Over the course of less than two months in the City of Ontario, there have been wild swings in political prognostication, fluid realignments between its politicians, global recalculations within the deep-pocketed support network that once both enabled and controlled those officeholdersers and radical readjustments in City Hall’s hierarchical arrangements.
In a debacle of epic proportions, all of the city’s employee union’s last year turned their backs on the mayor, siding with a councilman who was seeking unseat him. That councilman is now under the FBI’s microscope and has withdrawn from the mayor’s contest. This has creating a situation so awkward that union officials are now calculating that they will need to volunteer having their members forego raises over the next four years as a show of penance.
Worse, the realization that virtually everyone at City Hall had grown to accept the criminal culture that enveloped them so they could be the highest paid municipal employees in the county until the FBI acted has robbed local government in the city of 189,505 of any moral authority it once possessed.
When the candidate filing period opened on July 13, there was a widespread perception that a major shake-up on the City Council – more specifically with regard to the office of mayor – was in the offing.
Alan Wapner, who had been on the city council since 1994, was long known to resent having to play second fiddle to Paul Leon, who had joined him on the council in 1998 as an appointee and was then elected mayor in a special election in 2005. Wapner made no secret that he considered himself superior to Leon in every way that counted – he was, he believed, more intelligent, better educated, more experienced, more sophisticated, more tuned in to and therefore more sensitive to what was taking place in the community, more highly skilled at raising money and better equipped at cutting backroom deals and translate that into official action by the panel, the Ontario City Council, they were both members of. He was far more adept, Wapner knew, at recognizing what the movers and shakers in the community wanted than Leon. He was far more willing to make sure those wealthy business owners and venture capitalists invested in Ontario got what they wanted, and he was far less shy than Leon to request that those whose businesses and projects benefited as a consequence of the city council’s action rewarded him, in the form of campaign donations.

Virtually from the outset of the time Leon became mayor, Wapner was convinced that he deserved the honorific of mayor far more than Leon. Leon’s possession fo the mayoral gavel, Wapner deeply believed, was that Leon had a solitary advantage in the form of his Hispanic surname, which he had converted into his incumbency as mayor in a city in which upwards of 62 percent of the population was Latino. But for that minor accident of birth, Wapner believed, he would have been the mayor of Ontario.

Thereafter, Wapner had employed a multitude of stratagems in an effort to unseat Leon and take his place. In 2008, when Debra Dorst-Porada had been elected to the council, Wapner moved quickly to form an alliance with her, which in combination with his existing connection with Councilman Jim Bowman, gave him control of a 3-to-2 ruling council majority with regard to any issues of substance and/or disagreement with Leon that came before the council as a body. Simultaneously, he hired former policewoman-turned-private investigator-turned attorney Lorena Nesci to dig as much dirt up on Leon as she could. He then had Nesci compile that information into a dossier, which she then came before the Ontario City Council to read crucial passage from during those portions of the meeting reserved for public comment. The centerpiece of this were allegations and what Nesci purported to be evidence that Leon had carried on an affair with Diana Huizar, the executive assistant to the general manager of the Ontario Convention Center.

To further dim Leon’s enthusiasm for remaining in the role of mayor, Wapner in concert with Dorst-Porada and Bowman voted to end the city’s payment of an additional $30,000 per year to the stipend paid to the mayor beyond the $21,498 provided annually to the members of the city council.
When those efforts did not result in Leon opting out of running for reelection in 2010, Wapner utilized some of the money in his political war chest to do extensive polling of the city’s registered voters, learning in the process that Leon in virtually realistic elective scenario in 2020, including a head-to-head contest with Wapner, would prevail. At that point, Wapner dispensed with the effort to blow Leon out of office and supplant him, instead seeking and obtaining a temporary truce in which he and Bowman, who like Leon were on an elective cycle corresponding to California’s gubernatorial elections, chose to run as a slate, representing themselves in shared mailers, handbills and advertisements as the three members of “Team Ontario,’ whose steady hands at City Hall during their shared tenures in office, were responsible for Ontario being the most economically successful of all municipalities in San Bernardino County and whose sensible, enlightened and compassionate leadership had elevated the quality of life in the city. All three were comfortably reelected.
Wapner’s intent was to bide his time and allow circumstances to ripen to create an atmosphere in which he would be able to challenge Leon in a future election successfully. That strategy included continuing to dominate the true ultimate decision-making process in the city by keeping his ruling coalition involving Bowman and Dorst-Porada intact as well as taking the lead in a very aggressive effort to have ownership and management of Ontario Airport, which had been ceded to the City of Los Angeles, the City of Los Angeles Department of Airports and its corporate entity, Los Angeles World Airports by a previous city council in 1985, returned to Ontario.
2012 was a significant year for Wapner on at least two score. That year, he succeeded in getting Leon and the other members of the city council to create the Ontario International Airport Authority, install him as a member of the authority’s board and appoint him as the board president. The intent was that the Ontario International Airport Authority would take the place of the Los Angeles Department of Airports and Los Angeles World Airports when ownership of the airport was returned to Ontario. Later that year, Paul Vincent Avila, a perennial unsuccessful candidate for political office over the previous quarter of a century for everything from that of U.S. Congressman, state senator, state assemblyman and city councilman and who had succeeded in getting elected to the Ontario-Montclair school board, was elected to the city council.
In 2013, at Wapner’s urging, the city council had voted to initiate a lawsuit to regain ownership and control of the airport. Thereupon, the law firm of Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton filed suit on Ontario’s behalf against against the City of Los Angeles, its Department of Airports and Los Angeles World Airports, seeking the return of the aerodrome.
Despite Wapner’s hope that the 2014 electoral season would mature into the democratic forum in which he would be able to vault into the mayoral position, events transpired and conspired against that occurring. Primarily, out of Wapner’s personal life, a major vulnerability manifested in the form of a video, caught by one of his neighbor’s security cameras, beating his daughter. This consumed much of Wapner’s political networking skill, which included convincing the city council to hire an attorney to represent him with regard to issues that were enveloping him as a consequence of that election year’s election campaign, as well as his power of intimidation in order to convince those who had access to the video to remove it from the site on the internet it had been posted to.
Moreover, whatever mental energy Wapner yet had reserved for crossing swords with Leon had been diverted to the emergence of Avila, as Ontario’s newest political entity. Almost from the time Avila was sworn in as a member of the council in late 2012, he and Wapner found themselves at loggerheads, clashing over issues of both style and substance. Despite Avila’s occasionally sharp perception of dishonest and unfair dealing, he had little in the way of political sophistication, no understanding of parliamentary procedure and even less tact. Time and time again, Wapner allowed himself to be drawn into vituperative exchanges with Avila that generated plenty of heat and no light, by which neither came across as dignified.
This left Wapner no room for any sort of contretemps with Leon. Instead, there was, essentially, a replay of 2010, a campaign in which Leon, Wapner and Bowman sang each others’ praises, telling the citizens of Ontario how lucky they were to have three public servants with their wisdom and experience and accompanying breadth and depth of skill to oversee municipal operations.
Wapner’s main challenger that year was Ruben Valencia, who aggressively assailed him, doing so in ways that were far more cogent and, ultimately, problematic than the generally nonsensical or poorly articulated triflings lobbed at him by Avila. Still the same, Wapner easily outdistanced Valencia in that year’s polling, and was reelected along with Bowman and Leon.
In 2015, the lawsuit against Los Angeles was settled short of trial, on terms favorable to Ontario, with Los Angeles agreeing to return the airport to the smaller city to its east in 2016 in return for Ontario making a $190 million direct reimbursement to Los Angeles World Airports for its investments in maintaining and improving the airport and for job protection for 182 employees; a $30 million immediate payment from Ontario’s reserves when the land transfer was finalized; $50 million paid to Los Angeles over the five year period after the transfer; another $70 million aid over the following five years, along with Ontario assuming $60 million in airport debt and allowing Los Angeles World Airports to transfer $40 million from Ontario Airport’s unrestricted cash accounts to other Los Angeles World Airports accounts.
In 2016, Avila failed to gain reelection, and was replaced by Valencia. Dorst-Porada was reelected that year for the second time.
Just as Avila before him, Valencia became the odd-man-out on the council. That maintained the dynamic of an artificial alliance between Wapner and Leon. Wapner yet felt, indeed more strongly than ever, that he was being wrongfully straitjacketed into the role of councilman rather being able to claim the mayoralty as his own because the position was being usurped by Leon. His placement on the same electoral cycle as Leon, such that when the mayoral position was up for election, his position on the council was up for election. Had the council post he held been on an election cycle staggered from the mayoral post, such that he had to seek reelection in presidential election years, Wapner could have run for mayor while being midway in his council term, thus not risking his council position to reach for the mayoral brass ring. As it stood, however, in Ontario an individual cannot vie for two separate elected posts simultaneously. Thus, if he were to run for mayor and lose, Wapner would no longer be on the council at all. Based upon the polling of the city’s voters in 2018, just as had been the case in 2014 and 2010, the vast majority of the city’s voters were more favorably disposed toward Leon as the city’s ultimate political leader than they were toward, and he recognized that if he dared to challenge the incumbent, even if he brought his superior political fundraising ability to bear, the odds would still hold against him.
He remained in place in 2018, again campaigning with Leon and Bowman as the Three Amigos, and all four finished far ahead of the competition.
Meanwhile, with Ontario’s takeback of Ontario Airport, Wapner was in a position to engage in a round of empire building as he remained unchallenged in the role of the president of the Ontario International Airport Authority. With him on the board was his ally, Bowman. Through the airport authority’s charter, which was set up by the City of Ontario, the city had control over who would serve on the authority’s board. This gave, Wapner de facto control over the board, which in turn provided him with control of the airport authority, which the mayor and members of the city council, other than himself and Bowman, did not involve themselves in. When one of the original members of the airport authority board, real estate attorney, former director of the California Department of Housing and Community Development and one-time president and CEO of the Orange County Business Council Lucy Dunn, made a show of independence, Wapner had her replaced with Julia Gouw, the former president and chief operating officer of East West Bank. Wapner similarly kept the other members of the board, Fourth District San Bernardino County Supervisor Gary Ovitt and his successor as Supervisor, Curt Hagman, as well as former Riverside Mayor Ron Loveridge subservient to him. Indeed, when filling positions on the airport authority board’s finance subcommittee, a logical appointment would have been Gouw, with here extensive banking industry experience. For reasons of his own, Wapner did not want someone of her sophistication, knowledge and command of principles in the world of finance in that post. In particular, he did not want Gouw to gum up arrangements he was having airport authority and airport staff put in place conferring contracts on specific entities he had chosen, in virtually every case his campaign contributors, to receive no bid contracts with the authority or at the airport. Wapner kept Gouw out of finance committee role, despite her willingness to to accept it.
Wapner’s insistence on dictating policy manifested, essentially, in his giving direction to the remainder of the board as to how it was to vote on the items brought before it by airport and airport authority staff. Where elements of that policy went awry in recent years, Loveridge and Gouw, and to a lesser extent Hagman and Bowman were labeled by some as incompetent or likened to ostriches. Others knowledgeable about the circumstances at the airport authority headquarters, however, said the charges of incompetence were inaccurate. Rather they insisted, the board’s mode of operation, as orchestrated by Wapner and a network of staff and consultants he put into place around him, ensured that with regard to all of the issues of the greatest importance to Wapner, Gouw and Loveridge were simply not permitted to be engaged. The significance and impact of that arrangement, which remained off the public radar for years, loomed into stark relief on July [27,28] of this year.
The practical accommodation between Wapner and Leon had a further benefit for Wapner. Leon, like virtually everyone else among the power elite and the circle of influence in Ontario were conscious, some more than others, of irregularities and improprieties in the way the airport was being run, that as money flowed into the airport authority, money flowed out, and the lion’s share of the money flowing out ended up with companies that were owned by Wapner’s political supporters.
Leon made a command decision early on to remain silent about what he saw, what he suspected and what he knew. Political stability in Ontario, in which everyone stayed in their lanes and did nothing to rock the boat was, Leon decided, in his best political and personal interest. When asked about what was going on at the airport, Leon would beg off, using lines such as, “I have no idea” or “That’s not my area” or “Alan’s in charge of that.” Other important public figures in Ontario and San Bernardino County, such as a succession of Ontario police chiefs, the city manager and the leadership in the district attorney’s office under the immediate past and current district attorneys, followed Wapner’s lead. The mythic narrative that had grown up around the reacquisition of Ontario Airport was that the mayor and city council, led by the intrepid Wapner, had courageously and skillfully gone into battle against the far larger and more powerful City of Los Angeles and prevailed. It was seemingly in everyone’s best interest to propound the narrative that fair and honest local control had replaced the domination of the megalopolis to the west. It was contrary to everyone’s interest to taint the narrative with anything that would suggest that the airport was now in the hands of anything other than competent and dedicated individuals who were ensuring the facility was being put to the best use possible. The circulation of reports that the airport had become the fiefdom of Councilman Wapner, who was using it as a cash cow for his political supporter and personal associates to strengthen his hold on the city and the airport authority was antithetical to the myth that had been created.
In the mid 2010s, a push to have 12 of San Bernardino County’s cities and two of its incorporated towns switch from at-large elections to district-based elections of their council members. Whereas previously, the members of a city or town council were restricted only to living within the general city or town limits in order to run for office in an at-large voting system, with the changeover to by-district voting, the cities or towns were divided into political subdivisions – wards or districts – which had council representatives who resided exclusively within those districts. Voting for each representative is limited to those living in that particular 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 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 in 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, since he was unable to run for the city council in 2024, his exit from the council was assured.
In a bid for political survival, Valencia ran for mayor in 2022. Despite carrying out the most energetic political sign-based campaign in Ontario history, Valencia was vanquished in a three-way race that included the largely unknown Christian Garcia, with Leon’s far greater name recognition and his access to the support of the Ontario social, business and political establishment.
Valencia’s presence on the council had been a unifying factor that brought Leon, Wapner, Bowman and Dorst-Porada together. With Valencia headed toward at least temporary political extinction in 2024, Wapner, celebrating his 68th birthday recognized his time had now come. He could temporize no further. 2026 would be the year, he resolved, when he would at last seize the mayoral gavel from Leon.
Silently, without make an announcement, he intensified his fundraising efforts. By that point, after 30 years in office, Wapner had established himself as the most prolific political fundraiser among municipal officials in San Bernardino County history, having taken into his political war chest as of that year roughly $3.3 million. He redoubled those efforts, intending to apply what he was taking in to an overwhelming campaign for mayor. Leading all who were not members of his inner circle to believe that he was going to run for city council again in 2026, he undertook to head Leon off at the pass.
For years, Leon had made no secret of his hope that Daisy Macias, who had worked as a secretary and executive assistant for him at the church where he is a pastor, Hope Chapel, would at some point enter the political fray and run for city council. In an effort to groom her for elective office, Leon appointed Macias to the Ontario Parks and Recreation Commission and then to the Ontario Library Board, where she acceded to the position of president. After Macias left the employ of the church and went on to become an account executive with Old Republic Home Protection and then later a community relations manager with the Hope Through Housing Foundation, Leon touted her as someone of sound judgment who was dedicated to the community. If she succeeded in getting elected to the city council, Leon insisted, Macias would not be a rubberstamp for him or anyone else but an independent and thoughtful voice to represent the community as a whole.
Initially, Wapner resisted Leon’s promotion of Macias, believing that as his protege, she would automatically hew to the mayor’s side on any issues that might separate Wapner and Leon. In 2024, Wapner pulled off a major coup when, after quietly conferring with Macias and convincing her to declare her domicile had changed from where she lived in the city’s newly-formed Second District to the Fourth District and re-registering to vote there, he induced her to make a run for city council in the maiden election in Ontario’s Fourth District. As soon Macias’s candidacy was certified by the city clerk and the county registrar of voters, Wapner transferred $40,000, later augmented by another $10,150.27, from his campaign account to Macias’s. Wapner then put the arm on a whole host of those who had donated money to him in the past as well as his political associates, including Dorst-Porada, to provide her with another $93,000.
In the November 5, 2024 General Election, Macias, receiving 3,610 of 9,915 votes cast or 36.41 percent, was elected to the council in a five-candidate race in District 4, overcoming her closest competitor, Celina Lopez, who drew 2,649 votes or 26.72 percent.
A major consideration in local elections in California as they now play out are so-called slate mailers. Up to a dozen or perhaps even more enterprises have jumped into the niche of slate mailers. These companies, working independently of one another, function in ways that are virtually indistinguishable from the others. The company will schedule a run of two different mailers – in all cases one aimed at Republican voters and one aimed at Democratic voters. The mailers will be given a title such as Conservative Voter Guide, Progressive Voter Guide, Democratic Voter Guide, Republican Voter Guide or Independent Voter Guide. Placed at the top of the voter guides aimed at Republican voters will be the Republican candidates up for election that year, either president in leap years or governor, lieutenant governor, California Attorney General, controller, treasurer, secretary of state and insurance commissioner in the staggered years when gubernatorial elections are held along with the local Republican candidates for Congress, State Senate and Assembly. Space is reserved for local candidates. A similar mailer targeting voters registered as Democrats is prepared. The companies will then sell, for a price, the insertion of a local city council candidate’s name into the spaces reserved for local candidates. For that price, the candidate purchasing the space is included on both the Republican slate mailer and the Democrat slate mailer. Officially and by law in California, local elections are considered nonpartisan. Nevertheless, the slate mailers, without directly stating that the local candidates are Republicans or Democrats, leave that impression with the voters. The Republican-oriented slate mailers are sent to those Republicans in the respective cities who have demonstrated a consistent pattern of voting in past elections, and are not sent to Democrats. The Democrat-oriented slate mailers are sent to those Democrats in the cities who have demonstrated a consistent pattern of voting in past elections, and are not sent to Republicans. This serves to lead the vast majority of the Republicans who receive the mailer to conclude the endorsed local candidate for mayor or city council is a Republican. It also serves to lead the vast majority of the Democrats who receive the mailer to conclude the endorsed local candidate for mayor or city council is a Democrat.
In 2025, well ahead of the opening of the 2026 electoral season, Wapner quietly approach all known purveyors of slate mailers sent to Ontario residents in the past and preemptively purchased the placement of his name as the endorsed candidate for mayor.
Wapner continued to lull Leon into a state of complacency, keeping his council candidacy election fund active, delivering to the world the impression his ambition did not go beyond remaining in place on the council past 2026 as anything other than the representative of District 3, within the boundaries of which his home was located. Meanwhile, his prodigious fundraising continued apace. He began on January 1, 2025, with $288,330.42 in his campaign fund, which was designated for his reelection as councilman. In the course of 2025, he continued to collect money for his anticipated council run, but also created a second account to finance his run for mayor. Throughout 2025, he deposited $172,250 in donations into his council campaign fund. In the same 12 months, he deposited $125,800 into his mayoral campaign fund. Between January 1 and June 30 of this year, he practically ceased receiving money into his council campaign fund, though $2,950 did drift in from some donors who apparently had not yet gotten word that their checks should be made out to Wapner’s mayor campaign. In the same six month period,
$323,199.08 in donations were made to his mayoral fund. Wapner was at liberty to move money in his council campaign fund into his mayoral campaign fund.
In contrast, Leon, who started 2025 with $15,781 in his campaign account, collected $48,600 in campaign donations in all of 2025 and followed that up with $47,849 in donations received in the first six months of 2026.
Thus, in their respective campaigns for mayor through the middle of this year, Leon, the incumbent, had $112,230 with which to wage his reelection effort and Warpner had $912,529.08 with which to challenge him.
While Wapner kept his mayor ambition under wraps, more or less, throughout the first five months of 2025, the cat was out of the bag by June of that year.
Leon was caught flatfooted.
Wapner and those assisting him in his effort to unseat Leon acted rapidly, while the mayor was simply reacting to and not yet trying to recover from the shock, One by one, in quick succession, Wapner cut Leon off from the support he had previously taken for granted. Wapner secured the backing of the Ontario Police Association, the union representing the city’s police officers, followed by the support of the City of Ontario Police Management Group, representing the higher ranking police offices. Simultaneously, the Ontario Firefighters Association lined up behind Wapner. The Teamsters Union, which represents that portion of Ontario’s municipal employees who are not represented by the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees Local 3061, threw its support to Wapner. While Wapner was in an active dialogue with American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees representatives for that union’s support, Macias announced that she was a member of the Wapner for Mayor Election Committee. Thereafter the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees Local 3061 announced it was backing Wapner.
The Teamsters, American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, the Ontario Police Association, the City of Ontario Police Management Group and the Ontario Firefighters Association had all previously supported Leon, lending their names to multiple mailers and other electioneering materials he had sent out in 2022, 2018, 2014 and 2010, some of which were created jointly with the Wapner and Bowman campaigns. At that point however, union officials were expressing the belief that everyone – the citizens of Ontario, the Ontario business community, the employees at City Hall and at the City Yard, as well as the public safety employees working in the police and fire departments would fare far better under Wapner’s guidance than had been the case with Leon leading the city.
Throughout 2025 and the first six months of 2026, Wapner’s campaign spent $408,227.13 preparing for his mayoral campaign or engaging in the opening shots of the campaign. Wapner yet had close to half of a million with which to run the campaign during the crucial two months leading into the November 3 vote.
The constant polling Wapner was doing to measure what his prospects were showed things were trending in his direction. Those polls demonstrated that Leon yet had pervasive name recognition and generally positive name identification among the cities voters, and that Wapner lagged somewhat behind the mayor in this regard, not unlike what was the case in the past. But his campaign had engaged in some limited informational programming in a tightly circumscribed set of areas throughout the city, including doing what is referred to as push polling, which asks respondents how they would vote based upon certain conditions. The indications were that if the Wapner campaign and its allies, consisting of outside political action committees and so-called independent expenditure committees, launched an informational blitz and pressed it without let-up during the six-to-eight weeks prior to the close of mail-in voting and precinct voting to take place on November 3, Wapner’s upward arc in terms of voter percentage would reach a point above the anticipated decline in the mayor’s percentage of support.
Paired with Wapner’s candidacy for mayor was the candidacy of Hagman’s son, Jonathan, who was running for a position on the Ontario City Council in District 3. The network around Wapner gave indication of its constituent’s confidence that once Leon was out of the way and Wapner was installed as mayor, with the backing of Macias and young Hagman, Wapner would be in a position to move Ontario toward the future he envisions.
There were a few developments that had gone Leon’s way. One was the full-fledged defection of Dorst-Porada from Wapner’s camp and what could be described as the tentative departure of Bowman from Wapner’s team, as well. Both, Porada more than Bowman it appeared, had taken stock of the inveterate political machinations he had engaged in and the constant adjustments and accommodations he had to make in an effort to buy the silence of those who were aware of the questionable or outright illegal activity he was engaged in. Bowman was somewhat compromised in this regard because he had provided backing and votes to Wapner as a member of the airport authority, actions about which he could not claim ignorance, misunderstanding or naivete. Still, scrutiny over the entirety of the circumstance in Ontario was intensifying, and Bowman was due to leave the council in December 2026. District 1, where he lived, had elected its representative to the council, Dorst-Porada, in 2024, such that Bowman will not be eligible to run for the council again until 2028. He had a desire to remain on the airport authority board, for which there was a prospect if its number were to be increased to seven. He understood that there was a possibility that such an appointment might involve close inspection of what had occurred under his watch at the airport previously, and he came across as wanting to distance himself from Wapner so he might obtain a berth on the expanded airport authority as an experienced but newly independent voice.
Leon found support from an unexpected quarter, that being Valencia, who had vied unsuccessfully against him for mayor in 2022. Valencia, who was vying for election once more, this time to represent the city’s District 2, found the prospect of serving on a council presided over by Wapner abhorrent. He and Leon opened up a dialog aimed at keeping Wapner from steamrolling into the mayoral position.
The prognosticators and the smart money, when Wapner and Leon in July both took out nomination papers to run for mayor in this year’s election, were calling it in favor of Wapner, even with election still four and a half months away.
On July 28, all of that changed. That day, the FBI together with other federal agents, served search warrants at Wapner’s home; Hagman’s home and county office; the home and office of Frank Lizerraga, Wapner’s attorney and a former member of the Ontario Planning Commission; the business office of Andy Sehrmelis, a major campaign contributor to Wapner and Hagman; the West Covina home and West Covina office of James Su, the chief executive of EDI Media Inc., a large Chinese-American multimedia company controlled by the government of the People’s Republic of China; and a mansion in the 600 block of North Canon Drive in Beverly Hills. The FBI simultaneously served subpoenas for the production of documents at Ontario City Hall and the executive officers of the airport authority, seeking specified documents.
Instantly, the new world order that Wapner, Hagman and their supporters were certain was coming to Ontario was dashed.
In rapid succession, before the August 7 filing deadline, Jonathan Hagman withdrew as a candidate in the city’s Third District, Macias took out papers to run for mayor, Wapner took out papers to run for Third District councilman, Macias filed the full compliment of nomination papers for mayor, Wapner withdrew as a candidate for mayor and filed his application and nomination papers to run for city council.
The momentum had shifted from the presumption of Leon’s demise to the actual attenuation of Wapner’s hold on Ontario.
With renewed vigor, functioning not as those being ushered toward some inevitable slaughter, barely three days after the FBI raids, Leon, Dorst-Porada and Valencia were militating to stomp Wapner into irrelevancy if not out of office entirely.
A plan emerged: Wapner, as quickly as could be arranged, would be removed from all of his appointed positions and adjunct governmental roles, the foremost of which was his position on the Ontario International Airport Authority. Thereafter, Dorst-Porada would be appointed in Wapner’s place on the airport authority and installed thereafter as the board’s president. As quickly as was practical, the airport authority would would move to terminate Atif Elkadi, the current executive director of the airport and airport authority, who was handpicked by Wapner to occupy that position. Thereafter, the airport board would seek to interest Mark Thorpe, who had been the executive director of Ontario Airport from 2017 until he was driven out by Wapner in favor of Elkadi in 2022 and is now the City of Fresno’s director of aviation, overseeing the operation of Fresno Yosemite International Airport and Fresno Chandler Executive Airport, into returning to Ontario to once again serve as the airport’s executive director and manager.
It was unknown, precisely, whether Thorpe would be inclined to return to Ontario and, if he was, how soon he could leave his current assignment in Fresno. The Sentinel is reliably informed that Leon, Dorst-Porada and Valencia were prepared to wait until after the election to initiate contract negotiations with Thorpe in earnest if that was what was required to reach an atmosphere of political stability in which his confidence in the city’s leadership could be restored. In convincing Thorpe to take on the job, Leon, Dorst-Porada and Valencia recognized, they would need to meet his expectations on how management of the airport was to be structured, and they had to be in a position to show they had the inimpeded authority to do just that, creating some order of assurance that Wapner and Macias, if they were to remain in office, in the future would not be able to rescind his managerial authority by lining up a third vote on the council.
The first order of business was getting Wapner stripped of all of his extracurricular council assignments – director on and president of the Ontario International Airport Authority Board, the City of Ontario’s representative on the Omnitrans Board of Directors, Ontario’s representative with the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority, Ontario’s representative on the San Bernardino County Council of Governments, board member with the Southern California Association of Governments, representative to the National Association of Regional Councils and board member of the California Association of Councils of Government.
This could not be done automatically. Three votes were needed. Wapner would not supply one of the votes. Neither would Macias. The third vote would have to come from Bowman. Bowman was no longer as close to Wapner as he once was, but for decades he been a Wapner ally. Moreover, Bowman was interested in perpetuating himself as an airport commissioner, a perquisite that Wapner might make available to him if Wapner remained as the airport commission chairman. Overcoming Bowman’s historic and residual loyalty to Wapner was a delicate assignment, one that was worked out indirectly, with no explicit commitments, but the suggestion that once Wapner was no longer a factor at the airport or a controlling influence on the city council, a reorganization of the airport authority was likely and it was not out of the question that he might make a suitable board member if that panel were to be expanded beyond its current five. Bowman was on board with defrocking Wapner.
At that point, Wapner was able to demonstrate just how skilled he had become at bureaucratic infighting. When the council took up the subject of removing him from his appointed assignments, Wapner made note that the council item under which the council proposed to remove him from his committee assignments was labeled merely as “Council Matters.” The item did not explicitly state that he was to be removed from the various posts, he made a motion that the council take no substantive action. Macias joined him in that motion, but it was opposed by Leon, Dorst-Porada and Bowman. Bowman’s opposition to the motion was a clear indication to Wapner that Bowman no longer had his back. After a short recess, Leon allowed the public to weigh in on the matter. While a majority of those present expressed doubts about Wapner’s integrity, a few defenders spoke favorably of him. Uncertain that council’s contemplated action of removing Wapner from his assignments had been given adequate notice, he called for placing an item on the upcoming August 18 meeting which explicitly called for removing him from the various appointed positions he holds. That passed on a 3-to-2 vote, with Wapner and Macias opposed.
The following week, on Tuesday August 11, Wapner dropped a letter of resignation pertaining to all of his commission and adjunct governmental assignments off at the Ontario City Clerk’s Office. It was unsigned, however. He said he would return on Friday, August 14, to sign it. The provision of an unsigned resignation letter to the city clerk might have induced the city clerk to forego placing the item called for at the August 4 meeting relating to the rescission of Wapner’s appointed assignments. City Clerk Sheila Mautz, however, put the item on the August 18 agenda and Wapner on August 14 came into City Hall and affixed his signature to the resignation letter.
In this way, Wapner avoided having the council remove him. This prevented a vote of removal being lodged in the record against him, and has provided him with the ability to say that he voluntarily took leave of his assignments as a gesture of goodwill toward the city, and that he had acted graciously and responsibly to prevent the city being subjected to any doubt or untoward suggestions about the integrity of its decision-makers.
As was planned, Dorst-Porada was appointed to the airport board to replace Wapner. At the specially-called September 1 meeting after the August 27 regular meeting of the board was canceled, the appointment of officers took place. With Hagman absent in accordance with his self-imposed decision to “step away” from any commission or committee activity he would otherwise be involved in as a member of the board of supervisors, the board took up who was to hold the position of airport authority board president and airport authority board vice president. Out of keeping with the way in which Leon, Dorst-Porada and Valencia wanted it to go, the role of president was conferred upon Loveridge. Instead of being appointed president, Dorst-Porada was made vice president.
The three races in this year’s election have now taken their final shape.
Leon is being challenged by Nicolo Lama, a university student; Kevin Kizee, a business owner; and Macias.
In District Two, Valencia is up against Stephanie Martinez, a Wapner protege.
In District Three, Wapner is being challenged by Michael Rios, a software engineer; Larry Trinidad, a registered nurse; and D’Andre Lampkin, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy and businessman.
Leon is no longer gripped by the same sense of urgency he was prior to the FBI raids, and he appears to be cruising toward an easy victory. Polls show Lama in the single digit category percentage-wise, with Kizee and Macias polling in the low double digits. The polls place him near or above 55 percent of the vote. Leon appears intent on doing nothing to offend Kizee, whom he considers to be a possible future ally.
In District Two, Leon and Dorst-Porada are pulling for Valencia, who is shown in polls carrying over two-thirds of the votes Martinez is registering. In recent days and weeks, Martinez’s electioneering material has surfaced. It appears to be cloned from documents and handbills put out by Wapner’s campaign.
It is the contest for District 3 and coming to terms with which of Wapner’s opponents to back which represents the greatest threat of running the only-recently-developed alliance between Leon and Dorst-Porada aground.
While Leon has said he has a favorable impression of Rios and is seeking to maintain a positive relationship with him, he is gravitating toward supporting Lampkin. Others in the community are leery of Lampkin and his association with a number or controversial causes or matters, including a $22,000 unpaid debt his foundation accumulated when leasing a city property, sharp criticisms of the city’s land use policies Lampkin made, despite his status as a member of the planning commission, which was responsible for at least some of those decisions; a recurrent accusation of rape that was lodged against him that was investigated by the Ontario Police Department but never resolved and his modeling and “acting” in soft-porn videos aimed at promoting what has been termed “an alternative lifestyle.” Dorst-Porada is adamantly opposed to Lampkin’s election to the city council. She is supporting Trinidad.
The political disarray in the city is unlikely to resolve until after the election.
There have been previous instances in San Bernardino County of federal and state law enforcement action relating to a public official coming in close temporal proximity to that officials re-elective effort, resulting in his or her in ability to remain in office.
In 1995, two members of the San Bernardino City Council, Valerie Pop-Ludlum and Ralph Hernandez, were defeated in their bids for relection after the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office made no secret of its investigation into allegations of political corruption involving the pair.
In 1996, the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office filed criminal conflict of interest charges against Colton Councilman Abe Beltran in the months leading up to his run for reelection, alleging he had a financial stake in some matters that had come before the city council which he voted on. He was defeated in that election.
In 2007, Tad Honeycutt, who had first been elected to the Hesperia City Council in 2000 and was reeelected in 2004, serving during that time as the city’s appointed mayor, was arrested and charged with 34 counts of embezzlement pertaining to transferring roughly $5.5 million in public taxpayer funds out of the California Charter Academy. Honeycutt opted out of seeking reelection in 2008.
In 2011, investigators with the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office investigated reports about money being filtered into San Bernardino County Supervisor Neil Derry campaign fund and handed that information off to the California Attorney General’s Office, which charged Derry with two felony counts and one misdemeanor for allegedly failing to disclose the source of a campaign contribution. In July 2011 Derry accepted a plea deal in which the two felony charges were dropped in exchange for a guilty plea to the misdemeanor. That conviction was considered to be a major factor in Derry’s defeat for reelection in 2012.
In November 2018, Adelanto Mayor Rich Kerr was soundly defeated for reelection more than five months after the FBI raided his home and office at City Hall in May of that year.

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