(December 14)   SACRAMENTO—In the wake of the most resounding electoral defeat the GOP has ever sustained in California, former Republican Party standout Jim Brulte is looking to seize the reins of the party’s state political machinery in an effort to reestablish Republican relevance in the nation’s most populous state.
Working from his native San Bernardino County, which is one of the last Republican bastions in the Golden State, Brulte is seeking step-by-step to regain the position of prominence he held in the Republican Party during the 14 years he served in California’s legislature.
Figuring that in this winter of the Grand Old Party’s discontent now is the time for all good Republicans to come to the aid of their party, Brulte has taken up the gauntlet and what will prove to be either a Herculean task or Quixotic effort to resuscitate the Party of Lincoln. Statewide, as a growing and energized contingent of Latino and younger voters registered as Democrats and voted overwhelmingly in support of candidates from their party, the Republicans suffered a defeat of catastrophic proportion, with the Democrats capturing well over two-thirds majorities in both houses of the legislature, locking in a Democratic advantage at the statehouse while governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, holds sway over the state’s administrative function. Democrats have firm possession of 84 seats in the state’s 120-seat legislature. This supermajority provides the Democrats with the ability to raise taxes without the support of any Republican votes. Emboldened by the position of power they now hold, elements within the Democratic Party in the state are calling for the elimination of any remaining tax breaks for businesses.
In California’s Congressional delegation, the outlook for Republicans is equally dismal, with just 15 of the state’s 53 members of Congress now being Republicans.
Whether the California Republican Party can stage a comeback at all, under Brulte’s leadership or that of anyone else, is a question of some moment. It appears highly doubtful that the party could turn things around within the next or even the next two or three election cycles, given the immensity of the electoral debacle last month and the trends it portends. Nevertheless, those most enthusiastic about the party and Republican issues and values, believe that Brulte, who is no stranger to political adversity and Democratic skullduggery, possesses the requisite mettle and strategic orientation to carry it off if it is to be done.
Known as the “Fat Man” as a consequence of the 349 pounds he carried around on his 6 foot 4 inch frame at the time he was the Republican leader in the Assembly in the mid-1990s, Brulte led a charmed existence within Republican circles. In his twenties, he was Nancy Reagan’s appointments secretary when she was First Lady. Subsequently, he went to work for then-Republican U.S. Senator S.I “Sam”. Hayakawa and then obtained a position with the Republican National Committee, and was a civilian employee in the Department of Defense during the latter years of the Reagan Administration. His last assignment in Washington was as a member of the advance staff for then-vice president George H. W. Bush. He was sent back to California as part of a party strategy to install him as an elected official. In 1990, 65th Assembly District Assemblyman Chuck Bader, a former Pomona mayor and an up-and-coming Republican, was instructed by his party to forego reelection in the 65th District, where he would almost assuredly have been victorious, to allow Brulte to run in his stead. Bader, ever loyal to the GOP, did as he was instructed, and futilely challenged longtime Democrat Ruben Ayala for his State Senate seat. The end of Bader’s tenure as an elected politician gave rise to Brulte’s career as an elected official, which lasted for 14 years, at which time the term limits Brulte had championed in the state Assembly forced him to leave office. During eleven of those fourteen years, Brulte was the Republican Caucus chairman or his party leader in whichever legislative house he occupied. In late 1994 and early 1995, Brulte came tantalizingly close to breaking Democrat Willie Brown’s 14-year-long reign as Assembly Speaker, widely viewed as the second most powerful position in state government. After the November 1994 election and recounts, the GOP held a razor-thin majority in the Assembly, and Brulte appeared destined to become speaker. In a classic example of backroom maneuvering, however, Brown was able to remain as speaker by persuading one of the Republican assemblymen, Paul Horcher, to vote for him in return for some prize committee assignments. Brulte and other outraged Republicans then moved to successfully recall Horcher from office but before a Republican replacement could be installed, Brown again reached across the aisle to appeal to Republican Assemblywoman Doris Allen, arranging for her to be installed as speaker with the vote of the entire Democratic contingent in the Assembly. Thus, Brulte was again thwarted from becoming Assembly Speaker. Willie Brown would eventually leave the Assembly to become mayor of San Francisco. When he did, the Republicans captured control, briefly, of the Assembly, but that eventuality came too late to allow Brulte, who was being termed out of the Assembly and was thus running for State Senate, to become Assembly Speaker. That honor instead went to Curt Pringle.
In his bruising battles against Brown, Brulte grew as a strategist. Whereas Brown had cultivated and amassed power by vectoring campaign contributions obtained from special interest groups that were at his disposal to his Democratic allies, Brulte in earnest began to tap into money from right-wing groups and dispensed it in the most efficient manner possible to further the Republican cause.
Basically a conservative, but a pragmatist who could reach across to moderates when some political mileage was to be gained, Brulte was nevertheless a cunning strategist ready to push the envelope and secure whatever advantage the leverage he and his party possessed at any given time with regard to any specific or general issue.
In November 1996 Brulte was elected in the 31st state Senate District and in April 2000 he became the State Senate Republican Leader. He departed as an elected official in 2004, having served the maximum time he could under California’s term limit law. He went to work almost immediately for  California Strategies, a lobbying and public affairs consulting firm, staffed in large measure by former elected officials and former high level government employees.
In jumping directly back into the partisan fray, Brulte has his work cut out for him. For the first time since party affiliation records have been compiled, fewer than 30 percent of the state’s voters are registered as Republicans. The state’s demographics show that portion of the population from which the GOP draws most of its voters – upwardly mobile young white professionals, non-unionized tradesmen and older white males – being eclipsed by minority voters, who tend to identify themselves as Democrats.
Moreover, the internecine fighting among Republicans reached fever pitch this year, partly as a consequence of California’s open primaries, which provided for the two top vote-getters in June regardless of party affiliation to qualify for the run-off in November. This resulted in several head-to-head contests between Republicans in the congressional, state senatorial and assembly districts in which Republicans still hold a registration advantage. Curiously, the state party devoted a significant part of its resources to some of its Republican candidates engaged in  campaigns against other Republicans while providing less funding to Republicans who were simultaneously waging campaigns against Democrats. Some of those Republican vs. Democrat races were highly competitive. In this way, the party actually ran campaigns against Republican candidates that were more vitriolic than those which were run against Democratic opponents. One of those was incumbent congressman Gary Miller’s congressional campaign against state senator Bob Dutton. Dutton had been the Republican leader in the State Senate. He was assailed in a number of attack pieces paid for by his own party. Brulte, if he is successful in capturing the party chairman’s position when the California GOP meets in March, will need to convince party donors, many of whom supported the Republican candidates who were the targets of those attack campaigns, that they should continue to stock the party’s coffers with money.
Despite the challenges, many of them daunting, Brulte comes across as hell bent on assuming the party chairmanship. He appears well on his way to doing that, having lined up numerous party stalwarts and current office holders to support him, while no other figure of equal or less gravitas than he  has emerged to oppose him.

(December 14)   On December 3, the California Supreme Court closed out another but not the final chapter in the troubling matter of William Richards with a closely divided decision that did not put the controversy attending the case fully to rest. Ruling 4-3, California’s highest court upheld Richard’s 1997 conviction for the 1993 murder of his wife, Pamela.
There has been little about the Richards case that is clearly cut, other than that Pamela Richards was murdered and the entire circumstance lacks clarity.
The Richards case was beset with a myriad of difficulties from the outset, which in and of themselves resulted in three mistrials. It was only upon the prosecution’s fourth attempt that a unanimous vote to convict him was obtained. Then, while Richards was serving his 25-years-to-life sentence, further information emerged which cast, according to San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Brian McCarville, grave doubt upon his guilt, his conviction and the validity of much of the evidence used to obtain that conviction, exacerbated by evidence that indicated the presence of a person or persons unknown at the murder scene.
Then-deputy district attorney Mike Risley prosecuted Richards each time.
Richards’ story did not change from trial to trial.
He claimed he had returned the evening of August 10, 1993 from his machinist’s job in Corona at about 11:50 p.m. to find the motor home in which he and his wife lived on the five-acre Summit Valley property they owned dark and empty. The couple was living in the motor home  while efforts to construct a house on the property were ongoing. He went to look for his wife and found her dead in a pool of blood on another part of their property between the motor home and the Santa Fe railroad line.
He claimed he turned his wife’s body over and cradled her before summoning assistance.
In each of his prosecutions of William Richards, Risley suggested there was strife in the Richards’ 22-year long marriage. He put on an expert witness who testified that splatters of Pamela Richards’ blood that were found on William Richards’ shoes and clothes were tell-tale evidence indicating William Richards had wielded the cinder block used to crush his wife’s head.
Risley marshaled further evidence, accumulated by sheriff’s deputies and detectives, showing no car tracks or footprints other than those of Richards, his wife or the detectives and deputies or their vehicles were present on the property.
Risley displayed for jurors a “bite mark” on Pamela Richards’ hand and then followed that up with testimony from a forensic expert who claimed that by his analysis the bite could have only come from two percent of the population, including Richards, who had a certain peculiarity to their teeth.
The coup-de-grace was a tuft of 15 light-blue fibers found in a tear in the victim’s fingernail. According to Risley, the fibers matched those of the shirt Richards was wearing the night of the murder.
The first of the four times Richards was to be tried, the judge declared a mistrial before the matter was presented to a jury. In 1994, the first time the case went the distance, a jury deadlocked 6-6. A second full trial netted a 10-2 verdict for conviction. On the last complete go-round, he was convicted.
As in the first two complete trials, the third jury to hear the entire case reported that it too was deadlocked after seven full days of deliberation. The jurors, encouraged to return to deliberations, delivered a unanimous guilty verdict on the eighth day.
Richards has been imprisoned ever since.
Among those passionately inveighing against the verdict was Pamela Richards’ sister, Kathy Olejnik. Olejnik went to her grave in 2003 swearing her brother-in-law did not murder her sister, leaving behind multiple notarized affidavits asserting her conviction “that William Richards did not kill or murder my sister.”
There exists an accumulation of evidence that suggests Olejnik had solid ground for her belief.
Beginning in 1986 and continuing until 1999, a rash of murders had taken place around the country, now known or in large part proven to have been committed by a man identified as Angel Maturino Reséndiz, who was also known as Rafael Reséndiz-Ramirez, Angel Reyes Reséndiz and Angel Leoncio Reyes Recéndis, as well as the Railway Killer.
In the early stages of his murderous career, Reséndiz, a native of Mexico who continuously made undocumented trips between Mexico, the United States and Canada by riding the rails while using over twenty aliases and at least fifteen social security numbers, was not remarked upon by authorities or identified as the culprit. It was only in the final two years of his thirteen-year-long murder spree that suspicion coalesced around the entity dubbed the Railway Killer. Even after he was identified by Texas and federal authorities and placed on the FBI’s ten most wanted list in 1999, his itinerant lifestyle and his use of aliases allowed him to elude capture.
In July 1999, Reséndiz was apparently willingly lured into capture by Texas Rangers and FBI agents who negotiated his surrender through the intercession of his sister.
With a few exceptions, the murders Reséndiz committed fit within the same pattern. The victims lived or were found within a short distance of a railroad line and were killed by being beaten over the head with a rock or heavy object available at the scene. His primary motive appears to have been to steal money he used to purchase alcohol, drugs or gasoline to fuel vehicles he stole. He raped some, but not all of his female victims.
His known victims included:
* Christopher Maier, a 21-year-old University of Kentucky student who was walking along nearby railroad tracks with his girlfriend, Holly K. Dunn, on August 29, 1997 when they were set upon by Reséndiz, who bludgeoned Maier to death and then raped and severely beat Dunn, who survived the attack.
* Leafie Mason, an 81-year-old resident of Hughes Springs, Texas who resided 150 feet from the Kansas City-Southern Line. On October 4, 1998, Reséndiz let himself into her home through a window and used a tire iron to beat Mason to death.
* Dr. Claudia Benton, a 39-year-old pediatric neurologist at the Baylor College of Medicine who on December 17, 1998 was raped, stabbed and bludgeoned in her West University Palace, Texas home, which is proximate to the train tracks. Reséndiz then used Benton’s Jeep Cherokee to drive to San Antonio. Police recovered his fingerprints from the Jeep’s steering column.
* The Reverend Norman Sirnic, 46, and his wife, Karen Sirnic, 47, were bludgeoned to death by a sledgehammer-wielding Reséndiz in the parsonage of the United Church of Christ in Weimer, Texas on May 2, 1999. The parsonage was located near the Weimer railroad tracks. Reséndiz then used the couple’s Mazda to drive to San Antonio, where it was eventually found by authorities, who recovered Reséndiz’s fingerprints in it.
* Noemi Dominguez, a 26-year-old school teacher, bludgeoned inside her Houston, Texas apartment, located within short walking distance of the rail tracks, on June 4, 1999. On June 11, Dominguez’s Honda Civic was discovered by state troopers in a parking lot next to the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas.
* Josephine Konvicka, a 73-year-old woman living in Fayette County, Texas was killed on the same day that Noemi Dominguez was killed, June 4, 1999. Konvicka’s farmhouse was located near the railroad tracks by Weimar, Texas. Konvicka was killed while she was asleep by means of a blow to the head from a pointed garden tool. Reséndiz’s attempt to steal Konvicka’s car failed, apparently because he was unable to locate the keys.
* George Morber, 80, and Carolyn Frederick, 52, were killed on June 15, 1999 by Reséndiz, who shot Morber in the head with a shotgun and then clubbed Frederick to death. Their home in Gorham, Illinois was located only 300 feet from a railroad line. Reséndiz took Frederick’s pickup truck and was seen driving it in Cairo, Illinois a short time later.
* Jesse Howell, 19, whom Reséndiz bludgeoned to death with an air hose coupling and left beside the railroad tracks in Ocala, Florida on March 23, 1997.
* Wendy Von Huben, Howell’s 16-year-old girlfriend, whom Reséndiz then raped, strangled and suffocated, also on March 23, 1997. Her body was not found until July 2000 when Reséndiz led investigators to a shallow grave in Sumter County, roughly 30 miles away from the spot where Howell had been killed.
* Michael White was found shot to death in July 1991 in the yard of a vacant home in San Antonio, Texas. When San Antonio police interviewed Reséndiz in 2006, he provided investigators with details about the murder.
By the middle of 2002, Reséndiz had recounted to investigators details of about 20 killings since 1986, though the investigations of only 12 of those have been officially closed out with his identification as the perpetrator. According to Texas authorities, Reséndiz provided details about eight murders he had not previously been associated with, including three in Texas and two in California.
Two of the Texas murders remain unverified but a third is considered to be the shooting death of an unidentified woman in Bexar County in 1986.
Reséndiz indicated he had killed two people in Southern California in the early and mid-1990s: a man near San Bernardino and a woman up in the desert.
Detectives with the Colton Police Department believe Reséndiz is the “likely” perpetrator of the 1997 death of a man beaten to death in the Southern Pacific rail yard in Colton, which is the city lying immediately to the west of San Bernardino.
One of Reséndiz’s arrests came on August 19, 1995 by Santa Fe Railroad police in San Bernardino on trespassing and possession of a firearm charges.
The murder Reséndiz claimed to have perpetrated in the California desert matches in all respects the circumstances of Pamela Richards’ murder.
At the time of William Richards’ trials however, Reséndiz was not a consideration to Richards, his attorneys, the prosecutors, or the judge hearing Richards’ case. Jurors never heard a word about the Railway Killer, and were instead faced with Richards’ explanation of arriving home near midnight to find his wife dead, with no plausible explanation as to an alternate suspect or motive on the part of anyone else.
Risley fortified his case by presenting evidence that the Richards’ marriage was a financially challenged and tempestuous one. Risley presented evidence that Pamela Richards was having an extramarital affair with a man, Eugene Price, who had called the motor home the night of the murder in response to a message Pamela Richards had left on Price’s answering machine. Risley further offered jurors testimony from Pamela’s coworkers that she on occasion came to work with bruises on her face which she tried to mask with makeup and that she had expressed fear of her husband and his temper. Risley who was also able to take advantage of the opportunity to hone his presentation and jury selection across four jury panels, pressed on relentlessly against Richards, whose financial resources and ability to employ a trial attorney were depleted after the first trial that went before a jury.
A key problem with the case put on against Richards was that the investigation of the crime scene had been compromised before forensic investigators arrived because the sheriff’s personnel who initially responded to the call failed to secure it at all during the early morning of August 11, 1993 in the immediate hours after the murder occurred, leaving Pamela Richards’ body out in the open, which resulted in several wild dogs and coyotes molesting her corpse and partially burying it.
In 2003, the California Innocence Project at the California Western School of Law in San Diego took up Richards’ cause. By that time, however, Risley through his political alliance with Mike Ramos had risen to the position of assistant district attorney, the second most powerful member of the prosecutor’s office in San Bernardino County. San Bernardino County prosecutors consistently opposed all requests for testing or the reexamination of evidence in the case.
While in custody, however, Reséndiz was questioned by attorneys associated with the California Innocence Project. During the time Risley was still assistant district attorney and no new trial for Richards was in the offing, Reséndiz was executed by the state of Texas on June 27, 2006.
Prior to his death, Reséndiz and Texas authorities consented to Reséndiz providing a DNA sample. Authorization for that sample was given by San Bernardino County judge Margaret Powers at the behest of the California Innocence Project and over the objection of the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office.
Tests were requested on bloody objects from the murder scene and on fingernail scrapings taken from Pamela Richards that may have contained blood, tissue and hair samples.
In June 2007, the 46-year-old Risley retired from the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office. Shortly thereafter, he moved to Oxford, Mississippi. He has since relocated to Florida.
In August 2007, four attorneys working with the California Innocence Project at the California Western School of Law in San Diego – Alex Simpson, Jan Stiglitz, Justin Brooks and Mario Conte – and their organization pressed forward with the previously stymied effort to obtain a new trial for Richards.
Countering Risley’s claims, the Innocence Project utilized the DNA testing on the cinder block and a hair found under Pamela Richards’ fingernail to show that William Richards was not the only person at the crime scene that night and someone other than Richards held the murder weapon and struggled with the victim. This undermined entirely, Stiglitz and Brooks asserted, Risley’s claims to all three juries that Richards was the only person at the scene. They entered into the record the presence of numerous defensive wounds that did not contain Pamela Richard’s husband’s DNA, along with the presence of  unknown male DNA under her fingernails and on the murder weapon.
The Innocence Project has also shed doubt on the bite mark evidence Risley relied upon in convincing the jury that Richards murdered his wife.
At the 1997 trial, Risley brought in forensic experts to tell the jury that a “bite mark” on Pamela Richards’ hand could only have come from William Richards and two percent of the population. The Innocence Project demonstrated that Risley had provided prosecution and defense experts with incomplete information and poor photos of the injury and withheld other exculpatory evidence. The more comprehensive evidence demonstrated the “bite mark” was similar to other injuries on Pamela Richards’ body and the shape of the injury matched tools found at the crime scene.
In January 2009 two of the dental forensic experts that had testified for the prosecution during Richards’ 1997 trial were subpoenaed to testify in a hearing before Judge Brian McCarville and acknowledged the testimony they gave at trial was “scientifically inaccurate.” Both testified that Richards could not have made the alleged bite mark on the victim. A third dental expert testified that Richards was not a match and that the mark found on the body might not have been a bite mark. A fourth forensic expert asserted that if the wound on the victim’s hand was a bite mark, it could not have been made by Richards. He also questioned whether the wound was even a bite mark.
The Innocence Project was further able to discredit what was perhaps the most crucial piece of evidence used by Risley to convict Richards, the tuft of fibers lodged into one of Pamela Richard’s fingernails. The Innocence Project attorneys introduced evidence to indicate the fibers were planted into Pamela Richard’s fingernail during the process of the criminal investigation or otherwise ended up there by some form of gross mishandling of the evidence.
Risley used the tuft, consisting of 15 light-blue fibers said to match the shirt Richards was wearing that fateful night and found in a crack in Pamela Richards’ fingernail, to place William Richards at the scene.
Photos of Pamela’s body taken just after the autopsy clearly show no fibers present in the crack in her fingernail. Days later, when several of her fingers were severed and delivered to criminalist Daniel Gregonis for tests, Gregonis made a video which shows him removing a rather large light-blue fiber from Pamela’s nail. “That fiber evidence was critical to Richards’ conviction and it was not present on Pamela’s fingernail when it was initially examined,” Brooks told McCarville.
In response to the Innocence Project’s presentation and request to throw out Richards’ 1997 conviction, McCarville on August 10, 2009, sixteen years to the day after the murder of Pamela Richards, found that the new evidence pointed “unerringly to innocence” and he granted the petition for a writ of habeas corpus, the vacation of the conviction and a new trial.
The district attorney’s office, however, appealed McCarville’s decision, such that the matter for the last three years  and three months has wended through the appellate system, ultimately being lodged with the California Supreme Court. California’s highest court found the case every bit as difficult as had those forums which previously considered the evidence. Three of the State Supreme Court’s members found the Innocence Project’s arguments compelling and persuasive, determining that Richards’ conviction was based on faulty or erroneous information, testimony, evidence or presentation of that evidence. The  other four members of the court, however, signed an opinion that “the petitioner has failed to establish that any of the evidence offered at his 1997 trial was false” and further that “his newly discovered evidence does not ‘point unerringly to innocence or reduced culpability.’” The prevailing opinion held that even if technological advances did cast doubt on the validity of the expert testimony provided in 1997, the testimony still “has not been shown to be false evidence.” Since the defense did not reach the threshold of proving that the evidence used to convict Richards was “false,” the court majority reasoned, the new evidence did not reach the point of “unerringly” indicating innocence, and the habeas corpus relief should therefore not be granted.
This divided ruling upheld the murder conviction. Had the Supreme Court sided with Richards, now 63, he would have been the first convicted murderer in California to be freed through the California Innocence Project’s efforts.
Thus, Richards remains imprisoned at the state penitentiary in Tehachapi, officially convicted of the murder of his wife. Nevertheless, the record with regard to the entire matter protrudes as a deeply troubling one which has left legal minds, such as McCarville’s and those of three of the members of California’s highest court, less than convinced of a convicted man’s guilt.
And there are the chilling words of Angel Maturino Reséndiz himself, who in seemingly deprecating remarks about the fallibility of the legal system in a letter to Texas State District Judge William Harmon in July 2001 appears to be stoking the fire of doubt from the grave.
In that letter, Reséndiz stated to Harmon “So now you . . . will think as you go to sleep, `Have I sentence[d] to death an innocent person for one of Reséndiz Angel Maturino’s killings?’”

(December 14)   VICTORVILLE—In a rare development, Jim Cox last week was elevated to Victorville mayor less than an hour after he was sworn in as a city councilmember for the first time.
In Victorville, the mayor is not elected directly by voters but is rather chosen by the city council from among its members. Traditionally, the council has made a practice of choosing a mayor who has been seasoned by at least two years or in most cases a four-year term or more in office as a councilmember. The last and only Victorville mayor to assume the mayor’s gavel upon election to the council was Willard Wade, who was chosen as mayor by the city’s maiden city council shortly after incorporation in 1962.
Cox, however, is an exception. He is at least as, if not more, familiar with Victorville’s municipal issues than his council colleagues. He was hired as Victorville city manager in 1969 after serving an apprenticeship in the capacities of administrative assistant, treasurer and finance director under former city manager Fred Baxter. He remained as city manager for thirty years, until November 1999, when Cox retired from the top administrative post. He remained as a consultant with the city until March 2000, serving as an advisor to the man who succeeded him, John Roberts, who had been the city engineer for the last seven years of Cox’s first tenure as city manager.
In 2009, Cox was brought back as city manager following the departure of Roberts for the city administrator’s position in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Roberts’ departure as city manager came as the city was foundering financially, staggering under a budget deficit that had come about in large measure due to the city’s participation is several electrical power plant ventures that resulted in losses exceeding $100 million.
Cox, who had a reputation as a strong fiscal conservative who had perennially balanced the city’s budget and maintained hefty reserves, was faced with restoring the city’s fiscal health. Accordingly, he carried out far-reaching restoration efforts that were radically different from the staid and deliberate management policy of his past. He put the power plant projects on hold, cancelled existing contracts with those projects’ vendors and consultants, reduced city division budgets and laid off scores of employees.
Cox resisted calls from several quarters to have the city file for Chapter Nine bankruptcy protection. Simultaneously, the city was being investigated by the grand jury with regard to a host of its activities, by the Securities and Exchange Commission over its redevelopment agency’s issuance of bonds, by the FBI for assorted activities including alleged kickback schemes involving city contractors, consultants, vendors and city officials,  and by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service over the city’s failed efforts to bring in foreign investment money through the exchange of U.S. Visas for $500,000 minimum infusions of cash into the city’s infrastructure building efforts. All of those investigations related to issues the city was involved in after Cox’s first term as city manager and prior to his second stint as the city’s top staff member.
“When I got here in 2009, I had not done any kind of a fiscal analysis and had no idea of what a critical fiscal situation the city was in. I had just responded to [then-mayor] Rudy Cabriales’ request to take the job on an interim basis. When I saw the economic problems the city was facing, I was kind of shocked. It was not a pleasant story, quite frankly,” Cox told the Sentinel in 2011.
Cox retired as Victorville’s city manager for the second time at the end of June 2011, exhausted at having to put in eleven and twelve hour days and hopeful that his efforts had started the process of righting the city’s listing financial ship.
In his electoral effort this year, Cox found himself under attack by a faction of reformists and the political movement that has grown up around them, including current incumbent councilwoman Angela Valles. It was suggested that Cox was strongly connected to former mayor and councilman Terry Caldwell, who served on the council for 38 years beginning in 1972 until he chose not to seek reelection in 2010. Caldwell was widely identified with many of the financial faux pas that occurred during Roberts’ tenure as city manager. Those calling for the investigation or indictments of city officials suggested that Cox during his second go-round as city manager had been too protective of Caldwell, Cabriales, former councilman and mayor Mike Roshschild and Roberts, who were accused of being the architects of the failed and costly ventures the city had engaged in while trying to build power plants and to transform the former George Air Force Base into a successful civilian commercial airport. Cox responded that finger pointing and prosecutions would not solve the city’s very real economic and administrative problems and that he preferred to get on with the business at hand.  The reformists were hampered by the electoral efforts of a plethora of so-called reform candidates during the election. Cox was successful on November 6 as 14 candidates in all vied for three positions on the council. One incumbent, Ryan McEachron, remained  on the council, while another, Rothschild, lost. Cox won, as did one of the reformist candidates, Gloria Garcia.
Caldwell was replaced in 2010 by Jim Kennedy, the husband of one of Caldwell’s business partners. Before turning to Cox, McEachron, the outgoing mayor, nominated Kennedy to serve as mayor. Kennedy, however declined the honor, asserting that his travel schedule would prevent him from attending public events such as ribbon cuttings.
Cox, whose only previous foray into elective politics was an unsuccessful attempt to capture the Republican nomination for the State Assembly, declined making a lengthy acceptance speech, saying only that he would allow his votes and actions as mayor to do the talking for him.

(December 14)   Parents of kindergarten through eighth grade students attending  Sacred Heart Parochial School in Rancho Cucamonga have expressed concern and outrage over the Diocese of San Bernardino’s agreement to allow Verizon to install a cell phone tower on the church grounds proximate to the school’s playground.
The Diocese and Verizon have had the project on the drawing boards for more than 20 months. Approval for the tower was given by the Rancho Cucamonga Planning Commission in January and the Diocese signed a lease payment contract with the phone company two months ago. Parents, however, said they did not learn about the tower until late last week.
There is concern over the high intensity electromagnetic radiation to be emitted from the tower, which is to be erected at the west facing side of  the school’s “Blue Hall”  directly to the east of the  school’s grassy play area.  Studies done by Dr. Howard Wachtel at the University of Colorado at Boulder have demonstrated potentially harmful effects on humans exposed to high intensity magnetic fields. Studies undertaken in Scandinavia indicate elevated incidences of leukemia and other forms of blood cancer in children exposed to magnetic fields.
The school and the Diocese maintain they would not expose the children at Sacred Heart to any hazards and that Verizon had provided them with assurances the radiation to be transmitted from the tower is well under the maximum exposure level permitted by the Federal Communications Commission.

(December 14)   The closure of the Chino Courthouse slated for January 1 will be inadequate to redress a $22 million shortfall plaguing the county court system in 2012-13, necessitating a round of even more substantial cuts to court operations in May.
The next phase of cuts will entail the closure of the Barstow, Big Bear and Needles courthouses, San Bernardino County Presiding Judge Marsha Slough announced this week.
The drawdown in money for San Bernardino County Superior Court, which employs 954 and runs on an annual budget of $105.2 million, is a direct function of the state’s $22 million reduction in funds provided to the county to operate its courts.
The San Bernardino County Superior Court has implemented a series of cost reduction measures intended to close most but not all of the resultant operating shortfall by the end of this fiscal year. The first phase of these operational changes included the closure of Chino Courthouse, effective January 1, 2013, reductions of court clerk’s office hours countywide and reductions of administrative staff.  Three retired judges who were handling cases for the county on assignment are being released at the end of December. Those changes, however netted the county courts a savings of only $9 million, necessitating another $13 million worth of economies.
Accordingly, effective May 6, 2013, the Barstow courthouse will close, shutting all four courtrooms and resulting in the loss of 22 positions. Also to be closed will be the Needles and Big Bear courthouses, which  had recently been reduced to three days per month. Civil and juvenile delinquency cases and dependency drug court will no longer be heard in the Victorville District but rather in other courthouses to provide room for other cases from Barstow that will now be heard in Victorville. Juvenile court will reduce its staff  by four positions. The court administration division will lay off three of its personnel. Court reporters will no longer be assigned to specific departments but will be assigned from a pool as needed, and the court will continue to provide court reporters for civil law and motion and trials, to the extent sufficient resources are available. Unlawful detainers and small claims currently heard in San Bernardino and unlawful detainers currently heard in Rancho Cucamonga will be heard in the Fontana Courthouse.
Prior to May 6, 2013, the juvenile court will no longer accept direct filings of informal juvenile matters. Those issues dealt with in those filings must be addressed directly through probation. Night court services will no longer be provided in the county.
Slough said that “In total, it is planned that these and related actions will result in a reduction of approximately 44 staff, and will save a projected $5.3 million per year. The severe funding cuts made to our budget result in the need to take these painful steps. We are cognizant of the impact that these actions will have upon the bar and citizens of this county who have business in the court, especially for people who live some distance from the remaining courthouses. The closure of Barstow, Needles, and Big Bear courthouses will mean that people living in a large swathe of San Bernardino County will no longer have a courthouse within a reasonable distance from their homes, leaving many facing hardships to get to court, given very limited public transportation and distances that can exceed three hours in driving time, each way. The simple fact is that we can no longer afford to support as many court locations, or support as many services as in the past.”
Court officials said that San Bernardino County is one of the most under-resourced court districts in the state. “Our court has been operating on a shoestring budget for many years. Now the state is taking away the shoe strings.” said Judge Larry Allen, the court’s assistant presiding judge.
In addition to the court’s funding problems, San Bernardino County’s court system faces the largest shortfall of judges of any county in the state. Based on the California Judicial Council’s statewide judicial needs study released on October 25, 2012,  San Bernardino County’s courts should have approximately 156 judicial officers, including both judges and commissioners, but currently has 91, a shortfall of 65 judges, or 42%. Thus, judges in San Bernardino face caseloads that are substantially larger than in most other jurisdictions in California.
“If and when the court receives adequate funding, it will be a court priority to reopen the Barstow Courthouse, in order to reestablish needed court access in that part of the county.” said Judge Slough.

(December 14)   PHELAN—The Phelan Pinon Hills Community Services District has paid $10.75 million to obtain permanent pumping rights to 2,335 acre-feet of water per year in the High Desert’s Oeste Aquifer.
The purchase, undertaken with a $7.5 million loan from iBank and $3.25 million in cash reserves the district had on hand, will also include 160 acres of land on the Meadowbrook Dairy, which includes an existing well.
The Oeste zone covers a considerable expanse, with what is referred to as its upper area located beneath Wrightwood and its lower area in the vicinity of El Mirage.
The district previously had annual pumping rights to 1,146 acre-feet from the Oeste Aquifer. The just acquired water rights now give the district unfettered access to 3,751 acre-feet of groundwater per year from the Oeste sub-basin.

(December 7)   The elevation of John McMahon to sheriff is all but inevitable in the wake of Rod Hoops’ resignation midterm, nearly a dozen current and former sheriff’s department, top county and municipal officials have told the Sentinel.
Several of the officers and officials used the term “done deal” in describing McMahon’s appointment. None held out any realistic chance that any of a handful of other potential candidates for the post could be chosen, though a few acknowledged that among those alternatives were individuals with a combination of impressive law enforcement and administrative credentials rivaling or exceeding McMahon’s.
Crucial to the advantage McMahon possesses is his status as a department insider, the favor he has with Hoops and the reservoir of good will McMahon has developed lately with county chief executive  officer Greg Devereaux, along with the history and political power of the sheriff’s department.
Upon becoming sheriff, McMahon will be the de facto descendent of the political dynasty first established by former sheriff Frank Bland in 1954, when Bland defeated the county’s then-incumbent sheriff, Eugene Mueller. Bland remained in office for seven terms, gaining reelection in 1958, 1962, 1966, 1970, 1974 and 1978. In 1982, Bland retired, designating Floyd Tidwell as his successor. Tidwell handily won election in 1982 and reelection in 1986. He retired and endorsed his undersheriff, Dick Williams, in 1990. Williams lasted a single term, retiring in 1994.  He endorsed Gary Penrod. Penrod served three terms and was elected to a fourth. Half way through that term, he resigned, naming Hoops as his successor. The board of supervisors ratified  his selection. Hoops ran for election in his own right in 2010, comfortably beating two challengers. On November 7 this year, the day after the general election, Hoops announced he would retire as sheriff, and he called upon the board of supervisors to replace him with McMahon.
While Bland was sheriff, he cultivated a political machine, consisting of donors and supporters, together with a support network of campaign and public relations experts and consultants that dwarfed any competing campaign resources of his potential or actual opponents. In 1982, he handed that machine off to Tidwell and the machine, adaptively transformed to fit each succeeding generational change in political reality, has been passed along to each of Bland’s successive descendants. That machine, presented to McMahon by Hoops, now stands at the ready for use by McMahon, should he be called upon to undertake an electoral effort to become sheriff.
Moreover, McMahon as Hoops’ choice now enjoys the advocacy of Devereaux, the county’s top administrator, upon whom the board of supervisors is highly dependent for direction. The timing of Hoops’ departure in this regard is fortuitous for McMahon. As recently as a year ago there existed a degree of tension between Devereaux and Hoops that observers of both said was palpable. This was at least partially an outgrowth, sources have told the Sentinel, of the manner in which the sheriff’s department handled its internal accounting of officer overtime. From the outset of his tenure with the county, Devereaux has been very sensitive to the need to get a firm fix on costs in all divisions within the county governmental structure, and at least initially he was disconcerted over the way in which the sheriff’s department was crunching numbers and keeping its books. There were other disagreements between Hoops and Devereaux as well with regard to the department’s actual or planned apportioning of its resources. Despite whatever wariness with which Devereaux and Hoops may have regarded one another, a positive relationship between McMahon and Devereaux has nevertheless developed over the last year. Devereaux is pursuing a permanent solution to what is categorized as a “structural deficit” plaguing the county and his formula for eliminating that fiscal challenge is to forge contract agreements with the county’s various employee bargaining groups involving concessions on either salary or benefits into the future that will reduce county outlays. McMahon was designated as the sheriff department administration representative to work with Devereaux on those negotiations and participate in the face-to-face meetings with the representatives of the sheriff’s deputies’ union. In this way, McMahon was crucial to an important part of the success Devereaux has experienced in this undertaking so far. A positive relationship between the two men has developed and Devereaux has told several city council members from cities which contract with the sheriff’s department for law enforcement service that McMahon is the logical choice to succeed Hoops, and that his takeover of the department should prove a seamless transition.
There were indications of what was afoot several months ago. In September 2011, a report surfaced that Hoops had told Devereaux and the board of supervisors he wanted to retire and have McMahon succeed him. He was dissuaded from doing so at that time because of the perception that his leaving would come too soon after his election in 2010. There was no public confirmation of that report, but officials in several sheriff’s department contract cities, including Rancho Cucamonga and Victorville, told the Sentinel they were given to understand that a change in the department’s leadership was under way and that McMahon was being groomed for the top spot.
McMahon’s ascendency to the head of the internal department list of potential replacements for Hoops was a natural one.
Before Penrod left the department, McMahon was already considered a likely candidate to someday succeed Penrod, who like Tidwell and Bland before him was an equestrian enthusiast. Having grown up in Apple Valley, McMahon himself has raised and rode horses throughout his life.
McMahon is younger than the current crop of likely competitors within the department for the sheriff’s position. Undersheriff Robert Fonzi is, or at least was, McMahon’s most serious challenger for the scepter. Fonzi, as the second in command of the department, outranks McMahon. Indeed, several sheriffs served in the position of undersheriff before acceding to the top spot. What is more, Fonzi harbored ambition of becoming sheriff. Though he remains as the undersheriff, he has been on medical leave for some time, during which he underwent a first shoulder surgery and is awaiting, reportedly, a second surgery. His absence from sheriff’s headquarters over the last several months has proven crucial in his having been outmaneuvered by the younger McMahon.
Another of McMahon’s potential internal department rivals is deputy chief Paul Cook, who technically boasts experience and qualifications to match McMahon’s but is not seen as being as hungry, aggressive, or politically connected as McMahon.
Few consider deputy chief Sheree Stewart, the first female captain in the department and the first deputy chief of her gender in the department, a realistic candidate as sheriff. Deputy chief Ron Cochrane is also widely perceived as having the pedigree and gravitas to succeed Hoops. He is known to have ambition, having applied for two municipal department police chief positions which he did not achieve. Cochrane, however, appears to have accepted McMahon’s ascendency as inevitable. He has recently been seen accompanying McMahon to meetings and conferences involving other government officials and it is widely assumed Cochrane will move into the undersheriff’s post some time after McMahon becomes sheriff.
Hoops’ retirement announcement on November 7 together with his recommendation of McMahon generated a backlash in the form of charges that a backroom deal had been worked out between Hoops and the board of supervisors to install McMahon with little or no scrutiny or fanfare. Board chairwoman Josie Gonzales added to that perception when she publicly stated that the board of supervisors wanted to reach a decision on Hoops’ successor rapidly so an appointment could be made that would avoid any gap in the ultimate leadership of the sheriff’s department. In the face of pointed claims that Hoops had “brokered” a deal with the board to rubberstamp his selection of McMahon as sheriff, Gonzales offered assurances that the board had entered into no such sub rosa compact with Hoops and McMahon and that the board would conduct an open, thorough, honest and aboveboard examination of the qualifications of those to be considered as Hoops’ replacement before any decision is made. She indicated that the protocol for making the appointment would be discussed publicly as early as the November 27 board of supervisors meeting. No such discussion took place that date, but at this week’s meeting on December 4, Gonzales again indicated the board would carefully consider the qualifications of all candidates for the post, including those who personally step up or whose names are brought forth. The board then appointed a subcommittee, consisting of Gonzales and supervisor Gary Ovitt, to consider and interview if necessary any candidates for the sheriff’s position that emerge. Gonzales further indicated that the subcommittee will consider input from any other interested parties, in particular the sheriff’s deputies’ union, before the committee makes its recommendation to the full board.
It thus appears that the Gonzales/Ovitt committee will at the very least be obliged to look at the resumés of Fonzi, Cochrane, Cook, and Stewart before giving the nod to McMahon. Additionally, given Gonzales’s assertions that the process will be an open and thorough one, the committee will also need to consider  a handful of other candidates from outside the department, some of whose credentials equal or exceed those of McMahon. Those include:
* Paul Schrader, a Los Angeles sheriff’s deputy who ran against Hoops in 2010, finishing second. Schrader has consistently said that he intends to run for sheriff again in 2014. He maintains that as the second choice of the electorate to serve as sheriff in 2010, he deserves strong consideration to succeed Hoops, given Hoops’ decision to resign.
* Frank Scialdone, who was Fontana’s police chief and later a member of the Fontana City Council and ultimately Fontana mayor. He served as the interim police chief of the Rialto Police Department as well as the police chief of Pasadena City College. He is the president and chief executive officer of PMW Associates, which provides management and training services to law enforcement agencies.
* Martin Thouvenell, formerly the city of Upland’s police chief. In addition to heading the police department, Thouvenell was also fire chief on an extended interim basis. He further served as Upland’s interim city manager for more than a year in the 1990s.
* Former Rialto police chief Mark Kling. Kling has a master’s degree in administration of justice, an MBA, and a doctorate in public administration. He also served as Rialto’s city administrator for an extended period.
* Former San Bernardino County Marshal Keith Bushey. After the marshal’s office was merged with the sheriff’s department in 1999, Bushey was brought into the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, where he served in the capacity of deputy chief. Prior to becoming marshal in San Bernardino County, Bushey was a commander in the Los Angeles Police Department, where he had previously held the ranks of patrol officer, sergeant, lieutenant and captain. After leaving the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, Bushey was an executive staff liaison with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. He has a master’s degree in public service and is presently employed by the FBI’s Law Enforcement Executive Development Association providing  administrative level training to police executives. Bushey is a former Marine Corps colonel.  .
One department and government insider dismissed suggestions that Hoops had brokered a backroom deal with the board of supervisors to elevate McMahon.
Rick Roelle, a sheriff’s lieutenant and Apple Valley councilman who ran for county supervisor in November with Hoops’ endorsement but narrowly lost to Robert Lovingood, said he was unaware of Hoops intention to retire until the official announcement of the sheriff’s departure was made after the election.
“I’ll tell you honestly, I was surprised to hear that,” Roelle said. “If word was going around, it was kept from me. I really don’t believe there was any kind of a deal cut to get John McMahon in there. I was running for supervisor at the time and just about everyone seemed to think I had an even chance of winning, so you would have thought someone would have whispered in my ear, ‘We’re going to need your vote for McMahon to be the next sheriff once you are in there.’ That never occurred. I think I would have been brought in on it if there was going to be some kind of a fix.”
Roelle said that he is not yet convinced at this point that McMahon’s appointment is a fait accompli. “Josie [Gonzales] said they are going to take a look at everybody who applies,” he said. “Whether their decision will be to select John McMahon, I have no idea.”
Thouvenell told the Sentinel he had not contemplated being sheriff but that “I would consider it, depending on the circumstance, but I haven’t really thought about it. I’d have to really think about what I was getting into before I’d put my name out there.”
He said he conceives of the sheriff’s department to be something akin to a very large and geographically dispersed police department with multiple span of control issues. Serving as police chief, he said “was just about 85 percent administrative, probably about the same as being sheriff.”
Thouvenell said it was his impression that Hoops’ successor as sheriff would most likely be chosen from within the department. “The guy that’s in there stays until he is ready to leave and then he steps down and then he selects from within whoever it is that takes his place,” Thouevenell said. “That’s the way they’ve done it as far back as I can remember.”
As to McMahon’s qualifications, Thouvenell said, “I don’t really know him at all but I assume he is capable.”
Indeed, McMahon would not be where he is now if he were not capable. With no glaring skeletons in his closet, he is trusted by most if not all of the department’s rank and file. He is young enough to represent the possibility of change in the future, but enough of a part of the department establishment to not rattle any cages. He is supported by the old guard and seen by those in control of the department as the embodiment of the best foot forward for the organization. Already, Hoops has left the department except for occasional appearances at headquarters, and McMahon is serving as acting sheriff.
Even though Gonzales has stated she is willing to consider other candidates, the other member of the sheriff replacement search committee, Gary Ovitt, is extremely close to Devereaux. Devereaux was city manager in Ontario when Ovitt was mayor there before he was elected supervisor. Ovitt led the effort to lure Devereaux to the county as its top administrator and is entirely dependent upon Devereaux’s guidance. In addition, the board has two new members, Robert Lovingood and James Ramos, who were just elected in November. They are not likely to deviate far from the guidance of the county’s chief executive officer, especially on so monumental of an issue as the replacement of the county sheriff, the person destined to become the most powerful political figure in the county.
No informed entities have said they expect anyone other than John McMahon to be sheriff of San Bernardino County for the next decade.

(December 7)   Even as the city of San Bernardino’s petition for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection is being scrutinized by Federal Bankruptcy Court Judge Meredith Jury and the city of 209,924 has reduced its police department to a 258-member force, the city will continue to pay its remaining police officers wages that are competitive to those being provided to police officers in ten other cities of significant size  cities in California.
San Bernardino is paying its patrol and beat officers up to $85,272 per year, its detectives $97,296, its sergeants $110,280, its lieutenants $132,132, its captains $158,748, the assistant chief $193,152 and its police chief $237,300.
Pursuant to negotiations between city management and police management and police officers bargaining units carried out earlier this year before the municipality’s bankruptcy filing, an agreement was made to utilize an average of the pay provided to police management and officers in  Concord, Oxnard, Fontana, Palmdale, Irvine, Ventura, Lancaster, Santa Clarita, Norwalk and Thousand Oaks.
Beginning police officers start at a pay grade of $5,108 per month, and promote to $5,608 per month, $6,108 per month, $6,607 per month and top out at $7,106 per month. Detectives  start at $6,521 per month, move on to $6,923 per month, then receive $7,320 per month, $7,718 per month and a maximum of $8,108 per month. A sergeant starts at $7,385 per month, then receives $7,836 at the second step, $8,287 at the third step, $8,738 per month at the fourth step and graduates to a maximum of $9,190 per month. Lieutenants are paid a flat $11,011 per month. Captains receive a uniform $13,229 per month. The assistant chief is paid $16,096 per month. The police chief receives $19,775 per month.
The law enforcement trainee salary remains at $4,086 per month ($23.57 per hour), which is 80 percent of a rookie police officer’s salary.
While some critics of the city and its management team maintain the generous salaries paid to city employees including its police officers in large measure account for the city’s dire financial condition, others point out that with the attrition in the police department to 258 officers  and the shortage of personnel to patrol its mean streets, the salaries and benefits being provided to the police department employees are more than justified.

(December 7)   A month after the polls closed on November 6, newly-minted Democrat Steve Fox has secured what not only seemed to be the unlikeliest of victories but the narrowest one for state office this year, with the final tally by California Secretary of State Deborah Bowen giving him a margin of just 145 votes over his opponent, Republican Ron Smith, in the 36th Assembly District.
A portion of the 36th lies within San Bernardino County, the communities of Phelan, Wrightwood and Pinon Hills, specifically.
Fox seemed to be at a decided disadvantage. First, party registration in the 36th slightly favors Republicans. Second, Fox was seen as something of a turncoat, having previously run for the Assembly as a Republican. And in the June primary, Fox, with 14,150 votes or 32.9 percent, had lost to Smith, who drew 15,097 votes, or 35.1 percent. The other candidate in the race, Tom Lackey, also a Republican, had pulled down 13,795 votes or 32 percent.
With the first tally of votes on November 6, Smith led Fox by more than 2,000 votes.
On the basis of the distance between them, Smith was early on deemed the victor. In Sacramento, the Assembly staff assigned an office to Smith. He was further enshrined as a member of the legislature when his photo was posted on the wall of the Capital building leading to the Assembly meeting chambers. Smith named a chief of staff and most of his office workers.
But throughout November as late sent mail and absentee votes came in and provisional ballots were counted, Fox began to close the gap. With the final tally of votes from Los Angeles County this week, Fox eclipsed Smith.
In both San Bernardino and Inyo Counties, Smith trounced Fox. In Kern, Smith gathered 6,691 votes or 59.1 percent to Fox’s 4,631 votes or 40.9 percent.  In San Bernardino County, Smith fared even better, capturing 4,343 votes or 67.5 percent to Fox’s 2,092 votes or 32.5 percent.  But in Los Angeles County, where the lion’s share of the 36th District’s voters reside, Fox outpolled Smith 59,282 votes or 52 percent to 54,826 or 48 percent. According to the Secretary of State, Fox, a lawyer and teacher from the Antelope Valley, outdistanced Smith, a city councilman in Lancaster, 66,005 votes or 50.1 percent to 65,860 or 49.9 percent.

(December 7)   The San Bernardino County Federation of Republican Women will install its officers for the upcoming 2013 term, including the group’s new president, Vera Eyzendooren, on December 13.
The installation will take place at the Redlands Country Club, located at 1749 Garden Street in Redlands, starting at 10 a.m., with former California State Senator Robert Dutton officiating.
The 2011-2012 outgoing officers are president Kathy Faxon, first vice president Carolyn Kelsey, second vice president April Haverty, third vice president Vera Eyzendooren, recording secretary Helen Flint, and treasurer Cheryl L Bluy.
The incoming officers for 2013-2014 are president Vera Eyzendooren, first vice president               Fran Wemerskirchen, second vice president Susie Dryness, third vice president A’lice Smith, recording secretary Barbara Henley, and treasurer Kathy Faxon.
There are seven local clubs that make up the San Bernardino County Republican Women Federated.
The San Bernardino County Federation of Republican Women is affiliated with the National Federation of Republican Women.
The National Federation of Republican Women is the largest volunteer women’s political organization in the world. The national headquarters is located at Arlington, Virginia. Founded in 1938, the National Federation of Republican Women is a grassroots political organization with thousands of active members in local clubs across the nation and in several U.S. territories, making it one of the largest and most influential women’s political organizations in the country. The organization works to promote the principles, objectives and policies of the Republican Party; elect Republican candidates; inform the public through political education and activity; increase the effectiveness of women in the cause of good government; and foster loyalty to the Republican Party and promote its candidates in all elections, including non-partisan elections.
In working toward these objectives, the National Federation of Republican Women concentrates its efforts in the areas of educating, communicating, recruiting, campaigning, fundraising, training and legislative action.
Once an auxiliary of the Republican National Committee, the National Federation of Republican Women is financially and organizationally independent today.
For a participation fee of $15, members of the general public can attend Thursday’s ceremony, which will include lunch at noon, during which entertainment will be provided by the Redlands High School Choir. Lunch reservations can be had by calling Carolyn Thompson for reservations at 760-245-0075.