In this year’s Loma Linda municipal election, the 49th since the city’s 1970 founding, no one has emerged to challenge current Mayor Phill Dupper as the representative in the city’s Council District 2. The incumbent in Council District 3, Ron Dailey, has drawn two opponents.
Jonathan Hartnell is one of those who would replace Dailey, if the voters give him that opportunity.
Born at Loma Linda University Medical Center and a graduate of Loma Linda Academy, Hartnell is promoting his candidacy through a conventional embrasure of elements associated with the community, such that he is making no accusations of inadequacy or failure on the part of Dailey as the incumbent.
Hartnell has said he “wants to make sure Loma Linda is a safe community that attracts businesses and families. This means supporting our law enforcement officers and ensuring response times remain low.” Similarly, he celebrated the accomplishments of past council members by stating “Our community has access to great parks and open spaces. Jonathan wants to protect those lands and preserve them for current and future residents to enjoy.”
The closest Hartnell approaches making an accusation that the political class he aspires to joining has not performed well is suggesting that those in charge have perhaps allowed government to become to expensive.
He has said that as a husband and father, he “knows how expensive it is to live in California.” and that he is accordingly “committed to making our city government more efficient, while maintaining a balanced budget, without raising our taxes.”
Jonathan Hartnell is the son of Bryan Hartnell, who in 1969 survived an attack by the infamous Zodiac Killer, before becoming, in 1975, an attorney.
Jonathan Hartnell from 2009 until 2011, worked as a real estate agent with Yucaipa Real Estate. In 2009, he had also founded Hartnell Health Management, which remained a going concern until 2019. Meanwhile, he was simultaneously working as an investigator and law clerk with his father’s firm while working toward a bachelor of science degree in business at the University of Redlands, from which he graduated in 2013. He then went on to study at the University of La Verne Law School, from which he received his juris doctor degree in 2016. He has not yet, however, become a practicing attorney, having worked as a law clerk with Redlands-based attorney James Church and Riverside-based attorney Kyle Patrick. He is currently the lead investigator and law clerk with his father’s law firm, which is located in Redlands.
Hartnell and his wife have three children.
As the product of an Adventist upbringing, he fits the historic model for a member of the Loma Linda City Council, which over the course of 56 years has never had a member who is not an Adventist.
Amy Jones is also a candidate this year to represent Loma Linda’s District 3 on the city council.
She is employed as a medical education coordinator with the School of Medicine at Loma Linda University.
Like Hartnell, Jones does not appear intent on bucking the system but rather joining it.
Her campaign webside represents her as someone who “is committed to serving Loma Linda by listening to residents and addressing real needs, creating impact through collaboration, transparency, and solutions that strengthen communities.
She said she believes “strong neighborhoods are built when people listen, serve, and care for one another” and that she is “committed to keeping Loma Linda a community where families, students, and seniors feel supported and connected.”
In promoting herself, she references her work with firefighters, seniors, children, and residents and cites her accomplishments in those efforts as a recommending factor in her run for the city council.
Those accomplishments put her in alignment with the governmental and social establishment attested to by multiple certificates of recognition she has received, including one from San Bernardino County Third District Supervisor Dawn Rowe, San Bernardino County Fifth District Supervisor Joe Baca Jr and State Senator Rocilice Ochoa Bogh which she received this year in conjunction with the Loma Linda Firefighters’ Association for community building and animal welfare support; another for her attention to animal welfare from Assemblyman Robert Garcia she received in 2025; a leadership advocate award she received in 2024 from the American Student Dental Association; another from the Loma Linda Mayor in 2023 and one she picked up in 2016 from the Loma Linda Chamber of Commerce for her efforts in putting together the city’s best volleyball club.
Jones touts her founding of a nonprofit for children’s mentorship and her work with families, during which she has gained 15 years of experience in budgeting and grant writing. She has also led the Loma Linda Community Garden, organized classes, supported clean-up efforts and assisted animal shelters.
Jones recently obtained a grant through the Inland Empire Resource Conservation District for nearly $27,000 which will allow her, as coordinator of the Loma Linda Community Garden, to purchase gardening tools, soil, fertilizer and other needed items and continue to offer classes on preserving food, gardening, floral arrangement and others gardening related activities. Her experience in seeking out and getting grants, she feels, is a facet of her personality that further recommends her to getting a berth on the city council.
She has opined that City Hall’s financial sustainability is a majorissue facing the Loma Linda community. She maintains she is “the only candidate who has successfully brought in outside funding for our community.” She said that as a member of the city council, she would create opportunities for the city and support local businesses and institutions by obtaining grants.
She said the city council needs to prioritize how it is to make use of the funds it has. One issue, she said, is what infrastructure creation or improvements the city should engage in and whether constructing infrastructure for municipal use makes sense if the cost of capital improvements prevents the city from hiring or maintaining employees to make use of that infrastructure. She cited the example of the city’s recently constructed fire station but the dearth of funding to man it to its desired capacity with firefighters. She lamented a decision-making process that was influenced by a lack of assets or financial capability and the city’s institutional dearth of infrastructure.
In her zeal to obtain attention and positive press in her run for the city council, Jones has allowed herself to be pulled into discussions of issues or subjects that lie outside the purview of the city council. One of those pertained to the federal government’s aggressive immigration policies under the current presidential administration. Without, expressing support or opposition to the roundup of undocumented foreigners per se, Jones nevertheless the opinion that local government and local governmental institutions should not directly cooperate with federal efforts in enforcing federal law.
On school campuses , in particular, which are the province of school districts rather than City Hall, Jones opined that immigration enforcement carried the potential of impacting the educational opportunities of all students, despite the perhaps illegal or undocumented status of some, and that allowing federal officials to raid classrooms would erode the sense of security parents and families should have in sending their children to school.
Dailey, who has been on the city council since 2010 and has been, based on the custom in Loma Linda, rotated into the mayoral position twice, emphasizes that he “has dedicated decades to the people of Loma Linda.” In this sense, he asserts what many assume, which is that the City of Loma Linda nd its residents revolve around Loma Linda University and Loma Linda University Medical Center. Those decades of service to the community, Dailey holds, include his years as the executive associate dean of the Loma Linda University School of Dentistry.
Noting that he was first elected to the city council after raising concerns about public safety and responsible growth, Dailey credits himself with an “earned a reputation as a thoughtful, fiscally-minded leader who listens to residents and gets things done.”
Dailey’s interest and intensity with regard to governance and community goes beyond the Loma Linda City Limits. In 2018, he was considered by the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors as a replacement Third District county supervisor when James Ramos was elected to the California Assembly and left with two years of the supervisorial term he had been elected to in 2016 uncompleted.
In addition to being on the council, serving as mayor and serving as vice-mayor, known by the title mayor pro tempore, Dailey has participated in adjunct governmental assignments and on joint powers authority boards. One of those has been the Omnitrans Board of Directors, of which he was elected chairman.
In that capacity, Dailey drew both praise and criticism for having championed, with then San Bernaardino Mayor Patrick Morris, the sbX Bus Rapid Transit line, which connected the Loma Linda Veterans Hospital with Cal State San Bernardino. Some celebrated sbX as a modern form of public transit. Others called it a $192 million boondoggle.
Dailey points to his track record of having served on a city council that balanced the city’s budget every year for 15 years running; expanded the hiking trails in the South Hills at the edge of the city limits against the Riverside County frontier; protected open space and preserved the city as one that has not been overbuilt by developers; allowed construction that is of a sufficiently high quality to prevent a deterioration of the community, increased public safety by ensuring that the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, which serves as the city police department under contract, and the joint Colton/Loma Linda Fire Department have consistently been provided with the resources needed to ensure residents are protected and championed the wellness culture that has made Loma Linda a bastion of healthy residents.
Dailey has the support of Congressman Pete Aguilar, Assemblyman James Ramos and Mayor Phill Dupper.
-Mark Gutglueck