I was very excited to see that my friend Janice Rutherford, currently Councilwoman in the City of Fontana and an aide to Acting Board of Equalization Member Barbara Alby (a for a looong time for 
Bill Leonard before that) had an awesome election night. Janice is running for San Bernardino County Supervisor — she’s taking on an incumbent, Paul Biane.
When all was said and done, Biane posted a dismal 34.27% of the vote in his re-election bid — this after spending more money, by far, than Janice or anyone else. Clearly Biane’s strategy was to try and "win it all" in June. Coming in right behind Biane was Janice, with 31.21% of the vote. Four other candidates divided up the rest of the vote.
So in the Fall, Biane and Rutherford will face on in a run-off. Conventional wisdom is that Rutherford is now the front-runner. First and foremost, it is unheard of for an incumbent Supervisor to end up in a run-off, but to perform so poorly is really embarrassing. Second is that all of those voters who cast their ballot for the other candidates have already decided not to support the incumbent. I think that they will be very open and receptive to her candidacy.
In the short term, if you do any business with the County of San Bernardino, I would try to avoid any incoming calls from Supervisor Biane. He will be calling to perform a "cashectomy" – on YOU!
June 10th, 2010 at 12:00 am
I would also warn 2nd District voters to be prepared for basically nothing but negativity from their incumbent…
June 10th, 2010 at 12:00 am
and in droves…
June 13th, 2010 at 12:00 am
Conventional wisdom is often wrong. One of Rutherford’s closest campaign advisors–Upland Mayor Pomerski–was just raided by the FBI. Councilwoman Rutherford got a pass from the local media in the primary. She will face a lot tougher scrutiny about her cozy financial relationship with LA Developer.
June 13th, 2010 at 12:00 am
Biane has already been calling the other candidates who lost in the race requesting them to energize their base to vote for him.
That would be an odd phone call to get. It would seem that each vote for the other guy was a vote against Biane.
Those other votes will be going to Janice in a run off because all those votes were a vote against the incumbent.
Biane will have to paint her as a corrupt monster and that will backfire by not getting himself the votes he needs in the run off.
June 18th, 2010 at 12:00 am
Good luck to Janice! It’s too bad that there weren’t better candidates for the other district this June.
John Wurm – Lake Arrowhead