Ontario City Councilman Alan Wapner is on the brink of being overtaken by events following his decision last year, 31 years after he was first elected to the city council, to run for mayor.
There were two primary factors and several smaller considerations in Wapner electing to seek the mayoralty at this juncture. One was his sense that upon turning 70 this year, the sands in the top half of his political career hourglass are nearly depleted and he has already waited far too long in claiming the mayoral title which he believes is rightly his. The second major factor was his belief that his relative strength vis-à-vis Paul Leon, who has monopolized the mayor’s post at this point for 21 years, has grown to the point that he can exploit what he takes to be the incumbent’s current, ongoing and long-dormant weaknesses.
Foremost in Wapner’s panoply is his readiness, or the readiness of his supporters, to revive a womanizing scandal that in the early going of Leon’s run as mayor crippled but did not topple him. Wapner now stands ready, with the funding and resolve, to vector attention to that now obscure matter in a way that will make it impossible for Ontario’s voters to not know about that nadir in Leon’s tenure as the city’s leader.
Unbeknownst to Wapner and his circle of supporters, however, is that the below-the-belt tactic he is set to utilize in vanquishing his rival is about to be turned on him, and in a way he will be unable to deflect, given that his improper behavior involved an underage girl whose care and protection had been entrusted to him.
Over the last two decades, Leon and Wapner have stood at the apex of the Ontario community, both politically and in a larger social context. Given Ontario’s position as the wealthiest of San Bernardino County’s municipalities, both have taken on an even larger significance as pillars of the Inland Empire.
Of significance is that neither Leon nor Wapner are Ontario natives, but transplants from the greater Los Angeles Metropolitan Area. Wapner grew up in Los Alamitos, which is in the northeasternmost extension of Orange County flush up against Los Angeles County. Leon was raised in both Ojai, in Ventura County, and then in East Los Angeles, where he grew acquainted as a teenager with Antonio Villaraigosa, who was the mayor of Los Angeles from 2005 until 2013, the first eight years that Wapner was the mayor of Ontario.
Wapner, after attending USC and getting his juris doctor degree from Whittier Law School, went to work as a police officer with the Ontario Police Department in 1981. With his college education, law degree and ambition, Wapner was perceived as being on a track for relatively fast promotion up the police department’s chain of command, reaching, potentially, police chief, if he did not depart to pursue a career as a lawyer. Meanwhile, he evinced an uncommon level of interest and dedication to the community by running for and winning a seat on the Ontario-Montclair School District Board of Trustees. Wapner continued to work his way slowly but steadily up the ranks of the police department. In 1994, he vied for the Ontario City Council and was elected. At that time, an employee of a city in California could, if he or she resided in that city, vie for mayor or a position on the city council, and accept the elected position if victorious and remain as a city employee. California law did, however, restrict a mayor or member of the city council from being hired by the city while holding office. In 1995, the California legislature passed a law restricting anyone elected mayor or to the city council from 1996 onward from simultaneously holding elected office in a city while working for that city. Wapner was faced with a choice of keeping his job as a sergeant with the Ontario Police Department or running for reelection. He took a disability retirement from the department and vied for reelection, winning, such that he has been reelected to the city council seven times, in 1998, 2002, 2006, 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022.
In 1998, Leon was appointed to the Ontario City Council in 1998, elected to the city council in a special election in 1999 and re-elected in 2000 and 2004. In June 2005, following the departure of Mayor Gary Ovitt to a position on the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, Leon was elected mayor in a special election. Since then, he has been reelected to four-year terms as mayor in 2006, 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022.
As fate would have it, from 2006 onward, Leon and Wapner found themselves on the ballot in each successive electoral cycle, 2006, 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022, for mayor and one of two positions on the city council, respectively. Statistically in California over the last two decades, incumbents in local office prevail in 89 percent of the elections they compete in. While both Leon and Wapner, in each of those five election cycles, held the advantage of being incumbents, Wapner was accordingly at a disadvantage in terms of following through with what his true ambition was: becoming Ontario mayor.
Wapner, who had graduated from USC, attended the law school at the College from which Richard Nixon had graduated, who had vied successfully in every race for the school board that he ran in and then launched himself upward to be elected to the city council and was consistently reelected and never lost, considered himself Leon’s superior in virtually every way they might be compared – morally, intellectually, physically, experientially, philosophically and in terms of depth of personality. As Wapner saw it, Leon had seized the one advantage he possessed – an Hispanic surname in a city where upwards of 65 percent of the population was Latino – and played it to the hilt. Were it not for Leon’s name and his name only, Wapner truly believed, he would have himself acceded to his rightful position as mayor.
Leon and Wapner had no choice but to live with one another, they had both realized long before.
At the time he took up the mayor’s gavel, Leon held the upper political hand. In addition to being mayor, which made him the presiding officer at the meetings of the city council and the ability to recognize who had the floor and thereby control the ebb and flow of discussion and debate, Leon had the advantage of having Jason Anderson, a deputy district attorney whose entire personality and orientation runs toward moving with the flow of the establishment and the powers that be. Anderson gravitated into a loosely-knit alliance with the council’s top-dog, the mayor. Leon was on decent terms with another of the members of the council, Jerry Dubois, who was in failing health and would die in March 2006. Replacing Leon as a council member when he resigned that post to become mayor was Sheila Mautz, who had been appointed to the council by the Leon-led panel shortly after the special mayoral election in June 2005. She gravitated toward Leon and pretty much followed his lead, giving Leon what was essentially a four-member ruling coalition on the five-member council. Since resistance to Leon’s leadership at that point would have proven pointless, Wapner surrendered to the inevitable and essentially joined in with the rest, such that Leon led what was for all intents and purposes a city council that was in lockstep with itself.
In the 2006 election, Jim Bowman, who had twice been on the city council previously and had also been a firefighter with the city who acceded to the position of fire chief, was elected to the council for the third time. As public safety employees who had worked for the city, there was a ready-made alignment between Wapner and Bowman. The numbers at that point, however, were against the two, as the three votes of Leon, Anderson and Mautz prevented Wapner from commandeering control of the city. Over the course of the two years between 2006 and 2008, the subtle enmity between Wapner and Leon, at first imperceptibly and then more markedly, hardened and grew, with Bowman constantly hewing to Wapner’s side of the equation. Still, in 2007, with Leon in control of the council and both Wapner and Bowman needing the support of the rest of the council to make progress toward achieving their own goals, they augmented Mayor Leon’s annual stipend by $30,000, saying his constant participation in ceremonial roles tied to his function as mayor should be given tangible and financial recognition. That gesture boosted Leon into being the highest-paid mayor in the county and highest paid elected municipal city official in San Bernardino County other than the San Bernardino city attorney and the San Bernardino, Redlands, Rialto and Rancho Cucamonags city clerks.
In 2008, Debbie Dorst-Porada, whose political career, like Wapner’s, had initiated with having been elected to the Ontario-Montclair School Board, defeated Anderson in his bid for reelection to the city council. More significant still was that Dorst-Porada was very close to Bowman and his family, and a very natural alignment between her and the former fire chief formed even before she was installed on the city council. At once, the power dynamic shifted from Leon, whose lone ally on the council was then Mautz, to Wapner, whose connection with Bowman carried with it the bonus of Dorst-Porada’s readiness to back any action Bowman agreed to, which in virtually every particular was dictated by Wapner.
Wapner and Bowman set about retaining the services of Loredana Nesci, a one-time Los Angeles Police Officer turned attorney, giving her the assignment of digging up enough damning dirt on Leon to destroy his political career and then expose it in a dramatic fashion that would achieve that goal.
Nesci did as she was told, going over Leon’s campaign finance documents and his city expense accounts with a fine-toothed comb, shadowing him as he made his rounds as mayor at official events such as groundbreakings and ribbon-cuttings, attended council meetings and those of governmental joint powers boards of which he was a member, examining his votes as members of those panels for potential or actual conflicts-of-interest where his own personal or familial financial interests might have been entangled with those companies or individuals favored by his votes and surveilling the mayor as he went about in his function not just as mayor but in his capacity as the pastor of Hope Chapel, the church he led.
Armed with a compendium of her findings, the Leon Dossier as it were, Nesci began speaking up at city council meetings. Rather than highlighting what she had learned about graft at City Hall or the pay-to-play ethos that predominated there, which extended as much or more to Wapner than it did to Leon, Nesci dwelt upon the far more titillating and salacious fruits of her research: Mayor Leon was, she declared, a predator, one who was using his vaunted position as a mayor and pastor to impose himself on women, whether or not they wanted his attention or not. Exhibit A in this regard were photographs and video snippets of Leon and Diana Huizar, the executive assistant to the general manager of the Ontario Convention Center.
For her part, Huizar pointed out that the Ontario Convention Center is owned and operated by the City of Ontario and serves as a key public venue for conventions, conferences, and trade shows that were being sponsored, in some cases, by the city as part of a strategy to boost local economic development and attract visitors as well as attention and positive publicity for the city. She said that in her role as the top clerical employee within the convention center’s administrative office and the liaison between the convention center and the city, she routinely came into contact with city officials. She publicly stated that there was no “impropriety” between her and the mayor.
Nesci steadfastly declined to identify who her Ontario client[s] was or were. When that question persisted, Bowman agreed to acknowledge having retained Nesci to shield Wapner and prevent Leon or his surrogates from discrediting Nesci’s charges by characterizing them as spurious political attacks that originated with Wapner because of his rivalry with the mayor. Nonetheless, Wapner’s hidden hand in the orchestrated attacks on Leon were patently obvious to everyone knowledgeable about internal politics at Ontario City Hall.
Wapner’s enmity toward Leon was given further emphasis when in 2009, he orchestrated a vote in which he, Bowman and Dorst-Porada withdrew the $30,000 raise that had been provided to the mayor two years previously, returning Leon to a pay grade identical to the rest of the city council.
Wapner’s hope had been that the combination of reducing the mayor’s remuneration and subjecting Leon to the public obloquy, condemnation and embarrassment of Nesci’s public presentation of her findings at city council meetings would persuade Leon to simply opt out of politics altogether and not seek reelection in 2010. At that point, Wapner calculated, he would run not for reelection as a member of the council, but throw his hat in the ring for mayor. With the nearly $200,000 in his campaign fund with which to wage his electioneering effort, Wapner figured he would be a shoo-in.
At that point, Wapner was blindsided by something he should have seen coming.
In the same timeframe that Wapner was readying to vault past Leon, he and his second wife had welcomed into their home a foreign exchange student, Camila Costanzo. When the girl’s tour in America had concluded, Wapner accompanied her in a cross-continent flight, where they stayed in Washington, D.C. overnight before she was to catch a flight home.
Rather than obtain separate rooms, Wapner and the girl checked into a single room in a hotel with a single queen size bed. According to statements Costanzo subsequently made, Wapner did not have pajamas as bed clothes and instead was clad only in underwear behind the closed door of the room at a certain point in the evening. Costanzo slept alone on a loveseat in the room that night and into the next morning.
Before catching her flight, Costanzo contacted the Washington, D.C. Police Department, which in turn contacted the Ontario Police Department, leading to the involvement of Ontario municipal officials. Among the exchanges going back and forth between Ontario officials and the district attorney’s office was direct contact between Mayor Leon and then-District Attorney Mike Ramos relating to what Wapner had involved himself in while in the nation’s capital.
At least in part because of jurisdictional conflicts and the consideration that the alleged victim and primary witness was out of the country, no prosecution of Wapner was mounted.
These events transpired during what in common parlance is now referred to as the “Great Recession,” the downturn that ensued and persisted for roughly five years following the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007 and the resultant collapse of the U.S. housing and real estate market. Among the impacts of the financial meltdown were dwindling revenues to regional and local governmental entities such as counties and municipalities. Ontario, which prior to the recession had two thirds of a billion dollars flowing through all of its municipal funds on an annual basis and was established as San Bernardino County’s most fiscally sound city, was not immune to what was happening elsewhere. As a consequence of the city’s advantageous financial circumstance, city officials had previously proven generous in agreeing, during collective bargaining with the unions for the city’s various employees, to contracts which made Ontario’s city workers the most handsomely remunerated public employees in the region. In addition, Ontario officials had committed to providing those employees with future raises that would ensure they stayed abreast or in front of their counterparts with other cities throughout Southern California.
With the bottom dropping out of the economy, Ontario, which was riding higher and stronger than other cities before the downturn, was hit that much harder than other municipalities, seeing its anticipated revenue dropping by a staggering amount, at first approaching and then exceeding $100 million. In a Herculean effort to avoid massive layoffs of staff, then-Ontario City Manager Greg Devereaux had negotiated with the city’s employee unions, getting them to agree to let the city rescind the pay and benefits increases they had been promised in the employment agreements that had been signed prior to 2008.
Into this mix had been the city council, the members of which had been heavily supported, for the most part, by the city’s employees’ unions. Indeed, while he was a firefighter and prior to being fire chief, Bowman had been the fire union’s president. The council had succeeded in getting the city’s unions – which involved bargaining units for line employees, for the city’s firefighters, the city’s police officers and the city’s police department management level officers – to hold still for the salary and benefit freezes.
By 2009 and 2010, however, the police union – the Ontario Police Officers’ Association – was growing impatient. Wapner, in particular, because he had at one time been a police officer himself who could relate very personally and poignantly to their situation, became the focus of the police officers’ and the police unions’ entreaties to end the pay freeze and restore the raises the officers had previously been promised. Wapner, who was acutely conscious of the number crunching and economies that were being imposed throughout all of the city’s departments and the service reductions this entailed to the city’s residents and businesses, responded by telling the officers and the union leaders that the city simply did not have the financial wherewithal to meet their demands.
By the late winter/early spring of 2010, officers within the police department were aware of Wapner’s Washington, D.C. misadventure. At that time, a representative of the police union was utilizing the term “sexual predator” without restriction in describing Wapner, illustrating the degree to which elements within the Ontario Police Officers’ Association were on the brink of raising the issue during that year’s election, in which Wapner would either stand for reelection to the council or seek to displace Leon as mayor.
During the summer of 2010, in the crucible of heat, seemingly intractable self-interest, competing personalities and politics, a compromise all the way around was worked out. City officials relented on their earlier position that the city did not have sufficient funding to increase police officer pay and benefits, at which point marginal raises were offered and accepted, with the promise of more substantial adjustments going forward. The police union backed off and, essentially, left sleeping dogs undisturbed by discontinuing the effort to make an example out of Wapner by harping on the Costanzo matter. Wapner and Bowman ended their focus on the Huizar matter. Leon did not duck out of the mayoral race.
Wapner had utilized the substantial financial resources in his political war chest to carry out extensive professional polling of the city’s electorate, including samples across all order of the city’s voters, including those most likely to vote as well as those whose voting patterns were spotty but who might be driven to the polls by creative tactics. No matter how the questions were asked, the voters who were surveyed indicated that in a match between the mayor and councilman, Leon would best Wapner. He could use the considerable money at his disposal to make at run for mayor, blazing at Leon with both barrels and hope for the best, Wapner knew, but that involved tremendous risk. If he failed in the mayoral bid, that meant he would lose the position as councilman he did have, because he could not run for both positions simultaneously. And there was the possibility – or more actually the probability – that if he assailed Leon with regard to the Huizar affair, Leon would clobber him with what was know about his trip to Washington, D.C. with Costanzo.
Begrudgingly, Wapner surrendered his dream of becoming mayor, at least temporarily. He sought a rapprochement with Leon. Taking a long drag off a peace pie before offering it to the mayor, he proposed that he, Leon and Bowman all stay within their own lanes and carry forth as “Team Ontario,” running for reelection as a triumvirate, one which was responsible for Ontario being in the position of San Bernardino County’s wealthiest city, head-and-shoulders above all of the other cities in San Bernardino County and the Inland Empire, setting the pace in terms of development, economic vitality, job creation and services to the community. Leon, wary but somewhat relieved that he would no longer need to constantly weather attacks being vectored at him by Wapner, Bowman, Nesci, Dorst-Porada and their allies, and heartened as well by army of donors Wapner had cultivated who were willing to pledge money to him as well, Leon responded positively to Wapner’s overture. Riding the crest of their combined incumbency, all three were handily reelected in the November 2010 election.
Over the next two years, Wapner and Leon, resignedly, lived with each other, not as true allies but neither as enemies. Yet able to rely on the votes of Bowman and Dorst-Porada, Wapner headed the city council’s ruling coalition, controlling three of five votes. This was of marginal significance, however, as there were very few issues that came before the city council over which the two had any sharp differences. Statistically, over the coming decade, they voted in virtual lockstep with one another, casting votes that were identical in all respects over 99 percent of the time.
Wapner, like Richard the Lionhearted, headed out on a crusade, intent on wresting control of Ontario Airport from the City of Los Angeles, which had in 1967 been given responsibility for managing the aerodrome’s operations and then assumed title to and control over it in 1985 after meeting certain performance criteria relating to expansion and passenger traffic as part of a joint powers agreement between the two cities. Leon acceded to Wapner taking on the lead role in that effort, which the councilman pursued aggressively. In making that concession to Wapner, Leon allowed Wapner to assume the presidency of the board for the entity the city formed in 2012 with San Bernardino County, the Ontario International Airport Authority, which was intended to take over operation of the airport once Los Angeles, its Department of Airports and the corporate entity known as Los Angeles World Airports the megalopolis used to run Ontario Airport and Los Angeles International Airport were out of the picture.
Wapner flourished in that role and was ultimately successful, after persuading Leon and his council colleagues to file a lawsuit against Los Angeles, in returning the airport to local control.
Over the next several years, as well, there were developments beyond the control of both Leon and Wapner which preserved the uneasy alliance that united them. In 2012, Paul Vincent Avila was elected to the council, supplanting Leon’s one-time ally, Sheila Mautz. Early speculation was that Avila might form some order of an alliance with the mayor, particularly when he seemed to get off on the wrong foot with Wapner, but that never materialized. Instead, Avila, who evinced an imperfect understanding of parliamentary procedure and standard governmental protocol, served to unify everyone else on the council against him. He antagonized his council colleagues, none more than Wapner, who he referred to as “old camel gut.” Noting the frequency with which Leon’s and Wapner’s votes lined up, Avila attributed that to Wapner’s dominance, and he constantly referred to Leon as “Wapner’s puppet” and then, eventually, simply, “Puppet.”
In the 2012 and 2014 elections, Ruben Valencia, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy, ran unsuccessfully for city council. In that second effort, he targeted Wapner in particular. In the 2016 election, he ran for the third time, achieving success by outpolling Avila.
Despite his obvious distaste for Avila, Wapner found the more sophisticated Valencia, who shared his law enforcement background, a far more realistically dangerous opponent. Whereas Avila proved to be a pointed irritant who was able to get under Wapner’s skin and provoke from him an intemperate or less-than-dignified heated response, Valencia’s approach was more subtle. Valencia engaged in none of the undignified exchanges with nor hurled unseemly insults at Wapner or the others on the dais. He joined with his council colleagues in supporting routine housekeeping items relating to city operations and normal municipal activity, meaning his votes registered with the four others well in excess of 90 percent of the matters that came before them. Occasionally, he asked staff for clarification on items being considered before casting a vote in support of action the others were going along with. He was highly selective with regard to where he enunciated differences with the other members of the council. Where his dissenting votes extended to philosophical or policy differences, he generally articulated his rationale for his votes, without rancor and with a simple statement. In a minority of cases where he cast a dissenting vote, Valencia latched onto the connections – most often consisting of campaign donations or personal interactions – that linked his council colleagues with those benefiting by certain council actions. These embodied, he recognized, the pay-to-play ethos that had gripped Ontario, a situation in which those with business before the city – developers looking for project approval, those seeking licenses to operate businesses of various sorts within the city, those vendors or service providers competing for contracts with City Hall or those in pursuit of a franchise granted by the city – felt the need to support the establishment, meaning the mayor and the members of the city council, with campaign donations. All of Valencia’s colleagues accepted money from such donors, which was part of the political reality, since running for office successfully required energetic campaigning, which is quite expensive. This was exacerbated by the massive monetary support provided to Wapner, Leon, Bowman and Dorst-Porada by the city’s employees’ unions and many individual city employees, who were provided with salaries and benefits that were far more generous than those provided to employees holding similar positions with other cities. That Ontario was steeped in a pay-to-play ethos was unmistakeable to those who had an obstructed perspective on what was going on. Valencia was one of those who held such a perspective. He did not scream or shout about what he was seeing. He simply did not join in with the other four on those occasions when they were returning favors to their donors, those who had paid the freight to put them in office and keep them there. And Valencia took stock of every time such a vote was made and filed it away in his memory, perhaps for use at a later date. The others knew what Valencia was about and what he represented. Wapner, as the member of the council rooted deepest in Ontario’s pay-to-play culture, was the Ontario city official most vulnerable to Valencia.
In this way, the natural enmity that existed between Leon and Wapner but which had been put on hold when they buried the hatchet in 2010 perpetuated itself. In December 2016, less than two months after Valencia’s victory and less than a month after he was installed on the council, Wapner broached restoring the level of pay provided to the mayor that he, Bowman and Dorst-Porada had taken away in 2009.
“It’s time we compensate the mayor fairly for what he does for the community,” Wapner reverently said.
Bowman, Dorst-Porada and Valencia went along, and the $25,135 a year Leon was being provided at that point was more than doubled, to $58,684.
Wapner’s mayoral ambition, which had been suspended in 2010 and 2014 was put on hold again, in 2018, as the priority at that time was perpetuating the establishment-preserving arrangement that was keeping the money flowing in all directions – projects being approved, contracts being approved, licenses and permits being granted and franchises being rolled over or awarded such that the those businesses smiled upon by the city profited or continued to profit and the owners of those business endowed the campaign war chests of the politicians that voted to approve those projects and contracts, grant those licenses and permits and confirm the awarding of those franchises. One of the facts of life, or a fact of Wapner’s life, was the establishment of which he was a principal player included Leon and for the gravy train to keep on chortling along, it was best that they get along.
In 2022, when the fourth mayoral contest in which Wapner shrunk from stepping up and challenging Leon took place, Valencia boldly challenged Leon. Valencia put on a valiant effort, which included the most energetic sign campaign in Ontario municipal electoral history. He was inadvertently assisted by an event no one could have anticipated – the death of Leon’s brother during the election season. Nevertheless, Leon’s incumbency and the support of the Ontario establishment was something Valencia was unable to overcome. Leon with 15,583 votes of 29,173 cast or 53.42 percent, easily outdistanced Valencia, who brought in 10,129 votes or 34.72 percent. A third candidate, Christian Garcia, polled 3,461 votes or 11.86 percent.
For his apostasy, Valencia was made to pay a price.
Beginning in 2014, a group of lawyers, virtually all of them from outside San Bernardino County – Los Angeles-based Milton Grimes, Lancaster-based attorney R. Rex Parris, Malibu-based Kevin Shenkman, Los Angeles-based Matthew Barragan and Walnut Creek-based Scott Raffety – alleging racially-or-ethnically-polarized voting was taking place in various communities throughout San Bernardino County, used the California Voting Rights Act to push 14 of San Bernardino County’s cities to switch from at large elections to e members of their city councils are now elected by district. The last city to make that transition in San Bernardino County was Ontario. Under the California Voting Rights Act, control over how the district voting maps are to be drawn up is left to the local jurisdictions making the electoral mode changes. In Ontario, the city council assumed the authority in drawing those maps. In doing so, the city left in place a mayor, still voted for at-large by all of the city’s residents, and created four council districts, each of which, within a few percentage points, is inhabited by one fourth of the city’s population. Upon drawing the map, the council’s next task was to determine the timing of the elections. In doing both, the council created a district in which Valencia was the only incumbent council member in what was designated as District 2. The council then scheduled the district elections so that voters in Districts 1 and 4 would go to the polls in 2024 and those is District 2 and 3 would choose their council representative in 2026. Given that Valencia was first elected to the council in 2016 and reelected in 2020, his term was due to end in 2024. Thus, his exit from the council in 2024 was assured.
Valencia’s presence on the council had been a unifying factor that brought Leon, Wapner, Bowman and Dorst-Porada together. Now that he was headed toward at least temporary political extinction in 2024, a new dynamic took hold. Wapner could look toward a future in which the imperative of his becoming mayor could once more become the focus. In 2024, Wapner pulled off a masterful coup.
Over the years, Leon had been touting Daisy Macias for a potential position in Ontario’s governmental structure, either as an elected official or at the administrative level. Macias had grown up in Ontario’s De Anza District and in her late teens and early 20s worked for the church where Leon is the pastor. Subsequently, from November 2014 until September 2019, she worked as his personal assistant, after which she landed a position as a senior account executive at Old Republic Home Protection and then became the community relations manager with the Hope Through Housing Foundation. Leon was instrumental in getting her appointed to the city’s library board, where she eventually became president and then to the Ontario Parks and Recreation Commission. Leon spoke openly of the potential that Macias would seek a position on the council as early as 2024, although her residency in the city’s District 2, where a council election was not scheduled until 2026, seemed to rule that out. The conversation shifted to Leon perhaps appointing her to the city’s planning commission, which would lay the groundwork for her seeking the city council post in 2026.
Early on, the perception was that Macias would naturally hew toward an alignment with Leon if she were to be eventually elected to the council. Leon repeatedly responded that people were misjudging Macias, and that she was nobody’s girl but an independent thinker who would follow her own conscience. At one point, Wapner, concerned that Leon indeed was grooming Macias to take up a position on the council to become his automatic ally, told Leon that if such a move were to be made, he would run a candidate of his own and provide her with enough money to outpoll Macias.
Out of the blue in 2024, Macias, claiming she was no longer living in District 2 but in District 4, declared she was running for city council. As soon as the city clerk’s office qualified Macias’s candidacy, declaring the paperwork and the signatures of District 4 residents endorsing her candidacy as valid, Wapner transferred $40,000 from his campaign fund to hers. Starting out with that advantage, along with a $3,037.12 in-kind contribution from Dorst-Porada, Macias hit the ground running and was embraced by a host of members of the Ontario establishment. The Ontario Police Officers Association provided Macias with $30,000. Not to be outdone, the Ontario Professional Firefighters Association IAFF Local 1430 followed that with $31,000 in donations to her campaign fund. Paul Hofer, the owner of the Hofer Ranch, conferred $5,000 on her. JRC Real Estate Investment provided her with $5,000. JM Realty donated $2,500 to her. Community Prosperity Partners handed Macias $12,500. An outfit calling itself Building A Stronger California, which is sponsored by the Western States Regional Council of Carpenters, gave her $4,000.
Word spread during the campaign that Macias was not living in District 4 and that she was in fact actually residing in a home in Upland. Evidence to that effect was sent to the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office, but elements of the Ontario establishment, who were supporters of District Attorney Jason Anderson, interceded, and nothing came of those reports.
In the November 5, 2024 General Election, Macias was elected to the council in a five-candidate race in District 4, receiving 3,610 of 9,915 votes cast or 36.41 percent. Her closest competitor was Celina Lopez, who drew 2,649 votes or 26.72 percent. A third candidate, Andrea Galván, received 2,422 votes or 24.43 percent. Two others, Norberto Corona and Jose Nikyar, accounted for the remaining 12.44 percent.
In early 2025, an eternity before the 2026 Ontario Municipal Election, Wapner was playing his intentions close to the vest. In years during which elected officials do not have to stand for election, they must file two reports with regard to their fundraising, one covering the period between January 1 and June 30, due on July 31; and another covering the period from July 1 to December 31, due by January 31 the following year. When he filed his report for the first six months of fundraising in 2025 on July 30, 2025, the report related to his “Wapner for Council District 3 2026” committee. As of that June 30, 2025, there was no official indication he was going to make a run for mayor the following year.
Important elements of the Ontario establishment appeared to expect the status quo to remain intact that spring. On the same day, May 15, 2025, as if they were acting in concern, the Ontario Police Officers’ Association gave Leon’s mayoral reelection committee $10,000, the Firefighters for Responsible Government/Ontario Professional Firefighters Association gave Leon’s campaign $12,500 and the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees Local 3061, known by its acronym AFSCME, which represents a portion of Ontario’s non-safety division workers, gave Leon $2,000.
Still, there were telltale signs that Wapner was not going to fall into the familiar pattern in 2022, 2018, 2014 and 2010, when he had contented himself, somewhat discontentedly, with running for reelection to the council rather than for mayor.
One hint of what was coming was the cool reserve with which the councilman conducted himself around the mayor and the physical distance it seemed he was trying to maintain when they were together. Wapner, it seemed would not look at Leon directly, particularly if the mayor was looking his way.
In June, there was an even stronger hint. The Donald Trump Administration had begun its crackdown in earnest on undocumented aliens in the country and in Southern California in particular. At the June 17 Ontario City Council meeting there were expressions by some in attendance that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids were a real threat to at least some of those living in Ontario.
A 14-year-old girl addressing the city council in the portion of the meeting reserved for public comment gave her age and described herself as “a legal citizen here in the U.S.,” stating, “Like many others, I fear the safety of not only my parents, other parents, friends, students, family members and myself because of these ongoing arrests. ICE [the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement] has been wrongfully arresting many of our residents without criminal backgrounds.”
Obliquely Leon sought to reassure the young woman that she and other Ontario residents were not going to arrested and deported. Obliquely referencing his own Hispanic heritage, the mayor said, “I’m not getting profiled just for being around,” Leon said. “To think that they’re coming after you, just profiling you on the way that you look, I just haven’t seen that happen in this town yet. I don’t live in fear and I don’t want you to live in fear, because our police are not looking for you.”
Leon said those who might otherwise be a target of federal agents could avoid trouble by keeping a low profile. He said he believed that “if we behave, and don’t cause a problem” most people could fly below the immigration authorities’ radar.
Wapner, who had been searching for nearly two decades to break Leon’s Svengali-like hold on the city’s majority Latino population, saw his chance and pounced.
As the League of United Latin American Citizens Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, Indivisible Inland Empire, which is chartered to “oppose fascism” and “stop ICE overreach,” and the Greater Ontario Democratic Club condemned Leon, noting he was distrusted by a wide cross section of those in the Ontario community and is perceived as “out of touch … insensitive… [and] a coconut – brown on the outside but white on the inside,” Wapner piled on, telling the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, “I was really put off by what I heard that evening.”
As that hoopla was reaching a crescendo, Wapner announced he was running for mayor in 2026 and had formed a political committee to do just that.
After a decade and a half of uneasy collegiality, the thin veneer of unity and cooperation that Wapner and Leon had donned to mutually take credit for transforming Ontario into San Bernardino County’s wealthiest city was shattered as open hostility broke out between them.
Shortly thereafter, Wapner moved to rapidly advance past the off-balance Leon, revealing in quick succession that he had nailed down endorsement commitments from the city’s three safety employee unions – the Ontario Firefighters Association, The Ontario Police Officers Association and the Ontario Police Management Association – and that he had a tentative indication that the Teamsters Union, which represents that portion of Ontario’s municipal employees who are not represented by AFSCME Local 3061 was leaning toward providing him with its endorsement. Similarly, he said, he was in an active dialogue with the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees Local 3061, who had expressed the belief that they would fare far better under his guidance at City Hall than had been the case with Leon leading the city.
The best was saved for last. Wapner trotted out Leon’s one-time protégé to kick him in the gonads. Daisy Macias announced that she was a member of the Wapner for Mayor Election Committee.
Leon had been caught flatfooted, while Wapner had been hustling, which is demonstrated by the campaign reporting documents that were filed by both the mayor and the councilman for the period between July 1, 2025 and December 32, 2025. Leon’s report, which was completed on January 28, 2026, was date stamped as having been received by the city clerk’s office on February 2, 2026.
Leon spent $26,985 last year getting ready to run for reelection this year. He started the year with $37,396 in the bank to spend on his campaign, which, based on past practice, will consist of carrying out voter surveys, purchasing billboard space, yard signs, printing handbills and doorhangers as well as mailers and the postage to send those mailers, radio spots, television commercials, newspaper advertisements and phone banks. It is reasonably projected that Leon will be able to bring in another $150,000 to $200,000 in donations. It thus appears that he will be able to wage a campaign costing as much as a quarter of a million to convince Ontario’s voters to keep him as their mayor.
Wapner made two filings: one for his city council reelection committee, which was still open and one for his mayoral election committee. Wapner filed separate report for his council committee and his mayoral election committee January 31, 2026. The mayoral committee report showed that throughout 2025, he had spent $20,203.04 in gearing up to for mayor this year and that as of December 31, 2025/January 1, 2026 he had $133,646.96 to spend in the campaign going forward. The city council campaign report showed that he spent $137,511.39 from it in 2025 in preparing for his mayor run and that as of December 31, 2025/January 1, 2026, he had $370,905 remaining in it to wage his campaign this year. Totaled together, Wapner spent $157,714.63 last year to get into position to seek the mayoralty this year and as of January 1 of this year had $504,551.96 to spend campaigning this year. Knowledgeable sources have told the Sentinel that they believe that in the first six months of this year, Wapner has received another $400,000 or so in donations to his mayoral campaign. Between now and November, they predicted he should be able to pick up another $200,000. Wapner is thus in a position to spend close to $1.2 million on his mayoral race.
Of note is how Wapner expended some of that money available to him. In 2025, he spent $3,163.16 to sew up getting on several sets of slate mailers which are to be sent to both high propensity Democrats and high propensity Republicans.
The term “high propensity” means likely to vote and is generally defined as voters who have voted in six of the last eight elections. Wapner spent $2,109.51 to get his name on another set of slate mailers going to both Democrats and Republicans and another $4,920.16 on a similar set of slate mailers going to both Democrats and Republicans.
Wapner shelled out $1,147 to get on a slate mailer going to voters who are not affiliated with any political party or have no party preference. He spent another $223 on a slate mailer to be sent to voters with no party preference and followed that up with $308 to get on a slate mailer sent to voters who are not registered as members of any political party.
Wapner also spent $1,443 and then another $324 to ensure he will be on a slate mailer known as the California Homeowners Guide.
According to available campaign reporting documents, which run only until December 31, 2025, Leon had not secured a place on any slate mailers. Six months have elapsed since that reporting period however.
Based on the Sentinel’s interactions with individuals close to Wapner and those involved both directly and indirectly in his campaign, there is a high degree of confidence in his camp that his financial advantage will overcome the factors that have favored Leon during his 21-year run as mayor and in his elections for city council prior to that.
Statistically, incumbents have a substantial advantage over non-incumbents in political races. “Incumbent officeholders hold an electoral advantage that typically translates to a 2-to-8 percentage point bump in the vote share and a 20 to 25 percentage-point increase in campaign funding compared to open-seat races,” according to Ballotpedia, “This translates to historic re-election rates that frequently exceed 90 percent across various levels of government.”
In the case of Wapner going head-to-head with Leon this year, the alluded-to advantage that would normally fall to Leon in terms of campaign funding has not only been neutralized but reversed. Leon does retain his status as an incumbent, which with voters overall might represent a marginal advantage. In terms of name recognition, Leon’s mayoral status is a plus, while Wapner’s longevity in public office – nearly 32 years as a councilman and his previous time as a school board member – have given him as much or nearly as much exposure throughout the community as Leon has accrued in his more than 27 years in office, 20 of them in the higher profile role as mayor.
One element of Leon’s strength which Wapner is gunning to counter is the factor that for four previous election cycles convinced Wapner the discretion of not fulfilling his aspiration to become mayor was the better part of valor: the consideration that 68.6 percent of the current population of Ontario is Latino. That statistic is daunting on its face, based on a primary assumption that Hispanic voters are more likely to vote for a Hispanic candidate. The advantage to Leon in this regard, Wapner’s supporters have concluded, may not be as lopsided as assumed, particularly if two other statistics prove to be of relevance in November. A mere 67 percent of the eligible Latino voters in Ontario are registered to vote. Moreover, of the city’s highest propensity voters, i.e., those most likely to vote, only 44.46 percent are Hispanic or at least have Spanish surnames.
In his campaign, Wapner intends to hammer Leon with his statement made at the June 17, 2025 council meeting that Ontario’s Latino residents have nothing to fear from Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers if they merely behave themselves.
If Leon does not see his more-than-two-decade-long run as Ontario mayor brought to an end by the application of that strategy, those in the growing support network around Wapner have come to believe, the coup de grâce to be delivered at the height of the campaign will prove sufficient to initiate the Wapner administration era at City Hall. That blow is to consist of a blitz of attack mailers, which are to contain photographs and video stills, reviving the issue of the mayor having carried on with Huizar.
The Wapner campaign, meaning the electoral effort most directly associated with the candidate, has been somewhat skittish in approaching that issue. Earlier this year, there was some hope that the attack using the Huizar material could be done by proxy, either through what is considered the traditional press and media ostensibly discovering or more accurately “rediscovering” the story or having individuals ostensibly unconnected to Wapner or his campaign instigate press/media interest in the matter by having one or more social media outlets dwell on what flashed by as a passing frenzy 17 years ago. Approaching the matter in that fashion could conceivably, it was hoped, result in a reprise of the scandal in current journalistic coverage of the election. Handling the matter in this way, with an artificial firewall erected between Wapner and the attacks, it was thought, insulate the councilman from the perception that he was engaging in mudslinging himself.
At this point, leaving the matter to chance is not considered advisable from a larger strategic standpoint. It is a peculiarity of California law pertaining to elections and the regulations applying to them enforced by the California Fair Practices Commission that entities known as “independent expenditure
been somewhat skittish in approaching that issue. Earlier this year, there was some hope that the attack using the Huizar material could be done by proxy, either through what is considered the traditional press and media ostensibly discovering or more accurately “rediscovering” the story or having individuals ostensibly unconnected to Wapner or his campaign instigate press/media interest in the matter by having one or more social media outlets dwell on what flashed by as a passing frenzy 17 years ago. Approaching the matter in that fashion could conceivably, it was hoped, result in a reprise of the scandal in current journalistic coverage of the election. Handling the matter in this way, with an artificial firewall erected between Wapner and the attacks, it was thought, insulate the councilman from the perception that he was engaging in mudslinging himself.
It is a peculiarity of California law pertaining to elections and the regulations applying to them enforced by the California Fair Practices Commission that entities known as “independent expenditure committees” exist. An independent expenditure committee is a group or individual that uses its own funds to support or oppose a candidate, ballot measure, or political issue without coordinating with the candidate’s campaign or political party committee. These expenditures are not considered to be contributions to the candidate’s campaign and are not subject to reporting requirements applied to the candidate, and are instead reported as expenditures by the independent committee. Under the law, the candidate and the candidate’s committee are not supposed to communicate with the independent committee with regard to the campaign or coordinate their actions. That is a rule that is not strictly honored, and when the full range of activity relating to candidates or initiatives is examined historically, the application of the term “independent” with regard to independent expenditure committees often strains credulity.
The campaign disclosure documents filed by Wapner last year show that $20,000 was placed into an account referred to as “Wapner for Mayor 2026.” This was interpreted by an analysis of the disclosure documents as perhaps providing seed money for the creation of an independent entity or a holding account for an independent entity to be actuated once the election season is underway in full later this year. Disclosure of expenditures by the Wapner campaign in the first six months of 2026 are due in a filing to be provided by July 31. It is thus, at this point, unknown publicly if there have been further infusions of funds by the Wapner campaign to the Wapner for Mayor 2026 entity.
In an immediate response to an email sent to him by the Sentinel on June 26, 2026 which sought to explore how the Huizar and Costanzo issues were to be balanced during this year’s mayoral campaign, Wapner stated, “My campaign is not raising any issues involving Paul Leon’s personal affairs. Those issues are irrelevant, and I campaign on policy issues. I have never brought family or rumors into my campaigns or discussions nor will I.”
As to the reports pertaining to his interaction with Costanzo at the hotel in Washington, D.C., Wapner said, “The other issues that you discussed are absolutely false, never occurred and not worthy of discussion.”
Widely recognized is that over the last year the larger support network among the Ontario establishment has abandoned the long-running power sharing arrangement it formerly accepted by which Leon filled the titular role of mayor while Wapner headed the ruling coalition on the council that comprised the city’s actual governing configuration. Instead, they are banking on Wapner moving into the mayoral post. It is widely assumed that in seeking to ensure that Leon does not survive politically, a combination of those establishment interests will publicly revive the Huizar affair in a way that will widely resonate with voters. That being the case, the political praetorian guard around Leon, which remains intact, is equally convinced that it has no choice at this point other than to, in the parlance of one of its members, “go nuclear,” and do so sooner rather than later, meaning that Wapner must be called out with regard to his interaction with Costanzo before he and his campaign effectively seizes the high moral ground.