorable, honest and respected entities.
-Mark Gutglueck