By Mark Gutglueck
With the FBI scrutinizing virtually every element of his political existence, Ontario Councilman Alan Wapner has abandoned his challenge of Mayor Paul Leon and will instead run for reelection to the city council for the eighth consecutive time in the upcoming November 3 election.
Leon and Wapner are two of San Bernardino County’s longest-serving local elected officials. Wapner was first elected to the city council in 1994. Leon was appointed to the council in 1998.
Wapner, who has stated on numerous occasions, in numerous contexts and to numerous individuals privately and publicly that he considers himself to be comprehensively superior to Leon with regard to every consideration the voters should make in selecting a mayor, seriously contemplated running for mayor in the special election that took place in June 2005 after former Mayor Gary Ovitt was elected to the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors in November 2004 with two years remaining on his term. Leon, however, beat Wapner in filing to compete in that race, and Wapner opted against making it into a race between two incumbent council members. Leon prevailed in the special election against former Ontario City Attorney Sam Crowe, who had also served on the city council in the 1960s. Wapner contemplated running against Leon in 2010, but again deferred to the reality that Leon, given his Spanish surname, had an electoral advantage over him in a city in which upwards of 60 percent of the population is Hispanic. Privately, Wapner lamented that Ontario was being poorly and inadequately represented by Leon who was doing a disservice to the city’s residents by monopolizing the mayor’s position. Nevertheless, he chose, again in 2024, 2028 and 2022 to run for city council rather than mayor, and even arranged to run as a troika with Mayor Leon and Councilman Jim Bowman, who together shared the same election cycle in which they were due for reelection in California’s gubernatorial election years. The three ran as members of the so-called Team Ontario, claiming in mutually-funded election material that they were responsible for the economic development in their city that had rendered Ontario into the most lavishly funded municipality in San Bernardino County. Despite this public show of comity, Leon and Wapner in actuality loathed one another.
Beginning in 2011, Wapner had championed Ontario pursuing the return of Ontario Airport to local control. In 1967, as part of an effort to increase the number of airlines using that facility, the number of passengers flying into and out of Ontario and modernize the aviation facilities there, the Ontario City Council entered into a joint powers arrangement with the City of Los Angeles. Los Angeles then utilized its ownership and control over Los Angeles International Airport and gate positions there to induce airlines to set up operations at Ontario Airport. Los Angeles also used its bonding capability to obtain financing for improvements at Ontario Airport, including extending its runway into the longest one among civilian airports in Southern California, modernizing its concourse and constructing two ultramodern terminals. In 1985, after all of the criteria specified in the 1967 joint powers authority agreement were met, Ontario deeded the airport to Los Angeles. Los Angeles, through its Department of Airports and the corporate entity – Los Angeles World Airports – that operated Los Angeles International Airport, Ontario Airport and Van Nuys Airport, worked toward intensifying the use of Ontario International Airport. By 2007, ridership at Ontario Airport had increased from 200,000 passengers per year to 7. 2 million. The downturn in the national economy that occurred in 2007 and lasted until 2013 resulted in diminishing air travel all around the country. Wapner capitalized on that, claiming that Los Angeles was intentionally mismanaging Ontario Airport to increase passenger traffic at Los Angeles International Airport. He attacked Los Angeles, its elected leadership, the Los Angeles Department of Airports, Los Angeles World Airports and its officials as part of his strategy of wresting Ontario Airport from Los Angeles. Ontario created the Ontario International Airport Authority in 2012 in anticipation of the ownership of the airport one day returning to Ontario. Wapner was made the chairman of the airport authority board of directors. Wapner advocated that the City of Ontario sue Los Angeles over the airport ownership issue, which the Ontario City Council agreed to do in 2013. In 2015, Los Angeles threw in the towel, settling the lawsuit and agreeing to return the Airport to Ontario officially as of November 1, 2016 on the condition that Ontario pay it $650 million. With Ontario’s victory over Los Angeles in the war over Ontario Airport, Wapner was hailed as a conquering hero.
Wapner had always been a more prolific political fundraiser than Leon, which Wapner considered to be another manifestation of his superiority to Leon as a human being, personality and politician. In the 18 months from January 1, 2025 until June 30, 2026, Wapner made a display of that superiority by raising, in total, $652,248.08 in donations to his political war chest. In the same timeframe, Leon collected $96,449 from his donors. This demonstrated, Wapner asserted, that the Ontario community’s movers and shakers, the business community that was dynamic and focused on advancing the city, were strongly convinced that he was the superior choice for mayor. His intention was to use that funding to purchase sufficient billboard space and as many window signs and yard signs as was needed to get the attentions of Ontario’s voters to get name recognition matching Leon and then to convince those voters with along with television spots, radio ads, newspaper advertisements, brochures, handbills, mailers and phone banks that he would make a better mayor than the incumbent. He declared his candidacy for mayor last year and convinced all of Ontario’s municipal employee unions – including the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Service Employees International Union, the Ontario Firefighters Association, the Ontario Police Officers Association and the Ontario Police Management Association – to endorse him. Wapner was convinced that he could use his leadership role in having Ontario Airport returned to Ontario as a major selling point in his campaign against Leon. His belief was that by skillful use of the campaign funds at his disposal as well as utilizing a strategy that called for convincing his council ally, Daisy Macias, to jump into the race for mayor and thereby diluting/splitting the city’s Latino vote, he could oust Leon and claim the mayoral gavel, which he so rightfully deserved.
On July 28, however, the FBI served search warrants at his home, at the home of San Bernardino County Fourth District Supervisor Curt Hagman and at the home and office of attorney Frank Lizarraga, and served subpoenas for documents at Ontario City Hall and the administrative office of the Ontario International Airport Authority. Hagman is a board member on the Ontario International Airport Authority and Lizarraga is Wapner’s personal attorney.
Over the next several days, Wapner made a drastic recalculation of his political prospects. Whereas his assumption previously was that he stood a better than even chance of prevailing over Leon in the mayoral race, the intensive negative publicity he has unexpectedly been subjected to lengthened the odds against him dramatically.
With the deadline for filing all completed paperwork relating to candidacies being August 7, Wapner had only a limited amount of time to determine what he would do. Candidacy applications are exacting, requiring that all information be accurately provided/filled in and that nomination papers containing the valid signatures of at least 20 registered voters in the jurisdiction where the office being sought be included. Deviations in those signatures from what is on file with the registration of voters’ office or a signatory not being currently registered in the jurisdiction in question results in those defective signatures being discounted. To be safe, most candidates gather at least 25 signatures of those they believe to be voters in the appropriate jurisdiction and to be really safe, they gather 30 or more.
Ultimately, Wapner decided to drop out of the mayor’s race and to run for election in the council district in which he resides, that being the city’s Third District.
Whereas previously, Wapner was elected at large, this year is the second election cycle in which district elections for spots on the city council are being held and the first year in which council representatives to the city’s second and third districts are being chosen. Thus, presumably the signatures Wapner had been gathering for his mayoral run came from areas all across the city. In getting his council nomination papers signed, he had to confine himself to getting signatures of those within the city’s Third District.
As of the 5 p.m. filing deadline for the November 3 election on August 7, the city clerk’s office received a rescission of Wapner’s mayoral candidacy application, which was then substituted with paperwork intended to qualify him for candidacy in District 3.
The city clerk’s office had not had time to examine the paperwork to ensure that every I was dotted and all Ts were crossed, nor had there been sufficient time for the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Office to determine that at least 20 of those signing the nomination affidavit match the signatures of those voters it has on file.
At the city council meeting on Tuesday, August 4, Wapner asserted, “I don’t believe I am the suspect, the subject, or target of any investigation.”
It does not appear that Wapner was sufficiently confident that he can make a convincing case that he is not the subject of an investigation nor that he is not worthy of being investigated to remain in a match up against Leon, the incumbent mayor.
Rather, it seems, he believes he stands a better chance of remaining on the council in a race against D’Andre Lampkin, who is vying in District 3.
He cannot run for both mayor and in District 3 at the same time.