Javier Lopez announced over the weekend that he’s running for Congress just like we told you he would weeks ago.
The announcement was made Saturday, at all places, a tap room. Daniel Whitmore must be rolling over in his grave. (Ceres was a temperance town in the early days).
I’m not a fan when politicians seek a term and decide they want another office before their term expires and they abandon the seat if elected to the new office. As they climb the political ladder, it’s a form of bait and switch. We saw Channce Condit do that when he left the Ceres City Council midway into his term to run for Board of Supervisors. We saw Anthony Cannella do that when he abandoned his mayoral post to run for state Senate. We saw Gary Condit abandoned his Assembly seat to take a seat in Congress. Local folks be damned, they have better plans for themselves.
Since he knew all along his plans were to run for Congress shortly after his second term started, Lopez shouldn’t have sought a second mayoral term.
Congressmen are elected on an every-other-year basis and serve two-year terms. Adam Gray was just elected to the 13th Congressional District which means his seat will be up for grabs in November 2026, the mid-term election.
I’d like nothing more for the 13th to turn red again to help with the Trump agenda of righting the ship of state from the financial disaster for which it’s headed. But you’ll have to prove to me that Javier Lopez is the guy for the job. Lots will depend on which, if any, other Republicans enter the fray. Lopez apparently has the endorsement of John Duarte, the guy Gray defeated. Whether that holds any sway with voters remains to be seen.
Gray barely won the seat – 164 votes, mind you – against incumbent Republican John Duarte. So do you think Gray will have stiffer competition in Lopez, an unknown mayor of a city with a small population, than an incumbent congressman?
Javier Lopez would be a stronger candidate for the GOP had he first concentrates on serving out his mayoral term – he told his supporters that he was ‘here to stay’ – and perhaps try running for state Senate or state Assembly to establish some kind of legislative record. As of right now, it would be hard to identify Lopez’s GOP credentials given that his only experience in public office has been a non-partisan office. All we have now is his word that he is a conservative.
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Nick Maynard didn’t like my recent column criticizing Lopez’s record as mayor. In reference to my mentioning that Lopez refused to fill out a candidate questionnaire for the 2020 mayoral race, Maynard replied: “Lopez probably hasn’t agreed to a Q&A because you constantly blast him in your articles and on social media.”
The Q&A in question was during the 2020 election before he even became mayor and the critical analysis of his service came about.
But if Lopez was holding a grudge, as indicated by Maynard, does that not speak for his lack of maturity? After all, ours was an offer to let candidates inform the readers about their candidacy and their views. Lopez didn’t feel the need to do that.
Curiously, Maynard wrote dismissively of former mayoral candidate Gary M. Condit because of his youth but I didn’t say Condit was my choice. Maynard wrote on social media: “A 24 year old Condit wasn’t ready to lead a city.” His grandfather, former Congressman Gary A. Condit, might take issue with that as he was elected to the Ceres City Council in 1972 at the age of 24. Age doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with maturity. I’ve seen some octogenarians who had immature behavior and I’ve seen some exceptionally talented and serious young people. Nate Cousins comes to mind. He was writing sports for us at the Courier in the 1980s and he is now a judge in the San Jose Courthouse of the U.S. District Court.
Consider that Edward Rutledge was 26 years old when he signed the Declaration of Independence.
Maynard says I continuously “blast” the mayor. Not so; only when I saw something that needed calling out. I’ve followed every council meeting since Lopez was elected and doubt Maynard has. Yet, he insists “Javier is hands-on and has done a fine job whether you like it or not, Jeff. That’s why he was re-elected.”
Lopez may be an effective campaigner tapping into the Latino vote since he’s Latino but I suspect he would’ve lost the last election had he not had two opponents who split the anti-Lopez vote. More voters went for the other two candidates (Condit and Vierra) combined (7,838 votes) than did those voting for Lopez (6,195 votes).
I’ve listed my reasons in great detail where the mayor has lacked in leadership. After my column was published, I watched the council consider the Housing Element. The council asked all the questions, not the mayor, which makes me wonder how deeply he delves into material.
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I’ve been around a while, over three decades covering this city. So I know how things were done under previous mayors. When the council considered who to appoint to the planning commission or any citizens advisory panel, they once had applicants appear in a public meeting and give an introduction. I recall this was done under Chris Vierra’s term.
Later the process changed with a subcommittee of two council members would do the interviews and the mayor makes a recommendation. The remaining three councilmembers were left in the dark, only going off of the subcommittee’s assessment.
With three vacancies on the Measure H Committee coming up, the council was asked to weigh in on the process of interviews. Mayor Lopez rushed to volunteer himself and any other volunteer.
Not so far, opines newly seated Councilwoman Cerina Otero who suggested that all councilmembers should have a chance to interview applicants in a public meeting. That, my friends, is transparency.
Lopez seemed reluctant and replied, “We’ve never done that before.”
Previous councils, in fact, had done that before. But even if they didn’t, why conduct interviews in private?
Councilwoman Rosalinda Vierra agreed with Otero, saying it was difficult for her to make a decision on who to appoint to the planning commission last year because she didn’t get to hear any of the applicants speak.
Lopez still seemed resistant.
“So anybody who applies will have to understand that they will be in front of more than just two members and will have to interview in front of everybody else?” The attorney said yes, if the change is made, to which he replied, “Interesting.”
Anyone who applies to be on a committee or commission should not have any qualms about interviews in public because if appointed they will have to conduct business in public.
So now the council will have to come back and formally approve the process in which interviews are conducted.
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Gov. Newsom sure is trying to court Central California and Stanislaus County in particularly. He paid his fourth visit to our area last week with a visit to Modesto and the fire academy. He visited Stan State in Turlock in January, a day before the big LA fires broke out. He also came to Modesto a year ago to dedicate the Dos Rios Park near Grayson.
In his first week as governor, Newsom visited the Monterey Park Tract outside of Ceres to float his trial balloon of a statewide water tax which he promptly was ridiculed for before he abandoned the idea.
Newsom’s visits aren’t announced and that could be because he’s not well liked here. Newsom was eviscerated on social media when the story about Newsom’s Modesto appearance was made public. The comments were crass and crude.
One of the more civil responses on Facebook was this written by Vicki Cade: “Was he letting us know about the new mileage tax he wants to implement? Or the solar tax for those of us who spent an obscene amount on solar only to now be taxed too? Or the sales tax increases across California? Or the gas tax increase set for July? Or the total insolvency to Medi-Cal because people that broke the law to come here get health insurance for FREE? Or that he wants more money for train? Or that he’s spending 300 billion of tax payer money to turn San Quentin PRISON into a club med spa? Or that he wants us to pay $450 per 911 call? Or that he’s going to allow the 7th PG&E hike increase pass? Just wondering.”
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If Newsom really wanted to make himself useful, he could have headed down Highway 99 to the tiny berg of Ceres (even hear of that city, Gavin?) and see how horrible his HCD is treating residents of Lazy Wheels Mobile Home Park. The city wanted to get rid of this deplorable park over a decade ago but the ever powerful state doesn’t trust cities to take care of people.
There is zero compassion in state bureaucracy.
Read the front page story this week.
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When I look at California’s prospects at electing people with common sense to state office, I get depressed. I mean, how Adam Schiff became our U.S. Senator astounds me given how the man was censured by Congress for lying for years about Trump-Russia collusion.
Now we have a whole cast of progressives eager to replace Gavin Newsom as governor with no Republican in sight. Kamala Harris may get in the race.
Xavier Becerra, who I despised as attorney general, now wants to be governor. He recently was interviewed by Fox 11’s Alex Michaelson in Los Angeles. Michaelson aptly noted that it’s too expensive to live in California for many and asked whose fault it is given that the Democrats have had a supermajority and lock on state offices for decades. Isn’t that the Democrats’ fault, he asked.
Becerra’s first sentence was “we’ve had Republican governors as well.”
The last GOP governor left office in 2011 – which was 14 years ago!
Becerra utters a duh statement when he states house prices are high because “we haven’t built enough.” No kidding, Sherlock, but why is that? Your regulations and environmental policies have stymied development!
When pressed for a policy he would enact to change things, Becerra only offered he would assemble the “best experts there, you scrub it, and then whatever is left, whatever’s clean and survives, that’s what you do.”
In other words, he has no clue and doesn’t plan to give an inch on any environmental concessions to make building homes in California faster and cheaper.
Becerra reminds me of the time I saw Gavin Newsom in 2017 speak to a labor group in Salida. Here is what I wrote about that appearance in my column of Aug. 2, 2017: “Lt. Gov. Newsom seems like a polished, likeable guy alright but he gave a rundown on how the poverty rate in California has increased, admitting it’s all occurred on the Democrats’ watch.
“My answer to that is, why would we want to keep handing Sacramento over to their failed policies?”
So again, why should California NOT elect a Republican governor this next election? The last batch were all talk and no action to get anything done.
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I’ve said for years that if you want to enable developers to build more homes, you must either water down CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) or get rid of it. It’s being used as a hammer to delay or stop development. A good example of that is how CEQA was used to nearly bludgeon to death the Ceres Walmart Supercenter by delaying it for over 12 years. An attorney named Bret Jolley (hired by Save Mart we were told) trolled through town, got a bunch of anti-Walmart folks to form a rather dubious group called “Citizens for Ceres” and went to war against the retailer.
The same tactic is being used in Pixley.
Much like what happened in Ceres, some high-paid attorneys trolled through Pixley and got them to form the group, Pixley Residents for Environmental Justice. Running the show is the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability and Chatten-Brown Law Group.
They argue that the 28-acre Golden State Hydrogen Plant proposed by Proteum Energy project shouldn’t have been classified as light manufacturing and should be reviewed for its impacts, including its potential to increase conventional pollution as well as greenhouse gases. Let’s get this straight: Any gas burning vehicle or farting cow is considered by this group to be a threat against the environment. Never mind that the county approved an industrial hydrogen plant to be built next to an ethanol refinery.
Why the beef given the plant will provide jobs to a depressed area how hydrogen is a cleaner burning fuel?
The folks at Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability like to wage war on progress in California. They are populated by a bunch of young idealistic progressive environmental Democrats. Their mission statement is: “We work alongside the most impacted communities to advocate for sound policy and eradicate injustice to secure equal access to opportunity regardless of wealth, race, income and place.”
Seems like access to good paying job opportunities would be something supported by this group.
This column is the opinion of Jeff Benziger, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Ceres Courier or 209 Multimedia Corporation. How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com
