The Victorville City Council next week will consider removing Derek Marshall from his position as a member of the planning commission, based on a request from Councilman Robert Harriman that Marshall be relieved of that honorific.
At the February 17 Victorville City Council meeting, Harriman cited Marshall’s participation as a self-appointed chaperon during a student walkout at Victor Valley High School on February 13. That action, in which the students left class and the school campus as a protest/demonstration against what those students and their representatives said in overreach by the federal Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was not authorized by the school district and constituted what the Victor Valley School District maintains constituted mass truancy.
During that portion of the February 17 meeting reserved for council members to suggest items to be considered by the council at future meetings, Harriman said, “This last Friday, one of our planning commissioners was observed participating in a school walkout that began at Victor Valley High school and then ended here at City Hall. The walkout was in protest to the federal immigration and customs enforcement, also known as ICE. Our planning commissioner, Mr. Derek Marshall is an appointed local public official, and his participation in this type of activity communicates a disregard for our local governance structure we as a city council have supported. Therefore, I would like to ask that the council consider for discussion and possible action an item be placed on the agenda for the next city council meeting where we consider removal of Mr. Derek Marshall from the planning commission.”
Mayor Liz Becerra seconded Harrington’s motion and it passed by a vote of 4-to-1, with councilwomen Corinne Mora and Tiffany Gaudin joining with Harrington and Becerra supporting holding a public hearing at the March 3 council meeting to delve into whether the city should part ways with Marshall. Councilwoman Leslie Irving, who nominated him to be considered in the appointment process when he was placed on the commission, dissented.
While municipal elected positions in California are officially and by law deemed to be nonpartisan, throughout all of San Bernardino County party affiliation is a major factor in who holds elective office. California is dominated by the Democratic Party. Of California’s total 23,206,519 registered voters, 10,396,792 or 44.8 percent are Democrats, while 5,896,203 or 25.41 percent are Republicans. Those who have no party affiliation number 5,336,441 or 23 percent, a number not terribly far off from that of the Republicans. The remaining 1,577,083 voters or 6.8 percent are members of the American Independent, Green, Libertarian, Peace & Freedom or other more obscure parties. Despite comprising more than one-quarter of the state’s voters, the Republicans hold nine of the total 52 House seats in California’s congressional delegation, while the Democrats claim 43. In this way, California’s electoral map has already been set so that the Republicans are represented at a rate in the House of Representatives – 17.31 percent – well below the 25.41 percent of the voters they constitute. It is the same with state elective offices. California’s governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, treasurer, insurance commissioner and superintendent of public education are all Democrats. A supermajority – more than two-thirds – of the California Senate, are Democrats, consisting of 30 of the body’s 40 members. Likewise, the Assembly is overwhelmingly dominated by the Democratic Party, with which 60 of its members are affiliated, while 20 of its 80 total seats are held by Republicans. 20,105-square mile San Bernardino County is one of five Republican bastions in the Golden State. Despite the consideration that the number of voters registered as Democrats in the county, ??? , outnumber the registered Republicans, in San Bernardino County members of the GOP are elected to office with far greater frequency than Democrats. Four of five county supervisors ar Republicans. In 17 of the county’s 24 cities and incorporated towns, Republicans outnumber Democrats on their respective councils. In San Bernardino County, the Republican party is active and well coordinated, such that close to 90 percent of those identifying as Republicans in the county turn out to vote consistently at elections. The Democrats, despite their greater numbers in the county overall, rarely realize in total a 50 percent turnout and usually do not achieve that.
From its incorporation in 1962 until 2020, Victorville was a Republican city. That is, a majority of its city council members were Republicans. In 2020, the city achieved two historic milestones following that year’s November election: all five members of the council were women and three of them were Democrats, making it the first majority Democrat council in the city’s history. At the same time, three of those five members were Hispanic and one was African American. At that point, going back 30 years, Victorville had demonstrated itself to being host to one of the most diverse city councils in the county. During that timeframe, eight of the 19 individuals who had served on the city council had been or were Latino/Latina and two were African Americans. Nevertheless, the following year, one of the members of the city council – Blanca Gomez – retained an attorney from Northern California, Scott Rafferty, and threatened to sue the city over accusations that racially polarized voting was taking place in Victorville. Under the auspices of the California Voter Rights Act, Gomez and Rafferty, Democrats both, demanded that Victorville dispense with its traditional practice of electing its council members at large and partition the city into voting districts so that the members of the city council do not represent the city as a whole but a portion thereof. In this way, under a district representation system, each district is represented by a resident of that district voted into office by, and only by, residents of that district. District voting, Gomez and Rafferty asserted, would prevent racially polarized voting from taking place in Victorville in the future. Victorville officials, who rejected the assertion that racially polarized voting was taking place in their city, instead of resisting the call to convert to district voting, complied. The California Voting Rights Act exempts plaintiffs suing under its provisions, such as Gomez, from being held liable for a defendant city’s legal costs in defending against such a suit if the plaintiff loses. Nevertheless, if the plaintiff wins, the defendant city must cover the legal fees of the plaintiff’s attorney. To save itself the cost of litigation, the City of Victorville simply capitulated to Gomez’s demand, changing over to district voting.
Ironically, however, Victorville’s voters resented Gomez’s action. Five of the eight Hispanic Victorville City Council members who had been on the panel between 1990 and 2020 had been Republicans. The voters in her district voted her out of office in 2024. Victorville is no longer a Democrat city. At present, four of its council members are Republicans. Two rather than three, as was the case in 2020, of its council members are Hispanic, despite or perhaps even because of the efforts to push the city into the embrace of progressive politics.
Marshall inserted himself into the politics of Victorville and the larger desert and mountain region of San Bernardino County. Perhaps unappreciative or ignorant of what Gomez brought upon herself by espousing ultra-liberal politics in the atmosphere of Victorville, he, too, is pushing an aggressively-progressive agenda. In both 2022 and 2024, Marshall managed to become the standard-bear for the Democrats in the November general elections in California Congressional District 23, where Jay Obernolte is the Republican incumbent. Obernolte trounced him 99,360 votes or 61.15 percent to 63,136 votes or 38.85 percent in 2022 and beat him nearly as bad in 2024, 153,753 votes or 60.31 percent to 101,182 votes or 39.69 percent.
In both of his runs for Congress, as well as in other venues, Marshall has advocated for what he describes as progressive social progress and engaged in provocative actions, including calling for extending MediCal health insurance coverage to illegal aliens, holding or waving the Mexican flag during public demonstrations, staging fundraisers for his Congressional seat in Berlin, Germany, and emphasizing his identity as a gay man.
Activists at various locations around Southern California began organizing demonstrations and protests involving high school students in reaction to the aggressive round-ups of undocumented aliens being carried out in California as well as elsewhere in the country.
While immigrant activists, some elected officials and even parents are supportive of the students willing to make a political statement, and many believe that since the civil rights marches and antiwar protests of the 1960s that making a show of civil disobedience in as American as apple pie, there are others who consider the anti-immigration enforcement walkouts to be ill-advised, contrary to academic imperatives, an untoward show of defiance and disrespect, as well as potentially dangerous, with students driving the streets, walking the streets and in some cases confronting police and other authorities.
Marshall jumped in and was marching along with the students in their nearly three-mile trek from the Victor Valley High campus to City Hall. In doing so, they went along a route, which Marshall, as a planning commissioner, has described as what as the most dangerous pathway in the city for pedestrians.
Marshall’s defenders point out that he is registered with the district as an adult chaperon, one who has been vetted and fingerprinted, and is thus called upon from time to time to be present at events involving students, particularly ones that are off campus, serving as someone who is level-headed and mature to be on hand if something dangerous or just unanticipated should occur. Marshall, they insist, was doing the community a service by being there. Moreover, he was simply exercising his free speech rights.
The problem, Marshall’s detractors point out, is the walkout was not sanctioned by the district. His presence thereby put a false imprimatur on the event, which disrupted the educational mission. Moreover, they note, Marshall treated the crowds observing the parade of students to the spectacle of his carrying one end of an unfurled Mexican flag, while the other end was held by a high school student as they marched.
It is improper, some say, for Marshall, as a government official who is thus by definition a member of the establishment, to be tearing the establishment he represents down. No one is contending, they say, that Marshall is not free to say whatever he wants, and he can express himself however he chooses, they noted. But free speech is not free, they say, and Marshall will need to pay the price. Those in the establishment have rights of free speech as well, and if the establishment decides that it does not want to keep within its ranks someone who expresses contempt for the establishment, the establishment is at liberty to expel Marshall, they maintain.
Marshall says he was participating in the walkout as a “private citizen” and was not representing the city or the planning commission. He asserted that Harriman went after him because he intends to run against Harriman in this year’s District 4 city council race.
Some observed that it appears Marshall may have intentionally put himself in the position of being booted off the planning commission to garner publicity and further portray himself as an anti-establishment character, which will aid in his fundraising efforts among liberals in the San Francisco Bay Area in his run for city council or any other offices, such as Congress or the state legislature.
“I’m on the agenda to be removed from the planning commission this Tuesday,” Marshall said. “Let’s turn this into a civic lesson.” He called upon his followers and supporters to “make sure the room is full. This is not about me. It’s about all of us. It’s about local democracy. It’s about coming together, letting our voices be heard, and it’s about our First Amendment rights.”