By Mark Gutglueck
“The close of an era” is how the outcome of Tuesday’s voting in San Bernardino’s municipal elections was described, with two of the members of the city council who have more or less been central players in the council’s ruling coalition for the last six years having been shut out of office and the longest-serving member of the council who has been a mainstay on that ruling coalition being forced into a run-off in November where his chances of reelection appear to be at best fifty-fifty.
In the same contest, incumbent Mayor Helen Tran, whose first term has been marred by administrative faux pas beyond her control and the political resistance of the aforementioned ruling coalition, was reelected and by the outcome in the accompanying council contests strengthened considerably, having been given a council line-up for the next two years, at least, which will give her a shot at accomplishments in guiding and shaping city policy that has eluded her the last four years.
At stake in this year’s election was whether Tran, who was formerly the city’s human resources director and since 2022 mayor, was to remain in office in the face of challenges mounted by former Mayor John Valdivia, perennial mayoral candidate Rick Avila or relative political newcomers Amy Malone, Ivan Garcia and Ronnika Ngalande. In addition, there were contests in three of the city’s seven council wards. Tested in these was whether First Ward Councilman Ted Sanchez could hold off his predecessor as First Ward representative, Virginia Marquez and two others – Ron Alvarado and Omar Williams; Second Ward Councilwoman Sandra Ibarra’s staying power against her predecessor in the position, Benito Barrios, and another hopeful, Christian Shaughnessy; and if the dean of San Bernardino’s municipal politicians, Fred Shorett, who has been a member of the city council representing its Fourth Ward since 2009, would be able to withstand the onslaught of four of his constituents trying to unseat him. Those opposing Shorett were Erick Marquez, Jesus “Chuy” Medina, Vince Laster and Joe Salas.
San Bernardino, once the social, cultural, economic and governmental center of its eponymous county, has been in a prolonged and unrelenting state of flux for more than a generation, Throughout that time, its influence and prestige have diminished accordingly.
First established as a significant settlement by the Spaniards before it became a notable holding of Mexico following Mexican independence in 1826, it underwent an initial founding as a city under California statehood which did not last in 1854 and was first of the municipalities in San Bernardino County to formally come into being when it reincorporated 1869 as a town and reincorporated in 1886 as a city.
In 1905, the city adopted a charter that drew up the terms of the city’s governance, which established an elected mayor and elected council, an elected city attorney, and elected city clerk and an elected treasurer. The 1905 charter infused in those elected officials, beyond their political power, what was, even for that time and for what in more recent years was most certainly, an uncommon degree of administrative and actual control over the machinery of municipal government.
Under that charter, the mayor, city attorney and treasurer were given, if they indeed chose to exercise it, extensive control of their respective bailiwicks. In the case of the treasurer, he, as was originally the case and then he or she after the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920, was the titular treasurer, the elected official charged with overseeing the city’s finances. In San Bernardino, the treasurer was empowered to serve in the capacity of what is now recognized as that of municipal finance director or finance manager. The elected city attorney was not merely the legal representative of the city as an entity and the mayor and council, but given further sway in serving as the legal advisor to the mayor and city council, enforcing/prosecuting violations of the law and city ordinances, both proposing and writing city ordinances and presenting items involving city policy to the city council for discussion and approval.
The mayor was given sweeping authority under the 1905 Charter.
While the mayor’s political authority was somewhat attenuated in that he or she was not provided with a vote as a member of the city council on most routine matters, the mayor could vote with regard to appointments, legal issues, hirings and firings, as well as to break a tie-vote. Moreover, the mayor had the authority to unilaterally place an item on a council agenda for discussion or action through a vote of the council. The mayor also presided over the council meetings, wielding the gavel, recognizing who was to have the floor during discussion and thus controlling the ebb and flow of discussion and debate. In addition, the mayor had veto power over any votes that ended 4-to-3 or 3-to-2. In this way, on matters when the council took action, the mayor had what was essentially two votes to countermand that action if it was not to his or her liking.
It was not as a political entities or functionaries, however, that San Bernardino mayors derived their greatest power, but rather on the basis of the significant administrative authority the position carried. The mayor in San Bernardino was established, in conjunction with the city manager, as the city’s co-regent. In tandem, the mayor and city manager had the authority to hire and fire city department heads and employees, to monitor and enforce city staff’s execution of the policies approved by the city council to, in essence, plan, organize direct and control municipal operations in accordance with their agreed-upon vision for the city. Whereas the city manager was, in theory, answerable to the city council or a majority of the city council at any point, the mayor was answerable only to the city’s voters once every four years.
The 1905 Charter remained in place for over a century. During most of that time, San Bernardino grew, both in terms of land area to what is now some 64 square miles as well as in population to roughly 230,000 inhabitants today, making it the largest city in the county and the 18th largest in California, and the 104th largest in the United States.
In 1940, with the country’s direct participation in World War II approaching, under the direction of the U.S. Army Air Corps, what was initially represented as a municipal airport was constructed on 900 acres on the east side of San Bernardino. By the summer of 1941, it was being used by the Army Air Corps almost exclusively as a pilot training base, and in 1942, was renamed renamed San Bernardino Army Air Field, at which the San Bernardino Air Depot, which was crucial to material supply work in conjunction with the Army Air Corps operations, most notably in the Pacific Theater during the remainder of the war. The Air Field was also lent crucial support to the metallurgic activity being overseen by Dr. Enrico Fermi in support of the Manhattan Project from 1943 to 1945. Eventually, the air field would be renamed Norton Air Force Base in tribute to Captain Leland Francis Norton, who was raised in San Bernardino while living at  716 Twenty-first Street. Norton, an Army Air Corps fighter/light bomber/attack aircraft pilot, was killed in action over Amiens, France on May 27, 1944. Following the war, Norton Air Force Base was host to the Army Air Corps and then after the creation of the Air Force in 1947, the Air Materiel/Air Force Logistics Command from 1946 to 1966 and then as part of the Air Forces Military Air Lift/Air Mobility Command from 1966 to 1994.
The presence of the Army Air Corps and the Air Force in San Bernardino was a major boon to the local economy. In 1994 Norton AFB was closed as a result of the Base Realignment and Closure Act of 1988.
That decision, made in Washington, D.C., had a deleterious impact on San Bernardino’s financialsphere, reducing revenue into both the private and public sector of the city and its immediate environs, touching off a series of contractions in the local economy, closures of what had otherwise been successful retailers, declines in the real estate market, abandonments of properties and businesses which led to blight and a further downward spiraling in economic indicators, the migration of business owners who had been key to spending and investment to points elsewhere and a resulting drop in both consumer and investment confidence. Simultaneously, economic expansion and development taking place elsewhere in the county, most notably on the west end among the cites of Rancho Cuamonga, Ontario, Fontana, Chino and Chino Hills as well as in the High Desert communities of Victorville, Hesperia and Apple Valley began a gradual movement of the county’s financial center away from San Bernardino.
Over the course of the 20th Century, employees in the public sector, originally generally seen as denizens of the working middle class and lower middle class, began a steady albeit slow, progress toward the middle-middle and upper-middle class, brought on by both unionism uniting public employees and the wealth and prosperity in the American economy as a whole, which increased tax revenue that was the mainstay of government and which allowed many cities, including San Bernardino, to fatten its reserves. In San Bernardino, the 1905 Charter had been tweaked at various times to offer benefits and advantages to city employees in an effort to attract what were considered to be the “cream of the crop” among Southern California’s experienced municipal employees. One of those was Section 186 of the charter which effectively locked in salaries for the city’s public safety employees that were at par with or greater than those salaries received by their counterparts in ten similarly-sized California cites.
While provisions such as Section 186 were considered advantageous to the city, its residents and the community and were more than sustainable when San Bernardino was an up and coming and then rising financial powerhouse, as the bottom was dropping out economically in the late 1990s and into the Third Millennium, they became a liability. Revenues were dropping and city officials, by virtue of the charter, were unable by fiat to impose employee salary reductions. Indeed, they were prohibited from asking that city employees not insist on pay and benefit increases that were in keeping with what municipal employees elsewhere. By 2011, the city had engaged in what was de facto deficit spending over 12 of the previous 13 years, having balance its annual budgets only by digging into the reserves the city had managed to accumulate over the last half of the 20th Century. Patrick Morris, who was then the city’s mayor, was cataloging through one creative option after another in an effort to keep the city government together as a going concern. He was thwarted and flustered at numerous turns in that effort by then-City Attorney James Penman, who twice opposed Morris, unsuccessfully in mayoral contests. In March 2012, faced with dire financial reality, then-San Bernardino City Manager Charles McNeely tendered his resignation. In a desperate bid to save the city from the humiliation of disincorporation, Andrea Travis-Miller, the city’s deputy city manager who gamely steeped into the interim city manager role upon McNeely’s departure, worked with the city’s finance director, Jason Simpson, prepared the city’s application for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection, which was filed in August 2012. The city spent five years in bankruptcy court, stiffing one creditor after another by providing them with just a percentage of what they were owed, a stratagem which succeeded, but damaged the city’s reputation to an even greater degree than it had suffered previously.
As mayor, Morris was succeeded by Carrie Davis, whom he had endorsed. Among a contingent of the city’s most influential residents, business owners and citizens there was a belief that an element of the city’s dysfunction was that Penman, an A-type or alpha personality, had an inordinate degree of control on how the city was being run. They felt Penman’s dictatorial approach in trying to force his perspective on city employees and the city council, taken together with his close connections to and support he received from the city’s public safety employees’ unions, made it virtually impossible to reduce the city’s costs in terms of what it was paying to police officers and firemen, which constituted on an annual basis between 68 percent and 69 percent of the city’s general fund expenditures. Simultaneous to a recall effort that removed Penman as city attorney, those individuals concerned about Penman making a comeback and reasserting himself as city attorney – including Morris, California State San Bernardino Economics Professor Tom Pierce and Jim Savage – proposed revamping the 2005 Charter. The city council as it was then composed signed off on creating a charter review committee come up with a new charter, which was then placed in front of the city’s voters in the November 2016 election. It passed, with 27,478 votes or 60.57 percent in favor and 17,890 votes or 39.43% opposed.
In addition to consolidating city elections with presidential and gubernatorial primary and general elections held in even-numbered years, in effect, the charter eliminated the elected positions of city clerk, treasurer and city attorney, making them appointed posts. It further attenuated the power of the mayor. The new charter made no real alteration of the mayor’s political reach, giving who ever held the position the power to vote along with the council as a single vote on appointments, hirings and firings of the city manager, city clerk, city attorney and department heads and the deciding vote in the event of a tie, as well as veto power on 4-to-3 and 3-to-2 votes. The mayor remained as the presiding officer at city council meetings, with the ability to put items on the agenda unilaterally and to, in essence, control the forum in which decisions relating to agenda items are discussed and voted upon. Though the mayor’s political purview was left intact, the post’s administrative authority was eliminated entirely. Those provisions of the mayor’s duty and responsibility extending to control over day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month operations and making personnel decisions and on-the-spot calls with regard to how the policy approved by the council was to be implemented were written out of the charter. Before the citywide vote on approving the charter makeover was made there were a fair number of people, including some who were in favor of updating the manner in which the city was organized and run, who thought the reforms placed before the voters went too far or in some cases were unnecessary. One refrain was that the 1905 Charter was a good or even great document if the voters elected competent and good or great people into the mayoral, city attorney, treasurer and city clerk posts and it was a bad document if those elected turned out to be incompetent or greedy or insensitive. The voters ultimately decided by better than a 3-to-2 ratio to put the new charter in place.
In the 2018 election cycle, Carrie Davis was defeated by his primary challenger, then-Third Ward Councilman John Valdivia, who had been a Penman protégé. Also up for election in San Bernardino that year were the First Ward, Second Ward and Fourth Ward council positions. First Ward Councilwoman Virginia Marquez, who had been aligned, essentially, with Morris and then Davis from even before her 2009 election and did not get along well with Valdivia, opted out of running for reelection in the June 2018 primary, abandoning the field to four candidates who vied to replace her: Magie Castaneda, Miguel Rivera, Gil Botello and Ted Sanchez. Sanchez was a 30-year-old energetic president of the Lytle Creek Neighborhood Association who had declared his candidacy before Marquez announced her decision against vying for reelection that year. Also up for election in 2018 was then-Second Ward Councilman Benito Barrios, who was aligned with Valdivia. Challenging him were two Second Ward residents, Sandra Ibarra and Cecilia Miranda-Dolan. Another incumbent seeking reelection that year was Fourth Ward Councilman Fred Shorett, who had been on the city council since 2009. Shorett was not favorably disposed toward Valdivia. He was opposed by two hopefuls, Jesus Medina and Alexandra Beltran.
In the four-way contest in the First Ward in June, Sanchez and Gil Botello qualified for the November final. Despite the overall favor the city’s voters held Valdivia in that year, Barrios was unable to firmly grab his coattails to remain in office. Somewhat surprisingly, Ibarra and Miranda-Dolan both outpolled Barrios in the June primary, which qualified them for a run-off in November.
Shorett came within a 22 votes among 4,092 cast in the June primary from winning outright. As it turned out, with 2,035 votes in that election against Beltran’s 1,084, he was consigned to a run-off against her that November.
Though Valdivia had supported Barrios in the June election, he sent signals in the aftermath of the primary that he was leaning in favor of Ibarra in the November 2018 run-off and was looking forward to working with Sanchez as well. Sanchez and Ibarra, who had placed second in their June contests behind Botello and Miranda-Dolan respectively in June to qualify for their run-offs, each managed to prevail in November. Thereupon, Valdivia sought to, in his words, “show them the ropes and mentor them.”
While Shorett had appeared to be a shoo-in in the November 2018 contest, Beltran made a tremendously strong showing, making up much but not quite all of the ground between her and Shorett, who was reelected on the difference of a mere 8 votes and 0.10 percent – 3,709 or 50.05 percent to 3,701 votes or 49.95 percent.
Valdivia blew into office like a conquering hero. Of the six members of the council when he was sworn into the mayor’s office in December 2018, four were in his camp. The following May, when a special election was held to fill the Third Ward council member position he had resigned to become mayor, voters selected Juan Figueroa, whom he had endorsed, as his replacement. Initially, Sanchez and Ibarra were aligned with the mayor and two others on the council, Fifth Ward Councilman Henry Nickel and Sixth Ward Councilwoman Bessine Richard. Upon Juan Figueroa’s election, during the first year or most of the first year of his tenure as mayor, Valdivia held sway over the city by means of a ruling council coalition he led, which enabled him to overcome the dissent of the two councilors who did not see eye-to-eye with him, those being Councilman Shorett and Seventh Ward Councilman Jim Mulvihill.
With 2019’s progression, however, a number of considerations became apparent. One of those was that Valdivia was intensely loyal to his perceived constituency, which was not the same as his elective constituency. Rather, his loyalty went to those who had supported him in his electoral drive to become mayor – the donors to his political war chest. In 2018, Valdivia started that campaign year with $77,046.15 in his campaign fund and obtained $485,550.40 in donations over the next 12 months, while spending $551,796 throughout the year on his campaign. And he continued to raise money after he was elected and in place as mayor for his future campaigns. As of January 1, 2021, Valdivia had $216,953.59 in his campaign coffer.
As mayor, he sought to return the favors those donors had bestowed upon him by facilitating their success in obtaining lucrative municipal franchises or contracts with the city to provide goods or services, or in getting their applications for development projects within the city approved. Even more telling was his efforts on behalf of donors to his campaign fund who were seeking to obtain licensing for a commercial marijuana operation. After years of city officials, including Valdivia, opposing the presence of medical marijuana dispensaries being able to set up shop in San Bernardino, their hand was forced in 2016, when the city’s voters approved Measure O, permitting such uses within the city. Thereafter, despite his previous resistance to allowing cannabis and cannabis products to be available for sale, Valdivia began taking money from those wishing to cash in on what they thought would be the marijuana bonanza. One story, perhaps apocryphal, was that Valdivia had made promises and commitments to over 20 would-be marijuana/entrepreneurs that he would ensure they would get permits to operate within the city when the city council had voted to limit the number of such shops to no more than 18.
What grew out of the way Valdivia was conducting himself was an understanding that San Bernardino government, through the mayor’s office, was for sale to the highest bidder and that the coinage of the realm consisted of political donations to Valdvia to assist him in his future electoral efforts, be those for reelection as mayor or higher office.
The problem was that Valdivia did not have a vote, as mayor, with regard to any of the promises he was making. Approval of contracts, franchises, projects or permits for marijuana operations was accomplished through votes of the city council. If Valdivia managed to keep his ruling coalition – at one time consisting of Sanchez, Ibarra, Figueroa, Nickel and Richard – intact, he conceivably could have delivered on those commitments.
But before the Summer of 2019 had concluded, his ruling coalition was falling apart. Valdivia proved insensitive to issues the individual members of the council were raising in response to the concerns of constituents in their wards while simultaneously militating both behind the scenes and publicly on behalf of his major political donors. He had the opportunity to seek to build a consensus among the members of the council he was counting on for support for his own initiatives to have them support the items they were individually passionate about but, strangely, he did not trouble himself to do that. He simply expected those he considered to be members of his team to hop to when he called upon them. By the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, one by one, Nickel, Ibarra and Sanchez became estranged from him, leaving him without the requisite votes on the council to effectively pursue his political and practical agenda in terms of exerting control over San Bernardino’s municipal governance.
What was further driven home to Valdivia was that the administrative authority that had been entrusted to all of the mayors who preceded him was no longer a tool in his armory. Despite the 2016 Charter having divested the mayor of that power, he connived to artificially replicate it. In 2019, he moved, with the support of Sanchez, Ibarra, Figueroa and Richard to terminate Travis-Miller, who had returned to the city in 2017 to serve as city manager. Valdivia then arranged to temporarily move then-Assistant City Manager Terry Ledoux into the interim city manager post and then elevated her to the full-fledged city manager’s post. Valdivia thought it to be understood that Ledoux would allow him to surreptitiously call the shots as the city’s de facto administrator while she used her official status and station as city manager to order the city’s department heads and line employees to do the mayor’s bidding. To Valdivia’s chagrin, however, when Valdivia sought to actuate this unspoken plan to put his policies, which were never considered or voted upon by the city council, into play, she simply did not comply.
The unquestioned and unfettered ability to control the administration of civic authority Valdivia craved was intrinsic to his plan to meet the expectations of his donors so he could accumulate more and more money into his political war chest, increase his power and move onward and upward into even more impressive political positions. This play-to-play ethos, in which Valdivia was selling official municipal action for donations were a series of quid-pro-quos, some delivered upon and many that were not, action that was tantamount to bribery. While much of what he was seeking to carry off was done quietly and out of the limelight, before 2020 was over, it was well understood that Valdivia was out-and-out on-the-take. For all of the council’s members except Richard and Figueroa, both of whom were dependent upon the mayor for much of their political fundraising, Valdivia was considered radioactive.
If Valdivia’s propensity for bribe-taking was not enough to destroy his political prospects, his interaction with three women who had been members of his mayoral staff – Myrna Cisneros, Karen Cervantes and Jackie Aboud – would eventually seal his fate. Cisneros, Cervantes and Aboud, represented by attorney Tristan Pelayes alleged Valdivia persistently propositioned them, seeking to pressure or lure them into having sex with him and then retaliated against them when they refused. Ultimately, the case Pelayes filed against Valdivia and the city were settled for a collective total of $1.2 million.
In the 2020 election cycle, Mulvihill and Nickle, by that point two of the five of the council’s members who were at odds with Valdivia, and Councilwoman Richard, one of the mayor’s two remaining allies, were defeated in their reelection efforts. Mulvihill’s, Nickle’s and Richard’s replacements were, respectively, Damon Alexander, Benjamin Reynoso and Kimberly Calvin. Those newcomers presented, at least ostensibly, an opportunity for Valdivia to construct a positive working relationship with all three, permitting him with the prospect of thereby again taking firm control of the city’s political helm. Unfortunately for Valdivia, he was not able to close a political deal with any of those three, finding himself to be as much as at odds with both Reynoso and Calvin as he had been with Mulvihill and Shorett. Alexander proved willing to work with and occasionally support the mayor, but only on a case-by-base and selective basis. In this way, throughout nearly three years of his term as mayor, Valdivia remained in place and was presenting to the outside world that he was among San Bernardino County’s most dynamic politicians, but the reality was that he was being frustrated at virtually every turn by five and then six of the seven officeholders he had to work with.
Helen Tran had been the City of San Bernardino’s human resources director when Valdivia became mayor. Relatively early in Valdivia’s tenure as mayor, the problems with Cisneros, Cervantes and Aboud created a profound difficulty for her. It has been reported that when she was approached about Valdivia’s depredations with at least one of the women and then with another, Tran found herself in a deer-in-the-headlights moment. She had reason to believe at that time that Valdivia, as mayor, was in absolute control of the city and enjoyed the advantage of an alliance with five of the council’s seven members. The report is that Tran told at least one of the women that there was nothing that could be done about the circumstance and that they would have to simply live with the circumstance. Subsequently, when the woman and other employees, including Valdivia’s own chief of staff, Matt Brown, and a male employee in his office were in contact with Pelayes, it became clear to Tran that she was beset with a matter that could have a deleterious impact on her career as a municipal government personnel professional. When she was given the opportunity to jump to the position of human resources director in the Los Angeles County city of West Covina, he resigned her post in San Bernardino and did so.
In 2022, Tran, a longtime resident of San Bernardino, jumped into the mayor’s race. She was provided with substantial support by the California Democratic Party and other Democrats. Also challenging Valdivia was Penman, who was acutely aware that his support of Valdivia in his council and mayoral campaigns was detrimental to his reputation; Nickel, who was intent on making a political comeback; Treasure Ortiz, who had failed in her run against Figueroa to replace Valdivia as Third Ward council member in 2019 and had evolved into one of Valdivia’s most vociferous critics, along with Gabriel Jaramillo and Mohammad Khan.
In the June 2022 primary, despite Valdivia’s overwhelming fundraising advantage against everyone else in the campaign, he managed to place only a distant third in the voting, and was locked out of the November run-off, in which Tran scored a convincing win over Penman.
Tran, a darling of the Democratic Party establishment, is the first woman of Vietnamese extraction to become the mayor of a large American city. In this way, she is considered by the Democrats as “the great Yellow hope,” a personage who in the next decade might accede to substantially higher office, beginning with the California legislature, perhaps Congress and maybe even the governorship, given her base in Southern California combined with her appeal to the Asian community in the Bay Area. Despite high expectations, Tran experienced rough sledding in her first two-and-a-half years as mayor. A primary factor was the inability of the council to get on the same page and coordinated with regard to hiring a city manager. Bob Field, who had been hired by the city council as city manager essentially on the strength Valdivia’s recommendation and who had proved himself to be exceptionally loyal to Valdivia, resigned in the weeks just prior to Tran’s swearing in. For two years straight, the Tran administration seemed to be cursed with an inability to achieve a managerial stasis, burning through no fewer than four city managers, including one who was paid $870,000 without ever occupying the an office in the city’s administrative suite located outside of City Hall, which has been shuttered since 2017 because of seismic stability concerns. The shuttered City Hall has served as a metaphor for city government, which during Tran’s tenure had very little in the way of tangible accomplishments, primarily because there was no management authority on staff to plan, organize direct and control city employees.
During her first two years in office, Tran was able to forge something of an alliance with Reynoso and Calvin and enjoyed a somewhat better relationship with Alexander than Valdivia did. Neither was she at odds with Figueroa, and she was able, at least initially, to get along with Ibarra. This afforded her an opportunity to form a ruling coalition on the council. That did not materialize, however, partly as a consequence of the lack of managerial cohesion at the staff level, which prevented any major initiatives from being brought forward, around which such a coalition could coalesce.
Early in her tenure, Tran got off on the wrong foot with both Shorett and Sanchez, as both, despite their enmity with Valdivia and their preference for Tran, were unwilling to simply fall into line with her agenda.
A major complication for Tran was her increasing zeal to get a city manager in place, as administrative leadership in the planning, organizing, directing and controlling of city resources and employees was crucial Tran accruing a record of accomplishment before her first term ended. In May 2024, there appeared to be virtually universal enthusiasm and support for Rochelle Clayton when she was elevated to the position of interim city manager when the mayor and council terminated Charles Montoya as city manager. That evolved to a strong consensus to promote her into the city manager’s post in October of that year. By early November 2024, however, a majority of the council grew resistant to hiring her. Tran dug in her heels in attempting to get to get five members of the council as it was then composed to go along with installing Clayton in the city’s top administrative post. This created a schism in which Sanchez, Ortiz, Figueroa, Shorett and Alexander were unwilling to commit to hiring Clayton.
In 2024, Reynoso, Calvin and Alexander failed to gain reelection. They were replaced by Kim Knaus, Mario Flores and Treasure Ortiz, respectively. Flores and Tran bonded early. There was some commonality of purpose with Tran, Knaus and Ortiz, but an early attempt to forge a consensus on the newly-composed council to confer the city manager promotion on Clayton came up short and by February 2025, Clayton took up on an offer from the City of Barstow to become city manager there.
Eventually, agreement on the council to hire Fullerton City Manager Eric Levitt manifested, and he was hired in June 2025. Even with that success, however, there was a setback in that Ortiz cast the lone dissenting vote in the 7-1 vote to appoint him. This, among a handful of other issues, prevented the mayor and Ortiz from forming a reliable bond, which was somewhat paradoxical, as a loosely-knit council faction that formed which included Sanchez, Ibarra, Figueroa, Shorett and Knaus found itself sharply at odds with Ortiz. The Sanchez/Ibarra/Figueroa/Shorett/Knaus coalition found itself out of sync with Tran, who wanted and expected that the each of the council members, representing but one seventh of the city, would defer to her lead as the head of the entire city.
Tran, just as Valdivia before her, failed to fully anticipate or acclimate herself to a situation in which the city’s leader had only limited political reach and virtually no administrative authority. What the 2016 Charter had created was a circumstance in which the ideal mayor possessed superlative political and networking skill by which he or she could assemble and maintain a council coalition that would be at least amenable and, more desirable still, enthusiastic about the governance strategy he or she was advocating. Tran, however, had, barely, enough patience to endure the formal meeting format of the city council’s bimonthly meetings and had little patience or time for much beyond that. 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. 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, is not participating as a Inland Valley Development Agency board member.
Tran’s protégé on the council, Mario Flores, has remained loyal to her over the course of the last year-and-a-half. She has had a more nuanced relationship with Ortiz, who has antagonized the members of the council who are resistant to Tran’s mayoral authority. In 2022, Ortiz was one of the candidates who challenged Valdivia for mayor, and was thus running against Tran as well. Ortiz has sided with Tran with regard to a number of initiatives the mayor was pushing, but has, in leveling charges of incompetence and poor policy against the city in general, included Tran in those criticisms. For her part, Tran has avoided openly associating herself with Ortiz because doing so would alienate Sanchez, Ibarra, Figueroa and Shorett even further.
It became the collective perception of the board majority that Tran essentially lacked the temperament needed by a successful politician that would allow her, no matter the degree to which she found doing so to be disagreeable, to engage with and indulge her constituents in learning about their needs and concerns and to spend even more time interacting with other politicians in learning their priorities in order to be able to engage in the necessary political horsetrading, back-and-forth, give-and-take, assertion and compromise to move government on toward specific goals.
Despite Tran’s physical attractiveness, impeccable dress, articulateness and perfect conformance to the Democratic Party’s ideal in terms of identity politics, Sanchez, Ibarra, Figueroa, Shorett and Knaus did not perceive her or respect her as a politician willing and able to do the trench work in order to be a credible advocate for the citizens she represented or for the city. This lack of respect, while unspoken, was obvious. It was exacerbated in 2024 and 2025 when, in politically tone deaf fashion, Tran, in a way she thought would remain secret but which did not, began encouraging groups of individuals in the First and Fourth Wards which were pursuing ultimately unsuccessful recall attempts against Sanchez and Shorett. That destroyed to the foundations whatever broken bridges between her and the two councilman which might have been repaired.
As a consequence, despite having, at last, a competent and experienced professional city manager in the personage of Levitt in place, Tran had not been able to string together a meaningful set of accomplishments during her time in office.
Tran’s inability to get on track induced three relative newcomers to politics – Ivan Garcia, Amy Malone and San Bernardino Planning Commissioner Ronnika Ngalande – and two old hands – Valdivia and Rick Avila – to throw their hats into the mayoral ring.
Sanchez in the First Ward drew three opponents, most prominently Virginia Marquez, whose departure from the council cleared the way for his entry into politics in 2018, along with Ron Alvarado and Omar Williams.
Third Ward incumbent Ibarra was faced with a challenge by Benito Barrios, whose political career she truncated in 2018, and Christian Shaughnessy, a self styled “housing advocate” who proved to be highly supportive of Ortiz when she was subject to criticism by Sanchez, Ibarra, Figueroa, Shorett and Knaus, which resulted in the council voting to censure her in March.
In the Fourth Ward, Shorett found himself up against Vincent Laster and Jesus Medina, both of whom had run against him unsuccessfully in the past, as well as Erick Marquez and Joseph Salas.
After the dust had cleared on Tuesday night and all 164 of the city’s precincts had reported, Tran was safely reelected to another four years in office and the political careers of Sanchez and Ibarra had been brought to a close, if not permanently, then for a while. Shorett was left in political limbo. He had not lost but had not won either, and was going to have to go to a run-off, a not unfamiliar experience for him.
Tran captured 7,760 of the total 14,214 votes cast and counted as of that evening in the six-way race, giving her 54.59 percent. Over the next several days to a week, mail-in ballots are to come into the county registrar of voters office, so it is conceivable, though not likely, that Tran’s margin above the 50 percent threshold would be eliminated. Far more likely, based on statistical probability and past electoral results, is that the pattern of vote distribution among the candidates with any mail-in ballots will resemble the ratio exhibited in the voting at the polls. Indeed, as of today, Friday June 5, at 4 p.m., the number of votes logged in the mayoral race had increased to 22,325 while the number of votes for Tran were recorded as 12,165 or 54.49 percent, a minuscule drop which foretells her eventual victory. The runner-up on Tuesday night in the mayor’s race was Avila, who logged 1,525 votes as of that point or 10.73 percent. Avila was yet in second place today, having brought in 2,308 or 10.34 percent. Of note was the overall poor performance of John Valdivia, who finished dead last with 1,007 votes or 7.08 percent as of Tuesday and 1,412 vote or 6.32 percent at 4 p.m. today.
In the First Ward, Virginia Marquez marked a triumphant return to politics by capturing, after all 22 of the precincts in the ward had reported Tuesday night, a convincing 452 or 34.42 percent of the 1,313 votes cast. In second was Ron Alvarado, with 369 or 27.8 percent of the vote. This shut out Sanchez, but not by much, as he claimed 365 votes or four fewer than Alvarado, which put him at being favored by 28.1 percent of the ward’s voters. A four vote deficit was not impossible to over come, but two-and-a-half days later, by 4 p.m. today, the trending was not in Sanchez’s favor. Another 615 ballots had come in and were counted. Marquez’s count was boosted by 215, such that she now has 667 of the 1,928 votes counted so far, for 34.6 percent. Alvarado claimed 210 of the votes on the newly arrived ballots, sending his total vote count so far to 579 or 30.03 percent. Sanchez in the same span was endorsed on 133 of the incoming ballots, putting his total votes as of today at 498, which means that he actually lost ground to both Marquez and Alvarado, which is clearly reflected in his current percentage of 25.83 percent of the vote.
In the Second Ward race on Tuesday, Barrios and Shaughnessy did to Ibarra what Ibarra and Miranda-Dolan did to Barrios in 2018. Ibarra as of the closing on Tuesday night, with 18 of 18 precincts reporting, had 374 votes or 29.29 percent of 1,277 votes cast in the three-way contest. Shaughnessy was on top with 457 votes or 35.79 percent and Barrios was in second with 445 votes or 34.85 percent. As of this afternoon at 4p.m., after another 677 votes had arrived and been counted by the registrar of voters, Shaughnessy had improved to 38.28 percent of the 1,954 votes now received by adding another 291 to his tally. Barrios between Tuesday and today gained 204 votes but still dropped to 33.21 percent of the current 1,954, while Ibarra’s addition 187 votes left her with 557 as of today, an overall percentage of 28.51 percent, putting her in a distant third place.
Shorett, of the three incumbents, fared the best. Tuesday night, with 43 of the 43 precincts in the Fourth Ward having reported and 3,121 total votes having been tallied, he was on top with 1,148 votes, a respectable 36.78 percent of the vote in a five-way race. Nipping at his heels, however was Salas, with 1,129 votes or 36.78 percent. Their closest competitor was Jesus Medina, with 14.74 percent, a clear indicator Shorett and Salas were bound for a run-off. As of today at 4 p.m., after another 1,757 ballots have come in and been counted, Salas has overtaken Shorett. Having brought in another 558 votes, Shorett’s total now stands at 1,706 votes or 34.97 of the current 4,878 votes cast and counted. Over the same two-and-a-half days, Salas added a whopping 730 votes, zooming his total to 1,859 or 38.11 percent.
Of note is that Scott Beard, a developer with multiple interests around the city who has been active in supporting political candidates in San Bernardino and elsewhere in San Bernardino County in the past proved to be a major factor in how the election went on Tuesday. Two years ago, Beard emerged as the primary backer in Treasure Ortiz’s successful 2024 election to the council in the Seventh Ward.
This year, Beard worked in tandem with Jim Erwin, who controls the independent political expenditure entity Committee for Effective Government, in an effort to unseat Sanchez, Ibarra and Shorett. Over the course of less than two months, Beard endowed Committee for Effective Government with $94,700, at least $62,917.94 of which was used to derail Sanchez’s, Ibarra’s and Shorett’s political aspirations.
Between April 26 and April 30, the Committee for Effective Government spent $192.06 on data to form the basis of a mailer attacking Sanchez, $500 to design the piece, $5,012.31 to print it and $2,140.16 to mail it. Over the course of May 14/15, the Committee for Effective Government paid $500 to design, $2,232.18 to print and $875.63 to send by post a second attack mailer against Sanchez. Thereafter, the Committee for Effective Government expended $2,174.19 to print a third hit piece discrediting Sanchez, and $718.11 on postage to deliver it. In the final week of the campaign, the Committee for Effective Government delivered what it hoped would be the coup de grâce, via a mailer that involved spending $411.78 on research, covering the $1,000 cost of its design, laying out $2,189.63 to print it and expending $794.36 on postage to send it to a select group of First Ward residents. The Committee for Effective Government thus expended $18,740.41 in its blitz against Sanchez.
Between April 26 and April 30, the Committee for Effective Government spent $206.76 on research, $500 on the design and $5,108.47 on the printing of a hit piece targeting Ibarra, capped with the payment of $2,318.86 to the U.S. Post Office to deliver roughly 3,000 of the mailers to Second Ward households. On May 14/15, the Committee for Effective government spent $500 on mailer design, $2,308.07 on printing and $911.49 toward postage for another attack on Ibarra. From May 22 through 26, the Committee for Effective Government spent $411.78 to research, $1,000 to design, $2,259.73 to printing and $808.34 to mail another handbill savaging Ibarra. The Committee for Effective Government spent $2,244.62 to print a final mailer casting Ibarra in a negative light and spent $740.67 on postage to send it to the highest propensity voters in her district, timed to land in mailboxes on Saturday, May 30 and Monday, June 1 just before Tuesday’s polling. The Committee for Effective Government spent $19,318.79 on its mail campaign to destroy Ibarra’s reputation.
In a two day period between April 29 and April 30, the Committee for Effective Government spent $251.31 to research, $500 to design, and $5,677.29 to print an attack mailer against Shorett and then spent $2,785.49 to mail it to his constituents in the Fourth Ward. On May 14 and 15, the Committee for Effective Government spent $500 to design, $3,189.19 to print and $1,621.30 on postage for another hit piece targeting Shorett. From May 22 through May 26 the Committee for Effective Government shelled out $411.78 on research, $1,000 on design and $3,065.04 on printing for a mailer that demonized Shorett before devoting $1,485.59 toward postage to put it before the voters most likely to vote in the Fourth District. On May 26 the Committee for Effective Government spent $3,013.08 on a final handbill to trash Shorett, which was then delivered to Fourth Ward voters at a cost of $1,358.88. The Committee for Effective Government’s mail campaign against Shorett cost $24,858.74.
Three entities controlled by Scott Beard – Rialto-based Gerald W. Beard Realty Inc., Rialto-based Legendary Enterprises and Rialto-based S.C. Beard Enterprises – respectively on April 13, April 13 and May 7 provided the Committee for Effective Government with $50,000, with $19,600 and with $24,900.
A common theme in the mailers was tying each of the three to Valdivia. This was done despite the clear enmity that had always existed between Shorett and Valdivia from the time Shorett beat Valdivia in the special election in 2009 when Valdivia was living in the Fourth Ward and the intense estrangement that existed between Valdivia and Sanchez and between Valdivia and Ibarra during the last three years of Valdivia’s mayoralty. All three were attacked in one of the mailers against them for having voted to settle the lawsuits brought against the city and Valdivia by Cisneros, Cervantes, Aboud and others. The attack pieces did not mention that all of the other members of the council, including Ortiz, whom Beard had bankrolled into office, likewise voted to settle the case.
The bottom line at present is that without question Tran has captured reelection and the relatively predictable five-member line of opposition to her that currently exists on the council will be decimated, with at least two of its members consigned to San Bernardino’s political dustbin.
Marquez is the odd-on favorite to prevail over Alvarado in November run-off to replace Sanchez. Marquez endorsed Tran in the just concluded race and Tran transferred money from her political war chest to Marquez to assist her in her electoral effort. It would appear that Marquez will fall in line with the mayor’s agenda, if and when she gets into office.
Tran similarly transferred money from her campaign account to Barrios earlier this year to assist him in his effort to defeat Ibarra. Barrios is likely to assist her going forward if he gets past Shaughnessy in November. At the same time, Shaughnessy is close to Ortiz. On multiple elements of Tran’s game plan for the city, she is in lockstep with Ortiz. Thus, no matter which way the Second Ward election goes later this year, Tran is likely to have a far less hostile council member in that position to deal with than she does now.
Shorett has had close scrapes in his previous elections, yet managed to come through and remain in office as the dean of the council, having now been in place for 17 years. Salas represents a serious challenge for him, and with Beard and others who are in Tran’s corner willing to throw big money into a campaign against him, he has at best, an upward battle. When the Sentinel spoke with him this week, asking him if he was scared by what was going on, he responded, “Scared? I’m not scared. I went to Viet Nam when I was 19 and came through that. I’ve been divorced twice. I’ve been on the city council, on top, on the bottom and in between where I wasn’t sure which way up was. There is not a whole lot that is going to scare me.
“The better question might be, ‘Am I concerned?’” Shorett said. “Hell, yes, I’m concerned. I’ve been concerned all along. I wasn’t blindsided by this. From the beginning, I thought this was going to be a tough race, probably way tougher than any I’ve had or had in some time. Now I’m up against opposition from the mayor and her machine. I always felt I was the right person for this job. I still believe I am, and I still think I can win this thing. I knew it was going to be tight. I think, basically, I fit the voters in this district better than Joe Salas does. He is – let’s call it the way it is – a socialist. He doesn’t fit the temperament or the philosophy of the Fourth Ward. But with the money being put up by Scott Beard and the attack pieces put together by Jim Erwin, they did a pretty good hatchet job on me. Does it make me nervous that there will be more of the same as we get closer to November? Yeah, it does. But other candidates are out of the way and the race is defined now: Joe Salas or me. I know what case I have to make and I am going to stay focused, put my philosophy up against the socialistic alternative the voters have now. If I win, I win. If I lose, I’ve had a good run – 17 years.”
If Salas can vanquish Shorett, Tran should be able to compile a record of accomplishment that will erase the frustration she has had over spinning her wheels during her first four year term. With Salas in place along with Marquez and either Barrios or Shaughnessy, she will be able to add three votes to the one certain vote that Flores provides and Ortiz’s vote on the issues where they are in substantial agreement to form a 5-to-2 ruling majority. Under such a scenario, both Knaus and Figueroa, who at any rate were not as stridently out of synchronization with Tran as Shorett and Sanchez have been, might see the wisdom of making common cause with the mayor, indeed, as to be able to serve the constituents in their respective wards, they will need to give a little to get a little, and the council could become a panel that consistently agrees unanimously rather than gets mired in differences. Even if Shorett is able to remain in office, the effective five-member council opposition that is in place now will be entirely compromised, and Tran will still be able to get her way on the vast majority of initiatives she is likely to pursue.
Based upon Tran’s known priorities and wish list, which she has conveyed to her allies and even her rivals at times, it appears that within the first six months to a year after her second term begins, several things will be in the office.
Among those will be a move to confer on the mayor a substantial raise. At present, the mayor is provided with $ a 51,923 per year stipend/salary. That is augmented with some $9,036 she gets for attending meetings as a city representative or board member of regional agencies or joint powers authorities, 22,030.99 in perks and other add-ons as well as $29,034 in benefits for a total yearly compensation of $112,050.99. When Tran left as human resources director of West Covina in 2022, she had to give up a position that paid her roughly $142,000 in salary and provided another 18,000 in perquisites and pay add-ons together with 37,732.30 in benefits for a total annual compensation of around $197,732.30. What Tran wants to do, and what the newly formed council will likely go along with is to split the difference between where she was as human resources director in West Covina and as mayor now in terms of total annual compensation. This means, essentially, that her annual stipend as mayor would be increased to $94,790.66 so her total annual compensation would be, roughly $154,891.65.
A second priority for Tran is that she be provided with a staff approaching if not comparable to what Valdivia had before the scandal involving Cisneros, Cervantes and Aboud resulted in the council reducing it to just a skeleton crew. This would entail hiring at least two more workers into the mayoral staff answerable directly to her.
Another move will be to give an assignment to the city’s Charter Review Committee to examine or contemplate restoring the strong mayor system that existed under the 1905 charter whereby the mayor is given, at least in theory, the administrative authority lost with the 2016 charter change or that a hybrid of the strong mayor and city council/city manager model of governance be examined as to whether it would be suitable for the city.
Tran is also contemplating overhauling the current roster of appointments of council members to the governmental adjunct committees, regional boards and joint powers authority to give her greater indirect control of how the city is represented on those panels.
Tran will seek to have the council revisit a proposal to terminate the city’s contract with the law firm of Best Best & Krieger to serve as the office of city attorney, or, in the alternative, undertake a bidding process by which Best Best & Krieger will have to respond to a request for proposals from a wide variety of law firms whereupon a competition among the respondents will be carried out.
Tran wants to usher the new city council toward settling a $2 million pending lawsuit brought against the city by Councilwoman Ortiz for a proposed $50,000 and coverage of her lawyer’s costs.
Tran believes the city should hasten the retirement of Police Chief Darren Goodman, believing his retirement within the next five years to be an inevitable eventuality that would be better taken care of while she is still in the mayor’s role and before she moves on to a higher political office.
The mayor also remains committed to installing Rochelle Clayton as city manager and believes Clayton can be induced to leave Barstow to come to San Bernardino by offering current City Manager Eric Levitt a golden parachute.