San Bernardino City Councilwoman Treasure Ortiz, who for two years has eclipsed all others as the county’s most successful practitioner of antagonistic politics, was censured by her council colleagues
In drawing the rebuke, Ortiz joins what is now a rarefied three-member club of the county seat’s most accomplished municipal politicians who managed within the last five years to be reproved by those entrusted with the keys to the city. That troika consists of Ortiz and , ironically, both her most dire political rival – former Mayor John Valdivia – as well as her closest political ally – former Councilwoman Kimberly Calvin.
The city council’s action targeting Ortiz provoked an intensive, indeed virulent, reaction against it by not just a substantial number of her constituents in the city’s Seventh Ward but among a significant number of residents living in all six of the wards which elected the council members who participated in the vote against her.
[Revealed] in the contretemps which has grown to entangle not just Ortiz and her colleagues on the council, are the mayor, the police chief, the current and former heads of San Bernardino’s police union, the police department itself, District Attorney Jason Anderson, Deputy District Attorney Calor DiCesare and the district attorney’s itself is a wide cultural divide which has brought into question the motivation and credibility of a host of institutions and that of virtually everyone involved on both sides – including Ortiz and her support network along with those who are now so intent on seeing her banished from public life and influence. The go-to characterization utilized by either camp has been corruption, which has brought with it the danger of a wider set of revelations driving a stake into the heart of the legitimacy of local authority.
Ortiz’s ambition and her means of fulfilling it extends back more than seven years. Two of the incidents upon which her detractors now base the attacks on her character predated that first show of political interest by a decade in one case and three years in another.
In November 2018, then-Third District County Supervisor James Ramos was elected to the California Assembly. His acceptance of the legislative post in Sacramento necessitated his resignation as supervisor two years prior to the end of the four-year term as supervisor to which he had been reelected in 2016. Rather than hold an election to fill that vacancy, the remaining four members of the board of supervisors called for the submission of applications from Third District residents/registered voters interested in stepping into the post Ramos had left. That resulted in 48 residents coming forward and the board determining, based upon the responses made to a questionnaire accompanying the applications along with their curricula vitae and/or resumes that 43 would be extended an opportunity to make a case before the board for their appointment. Among those applying were for four residents or one-time residents of San Bernardino, including then-outgoing Mayor Carey Davis, former Third Ward Councilman Tobin Brinker, former Third Ward Councilman Neil Derry and Ortiz. Ultimately, after considering those oral presentations and winnowing the field to 14, which included Davis and Brinker, the board chose former Yucca Valley Councilwoman Dawn Rowe who was at that time a field representative to then-Congressman Paul Cook, to succeed Ramos.
Undaunted by the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors having elected to bypass her for elevation to Third District supervisor, Ortiz next set her sights on the Third Ward Council position in the City of San Bernardino. In the same November 2018 election in which voters in what was then the 40th Assembly District sent Ramos to Sacramento, John Valdivia, who was then San Bernardino’s Third Ward councilman, defeated incumbent Carey Davis in that year’s race for San Bernardino mayor. As had been the case with Ramos, Valdivia was obliged to resign from the post he had held prior to moving into the more-elevated post he had just been elected to. This left San Bernardino’s Third Ward council position vacant. After Valdivia’s assumption of the mayoralty, the San Bernardino City Council voted to fill the gap on the council by holding a special election in the Third Ward in May 2019.
Jumping into that race were Ortiz; Valdivia’s hand-picked choice for the position, Juan Figueroa, and Anthony Aguire.
Ortiz had previously worked for the city in the capacity of a human resources technician and human resources and an analyst in the human resources department in in 2014, 2015 and 2016 before moving to a similar posiiton with the City of Rellands and then ultimately to the City of Lynwood, where she served as director of human resources and risk management. She therefore brought to the table more information than that gleaned from being a city resident.
Ortiz went immediately into campaign mode, promoting herself while at the same time tearing into Figueroa, who was perceived by most political observers and prognosticators to have an inside track in the race, given that he was being endorsed by Valdivia, the most recent holder of the Third Ward spot as well as the city’s mayor. Ortiz proved highly aggressive in her electioneering effort. Figueroa’s very obvious link to Valdivia proved fecund grounds for her attacks. She repeatedly cited the Figueroa-Valdivia connection as a reason to not allow Figueroa into office, maintaining Figueroa would rubberstamp virtually everything that Valdivia wanted to carry out. Prior to his election as mayor, based upon his voting record and other actions while he was Third Ward councilman, Valdivia had earned a pointedly pay-for-play reputation as a politician, faithfully supporting the provision of city contracts and the extension of city franchises to and the approval of project applications by those who were willing to make substantial donations to his political war chest. In the interim between his election as mayor and swearing-in to that position, evidence and other indications emerged of his ties to multiple bootleg marijuana operations that had cropped up all over the city during the city’s commercial cannabis prohibition era and then the initial stages of its licensing of a limited number of such enterprises following the 2016 passage of Measure O by the city’s voters allowing the regulation and licensing of marijuana businesses under a specified zoning code. While city officials would ultimately make a determination that the city would allow 17 cannabis-related retail and one distribution operations within the city under a strict selective protocol, reports abounded of Valdivia making multiple commitments and promises of licenses and permits to would-be commercial cannabis entrepreneurs in exchange for both campaign contributions and cash. Reports of those arrangements became legion when those who had been promised fast-track approvals learned in dealing with the city’s community development division that their projects had been denied altogether or that the vetting, licensing, permitting and approval process for their proposals were on hold or being processed at a glacial pace, and that the mayor’s assurances were completely inconsequential and irrelevant to to the actual entitlement procedure. On occasion, those attempting to obtain licensing to operate a marijuana dispensary or store in San Bernardino related instances of Figueroa accompanying Valdivia to meetings with project applicants in which the mayor confidently assured his interlocutor that he had adequate city council votes to dictate which projects would be given go-ahead and which ones would not.
Word was emerging as well of late night meetings in which paper bags stuffed with cash were being handed over to the mayor.
In the midst of this, barely three months into his tenure as mayor, it was becoming clear that five of the seven votes on the council that he could count on when he became mayor in December 2018 were no longer safely in his command and that at least one of those five council members could not be counted upon to support his initiatives and that another two members of the council were chaffing at being instructed by him on how they should vote.
Ortiz did not hold back in making use of the material that was readily coming her way during the run-up to the special May 2019 Third Ward election. Indeed, in analyzing her campaign, the upshot divided roughly into one-third being a promotion of herself and her candidacy, one-third was an attack on Figueroa and his candidacy and a third was taking major issue with the Valdivia Administration.
Despite Ortiz’s efforts, Figueroa prevailed in the contest with 69.29 percent of the vote. Ortiz polled 27.12 percent, while Aguirre was endorsed by 4.59 percent of the ward’s voters.
None of the elements of Ortiz’s approach to politics, particularly, was endearing her to the San Bernardino establishment or the city’s employees, including those who had been Ortiz’s colleagues when she was working for the city. Municipal workers or those involved in government generally prefer clear lines of authority and do not find it in their personal interest to be perceived by either those at the senior levels of administration/management or their political masters to be questioning, dissenting with regard to or deviating from official policy. And while a handful of or even more city employees were in agreement with Ortiz or at least empathetic toward her point of view, they could not be seen as being openly in league with her.
2020 would prove a landmark for those in San Bernardino County engaged in antagonistic politics.
At that time, the undisputed queen of the imperfect art of political confrontation was Victorville City Councilwoman Blanca Gomez. Having first been elected to the city council in that desert city in 2016, she accomplished within three months of her installation in office totally alienating all four of her council colleagues. An unabashed liberal at the furthest leftward extreme of the Democratic Party, Gomez attempted to bypass the construction of a consensus with regard to those policies she was advocating, essentially ignoring protocol and parliamentary procedure and enraging Mayor Gloria Garcia in the process. Intent on pursuing a host of what she considered reforms of governance, many of which fell outside the purview of municipal or local government and which were traditionally handled at the regional, state and national level, Gomez engaged in a host of provocative acts, extending to draping herself in a Mexican flag, which offended the other members of the council – Garcia, Eric Negrete, Jim Cox and Jim Kennedy, all of whom were at that time Republicans. Gomez engaged in bashing of the white or what she called Anglo population, white males in particular, whom she frequently characterized as racist. Despite those attacks being mainly applicable to Cox and Kennedy, it was Garcia and Negrete who were most pointedly and potently at odds with Gomez. That enmity endured throughout the virtual entirety of Gomez’s first term in office.
In 2018, Kennedy opted out of running for reelection in that year’s municipal race. Negrete ran a close third in a field of 11 candidates, but failed to gain reelection in a contest in which a Republican, Debra Jones, came out on top, and Rita Ramirez, a Democrat captured second place.
That composition on the council set up the historic events of two years later, when Cox, who had previously been Victorville’s city manager from 1969 to 1999, like Kennedy before him chose not to run for reelection. In the 2020 Victorville Municipal Election involving 22 candidates, Gomez was reelected and Garcia was defeated. Replacing Cox and Garcia on the panel were Liz Becerra, a Republican, and Leslie Irving, a Democrat.
For the first time since its incorporation in 1962, Victorville had a city council wherein a majority of its members were Democrats. As significantly, all of its members were women, an historic first for Victorville.
Of two election cycles changing out all of the members of the council who were aligned with the opposite party while managing to replace two of those with members of her own party. While what had occurred could not be attributed to Gomez’s political skill or strategic finesse, what had taken place was virtually unparalleled in San Bernardino County history. What would ensue was equally remarkable.
Of note is that Gomez had achieved a significant breakthrough. While political entities who embody opposition to the establishment have occasionally been able to gain election and get into office with various jurisdictions in San Bernardino, it has been extremely rare, nigh unto never, where political contrarians have been able to capture a controlling majority of the decision-making panel of a local government. What Gomez had achieved consisted of not only remaining in place as an elected official into a second term on a city council that had been composed of members of the opposite political party, all of whom were intensely hostile toward her, but over the course of two election cycles changing out all of the members of the council who were aligned with the opposite party while managing to replace two of those with members of her own party. While what had occurred could not be attributed to Gomez’s political skill or strategic finesse, what had taken place was virtually unparalleled in San Bernardino County history. What would ensue was equally remarkable.
The month following the November 2020 election, the reelected and newly-elected members of the city council were installed. At that point, barely four years after she was first elected, Blanca Gomez found herself the dean of the Victorville City Council, a panel which was now composed of a 3-2 Democrat-to-Republican majority.
Victorville, like nine other of San Bernardino County’s cities and towns, does not directly elect its mayor. Instead, the choice of who should be provided that honorific is left up to the city council, which like those other nine cities, select from among its members who will wield the mayoral gavel for a term of one and sometimes two years. In Victorville, as is largely the tradition in other San Bernardino County municipalities where the mayor is not elected by the citizenry, the council makes a practice of rotating the mayoralty to that person with the most seniority on the council who has not yet served in the mayor’s spot. Thus, per the longstanding protocol, Gomez was on a trajectory to become mayor. There was some intensive backroom maneuvering that took place prior to the December 8, 2020 meeting at which Cox and Garcia were to formally depart and Irving and Becerra would replace them upon being sworn into office together with Gomez for the following four years
When the newly composed council met on Tuesday, not as is the case traditionally in the council chamber at City Hall but by means of an electronic hook-up as a precaution in the face of the worsening coronavirus pandemic, Gomez was locked out of the meeting and could not participate. Thus, when the council took on the task of appointing council officers, including mayor and mayor pro tem, Gomez did not take part in the nomination process nor in the vote. The upshot was that Jones was selected as mayor and Ramirez was designated as mayor pro tem.
One report had it that city staff, which was responsible for the arrangements for the electronic forum for the council meeting, purposefully prevented Gomez from connecting from her remote location to the software program that conducted the meeting. Reports were that inducements had been provided to both Ramirez, in the form of being installed as the mayor pro tem, essentially vice mayor, and to Irving, in the form of commitments with regard to future council actions. In February 2021 Irving, who was previously active in the Democratic Party, with much fanfare abruptly resigned from the San Bernardino County Democratic Central Committee, characterizing it as a racist organization in doing so.
The upshot was that Gomez was denied elevation to the mayor’s post, which effectively deprived her of a platform from which to propound her contrarian and antagonistic political approach.
Having attenuated somewhat the alliance among Gomez, Ramirez and Irving, the establishment forces in March 2021 foreclosed entirely any possibility of a council majority coalescing around Gomez, with a move originating with Jones and Becerra and sponsored by Becerra to remove Ramirez from the council Ramirez, who had injured her foot in a fall in December 2019, was hospitalized thereafter, whereupon an infection resulted in three amputations, first of several toes on her left foot, thereafter her foot and then the lower portion of her leg. With the advent of the COVID pandemic, her son had insisted upon removing her to the family home in Twentynine Palms to ensure her isolation and recovery. Initially, the City of Victorville had facilitated her continuing participation in the council proceedings by delivering her the agenda and accompanying materials for the council meetings to the residence in Twentynine Palms and by allowing her to participate in the remotely held meetings through videoconferencing, which was the same arrangement made for the other members of the city council. On March 2, 2021, the council voted 3-to-2, with Gomez and Ramirez dissenting to remove her from office as a consequence of her alleged lack of residency in Victorville and concerns over her continued absence from the city and the potential impact on the reprsentation of her constitituents. The council then deferred replacing Ramirez until the 2022 election. This created a situation whereby the concerted votes of Jones and Becerra prevented any possible passage of an item proposed by Gomez.
Present at the July 20, 2021 Victorville City Council meeting were the members of the city council, representatives of city staff, members of the sheriff’s office in place to preserve order and members of the public, including Daniel Robert Rodriguez, Gomez’s husband, and Gene Jones, Mayor Jones’s husband. Both Rodriguez and Gene Jones were using their cell phone to video the council’s action and interaction with the public. When Mayor Jones demanded that Rodriguez desist in his videotaping without issuing a similar order to her husband and deputies approached Rodriguez to enforce the mayor’s order, Gomez came out of her chair behind the dais and went into the gallery. A tussle between Rodriguez and Gomez on one end and the deputies on the other ensued, with Rodriguez and Gomez being arrested.
Ultimately, Rodriguez was convicted of disturbing the peace and interrupting a public meeting at his trial held in December 2021. The matter with regard to Gomez was delayed continually until it at last went to trial in October 2024, less than a month before she was to stand for reelection. In those proceedings, she was charged with disturbing a public assembly, a count of conspiring to create a public disturbance and two counts of resisting arrest. She was convicted on all but the conspiracy charge. In the 2024 election, the selection of Victorville’s council members had been transitioned into by-district contests rather than at-large elections of council members as had been done previously, essentially as a consequence of legal action initiated by Gomez. In the November 2024 contest, Gomez found herself up against Becerra, a well-funded Republican. The combination of an intensive campaign promoting Becerra, an equally intensive if not even more intense campaign attacking Gomez and the publicity relating to her conviction resulted in Gomez being decisively voted out of office.
In recent years, a smattering of candidates have enjoyed marginal success through the use of antagonistic tactics against entrenched political forces. In 1994 Diana Carloni Nourse was elected to the Hesperia City Council. The following month, her council colleagues elevated her to the mayor’s post. She retained that honorific for a year, during which she became more and more alienated from her colleagues on the council. While serving on the council, Carloni-Nourse developed a pattern, one which distinguishes her from virtually every other elected official wh has held office in San Bernardino County, of automatically voting against approving the consent calendar placed on the city council agenda. The consent calendar typically consists of items deemed by city administration to be non-controversial items, ofen involving routine municipal business, which are grouped together to be approved in a single vote. Carloni-Nourse, who had grown distrustful of both her council colleagues and the municipal officials entrusted to run the city on a day-to-day basis, refused to vote to approve the consent calendars presented to her out of the belief that items that were contrary to the public interest masked as benign might be hidden them. Carloni-Nourse was returned to office by Hesperia’s voters in 1998, even as her relationship with the other members fo the council were deteriorating. In 2000, after her colleagues voted to hire Robb Quincey as city manager, Carloni-Nourse grew derisively critical of what she perceived as his intent to sell rights to the city ‘s water and its entire water system to an outside private entity. The his antagonized her colleagues further, though the depth and intensity of her resistance to the water sale is today credited as the primary reason such a sale did not take place. In 2002, Carloni-Nourse, who was a practicing attorney opted out of seeking reelection.
In 2012, Paul Vincent Avila was elected to the Ontario City Council. It was immediately apparent that Avila was not going to get, even minimally with the program. Indeed, his presence on the council resulted in a rapprochement between Mayor Paul Leon and two of the council members with whom he had had differences over the years, Alan Wapner and Jim Bowman, over the years. Avila’s hostility and open show of disrespect toward Wapner, whom he referred to as “old camel gut,” and his derision of Leon, whom he called Wapner’s “puppet,” so disconcerted the remaining members of the council and city staff that on occasion, council proceedings were suspended and action delayed.
In 2016, Leon, Wapner and the rest of the council were relieved when Avila’s quest for reelection was thwarted with the election of Ruben Valencia in his place. In relatively short order, however, Valencia emerged as a more sophisticated, articulate, refined and thereby effective foe than Avila had been. Valencia had been critical of Wapner in his previously unsuccessful runs for city council, but after being elected, voted in lockstep with Leon and the other three council members on upwards of 97 percent of the items that came before them in their capacity as the city’s leaders. Valencia was, however, selectively critical of and resistant with regard to certain city policies and specific matters of import to the city, raising issues and questions during council meetings that proved complicating, problematic or outright irritating to city staff, the council in general and, in particular, to Leon as mayor, who wanted to duck as much controversy as possible. Valencia was reelected in 2020, and his continuing presence on the council extended Leon’s artificial alliance with Wapner and Bowman. Though arguably a case might be made that the Leon/Wapner/Bowman troika were as antagonistic toward Valencia as he was toward them, Valencia deepened the enmity with Leon by running against him for mayor in 2022. Valencia was unsuccessful in that effort. Valencia was outmaneuvered by his council colleagues, who deprived him of his advantage of incumbency by adopting a gerrymandered electoral map that went into effect in 2024, when the city made a transition from what had previously been at-large council elections to by-district voting. That map placed him in one of the city’s voting districts sequenced for its initial election in 2026. Since the term on the council Valencia was reelected to in 2020 came to an end in 2024, he was by default displaced from the council.
In 2016, Janice Elliott was elected to the Upland City Council. By early 2017, she had antagonized, although not purposefully so, Mayor Debbie Stone and council members Syd Robinson, Carol Timm and Gino Fillipi when she persistently questioned the wisdom of closing out the city’s 111-year-old municipal fire department in favor of contracting with the county fire department for fire protection service and emergency medical response and then casting the lone vote against doing so.
There ensued a series of attacks on Elliott by the mayor and other members of the council, which chastened her from being frank and open with regard to city policy decisions and she voted in accordance with the mayor and council in an effort to go along and get along with them. On a few noteworthy issues, however, Elliott was unable to suppress her differences and made statements that were out of keeping with the collective sentiment of the mayor and council.
As 2017 transitioned to 2018, the city council, in cooperation with then-City Manager Martin Thouvenell connived to attenuate Elliott’s political career and her influence over public affairs in the City of Gracious Living. Largely on the basis of Elliott’s resistance to the county fire takeover, the ruling council majority voted to censure Elliott. The resolution of censure said she had “engaged in conduct which has brought embarrassment and discredit to the city council and improperly publicly disclosed confidential documents and information” and that she had “breached the trust and confidence of the other city council members through public disclosures of confidential and privileged council communications.” Furthermore, according to the resolution, Elliot “improperly exceeded the scope of her authority and duties as a council member by interfering with city staff and management in daily personnel and operational matters and improperly and secretly engaged in communications and settlement negotiations with litigants suing the city without having the advance knowledge or consent of the city, potentially disclosing or prejudicing the city’s litigation confidentiality and strategy.” The resolution also dwelt upon Elliott’s participation on social media sites, in which she had engaged in indecorous criticisms of the council and its actions. The council then passed the resolution of censure.
Even as the resolution of censure was being prepared, Thouvenell and the remainder of the council were strategizing toward banishing Elliott from City Hall. That year, Upland was making a transition from at-large voting for its four council members in which all of the city’s voters participating in voting for all four members to by-district voting, which was to divide the city into four voting districts such that the voters in each district would be limited to voting for a resident of that particular district as their representative and would be excluded from voting with regard to the council representatives of the other three districts. Elliot had first been elected in 2016, such that the term in office she had been elected to was to run until 2020. The map drawn up for the council’s approval essentially divided the city into four quadrants – northwest, north east, southwest and southeast, respectively the first, second, third and fourth districts. The council then sequenced the elections such that the mayoral and the District l council posts were voted upon during presidential election years and the districts 2, 3 & 4 were voted on in gubernatorial election years. In this way, Elliott, a resident of District 2, would be eligible to run for election to the newly created post later that year, in the November 2018 election. The council term she had been elected to in 2016 and which she was then in the midst of did not end until 2020. In 2020, however, the only position on the council Elliott was eligible to fill – that representing the Second District, would not be up for election. Thus, Thouvenell, Fillipi, Timm, Robinson and Stone were hoping, Elliott would not fully take stock of the situation, contentedly continuing to serve in the at-large council position she was elected to in 2016 and not seek election to the Second District post that fall. As it turned out, however, Elliott fully understood that the timing of the election but her tenure in office beyond 2020 in peril, and she declared her candidacy in the November 2018 election. In that election cycle, Robinson did not seek reelection and both Timm and Fillipi lost, while Elliott emerged victorious.
By 2020, game plans – indeed whole playbooks – had been derived and passed around by members of the political establishment for dealing with practitioners of antagonistic politics. That year, Figueroa was due to stand for reelection, as his abbreviated term representing Ward 3 was drawing to a close. Ortiz did not vie against him because she could not. She was pursuing a doctorate in public administration at California State University San Bernardino and had moved closer to the campus, putting her in the Seventh Ward. Ortiz had no particularly beef with then-Seventh Ward Councilman Jim Mulvihill, who, in addition to being a professor at CSUSB, was one of Valdivia’s two most strident foes on the city council. Though she was not personally involved in a race for electoral office, Ortiz remained in the thick of things politically, attending council meetings where she engaged in trenchant and sharp-tongued criticisms of Valdivia.
Meanwhile, Valdivia was experiencing multiple other challenges, including lawsuits filed by five former employees within the mayoral office, including his one-time chief of staff, Matt Brown. In those lawsuits, constituent service representative Mirna Cisneros, office assistant Karen Cervantes and legislative aide Jackie Aboud alleged Valdivia had subjected them to unwanted sexual advances, innuendo and crude remarks, that he sought to press them into compromising circumstances, plied one of them with gin and tonics in an effort have him go to bed with him, that he insisted that they perform tasks outside their job assignments, forced them to comply with the demands of Valdivia’s political supporters in terms of actuating city policy while he simultaneously insisted that city services be withheld from constituents he shared with council members with whom he did not get along, and that he them in or acknowledged to them his skirting of the law pertaining to the use of public funds as well as his violation of the reporting requirements imposed on public officials relating to the reception of donations, money or services. Another mayor’s office employee, Field Representative Don Smith, related that Valdivia had pressure him to perform tasks that were not part of his job description and that he had witnessed Valdivia on one occasion being provided with a bribe made in exchange for ensuring companies that were already city franchise holders did not lose those franchises. Brown alleged that while he was serving as Valdivia’s chief of staff, Valdivia pressured him to falsify performance reviews of Cisneros, Aboud, Cervantes and Smith in order to, variously, justify the termination of Aboud and Smith or discredit the accusations against him made by Cisneros and Cervantes.
In the outpouring of negative publicity surrounding the mayor were reports of quid-pro-quos which involved money going to the Mayor or his consulting company, Aadvantage Communications, in exchange for the facilitation of city action favorable to those who were providing the money. Other reports surfaced with regard to Valdivia and a team of two, three or four men, all snazzily attired in business suits, approaching business owners or operators in the city, encouraging them to make donations to Valdivia’s electioneering fund or to otherwise make a show of support while offering them the support of the city government in their endeavors if they complied and threatening them with enforcement or regulatory action if they did not.
In December 2021, the San Bernardino City Council, in reaction to a host of reports and complaints with regard to Valdivia’s comportment in office, extending to seeking to utilize that year’s state of the city address as a fundraising forum for his upcoming reelection effort, unanimously voted to approve a resolution of censure against him. Of note, Valdivia’s longtime council ally, Juan Figueroa, participated in voting for the censure. l
In 2022, six challengers against Valdivia surfaced, including Ortiz: former City Attorney James Penman, who was once a political mentor and primary supporter of Valdivia but felt he needed to ensure Valdivia’s removal from office to undo the damage his earlier support of Valdivia had done to his reputation and legacy; former Ward 5 Councilman Henry Nickel, likewise a one-time Valdivia supporter who had a falling out with him during his mayoralty; and Helen Tran, who had been the city’s human resources director when Valdivia was elected but who had found it propitious to resign and take a similar position with the City of West Covina after Cisneros, Cervantes, Aboud, and Smith came forward to lodge what eventually became official claims for damages with regard to Valdivia’s behavior toward them, placing her in what she considered to be an untenable position.
Having by that point achieved her doctorate, Ortiz was making use of her Dr. title. This provoked Valdivia, who expressed skepticism with regard to the validity of her academic achievement, and he revived previous criticism he had made about the quality of the academic programs at Cal State San Bernardino.
In the June 2022 primary, despite Valdivia having a political war chest that totaled more than twice as much money as his six rivals combined, he placed a distant third in the vote tally, behind Tran, with 41.65 percent and Penman, who received 20 percent of the vote. Valdivia’s 16.92 percent was not far ahead of Ortiz’s 13.53 percent, which garnered her fourth place.
In the November 2022 run-off between Tran and Penman, as the qualifiers given that they were the top two finishers in June, Tran prevailed.
By mid-2023, Ortiz was leaning hard toward making another political run, this time to represent San Bernardino’s Seventh Ward on the city council, in 2024, which would require that she challenge incumbent Damon Alexander, who had beaten Jim Mulvihill in the November 2020 election. She began making preparations for doing so, which alerted a fair number of those involved, interested or entangled in local politics by that September.
Also intent on challenging Alexander in the 2004 Ward 7 race was Penman.
Penman had been San Bernardino’s elected city attorney from 1987 until 2013 and had consequently developed a close relationship with the city’s public employees’ unions, in particular the San Benardino Police Officers Association. The SBPOA had endorsed Penman in his unsuccessful mayoral campaigns against Patrick Morris in 2005 and 2009 and against Tran in 2022. Even before it was determined who was to be among the field of candidates in the Seventh Ward, and despite Alexander being a retired federal law enforcement agent, a consensus had formed among the members of the San Bernardino Police Officers Association and the San Bernardino Police Officers Management Association to support Jim Penman in his run for the 7th Ward post. In an effort to derail Ortiz’s candidacy, the union utilized a data base at the police department’s disposal – the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System – to retrieve information pertaining to a 9-1-1 call for assistance reporting domestic abuse in progress she had made in 2006, when she was 23 years old and living in Big Bear. The San Bernardino Police Officers Association, the union representing police officers below the command level, on October 25, 2023 sent a survey to 7th Ward residents seeking to determine if the consideration that Ortiz “has been arrested for domestic violence and was terminated from employment” would impact whom they would support in the 7th Ward race.
The “survey” sent out by the SBCPOA was not an actual or sincere effort to gauge the level of support for the prospective candidates in the 7th Ward race but rather a common electioneering device known as a “push poll.” A push poll, which exists in the form of a questionnaire or set of questions, utilizes a pretensive basis compendium of bases to set up the questions in the poll, which may or may not be factual. The supposed “facts” forming the bases for the questions are in most cases unflattering to the candidate or potential candidate being targeted in the push poll. It poses questions ostensibly seeking to determine if the voter will support the candidate if the unflattering facts – such as the candidate’s criminal record, bankruptcy, illegitimate children, dishonorable discharge from the military, drug addiction – were known to the voter. The intent is to inform the voter or leave an impression with the voter that the candidate in question is indeed a reprobate undeserving of holding political office. The wording of the questionnaire is such that it does not actually state unequivocally that what the voter is being asked to consider about the candidate is actually true, insofar as the question posed is a hypothetical beginning with “if.” The October 25, 2023 San Bernardino Police Officers Association survey’s insinuation was that Ortiz had been fired or that she had been arrested for domestic violence. Ortiz maintains that neither of the implied accusations are true. The disingenuous implying that she had been arrested for domestic violence, according to Ortiz, was based on the 2006 distress phone call she made in which she was the victim and not the aggressor. The information pertaining to that call, she contends, was illegally obtained by the police union.
It is Ortiz’s contention that neither insinuation contained in the survey – that she had been fired or that she had been arrested for domestic violence – was true. The disingenuous implying that she had been arrested for domestic violence, according to Ortiz, was based on the 2006 distress phone call, which was illegally obtained by the police union.
The California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, known by its acronym, CLETS, and JDIC, the Justice Data Interface Controller maintained by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the Central Name Index, maintained by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, NCIC, the National Crime Information Center maintained by the FBI and NLETS, the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System maintained by a consortium of law enforcement agencies in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories are database and information retrieval systems available to law enforcement agencies that are interlinked and intended to provide information relating to actual or suspected criminal activities, crime reports, incident reports, suspects, arrestees, those convicted of crimes, victims and witnesses. Use of and access to the system is supposed to be limited to law enforcement agencies and their officers who are engaged in legitimate law enforcement activity and investigations.
It is Ortiz’s contention that the police union acted improperly and illicitly in accessing the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System and applying that information in a falsified context to derive the October 2023 “survey,” which was a poorly-disguised political attack piece targeting her.
She met with Penmen on November 8, 2023, at which time, she maintains, Penman endeavored to persuade her to drop out of the contest against Alexander, telling her that the San Bernardino Police Officers Association was planning to carry out a relentless attack on her if she remained as a candidate.
In 2024, after Alexander had finished in third in the primary election and while she and Penmen were vying against one another in the November run-off, according to Ortiz, she addressed her concerns that the department was engaging in impermissible political activity to Police Chief Darren Goodman, who initially was unable to find any indication of the department conducting a CLETS search relating to Ortiz. On August 8, 2024, less than three months before the election, Goodman contacted Ortiz, informing her he had found evidence that the department/police union had indeed run a search on her through the CLETS system, that the use of the law enforcement data base relating to her had occurred in 2020, and he identified Detective Steve Desrochers, who had been the president of the San Bernardino Police Officers Association from 2016 until 2018 and had also served in the capacity of union vice president, as the individual officer with the department who had accessed the CLETS database in retrieving her file. Goodman informed her there was going to be a criminal case put together against Desrochers, based on his illegal use of the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System.
Six days later, late in the morning on August 14, 2024, there were text communications between Ortiz and Goodman, consisting of Ortiz’s inquiries about the Department of Justice Audit Report with regard to the department’s accessing of information relating to her. Over the course of the afternoon and into the evening, there were internal department communications between Goodman and other members of the department at the command level about the misuse of CLETS and its application for political purposes, in particular how it had, at the very least, the appearance of being related to the San Bernardino Police Officers Association’s endorsement of Penman. Goodman contacted Police Officers Association President Jose Loera and arranged to have him meet with Ortiz the next day. morning.
That meeting took place at DJ’s Coffeehouse in San Bernardino at 2:45 p.m., by which time the Police Officers Association had made a withdrawal of its endorsement of Penman. Accompanying Ortiz to the meeting with Loera was then-Councilwoman Kimberly Calvin. Loera told Ortiz and Calvin that he had not been aware of Desrochers’ use of the CLETS database for political purposes until the previous day, but that he had been thoroughly brought up speed with regard to what had happened. He owned up to what had occurred.
“I’m here to formally apologize for what they did in the past,” Loera is heard saying on an audio recording of the meeting. “Clearly, I got a phone call yesterday. You got a phone call too. And I was just like, ‘What? Are you kidding me?’ Like, that’s just the way they told me was, ‘You need to sit down.’ I’m like. ‘What happened?’ First of all, I thought that one of my members was injured. I was like, ‘Oh, my God something happened, right?’ And they told me. I was like, ‘Oh, Hell, no, there’s no way. There’s no way.’ Because, we, during that time, clearly, [Previous San Bernardino Police Officers Association President Jon] Plummer and I were not in charge. And something happened: that. You know that. It was the guys, the people that were in charge at that time. And that is not the way we do business – ever since Plummer and I took over. While Plummer’s not in charge anymore, I am. We said we were different, right? And when I heard that, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna burn down the house right now, because that is not okay, one hundred percent, you know, and I immediately removed the endorsement of Jim Penman, canceled the forum and all that stuff, because it’s not okay. It’s not. It’s not what Plummer and I created. It’s not.”
Ortiz responded, “Well, that’s not what Jim Penman says. Jim Penman has a whole narrative out that he withdrew.”
Loera said, “What?”
Ortiz clarified, “He withdrew his support, his endorsement, your endorsement from him because you’re being attacked by a hostile, anti-cop candidate who is lying about all of this.”
Loera said, “No, that’s not true.”
Loera said what Desrochers had engaged in was making the police department, the department’s officers and the police union look bad.
“[W]e’re paying, obviously, we’re paying for the mistakes of our forefathers, which is the person that was who did it.”
Loera told Ortiz that she should pursue pressing criminal charges against Desrochers, one of his predecessors as union president.
“Do what you got to do with the criminal portion of it, which I highly recommend because it is a crime doing that,” Loera told Ortiz. “The same way you hold bad people accountable. I get it.”
On August 28, two weeks to the day after Ortiz’s and Calvin’s meeting with Loera, Chief Goodman had a face to face meeting with Ortiz, who was accompanied by Scott Beard, one of her major political contributors.
Goodman brought with him to the meeting a print-out of the audit showing that Desrochers had run her name through the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System database.
Upon showing Ortiz the audit report, Goodman indicated to both Ortiz and Beard that he was seeking to have Desrochers prosecuted by the district attorney’s office for having unlawfully utilized the department’s equipment and informational databases. He expressed the belief a criminal case could yet be made against Desrochers, even though four years had elapsed since he had made the illegal information retrieval, which potentially put it beyond the timeline within which a crime must be prosecuted, which is specified in the penal code under what is referred to as the stature of limitations.
“The statute of limitations is on the date of discovery [of the crime’s commission], which is why I’m pursuing the charges on Desrochers, because it’s from the date of discovery, not from the date of which he did it, which was back in 2020,” Goodman is heard saying on the audio recording. “So, we just learned about it now. I’m going to submit to the DA now and hopefully, they will file it.”
Goodman offered his opinion that, measured by both Desrochers’ intent and what the information he obtained was used for, the offense the former Police Officers Association president had engaged in constituted a serious offense.
“It’s a minor crime to just run someone you like, you know: ‘Oh, I’m just curious where this person lives” versus ‘I want information and then I’m going to use this information to hurt this person.’ That’s a whole other level,” Goodman said. “And that’s how I feel about this, and I want to nip this in the bud and, quite frankly, want to make an example of Desrochers, whether he is retired or not, to send a message to anybody else that’s playing these games.”
Goodman told Ortiz and Beard he was in the course of preparing the case to be presented against Desrochers by compiling a report along with the evidence of how he had used the state law enforcement data base for an illegitimate purpose.
“I’m planning on going forward,” Goodman is heard saying. “The DA has already been notified – not the DA but the DA’s office – and they know this is coming and I wanted to preface it with them because of the whole concern about the statute of limitations and I said, ‘Hey, look, I think this is different because we just discovered it’ and they said, ‘Yeah, you might be right and there may actually be some exceptions because there is a lot of new law based on use of technology and use of information from criminal databases.’ So, we’re hoping that they see it that way once it gets there and they see the entirety of the report.”
A little more than two months later, in the November 2024 run-off against Penman, Ortiz registered a relatively convincing 11.5 percent victory to capture the Seventh Ward council position, netting 3,929 votes or 55.78 percent to Penman’s 3,115 votes or 44.22 percent.
In December 2024, Ortiz was installed as the 7th Ward councilwoman along with two other newcomers, 5th Ward Councilwoman Kim Knaus and Sixth Ward Councilman Mario Flores. With the opportunity the recomposed council provided her, Mayor Tran, whose first two years in office had proved devoid of any notable achievements, was hoping to capture lightning in a bottle over the next two years by outlining a hopeful and energetic agenda she was hopeful the seven decision-makers she was leading would find compelling enough to support. There was some initial indication that a transformation out of the malaise that had previously gripped the city’s governing body was in the offing. One such indicator was that Ortiz seemed to have dispensed with her confrontative attitude, and was setting aside her previous negative orientation toward Figueroa, with whom she appeared ready to peaceably coexist and that she was on the same page with, basically, Tran, against whom she had after all technically competed in 2022 when both were running for mayor, though neither had focused on or attacked the other, given as how they were identically committed to defeating Valdivia.
As 2024 gave way to 2025 and the calendar moved through the year’s first two winter months, to all observers, even those who were not sensitive to nuance or intensely focused, it was apparent that antagonism remained as Ortiz’s primary form of political capital. Even so, no one anticipated what came in March, when on the 28th of that month, Ortiz lodged a $2 million claim against the city over the police department’s access of the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System to obtain information relating to her and the application of that data in the campaign against her. The San Bernardino City Council rejected that claim on May 5, 2025.
In making that rejection, the city, seemingly unaware that Ortiz had audio recordings to back her, claimed Desrochers had done nothing untoward, wrong or illegal.
“The city’s review of this matter determined that the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, also known as CLETS, was lawfully accessed by authorized law enforcement personnel in March of 2020,” the city maintained in a statement prepared for public dissemination which was read into the record by Mayor Helen Tran during the May 5, 2025 city council meeting. “The city’s investigation finds the claim to be frivolous, filed in bad faith, dishonest and an attempt to swindle the city of San Bernardino out of $2 million.”
Ortiz’s statements that the police chief and the head of the police union had acknowledged she was the target of a politically driven investigation and that members of the department had made improper use of law enforcement tools to carry out that investigation were utter and complete falsehoods, the city insisted. Chief Goodman and Sergeant Loera had said nothing of the kind, city officials said, and Ortiz’s story to that effect was a fabrication.
Suggestions emanating from the city were that if Ortiz did not rescind her claim and even if she did, she was going to be subject to arrest and prosecution for making a false claim/police report. Both privately and publicly, members of the council badmouthed her, offering ample indication that the county seat was now infested with the politics of antagonism. Over the next several months, what appeared to be a Mexican standoff ensued. City officials sans Ortiz were unwilling to make good on the threats to have her arrested for spouting falsehoods about the city and its police department lest that push her into actually filing suit. Ortiz came across as having been cowed just enough by those threats of arrest that she was going to abandon filing suit.
On November 5, 2025, represented by attorney Peter Schlueter, Ortiz filed suit ti all hell broke lose. Contained in the suit were verbatim quotes attributed to both Goodman and Loera, ones that were extensive, precise, backed to the hilt what Ortiz had claimed and were now contained in a document filed with the court. The immediate, and accurate, inference drawn was that Ortiz had either video or audio recordings of the police chief and the union president. Among the first lines of defense contemplated was to somehow prove the recordings as fakes, ones derived through some application of artificial intelligence. As cooler and clearer heads made a more sober assessment, the realization that Goodman and Loera had indeed stated clearly that Desrochers had illegally accessed the CLETS database in the police union’s zeal to advance Penman’s electoral prospect and undercut Ortiz registered with everyone.
Rocked back on their heels and recognizing that the city’s only way out was going to be through the skillful use of legalism, city officials retained Stephen Larson, a former federal prosecutor later appointed by President George Bush to a position as a U.S. District Court judge for the Central District of California, a post he served in from 2005 until 2009. Larson had notched a series of victories in high profile cases, including ones that went to trial as well as ones that did not, many of them in San Bernardino County, since he had returned to private practice in 2010. It was not only hoped but believed, in some cases with substantial confidence, that Larson would be able to outlawyer Schueter.