Nearly four years into her tenure as San Bernardino mayor, Helen Tran has at last gotten to the place where she and many of those in her support network thought she would be at the time she was installed into the post a little more than a month after her maiden election.
Tran embodies a mixture of attributes, a combination of features that are both highly advantageous to a politician and decidedly negative in terms of sustaining herself in office. For starters on the positive side, her Asian heritage has captured the imagination of the identity politics-oriented Democratic Party, of which she is a member. She is the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants who fled to the United States as refugees.
Tran’s physical attractiveness, impeccable dress and articulateness have brought her to her current juncture and promise to be of service to her propelling her further politically going forward.
A further double advantage has accrued to Tran by virtue of the location of her political base within the Inland Valley of Southern California. She represents the county seat and largest city within the heavily Democratic San Bernardino/Colton/Rialto/Fontana swath of 20,105-square mile San Bernardino County.
The Democrats have already obtained success with Asian female candidates in Northern California and Los Angeles County. She fits perfectly within the party’s appeal-broadening scheme of acclimating the electorate in the Inland Empire, which is accepting of and receptive to African American, Latino and Latina candidates, to being represented by an Asian woman.
For three generations San Bernardino County has been dominated by the Republican Party. Accordingly, the Democrats are intensely interested in flipping the county. Because she has established herself as one of the more important members of the political class within the predominantly blue-collar confines of San Bernardino, Colton, Rialto and Fontana, Democrat Party leaders in Sacramento perceive her as being a potential catalyst in ending San Bernardino County’s status as one of five bastions of the Republican Party in California. At present, 146,851 or 45.94 percent of the 319,640 registered voters in San Bernardino, Colton, Rialto and Fontana are Democrats, while 69,919 or 21.87 percent affiliate with the GOP. The remaining 32.19 percent have no association with an organized political party or are registered as American Independent, Green, Libertarian or Peace & Freedom party members. Within the City of San Bernardino, specifically, 48,868 of the city’s 108,960 voters or 44.8 percent are Democrats, more than twice as many as the 24,189 or 22.2 percent who are Republicans.
In this regard, Tran, in 2022, impressively dethroned her predecessor, Mayor John Valdivia, and made short work of Valdivia’s one-time mentor, Jim Penman, who qualified for the run-off contest against her after doing so.
In the 42-month run-up to his 2022 reelection campaign, Valdivia collected an impressive $854,626.21 into his political war chest. Tran collected $236,135.88 to run against him and defeated him handily in the June 2022 primary race. Penman had been San Bernardino’s city attorney for more than two decades, and more than ten years previously had assisted Valdivia in his first successful run for public office in the 2011 race for city council in San Bernardino’s Third Ward. Penman had broken with Valdivia over the years and was among six candidates, including Tran, challenging Valdivia in 2022. After Tran came in first place but did not capture more than 50 percent in the June 2022 primary, she collected another 368,288.37 to vie against Penman in the November 2022 general election and defeated him.
But just as the contents of her portfolio and persona provide grounds for optimism with respect to her future political viability in terms of what might prove popular with Democratic voters, there are elements of Tran’s personality that undercut and compromise her ability to function adequately in the halls of governance now that she is in office.
One of her shortcomings, particularly with regard to being mayor of San Bernardino, was her learning curve with regard to the extent of the reach and the limitations of the office she holds. In the City of San Bernardino’s charter which was first put into place in 1905, the mayor had greatly attenuated direct political power but extensive administrative authority under what was referred to as a strong mayor model of government. On most issues the city council dealt with, excluding the ratification of hirings and firings of employees and appointments of commissioners and the replacement of deceased or departed council members, the mayor normally had no vote. The mayor was empowered to vote in order to break a tie. Also, the mayor had veto power over votes that ended in a 4-to-3 or 3-to-2 decision. Most significantly, the mayor, under the terms of the 1905 charter, was given substantial power as an administrator at City Hall, with a direct say, equal to the influence of the city manager, in the hiring and termination of city department heads. This made the mayor, if he or she so chose, in a very real way, a type of co-regent of the city, along with the city manager, over whose hiring and firing the mayor had considerable say. Many of San Bernardino’s mayor did not fully exercise the administrative power entrusted to them, instead deferring, for the most part, to the judgment of the city manager. Nevertheless, San Bernardino’s mayors historically made use of the potential to exercise that power to enhance their overall status in the political realm by horsetrading with regard to the actual or threatened implementation of policies in the city’s operations to engage in consensus building among the city’s leadership and to form or hold together a ruling council coalition.
In 2016, in the midst of the administration of then-Mayor Carey Davis, the city formed a charter review committee which reconsidered the 1905 Charter and then suggested several changes in the city’s governance model which were submitted to the voters, who passed them. Those changes included eliminating the elected city attorney, city clerk and city treasurer posts and stripping the mayoral position of its administrative authority. In so doing, the charter did nothing to enhance the mayor’s political reach. It left intact that portion of the 1905 Charter by which the mayor was empowered to vote only to ratify hirings, firings, appointments and replacements and to break a tie. The mayor retained veto power on votes where the passage came by a single vote. Still, the mayor was not eligible to vote on any other routine issues.
John Valdivia, who succeeded Davis as mayor in 2018, initially did not understand the degree to which the 2016 Charter limited the mayor’s power, though he soon found himself having to come to terms with it. His efforts to work around those limitations contributed not wholly but partially to the problems that plagued his administration and led to his demise in 2022.
While the 2016 Charter change did not transition the San Bernardino mayor into a figurehead, it did greatly attenuate the position’s control. Left in place was the mayor’s official status as the head of the city, with the ability to place items on the council agenda for discussion, debate and a vote, the ability, as the presiding officer during city council meetings, to control the ebb and flow of that discussion and debate while controlling who had the floor during public hearings. Remaining as a tool in the mayor’s armoire was veto power.
With the charter change, demanded of Davis, then Valdivia and now Tran and every succeeding San Bernardino Mayor is the ability to network with, if not all of the members of the city council, a majority of them in a way to engage in consensus building and political horsetrading to work toward setting policies that are of tangible benefit to the city’s residents, both collectively and in terms of meeting the special or unique needs of the residents in specific wards, thereby making it possible for the council members to prove responsive to their constituents. This requires of a mayor intelligence, insight, engagement, sensitivity, general understanding and understanding of nuance, patience, time, charm, willingness to compromise, a high threshold for frustration and a myriad of other skills and talents.
Much like her predecessor Valdivia, Tran was lacking across a wide spectrum in these critical areas. Perhaps most shockingly apparent was her seeming distaste in having to deal with or tolerate other politicians.
She did well enough within the context of the bimonthly formal meetings of the city council, where in the capacity of the presiding officer she wielded the gavel and was, ostensibly, in control of the proceedings. Outside that context, however, her engagement was not even half-hearted.
As mayor, like the members of the city council, she was given adjunct governmental assignments, ones that were both internal and external to the city. Those include being appointed as a member of a council subcommittee as well as appointments to serve as the city’s representative on a number of regional governmental and joint powers authority boards, such as those for the League of California Cites, Southern California Associated Governments, the San Bernardino County Transportation Agency, Omnitrans, the Inland Valley Development Agency and the San Bernardino International Airport Authority. Normally, politicians treasure such assignments, as they provide them with an opportunity to not only become intimately acquainted with issues of meaning and import to their constituents but to meet, work with, network with and form friendships or alliances with other politicians, who in the future can be called upon for advice, assistance or support, be that political in the form of endorsements or practical in the form of votes on issues of consequence to the politician’s city or constituents in the context of those regional board assignments. Tran, however, is not gregarious or socially-oriented. At best, she is superficially glib in a crowd but only in short bursts. Rather than utilizing the opportunity her presence at regional board meetings presented her to interact with other elected officials and key government employees, she was frequently observed engaged with her cellphone, either on calls or reading information available on the internet. She would often remain at such meetings until after roll was taken and media photographers left, at which point she would quietly duck out. She seemed curiously uninterested in the minutiae of governance. San Bernardino provides two directors for the board of the San Bernardino International Airport Authority and an alternate director. Since the authority’s creation in reaction to the closure of Norton Air Force Base in the 1990s, its board, until Tran became mayor, included San Bernardino’s mayor. Tran is not interested in participating in shaping the future of what many believe should become the major international gateway into the city. The Inland Valley Development Agency has existed since the 1990s as an intergovernmental entity intended to promote economic growth, job creation, and community revitalization in the region surrounding the former Norton Air Force Base. It has three representatives/directors from San Bernardino on its board and an alternate representative/director from San Bernardino. Tran, unlike the mayors before her, did not participate as an Inland Valley Development Agency board member.
Even before she was out of the starting gate as mayor, Tran stumbled.
Valdivia, like Tran and likely all future mayors, was wrestling with the loss of mayoral authority. His strategy in facing that was to seek to establish through a relationship with the city manager a connection to, if not an outright replication of, the administrative authority that had been the mayor’s in the 1905 Charter. For Valdivia, doing that with the city manager, Andrea Travis-Miller, he had inherited from Davis was a nonstarter. Accordingly, he utilized the dominance of the city council he had in the early going of his tenure as mayor but which he later lost to sack Travis-Miller. He then elevated Travis-Miller’s assistant, Terri Ledoux into the acting city manager role and then installed her as the full-fledged city manager, doing so in a way in which he calculated he would place Ledoux under his thumb, and that she would do his bidding, or at the very least much of his bidding, as city manager, such that Valdivia would be calling most of the shots, including the most important ones, pertaining to city governance.
Ledoux, however, was less than fully accommodating of the mayor, particularly as those to whom she was by the letter of the charter answerable, the city council, one by one had falling outs with Valdivia, giving him less and less control over how the city’s official policy was being shaped through official votes taken in the course of council meetings. In one of his last meaningful acts of control, Valdivia in 2020 was able to hire a city manager essentially of his choosing when Ledoux retired. The city council had deferred to Valdivia in letting him conduct a recruitment and interviewing process for the next city manager. He settled on Robert Field, who had been the economic development director for Riverside County. The city council endorsed Valdivia’s choice and ratified the hiring of Field, who thus came to San Bernardino under the impression that Valdivia was in a far more dominant position within the context of city governance and in relation to the city council than he actually was. Moreover, because Field had never worked in the capacity of a municipal manager previously and was not steeped in the ins and outs of San Bernardino’s changeover from the 1905 Charter to the 2016 Charter, he was not fully cognizant or appreciative of the requirement that city policy had to be ratified first by a vote of the city council and that it could not simply be dictated by the mayor. In this way, believing, despite his presence within closed session meetings of the mayor and council, that Valdivia had majority support on the council, Field took out action in his capacity as city manager that was often dictated to him by Valdivia. It would not be until relatively late in his tenure as city manager when events such as the city council censuring Valdivia brought home to Field the degree to which the San Bernardino scepter had slipped from Valdivia’s grip. Field in the popular perception thus became closely associated with Valdivia and was seen by many as his lapdog.
After Tran’s victory over Penman in November 2022 but before she was sworn in the following month, Field, fearing he would be unable to work well with Tran given the widespread perception that he was merely a creature of Valdivia administration, resigned.
In this way, Tran began as San Bernardino mayor without having any semblance of clear administrative and managerial authority within city government. An attempt to remedy that was made by bringing in former San Bernardino City Manager Charles McNeely to serve as interim city manager while an effort to find a city manager to fill the role on an more permanent basis was carried out. At that point, however, Tran’s seeming inability to work toward assembling a consensus and working collectively without rancor toward a shared goal created problems that perpetuated the lack of cohesiveness. Differences on the council developed over whether to dispense with the city manager search and simply settle on McNeely filling the managerial role. Then the city council misplayed an opportunity to hire Harry Black, the former Cincinnati city manager who at that time was the Stockton city manager and is now the Vallejo city manager. Thereafter, it botched the hiring of Salinas City Manager Steve Carrigan, who accepted the San Bernardino job and then declined it, later suing San Bernardino and obtaining a $800,000 settlement from San Bernardino despite not serving as city manager for a single day. The city then hired Charles Montoya, the city manager of Avondale, Arizona, the former city manager of city manager of Watsonville in California and the town manager of Florence, Arizona as city manager in October 2023. By May of 2024, however, virtually the entire city council had grown disenchanted with Montoya, and he was let go. Replacing him on an interim basis was Rochelle Clayton, whom Montoya had hired the previous month as deputy city manager. Over the next four months, Tran and the seeming entirety of the city council grew appreciative of Clayton’s skills and performance, to the point that in October 2024, there was what appeared to be unanimity on the council and mayor’s part in conferring the position of city manager on her. Just prior to that occurring, however, it emerged that during the summer Clayton had turned down an offer of a $17 million Homekey program grant from the State of California Department of Housing and Community Development to cover the city’s cost in constructing a homeless services facility and did not informed the council, calculating that too many strings were attached to the grant offer. This compromised the willingness of Councilmen Ted Sanchez, Councilman Fred Shorett, Councilwoman Kim Knaus and then-Councilman Damon Alexander to support Clayton, while giving Councilwoman Sandra Ibarra and Councilman Juan Figueroa pause. Tran and both Councilman Ben Reynoso and Councilwoman Kim Calvin remained supportive of Clayton. A battle royale ensued, in which Tran was unable to obtain a crucial fifth vote to hire Clayton. Ultimately, Clayton took an offer from Barstow to become city manager there and San Bernardino in February 2025 filled the city manager’s post on a temporary basis with then-recently retired Brea City Manager Fred Gallardo.
It was not until June 2025 – two years and 6 months after Tran was sworn in as mayor, that San Bernardino reached a state of managerial stability by arranging for Eric Levitt, then the city manager of Fullerton, to become city manager effective on August 4, 2025. Levitt has now been in place for approaching 15 months.
San Bernardino’s lack of managerial expertise or even reliable managerial presence for the better part of the first three years of Tran’s time in office made for a general lack of accomplishment throughout that time as well.
Similarly, Tran was unable at any point to assemble something approaching a ruling coalition among the seven member’s of the council. There was, shortly after she came into office in late 2022 and early 2023, something of a honeymoon while there was a spirit of bonhomie among the council members, virtually all of whom had been at odds with Valdivia and were interested in getting behind Tran as the city struggled to move forward. Differences between Tran and all seven of the council members manifested at one time or another, though Ibarra, Figueroa, Reynoso and Calvin on certain issues came together occasionally to support the mayor. The closest to a coalition forming, though it was not sufficient to prevail, was Tran, Reynoso and Calvin in the effort to install Clayton as city manager.
Tran, in a politically tone deaf move, sought to assist a group of residents who were working toward the recall of both Sanchez and Shorett. Tran was unable to keep her support of the move confidential. The recall efforts did not succeed and Tran’s poorly hidden connivance in them earned her Sanchez’s and Shorett’s enmity.
In the 2024 election, Figueroa was maintained in office but Reynoso was replaced by Kim Knaus, Calvin was upended by Mario Flores and Alexander was ousted in favor of Treasure Ortiz.
Tran was closely affiliated with Flores and gained a council ally through his presence on the panel, but what seemed promising opportunities to form ruling partnerships or affinities with Knaus and Ortiz failed. Had Tran accomplished making meaningful and lasting connections with Knaus and Ortiz, she would have had a reasonable chance at establishing a ruling coalition, perhaps with the addition of Figueroa and, somewhat less likely, Ibarra. Nothing like that even remotely occurred, however.
This year, after eight years in office, both Sanchez and Ibarra were convincingly defeated in the June primary in elections featuring three candidates each, such that neither qualified for the November runoff and will leave the council in December. Shorett managed a second place finish in a four-competitor race, meaning he is standing for re-election for the fourth time since his initial election in 2009. His opponent, Joe Salas, is being supported by Tran. In the 1st Ward, former Councilwoman Virginia Marquez, based on the June results, appears headed for victory in November. Tran is supporting Marquez in the runoff against Ron Alvarado.
In the Second Ward, Tran has actively supported Benito Barrios, including canvassing with him and transferring funds from her political campaign account to assist his election effort. Barrios is opposed by Christian Shaughnessy. Whether Barrios can prevail against Shaughnessy is an open question. Barrios shares Tran’s governmental philosophy and he is in favor of a strong-mayor form of government, closely aligning with Tran’s political agenda and administration goals during her second term. If he makes it into office, there is a possibility that the city will revisit the charter structure, a move which might strengthen Tran’s resume in years going forward.
Tran was handily reelected in this year’s June primary, receiving 54.65 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff against any of the five candidates who opposed her, including Valdivia, who finished last with 6.06 percent.
Her victory is seen by some, anyway, as a vindication of the Democrats commitment to her as a standard bearer for their party, a future candidate for the county board of supervisors, or California Assembly, the State Senate or perhaps Congress.
It appears that Tran will, at the least, begin her second term in office under the condition she should have started her first term in office, with a city manager and staff hierarchy in place. In the best case scenario from Tran’s standpoint, with Marquez, Barrios and Salas emerging victorious in November, she will have at least four of the seven council members – Marquez, Barrios, Salas and Flores – most definitely in her corner and the potential that both Figueroa and Knaus will, out of practical political necessity, support her agenda in a bid to get support for the items they are championing.
This week, almost two weeks prior to the November 3 election and nearly two months before the next city council will be installed with the December swearing-in ceremonies, came one of the first tangible indications that Mayor Tran has acceded to control of the council which has eluded her for nearly four years.
Before she was mayor, Helen Tran was the human resources director of West Covina, where she was provided with a $139,122 in base salary, $13,547 in perquisites and pay add-ons, and $128,053 in overall benefits for a total annual compensation of $280,722.
To take on the San Bernardino mayoral assignment, she left the post she had in West Covina.
In San Bernardino County, as in most of California, elected municipal officials are, for the most part, not provided with salaries, but rather stipends, as their political duties are not considered full time jobs. There are some exceptions among larger cities, such as Los Angeles or San Francisco. In the years just prior to Tran becoming mayor, within San Bernardino County, the municipal elected official receiving the largest stipend was her predecessor, Valdivia, who in addition to a stipend of $116,788 was provided with perquisites and add-ons of $9,019 and benefits of $25,090 for a total annual compensation of $150,897. In January 2022, however, as the relationship between five of the seven members of the council and Valdivia was deteriorating, the council moved to reduce the mayor’s salary at the beginning of the mayor’s next electoral cycle, in December 2022, to $50,000. With benefits and pay add-ons, that put the mayor’s total annual compensation at around $93,000.
Thus, in taking on the mayor’s job, Tran saw her total annual compensation drop from the roughly $280,000 she was making in West Covina to roughly one third of that.
In recent years, Tran has herself suggested she is a bit on the undercompensated side.
At present, Tran is being provided with a $48,654 stipend, another 8,769 in pay add-ons and perquisites, mostly for attending adjunct governmental board meetings and $37,695 in benefits for a total annual compensation in her role as mayor of $95,118.
This summer, the San Bernardino Elected Official Compensation Advisory Commission took up the issue of potentially raising the mayor’s salary and on September 29 offered the suggestion that the mayor’s salary to 50 percent of the $244,000 paid to a San Bernardino County Superior Court judge.
Looking ahead to the political scenario in the county seat that is likely to come about after the current election, the city council on Wednesday took up the matter of the mayor’s compensation.
Councilman Juan Figueroa said in calculating a salary for the mayor that would be fair, the city should start with San Bernardino’s median household income of $67,415 and add to that three percent of a judge’s salary times 7, which is equal to the number of council members. Thus, $67,415 plus $51,240 would make for a mayoral base salary/stipend of $118,655. Added to that would have been add-ons of roughly $9,000 and benefits of around $25,000 for a total annual compensation of $152,655. Figueroa also suggest that the individual council members should get half of the median household income of San Bernardino residents – $33,707.50 – because they are part time legislators and that they get an addition 3 percent of the amount a superior court judge is paid, $7,320, for a stipend of $41,027.50.
Tran reiterated her belief that subjecting her to the pay reduction the position was given because of the former city council’s beef with Valdivia was “unjust.”
Some residents, while not disputing that Tran was indeed not being fairly compensated, complained that $122,000 was an overcompensation in which 225,000 population San Bernardino County was being compared to 990,000-population San Jose and San Diego with its 1.4 million inhabitants. The mayor of 345,000 Anaheim received a mere $18,000, making the $122,000 suggested for Tran seem unreasonable, some said.
At one point, Shorett indicated that $50,000, equal to the stipend paid to comparatively-sized Fontana was closer to what he envisaged.
Councilman Ted Sanchez proposed a compromise of doubling the $43,000 paid to members of the city council, such that the mayor would receive a base stipend of $86,000.
On a 6-to-1 vote, with Councilwoman Ortiz dissenting, the full council agreed to set the mayor’s annual base salary as of December at $86,500, an increase of more than 70 percent from the current $48,654. In addition, the council threw in a $725 car allowance. In total, with salary and pay add-ons/perquisites together at around $95,000 and benefits of $38,000, she is receiving just about $133,000 in total compensation.
The change gives Tran staying power to remain as mayor for another four years and use her status as the first and only woman of Vietnamese extraction to serve as the mayor of a major American city as a major plank in her platform to seek even higher office.
Winning an election and actually governing are two different things, of course, and it is now incumbent upon the incumbent mayor to accrue a record of actual accomplishment to complement the faith her party and the people of San Bernardino have shown in her.