A controversy erupted in Fontana this week with the mayor’s and city council’s consideration and selection of what has become universally recognized as a gerrymandered electoral map to be used in the 208,393-population city for the next decade.
After considering a number of potential voting district configurations based upon the city’s population numbers in the 2020 Census, the city council came to Tuesday night’s meeting with its options limited to three potential maps, all of which had been manipulated to protect Mayor Acquanetta Warren’s primary ally on the city council from being challenged by a former local office holder considered by political handicappers to be his strongest competitor.
Acquanetta Warren has been an officeholder in Fontana since 2002, when she was appointed to fill out the last two years of Mark Nuami’s council term after he was elected mayor that year. Two years later, Warren ran for election to the council in her own right and won. That was followed by her council reelection in 2008 and her election as mayor in 2010. From that time forward, Mayor Warren has been the dominant political personage in the former steel town, which has grown to the point that at present it is in a not-too-distant second place position behind the county seat of San Bernardino for the title of the county’s most populous city.
Warren, a Republican, has assembled around herself a ruling coalition consisting of three other Republicans – Phil Cothran Jr, Pete Garcia and John Roberts.
The Republican primacy in Fontana is a remarkable phenomenon. Though in California municipal, county and local agency races are considered nonpartisan ones, in far-flung San Bernardino County, party politics plays a substantial role in every contest for public office. That the Republicans hold any elective offices in Fontana at all is remarkable from a statistical standpoint. Looking at the party registration numbers in Fontana shows that Democrats have not just a lead but a commanding one in that regard. As of this week, of the 107,806 voters in the city, 53,606 of them or 49.7 percent are registered Democrats, while 21,681 or 20.1 percent are registered as Republicans. Not only are there just shy of two-and-a-half Democrats for every Republican in the city, the number of voters in Fontana who have chosen to align themselves with no party is 25,021 or 23.2 percent, outrunning the number of Republicans in the city. The remaining 8 percent identify as Libertarians, Greens, American Independents or as members of the Peace & Freedom or other obscure parties. In the last thirty years, the Republicans in Fontana have maintained their edge by spirited and cohesive campaigning, coordinating, communicating and achieving high voter turnout percentages and simply outhustling their Democratic rivals, all of which have hinged on aggressive fundraising.
Over the last generation, Phil Cothran Sr, a successful insurance salesman and landowner in the city, has been active in those fundraising drives for Republican causes and candidates in Fontana, including for Warren, and he has been a major contributor himself. The father of Phil Cothran Jr, he and Warren have mentored and groomed his son to take on a political role in the city.
In 2018, Cothran Jr ran successfully in the first by-district election held in Fontana history, competing against three others, including former Fontana Unified School District Board Member Shannon O’Brien, in the city’s newly formed District 1. Young Cothran, like his father a Republican, defeated O’Brien, a Democrat.
Slowly, indeed at a glacial pace, the Democrats in Fontana are developing the sophistication and tools to seize a political position more in keeping with their numerical superiority, including waking up to the need to engage in both fundraising and then learning and mastering the mechanics of political campaigning to drive voters to the polls or cast mail ballots, actions which in tandem with the local Democratic Party registration advantage raise the significant possibility that Warren and her Republican cohorts could lose their hold on City Hall.
Shannon O’Brien and her husband, Jason, are at the forefront of the Democratic vanguard seeking to flip Red Fontana Blue. Jason, a Los Angeles Police Department detective, succeeded his wife on the Fontana Unified School District Board of Education from 2016 until 2020. During each of the times when the O’Briens were on the school board, they served as a bulwark against the bloc of officeholders on that panel who had been placed into office with Warren’s assistance, as the mayor’s political machine had and continues to spread itself to all elements of the community.
This year, Shannon has thrown her hat in the ring as a candidate for mayor. Also this year, in January, Jason filed a form 501 candidate intention document with the City of Fontana through the city clerk’s office, signaling he was going to run for councilman in the First District. The O’Briens live on the north side of Fontana, well within the city’s original First District, basically located within Fontana’s northwest quadrant. Their home was safely within the First District boundaries and it was a logical assumption that with the completion of the voting district map for the City of Fontana, the O’Brien household would remain within the First District.
For reasons that have not been publicly specified, however, Fontana’s effort to establish the electoral map that is to apply in the 2022, 2024, 2026, 2028 and 2030 election cycles has been drawn out, making Fontana one of the last jurisdictions in San Bernardino County to set its district map. The boundaries for the council districts were not set until this week, at a point well after candidates, potential candidates and contemplated candidates have begun their analyses of the political winds to ascertain if they are going to seek office and what offices – agency or municipal, local, state or federal – they would vie for. Indeed, Fontana did not set its council district boundaries until after the filing period had opened and then closed for county, state and federal offices in this year’s primary election.
When the Fontana City Council at last this week got around to making its final call as to how the city’s electoral map is to shape up, it considered only three of the nine maps and map variations that had been drawn up during the reapportionment process carried out this year in Fontana. The city’s consultant, the National Demographics Corporation, had drafted four primary maps, those being 101, 102, 103 and 104. Additionally, the public submitted least four maps for consideration. Three of those – 401, 402 and 403 – like the National Demographics Corporation maps, called for the city to remain being divided into four districts, each represented by one council member, with all residents voting to elect an at-large mayor. A fourth map submitted by the public, Map 604, would have created six council positions, entailing six council districts, in addition to the at-large mayoral position. Prior to this week, the National Demographics Corporation had tweaked some of the basic maps, giving them nomenclature which retained the original number from which the map deviated augmented with a letter. Ultimately as of Tuesday night, the maps submitted overall had been reduced to three finalists, two of which originated with the National Demographics Corporation and one which had been submitted by the public. The council’s final options were the map designated 103, another designated 402 and a third designated 104B.
Remarkably, all three removed the O’Briens from District 1. Both maps 402 and 104B displayed a radical use of gerrymandering. Map 402 featured a jetty that jutted out westward from the main body of District 3 to include the neighborhood in which the O’Brien residence is located. In the case of Map 104B, a similar jetty or peninsula extended west from District 2. Map 103 was less obviously gerrymandered, with district lines that were more uniform and linear. Nevertheless, it too, moved the immediate neighborhood in which the O’Briens live out of District 1 and into District 3. Meanwhile, all three maps left Phil Cothran Jr. in District 1. Those maps which left O’Brien and Cothran in District 1, thus creating a scenario in which they would run against one another this year, were eliminated from consideration before the council met on Tuesday.
A not unreasonable interpretation of what had occurred was that the council majority – that being the four-member ruling coalition headed by Warren – had given itself options that were designed to lock in its existing electoral/political advantages and which compromised the ability of the political opposition to mount any sort of effective challenge.
Ultimately, on Tuesday evening, the council, by a vote of 4-to-1 with the council’s lone Democrat and nonmember of the Warren coalition, Jesse Sandoval, dissenting, Map 104B was selected.
During a significant amount of the discussion and public debate leading up to the vote, the focus was not so much on the north end of the city where the O’Briens live but on the south end of Fontana.
All three maps the city council seriously considered Tuesday night – 103, 402 and 104B – divided the southernmost area of Fontana into two districts, representing a change from the map that was put in place in 2017 and has been in effect until now. A roiling issue in Fontana is what many consider to be the overbuilding of warehouses, in particular at the city’s south end, and activists intent on limiting or ending further warehouse development in the city wanted the city to maintain a single district in south Fontana to prevent the anti-warehouse popular vote that exists there from being diluted. The city council Tuesday night was confronted by members of both the South Fontana Concerned Citizens Coalitions and the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, who pushed for the council to resurrect a map that had been previously rejected and was not being considered Tuesday night, Map 401. They touted Map 401 as one which would, in the words of several, “keep communities of interest together.”
Members of the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice questioned why the city seemed so committed to maps 103, 402 and 104B, all of which created not only the possibility but the likelihood that a city resident living in central Fontana perhaps as far north as Arrow Boulevard will represent those at the south end of the city who are confronted by far different living and quality of life issues.
Some of those opposed to the city’s limitation of its districting options to maps 103, 402 and 104B suggested that what was ongoing was the council majority’s effort to “gain a political advantage.”
Jason O’Brien brought that charge full circle when, in a remark to the Sentinel this week he connected the observations of what was happening at the south end of the city with regard to the city’s political mapping there with what was happening toward the north end of the city.
“Acquanetta has always tried to stop me from running,” Jason O’Brien said.
In her action this time around, he suggested, Warren is looking to keep him from loosening the vice grip she has on the city’s governmental machinery by challenging, and potentially defeating, Cothran Jr, who is up for reelection in the city’s First District this year.
“She was able to remove me from District 1,” O’Brien said. “You will notice District 1 and District 4 are up for election in November 2022, forcing me to wait until 2024 to run.”
This is not the first time Warren used underhanded tactics to try and undercut him politically, Jason O’Brien said.
“In my 2020 school board race, Acquanetta financed and endorsed black candidates to unseat me by dividing up the black votes,” he said. “One of those candidates was Shelly Bradford. I also suspect Oliver Christian, but we have no paperwork linking him to the mayor. Christian didn’t campaign. We suspect he was placed in the race to further split my vote.”
Warren dismissed assertions that the city’s electoral map was being drawn with immediate political considerations in mind.
“This is for ten years,” she said, “So we have to look at not just today, but what’s happening down in those areas,” meaning the city’s southlying districts.
-Mark Gutglueck

Chino Hills, which a little less than five years ago earned distinction and praise for not creating electoral districts that across the board benefited the city’s incumbent council members, this week erased its reputation as one of the few cities in San Bernardino County not headed by a slew of politicians whose first priority extends to ensuring their political primacy.
In setting the boundaries for the city council districts that will be in place in the county’s southwesternmost municipality during the 2022, 2024, 2026, 2028 and 2030 election cycles, the council’s five members locked in for themselves advantages in the next several races they will need to run in to remain on the council.
Historically in San Bernardino County, only the cities of San Bernardino and Colton had city councils in which the members were elected by ward or district. Beginning in 2014, a group of lawyers based outside of San Bernardino County – Lancaster-based R. Rex Parris, Milton C. Grimes of Los Angeles, Malibu-based Kevin Shenkman and Matthew Barragan of Los Angeles – began assailing the lion’s share of San Bernardino County’s other cities and incorporated towns with demands that they move to by-district or by-ward voting. Parris, Grimes, Shenkman and Barragan based those demands on allegations that there was a pattern of racially-polarized or ethnically-polarized voting in those cities and towns which had resulted in fewer members of certain ethnic or racial minorities – essentially Hispanics – being elected to those municipalities’ councils percentagewise than the percentage of Hispanics within their various and respective populations.
Since the terms of the California Voting Rights Act made it both expensive and difficult for cities to contest such claims of ethnically-polarized or racially-polarized voting even in circumstances in which the claims were invalid, most cities simply chose to convert their electoral processes to ones in which members of their councils were elected to represent the district in which they lived through elections in which voters were restricted to voting only with regard to the district in which they reside. The California Voting Rights Act contained a provision by which an attorney making such a by-district voting demand of a city would then be eligible to receive a $30,000 to $45,000 fee from the city for having written such a demand letter that was complied with. Consequently, in virtually every case where a city made a transition to by-district or by-ward voting, the attorney would collect that fee, and discontinue any further involvement in or monitoring of the election system transition.
This left the cities making those transitions free to carry out the election process conversions in any way in which they saw fit. Often this meant that the conversion of a given city’s elections into ones in which minority members were more likely to be elected in the past did not take place. Even more often – indeed in well in excess of 90 percent of the cases – what happened was the cities set up districts in which the incumbents serving at the time the transitions were made were provided with an advantage against any of their emerging competitors for office.
One of the ways in which this manifested was the gerrymandering of the districts such that the district maps that were created put district boundaries between those who were in office, making it so incumbents did not need to run against incumbents. Moreover, the cities would engage in sequencing of the elections such that the terms for those seeking to be elected to represent the newly created districts were timed to begin just as the terms of the at-large council positions the council members who were eligible to run in the new districts ended. This was a baldly political and self-serving manipulation of the electoral process, and in city after city after city after city after city after city after city after city after city after city in San Bernardino County where the transition to district elections had occurred, those in office took advantage of the power and authority that had been entrusted to them to further advance their political careers.
Incumbents already possess an advantage over non-incumbents in terms of name recognition with the general public, which makes voters more likely to vote for them. In addition, incumbency makes it easier to convince political donors to provide those running for office with contributions to their political war chests. That money can be used to conduct polling, run radio ads, buy billboard space, secure local television ads, purchase endorsements on slate mailers sent to voters in the weeks prior to an election, print and send mailers touting the incumbent and the job he or she has done while in office along with his or her accomplishments, print and send attack mailers dwelling on the shortcomings of opponents, pay for handbills that can be distributed door-to-door or defray the cost of phone banks to call voters and importune them for their votes. Placing themselves into districts where they need not run against other incumbents with the same advantages they possess confers on those incumbents an even further leg up, as is demonstrated by the substantially superior win-loss percentage incumbents have over non-incumbents nationally, throughout California, regionally, at the county level and locally.
Just like the towns of Apple Valley and Yucca Valley and the cities of Chino, Upland, Rancho Cucamonga, Redlands, Twentynine Palms, Big Bear, Hesperia, Barstow, Fontana, Highland and later Ontario, Chino Hills in 2018 was forced to embrace district elections. Unlike virtually all of those cities and towns, however, Chino Hills had resisted the temptation to put into place a map in which the districts had been drawn to benefit those who were then in office. While the city did hire outside consultants and demographers to assist in the electoral map drawing effort, the map ultimately selected for Chino Hills in June 2017 for use beginning with the 2018 election was one that was drawn up by two citizens, those being Brian Johsz and Richard Austin. The city’s consultant, the National Demographics Corporation, provided the city with four maps which divided the city into five districts, one of which included districts that kept all five council members in separated districts. That map was presented in keeping with National Demographics Corporation principal Douglas Johnson’s recognition that most politicians want to remain in office and they have both the power and reach to provide themselves with an advantage in terms of how electoral districts get drawn. Accordingly the National Demographics Corporation gave the Chino Hills City Council the option of conferring just such an advantage on itself.
Worth noting is that the council as it was then composed, consisting of Ray Marquez, Art Bennett, Cynthia Moran, Peter Rogers and Ed Graham, rejected the option of adopting the map that put all five of them in different districts. Instead, they adopted the Johsz/Austin map. That map created districts in which three of the council members were placed in a district by themselves, two of the incumbents resided in the same district and one district had no incumbent. Specifically, the map put Ray Marquez in District 1, Peter Rogers in District 2, Art Bennett in District 3 and Ed Graham and Cynthia Moran in District 5.
As it turned out, not too long after the map was adopted, Graham, one of the original members of the city council when Chino Hills incorporated in 1991, resigned. He was replaced, notefully, by Johsz, a resident of District 4, who was appointed to fill in for Graham until his term expired in 2018.
Marquez and Rogers were elected without opposition in 2018; Johsz was retained in office in 2018 with three opponents running against him; Bennett and Moran were elected in 2020, with Bennett defeating three challengers and Moran unopposed.
In accordance with the 2020 Census, all jurisdictions throughout the country and California were due last year to redraw their electoral maps and the boundaries therein, a process known as reapportionment, to ensure numerical uniformity, or uniformity within a range of 10 percent presumptively considered to be in accordance with U.S. and California constitutional provisions. Because of delays brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, there were delays which postponed many cities’ adoptions of the new maps. Chino Hills was among the last of the county’s cities to conclude the process. It did so this week at its March 22 meeting.
In at least some respects, Chino Hills complied, or ostensibly complied, with the intent spelled out in the California Voting Rights Act in terms of enabling minority groups to express themselves through the electoral process. The city made some relatively minor shifts of boundaries to accommodate some slightly uneven geographical population growth within the 44.7-square mile city over the last decade. With a city population in the 2020 Census of 85,695, each district was supposed to have, ideally, 17,139 residents within its confines. The map the council ultimately chose was drafted by Chino Hills resident Jeff Vaka, with some minor tweaking here and small adjustments there.
While in most of the rest of San Bernardino County, it is Latinos considered to be historically unrepresented on the various town and city councils, Chino Hills is heavily populated with those of Asian extraction, and there are no Asians on the council.
According to the city, the districts that were put into place Tuesday match the goal of providing the city’s residents with a fair shot at electing Asian-American representatives.
According to the National Demographics Corporation, which remains as the city’s consultant in determining how its districts are to be drawn, District 1 has a 53 percent concentration of Asian-Americans and District 2 boasts a 52 percent concentration of Asian-Americans.
The highest concentration in the number of Latinos in any one district is in District 4, where 41 percent of the population is Hispanic.
The white population in Chino Hills is uniformly a minority throughout Chino Hills, as District 1 is 21 percent Caucasian, District 2 is 20 percent white; District 3 stands at 36 percent of primarily European ancestry, District 4 is 17 percent Caucasoid and 23 percent in District 5 register as predominantly Aryan.
Similarly, the black population is static throughout the city at 4 percent in all districts except District 5, which is 6 percent African-American.
The map managed to confer advantages on all five current officeholders in the city. Marquez remains in District 1 at the north and western end of the city, abutting Los Angeles County. Rogers is within the Second District on the eastern side of the city primarily to the north, the densely populated section that is contiguous with the City of Chino to the east. Bennett’s resident falls within the even more densely populated Third District just south of the Second District, and it is also snuggled up against the city limits with Chino. Johsz’s Fourth District stretches all the way across the city from the Orange County line on the middle southwest side to Fairfield Ranch along the eastern border with Chino. Moran’s District 5 is the southernmost, largest and most sparsely populated portion of Chino Hills, contiguous with Chino to the east, Riverside County to the southeast and south, and Orange County and Chino Hills State Park on the southwest.
Marquez, Rogers and Johsz are due to stand for election this year if they are to remain in office after December. Bennett and Moran must stand for election in November 2024 or leave office the following month.
-Mark Gutglueck

On Tuesday, the steady generational makeover of the downtown area of Redlands advanced, with the planning commission giving approval to two new buildings.
A limited liability company known as Redlands Railway District, LLC formed with the specific goal of developing property in close proximity to the Santa Fe Depot. Redlands Railway District proposed the Packing House East project to be located at 333 Orange Street, at the southwest corner of Orange Street and Al Harris Lane. The site falls within Redlands’ Town Center-Historic District, which is delineated in the city’s Downtown Specific Plan.
The surrounding land uses consist of the Santa Fe Depot, which the city has designated as Historic Landmark 38, and the Redlands Chamber of Commerce Building, designated as Redlands Historic Landmark 40, both to the north; Denny’s restaurant and a law office which was previously Home Savings and Loan to the south; the Romano’s Pizzeria, Aroi Mak Mak and the Flamingo restaurants to the east; and the historic MOD Packinghouse, which is currently under renovation to become a multi-tenant food hall, to the west
The general plan designation on the property is commercial.
The northeast portion of the 1.67-acre property has one existing retail building, a FedEx/Kinko’s shop, which is to remain along with a parking lot. The westerly side of the subject properties is vacant and unimproved, and that is the portion of the site proposed for new development, which is to consist of one 7,973-square foot restaurant building and one 3,839-square foot retail building. In addition, the applicant will complete an associated new parking lot and further site improvements. Those site improvements include upgrading to the exterior façade as well as improving the ADA-access ramps and other accessibility features at the FedEx/Kinkos retail operation.
The 7,973-square foot restaurant/food service building will feature an approximate 1,598-square foot outdoor dining patio, which will be located between the existing FedEx/Kinkos operation to the east and the existing historic MOD Packinghouse to the west. The 3,839-square foot retail building will be located on the south side of the FedEx/Kinko’s building.
The total combined proposed new floor area for the buildings to be constructed is 11,812 square feet.
Redlands Railway District does not have tenants under contract for the new buildings at this time, but anticipates the restaurant building would be occupied by a single tenant.
Redlands Railway District requested and was granted a lot line adjustment to modify the interior lot lines of four parcels for development purposes, such that there will be one building on each lot after the development is complete.
Previous construction at the project site occurred in 1987 when the site was developed with an approximately 8,000 square-foot bank building, with office uses located upstairs. Currently that building is occupied by FedEx/Kinko’s as the sole tenant. Much of the project site was developed with an existing parking lot, while the remainder on the west side was left vacant and unimproved.
In 2018, an application was made by a previous owner and applicant for the planning commission to review and approve the construction of a 10,000 square-foot building adjacent to Al Harris Lane and a 5,200 square foot building adjacent to Orange Street. The entitlement granted to that application has since expired and the property changed ownership. Redlands Railway District, as the new owner and current applicant, filed the new application for a similar, but revised, proposal for two new retail buildings.
Glen Feron represented the developer before the commission on Tuesday.
Feron and city staff said the building design theme will match that of earlier additions to the Packing House District, utilizing brick veneer, shed-style roofs and metal awnings.
With commissioners Steven Frasher and Matt Endsley absent, the commission voted 5-to-0 to approve the project.