The Debra Jones Era in Victorville will come to a close in two months, city official have disclosed.
Jones, just as multiple individuals before her, commandeered control over municipal government in what is today’s largest desert city in San Bernardino County, relatively shortly after acceding to the city council in 2018, thwarting what had been the upward progression of Blanca Gomez, her primary rival during most of her tenure with the city.
Jones proved over the course of her time as an elected official in the Victor Valley to embody some contradictory elements, ranging from reformist inclinations she indulged in when she began as school board member that led to what many perceived as changes that benefited students to her assumption of the identity of the leader of the present-day Victorville Establishment, with its roots in the fundamental governmental and social excesses and corruption the community has long been inured of.
Councilmember Debra Jones has announced her intention to step down from the Victorville City Council following the October 21, 2025, meeting, as her family prepares to relocate outside the city later this year.
During the August 19 Victorville City Council meeting, Jones said she had made a “painful decision” to leave the city council as she is approaching her seventh year in her current elected post. “[S]tepping down is one of the hardest things that I’ve ever had to do,” she said.
She reiterated her decision in a Facebook post.
“After years of dedicated service to Victorville, I will soon be stepping down from the city council as I prepare to relocate outside the city,” she wrote. “Serving this community has been one of the greatest honors of my life, and I am deeply grateful for the trust you’ve placed in me.”
Jones began her political career toward the end of the first decade of the Third Millennium as a newfangled and reformist Republican willing to challenge what was then the Old Guard in San Bernardino County’s GOP establishment. Bill Postmus, who had been the chairman of the San Bernardino county Republican Central Committee, the chairman of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, San Bernardino County’s First District Supervisor from 2000 to 2006 and the highest taxing authority in San Bernardino County as the county assessor from 2007 until his forced resignation in 2009, had built a remarkable deep and broad political machine built upon pay-to-play politics. As supervisor, board chairman and central committee chairman, he had perfected the technique of shaking down those with business pending before the county board of supervisors, various city councils and, in some cases, the California Legislature. He did this by suggesting, hinting, representing or outright promising that in exchange for donations to the local Republican Party, to any of several political action committees he had founded, taken over or otherwise controlled, to his own political war chest or to the electioneering funds of any of his political associates, he could arrange for the development proposals or governmental contracts for goods or services or the franchise applications those donors with governmental entities would be approved. As county assessor, in exchange for political support of his candidacy or the candidacies of his political allies, Postmus was prepared to arrange or had in fact arranged to lower the property value and equipment/facility value assessments of the possessions of individuals or businesses, thereby lowering by thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars the taxes those entities had to pay on a yearly basis.
Side-ventures to Postmus’s corrupt manipulation of his authority as a public official were efforts to exploit governmental programs and subsidies. One such scheme was that relating to the California Charter Academy, an entity set up by Charles Steven Cox by means of an arrangement with/sponsorship of the Snowline Joint Unified School District, the Orange School District and the Oro Grande School District. Between the turn of the millennium and 2004, according to prosecutors, Cox and Tad Honeycutt, both of whom were Postmus’s political associates, diverted some $23 million in public money that was intended for educational purposes to their own use, spending it on a lavish lifestyle for themselves and their associates and families, investing it in stock and bonds, whisking it into offshore bank accounts and routing it into the campaign accounts of various politicians, including Postmus.
Cox arranged to contract with an entity he had set up – Educational Administrative Services – and two others set up by Honeycutt – Everything For Schools and Maniaque Enterprises – to divert California Department of Education money provided though the Snowline, Orange and Oro Grande districts for the provision of school administrators and school room items such as blackboards, desks, text books, computers, projectors, pens, pencils, notebooks and the like into accounts he and Honeycutt controlled. The educational materials were never delivered. Involved with Cox and Honeycutt in the scheme were Postmus; Brad Mitzelfelt, Postmus’s campaign manager, chief of staff when he was supervisor and his successor as supervisor; Adam Aleman, Postmus’s protege, political associate and San Bernardino County’s assistant assessor when Postmus was supervisor; Jessie Flores, a Postmus political associate and currently Adelanto City Manager.
After having made off with some $23 million in funds intended for educational purposes, Cox and Honeycutt saw the California Charter Academy gold goose killed when prosecutors charged Cox with 56 felony counts of PC 424 embezzlement/misappropriation of public funds, 56 felony counts of PC 487/grand theft, and one count of violating California Revenue and Taxation Code 19706 and Honeycutt was charged with 16 counts of PC 424/misappropriation of public funds and 14 charges of violating PC 487/grand theft, three charges of violating California Revenue and Taxation Code 19706/tax evasion and one charge of violating California Revenue and Taxation Code 19705/filing a false tax return. Postmus and the other political figures in his circle found themselves cut off from the largesse that Cox and Honeycutt could provide.
In 2008, the Postmus political machine and its coterie of hangers-on sought to duplicate the success that had been had with the California Charter Academy. Cox, working as a quiet adviser functioning from the shadows, put together another charter school proposal, this time selling the idea to the Adelanto School District. Participating in the free-for-all were Cox; Postmus; Mitzelfelt, who had succeeded Postmus and at that time was First District supervisor; Dino DeFazio, a friend of Postmus and the owner of D & D Real Estate and other real estate businesses, including Tri-Land, Inc, in which he was a partner with Postmus; Flores, a former field representative for Postmus and a then-field representative for Mitzelfelt; Aleman, who was formerly one of Postmus’s field representatives and at that time one of Postmus’ assistant assessors; Hesperia Unified School District Trustee Anthony Riley, a Postmus political ally; Sentry Home Loans owner and Adelanto Boys and Girls Club President Helene Harris and her husband Hendon Harris; Mitchel E. Pullman, a principal in Arrowhead Properties, IV, LLC; and Peggy Baker, Charles Steven Cox’s sister-in-law.
After Cox prepared the articles of incorporation, the Adelanto Charter Academy was chartered by the Adelanto School District on August 19, 2009. Functioning on a model not very different from that used by the California Charter Academy but on a smaller scale, Cox, Postmus, Mitzelfelt, DeFazio, Flores, Aleman, the Harrises, Pullman and Baker utilized the position of trust they had been vouchsafed to funnel money to themselves or the companies they controlled. In the roughly 15 months the academy was running without any oversight, they managed to loot the operation of more than $2 million that should otherwise have gone toward the education of students but instead was diverted to activities, purchases and disbursements having no conceivable academic application, such as the provision of limousines to the participants by Flores, the owner of Diamond Limousine. The Adelanto Charter Academy contracted with Professional Charter Management, Inc. to have the latter perform administrative services in return for 15 percent of all Adelanto Charter Academy revenues.
According to the California Secretary of State, Professional Charter Management, Inc. was a corporation with Jessie Flores as its chief executive officer and Dino DeFazio in the capacities of chief financial officer and secretary and Kari Murdock as agent for service of process. Kari Murdock is a niece of Charles Steven Cox.
In December 2010, Jessie Flores filed, under penalty of perjury, a certificate of dissolution for Professional Charter Management, Inc. Records, however, show that Professional Charter Management, Inc. continued to receive payments from the Adelanto Charter Academy after that dissolution.
In 2010, Postmus reached the end of the line as a politician when he was indicted on political corruption charges. Nevertheless, the illicit schemes he was involved in, such as the one involving the Adelanto Charter Academy, were yet operational.
In Honeycutt diverted some $23 million in public money that was intended for educational purposes to their own use, spending it on a lavish lifestyle for themselves and their associates and families, investing it in stock and bonds or whisking it into offshore bank accounts.
Just as Postmus’s career as a politician was sunsetting, Jones run in elective office was beginning. In 2010, she was elected to the Adelanto Elementary School District Board of Trustees. Despite the consideration that she was a Republican and that part of Postmus’s modus operandi was to exploit his authority as an elected official to rob from public coffers and transfer that money over to the rich donors that had kept his Republican political machine humming, Jones forthrightly participated in the effort to bring a curtain down on the depredations Cox, Postmus, Mitzelfelt, DeFazio, Flores, Aleman, the Harrises, Pullman and Baker were engaged in with the Adelanto Charter Academy. She pushed, along with other members of the school board, for the district to make an examination of what was being done with the state educational money the Adelanto School District was instrumental in delivering to the Adelanto Charter Academy. In November 2010, an audit cataloging significant shortcomings in the school’s operations was released, showing the academy had diverted some $2.2 million from educational purposes to the coterie of Postmus’ one-time political hangers-on. On May 17, 2011, the Adelanto School District revoked the charter it had granted to the Adelanto Charter Academy. The Adelanto Charter Academy immediately appealed the decision to the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools, who upheld the Adelanto School District’s decision on August 1, 2011. The Adelanto Charter Academy appealed that decision to the California Department of Education and continued to operate until notified on April 17, 2012, that “your administrative remedies are exhausted” and “any further appeal of revocation must be sought in a court of local jurisdiction.”
Recognizing that moving the matter into such a forum might well lead to indictments, those behind the operation threw in the towel, having diverted somewhere in the neighborhood of $3.1 million to their own pockets and bank accounts.
Jones earned the admiration and support of those who were paying attention to what she had achieved in the Adelanto School District, and she was recognized as a Republican reformer, who was willing to stand up to those in the local GOP such as Postmus, Mitzelfelt, Cox and Flores, who were more powerful than she was.
In 2018, partially on the strength of her achievements in the Adelanto Elementary School District, Jones was elected to the Victorville City Council. She joined Jim Cox, who was no relation to Charles Steven Cox; Mayor Gloria Garcia and Councilwoman Blanca Gomez, who were already on the council, and was sworn in that December along with Rita Ramirez, who had been elected to the council with her that November.
While races for local office – school and fire district boards, town councils, city councils and county supervisorial boards – in California are supposed to be nonpartisan, in San Bernardino County, party affiliation has for decades been a major factor with regard to who holds elective office. Throughout Victorville’s entire then-56-year history – from its 1962 incorporation until 2018 – it had been controlled, if not outright dominated, by Republicans. At that point, the number of registered Democrats in Victorville had eclipsed the number of registered Republicans. Despite that, given the far greater sophistication of the Republicans, their propensity for much higher voter turnout, their superior coordination and concerted electioneering and the degree of cohesion they demonstrated while the Democrats were beset with dissension, a lack of coordination and riddled with apathy, the GOP retained its control of the city, as Cox, Garcia and Jones were Republicans. Nevertheless, the presence of Democrats Gomez and Ramirez on the council reflected the growing influence of their party within the context of Victorville.
Blanca Gomez, through both her conception of herself and the world as it existed around her, made for a Democratic politician of especial stridency. She applied the concept of Democracy in the most literal fashion; perceiving, perhaps accurately and perhaps not, that Democrats outnumbered Republicans and that conservatives as she defined them were in eclipse and that liberals were in ascendancy throughout the community generally, she was unable to understand or accept that when it came to politics, the Democrats had simply been outhustled by the Republicans and the spoils thereafter fell to the victor. When she joined the city council in late 2016, her colleagues were Cox, Garcia, James Kennedy and Eric Negrete – Republicans all. It did not help the matter that upon being elected, Gomez did not have a command of parliamentary procedure. Within two months, over the course of three public meetings, hostility had developed between Gomez and Garcia, the latter of which had been honored with the mayor’s gavel and as such assumed the duty of presiding over the council’s meetings. Garcia grew weary of having to rein in or gavel down Gomez, who perceived the bully pulpit of the city council as an opportunity to address in depth and fashion on the spot a solution to any social or public issue that existed, irrespective of the limited set of topics delineated on that particular meeting agenda. For Garcia, Gomez’s would-be excursions into provinces where the city council had little or no authority or license to tred were only slightly more enraging than the positions Gomez had assumed with regard to issues of social reform and justice for herself and which she wanted the balance of the council to endorse. Convinced that American society was racist and that the country’s majority population of European extraction was indecently lording it over the economically-disadvantaged indigenous, black and Latino component of the society, Gomez found herself at odds with not only Cox and Kennedy, who were white, but most especially Garcia and Negrete, who had applied their personal intensity to establish themselves and rise within the conventional social hierarchy. Less than halfway through 2017, the exchanges between Gomez and Garcia and between Gomez and Negrete became legendary remonstrations of indecorousness.
In 2018, Kennedy opted out of running for re-election and Negrete was defeated in his bid for reelection. They were replaced by Ramirez and Jones.
In 2020, electoral history was made on two score in Victorville when, in the aftermath of Jim Cox’s decision not to seek reelection, no fewer than 20 candidates sought election or reelection to the council in the November contest, with Gomez capturing reelection, Mayor Garcia being defeated and newcomers Leslie Irving, a Democrat, emerging victorious, along with Liz Becerra, a Republican. Thus, for the first time in Victorville history, all five members of the city council were women and a majority – consisting of Gomez, Ramirez and Irving – of the council were Democrats.
In Victorville, as was and is still the case with nine of San Bernardino County’s 23 other cities or incorporated towns, the mayor is not elected directly by the city’s residents but is rather chosen from among the members of the council by the council. A tradition had developed of rotating the mayoral appointment, which generally lasted for a period of two year, to that individual with the most seniority/experience on the council who had not previously served as mayor. In December 2020, at which point the Victorville City Council was set to select the mayor to succeed the departing Garcia, Gomez was the most senior member of the council, having been elected in 2016, two years prior to Ramirez and Jones and four years prior to Becerra and Irving.
By tradition and the rule of seniority, the honorific of being named mayor at that point, both logically and politically, seemed to fall to Gomez. As Democrats, Gomez, Ramirez and Irving had more votes combined than did the two Republicans, Jones and Becerra. In a series of backroom maneuvers, the terms of which were never publicly disclosed, Jones was appointed mayor, Ramirez was designated mayor pro tem and Gomez was denied the post she and her supporters felt she deserved.
At that point, the Jones Era in Victorville began. As mayor, she undertook a host of initiatives ostensibly aimed at bettering the community, ones that were consistent with Republican goals of improved public safety, economic opportunity, development and prosperity, translating into increasing funding for law enforcement and fire services and attracting investment and large employers to the city.
In 2020, Measure P, the brainchild of Ruth Cordova that had been sponsored by a coterie of pro law enforcement advocates, was placed on the ballot as a general sales tax measure. It was approved by the Victorville voters during the November 3, 2020 election, increasing Victorville’s sales tax rate from 7.75 percent to 8.75 percent. Its supporters convinced the city’s voters to vote for it by emphasizing that the revenue from the one cent sales tax increase would be used to enhance public safety programs, by expanding essential services like policing, fire prevention and suppression, code compliance and animal care and control, while broadening community services, and creating programs to deal with homelessness.
As Measure P went into effect on April 1, 2021 in the earliest stage of Jones’ time as mayor and provided funding throughout the remaining time of her tenure as mayor, Jones was in certain respects the primary beneficiary of the initiative. She was widely credited with the measure’s impacts and as the driving force behind it. While she basked in that reputation and it increased her popularity with a not inconsiderable number of Victorvile’s residents, those who were in actuality the prime movers behind Measure P resented the way in which she had stolen their thunder and accrued glory. This was particularly galling to some who watched as Jones took credit for and saw her name enshrined on the cornerstone of the new police station and civic plaza now under way, financed in part by Measure P funds.
Jones moved into the central role of the city’s leader and the embodiment of the establishment, serving on regional boards such as the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority, Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority, along with participating in multiple seminars and conferences with the League of California Cities while serving on that organization’s Revenue and Taxation Committee. She also was a board member on the Mojave Desert & Mountain Recycling Joint Powers Authority, and was an alternative representative to the Victor Valley Transit Authority and serves on the League of California Cities Revenue and Taxation Committee.
Jones worked behind the scenes as an effective Republican political operative, undercutting the Democrats. When Councilwoman Leslie Irving, formerly a strong Democrat, had a falling out with her party, Jones encouraged that estrangement between Irving and the Democrats, giving her greater reach on the city council.
With Jones’ assumption of the mayoralty, she inherited Garcia’s enmity with Gomez. Over time, Jones earned the disapproval of those in the community who saw Gomez as their champion. Gomez, who regularly engaged in behaviors such as draping herself in the Mexican flag or practically maintaining that the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo should be abrogated so that Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and California could be returned to Mexico, found herself out of favor with a growing number of Victorville’s residents, who by default adhered to Jones.
Gomez sought to widen her base through the use of social media platforms, which included streaming city council meetings to her followers, framing what was being broadcast in terms or explanations or contexts that were favorable to her. She did this with the assistance of her boyfriend Robert Rodriguez, who regularly attended the city council meetings, likewise using his cellphone to capture video of the ongoing proceedings or those in attendance. Among those often in attendance at the meetings was Jones’ husband, Gene, who periodically matched the tactics Gomez and Rodriguez engaged in by using his phone to capture video images of the goings-on at the meetings his wife was presiding over. On a few occasions, verbal confrontations of one sort or another between Gene Jones and Rodriguez resulted.
On one such occasion, the ensuing contretemps between Rodriguez and Gene Jones interrupted the meeting, at which point Gomez left the dais herself to confront the sheriff’s deputies who were surrounding Rodriguez. As she did so, Gomez instructed her adolescent daughter, who was present in the front row of the gallery, to get what was ongoing on video. Ultimately, both Rodriguez and Gomez were arrested for interrupting the meeting. Jones, as mayor, and other Victorville officials and the sheriff’s department prevailed upon District Attorney Jason Anderson, a Republican, to prosecute Gomez and Rodriguez over the matter. Rodriguez’s case went to trial and he was convicted of creating a public disturbance and handed a 270-day sentence, much of which he had already served because he had not been released on bail after his arrest.
Ultimately, the Jones/Gomez rivalry brought about disparate conclusions, based largely on the political affiliation, philosophy or orientation of the beholder. Some saw Gomez as a provocateur, an unwelcome quantity in the realm of politics, whose inability to understand that the city council’s province was civic affairs and the operation of local government that had nothing, or little, to do with the social causes Gomez espoused. Those people saw the action that Jones took in gaveling Gomez down or having her removed from the council chambers in the midst of discussion or debate over an item to be decided and voted upon by the council to be an entirely justifiable reaction to a situation of Gomez’s creation. Others, however, saw Jones’ use of her mayoral prerogative to impose strict order on the council discussions and the selective action of the sheriff’s department in restricting or preventing Rodriguez’s videographing of council proceedings and audience members while allowing Gene Jones to engage in such activity to be not only heavy-handed but prejudicial, partisan, a violation of her constituents’ constitutional rights and an abuse of her authority.
In 2019, Councilwoman Ramirez was injured in a fall that seriously bruised her foot, and she required hospitalization. While hospitalized, the advent of the COVID epidemic took root, and complications set in, requiring a succession of three amputations. Her son, concerned about his mother’s presence in a medical facility where COVID was at large and spreading while she was seeking to convalesce, bundled her off to the family home in Twentynine Palms, from which Ramirez continued to participate in city council meetings remotely.
By early 2021, Jones recognized the opportunity that was being presented to rid the city council of yet another Democrat. Using Councilwoman Becerra as her cat’s paw, she initiated a challenge of Ramirez’s right to remain on the council on the grounds that Ramirez was no longer meeting the Victorville residency requirement. In March 2021, the city council voted 3-to-2, with Ramirez and Gomez dissenting, to remove Ramirez from the council.
For many, Jones’ active efforts to neuter local Democrats at the civic level is beyond baffling, given her muted response to what was the most pointed Democratic power play while she was mayor.
In 2021, Gomez networked with an attorney from Walnut Creek in Northern California, Scott Rafferty, utilizing the California Voter Rights Act in an effort to force Victorville to dispense with its traditional practice of electing its council members at large and partition the city into voting districts so that the members of the city council do not represent the city as a whole but a portion thereof. In this way, under a district representation system, each district is represented by a resident of that district voted into office by, and only by, residents of that district.
Under the California Voting Rights Act, a city can be forced to adopt by-district voting if it can be demonstrated that under the at-large voting system, racially polarized voting has taken place. Indications of racially polarized voting include a city on a continuous basis having elected no members of a so-called protected minority – African Americans, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans and Pacific islanders – if more than one-fifth of the voters in a city with a five-member city council elected at large consists of those who identify as a member of those racial minorities.
Thus, based upon Gomez’s representations to him, Rafferty, whose law office was located 353 miles from Victorville, was alleging that racially polarized voting had taken place in Victorville, justifying the request that the court order Victorville to cease electing its council members at large and form council districts, henceforth having the electors from each of those five districts select a single council member from among themselves to represent them at City Hall.
It was quite clear, however, that going back over the previous three decades, racially polarized voting had not taken place in Victorville. During that timeframe, eight Latinos – Felix Diaz, Rudy Cabriales, Angela Valles, Gloria Garcia, Eric Negrete, Blanca Gomez, Rita Ramirez and Liz Becerra – and two African Americans – Jim Busby and Leslie Irving – served on the council.
Curiously, however, in the face of the legal action brought by Rafferty, the city folded. Instead of taking the matter to trial and demonstrating to the world that Victorville was indeed one of those places where the sleeping Hispanic political giant first awakened and that, contrary to what Gomez and Rafferty were alleging, Victorville accommodates those who want to participate in the political process without regard to race or ethnicity, the city capitulated and adopted district voting. To those who had a long enough memory, the contrast between the Debra Jones that fought the corrupt Republican cabal that misappropriated school district money in 2010 and 2011 and the Debra Jones who was too frightened to fight the Democrats in their bid to create Philadelphia-style or Chicago-style machine-dominated ward politics in Victorville was stark. She had found her niche in the political establishment, and she was unwilling to rock around and resist, lest she find herself on the outside looking in.
In 2022, after gerrymandering the city’s voting districts in such a way that it gave her and her allies an advantage in running for reelection or election, she was handily returned to the council as the first person to represent the city’s District 2, overcoming Democrat Rafael Porras, or 2,583 votes or 66.87 percent to 1,280 votes or 33.13 percent. At the same time, Jones’ ally, Republican Robert Harriman, eked out a victory in the first District 4 race with 2,096 or 51.96 percent to Democrat Lizet Angulo’s 1,938 or 48.04 percent.
With the Republican domination of the Victorville City Council yet in full swing, Jones was unwilling to give Gomez, whom she know considered to be a profound political rival, her due by turning the mayor’s gavel over to her. Instead, worked out with Harriman, Becerra and Irving a deal in which she remained as mayor for another year.
When 2024 rolled around, acutely conscious that Gomez and Becerra had been gerrymandered into the same district and would be facing each other in November to determine who would remain on the council, Jones relinquished the mayoral post to Becerra, allowing her to campaign using that title later in the year. Indeed, the full Republican Party political machine and its law enforcement and conservative family values coalition came together to back Becerra over Gomez.
While Becerra was mayor, Victorville was yet considered to be Jones’ oyster. Like previous dominant political forces in Victorville such as Joseph Campbell, Terry Caldwell and Jim Cox, her reach by 2024 had extended far enough and her grasp was firm enough that she could designate proxies to serve as the city’s figureheads.
History will record that during her tenure, she reasserted the Republican grip on the city while breaking the upstart Democrat’s hold, had furthered economic development in the city, brought in major businesses such as Amazon and CarMax and made the most significant strides in dealing with the city’s and regions intractable homelessness problem by the development of the Wellness Center in Old Town Victorville, providing housing, medical care and other assistance to the dispossessed, which opened at the end of her run as mayor in December 2023.
According to Jones, she would have otherwise remained in Victorville as its leading political figure except that her husband Gene has recently faced health challenges. Rather than remain in their two-story home at 12261 Chacoma Way in Victorville, the couple is intent on moving to a bungalow in either Adelanto or in the Riverside County community of Banning, where her husband will not need to climb stairs.
Jones said her last day as a member of the council well come on October 21, when the council holds its second scheduled meeting that month, after which her resignation will become effective.
The Victorville City Council will then have the option of appointing her replacement to serve out the remainder of her term, which will end in December 2026; schedule a special election to allow District 2’s voters to choose her replacement; leave the post unfilled for the remainder of the term; or accede to Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, appointing Jones’ replacement.
Jones indicated she is proud of her accomplishments while in office in Victorville in a posting on Facebook.
“Together, we’ve achieved so much—from strengthening public safety to bringing new jobs and addressing homelessness with compassion and innovation,” Jones wrote. “I leave confident in Victorville’s future and in the capable hands of its leaders and residents.”
The Jones ruling era in Victorville was relatively short-lived, last less than a half of a decade. Prior to her, the last dominant personage in Victorville Politics was Terry Caldwell, who served on the City Council for 38 years before electing against running for reelection in 2010. Caldwell served eight separate two-year terms as mayor during that span, leading the city when the Mall of the Victor Valley was constructed. Having grown up in Barstow and Colton when those two railroad towns were far larger than Victorville, Caldwell moved to Victorville out of the belief that it represented the High Desert’s future. His leadership is seen as a key factor in the city’s growth into the largest geographical and most populous of San Bernardino County’s Desert cities. Caldwell’s tenure is identified in large measure with that of Jim Cox, who began as Victorville’s assistant city manager in 1967 and then served as city manager from 1969 until 1999, and then reprised that role in 2009 and 2010, before running successfully for City Council in 2012 and being reelected in 2016. Caldwell and Cox are credited with having formulated and executed the strategy to have Victorville rather than neighboring Aelanto annex the former George Air Force Base after it was shuttered in 1992, converting it into the present day Southern California Logistics Airport.
Prior to Caldwell’s political primacy in Victorville was that of Joseph Campbell, who was a member of the maiden Victorville City council when the city incorporated in 1962 and later spent three years as mayor prior to his nomination to the Superior Court by then Governor Ronald Reagan. Campbell was the scion of what was one of the community of Victorville’s elite families, prominent in the area’s history. His father was Kemper Campbell, Sr., an attorney, and his mother, Litta Belle Campbell, also a lawyer, was the first women to achieve the status of assistant district attorney in the State of California. He was the brother of Kemper Campbell, Jr., a graduate of Victorville High School who had enlisted in the Army Air Corps, where he obtained his wings and then died in the early months of World War II during a logistics flight.
Willard Wade was Victorville’s first mayor, who served in that capacity for the entire length of the city’s first four years in existence.
