SB City Councilwoman Wendy McCammack Finishes First in Mayoral Vote, Gets Recalled

by Brian Leubitz

Recalls generally come in waves, and the wave in San Bernardino is no different.  While the last 24 hours featured more Calitics coverage of the city than the previous year, it certainly has been an interesting year.  City Attorney James F Penman’s long tenure in office, over 25 years, has come to an end after his recall last night. But that isn’t even the most interesting part of all this. The recall supporters also recalled two of his allies, Wendy McCammack and John Valdivia.

Valdivia was ultimately able to fend off the challenge in a very poor turnout election. Epicly poor, really. As of the latest tallies last night, which hopefully will go up a lot by the next update tomorrow afternoon, turnout in the San Bernardino election was standing at 7.75%. Yes, well under 10%, which seems like a hopeful target for the final tally.  How low? Well, that’s substantially less than the 15% of voters needed to get the recall on the ballot. This is an odd situation: More people signed the recall petition than voted in the recall election.

But I digress, Valdivia is leading at (609-343) to keep his job. On the other hand, Wendy McCammack is looking like she is in trouble at 1,256-944 in favor of recall. The irony of that is the fact that McCammack is now leading the mayoral vote, and appears set for a runoff with businessman Carey Davis:

Councilwoman Wendy McCammack led all mayoral candidates and will face accountant Carey Davis in a February run-off, even as voters in McCammack’s 7th Ward decided to recall her from the council.

With all precincts reporting in unnofficial results Tuesday night, McCammack led Davis by 136 votes, with candidates Rick Avila and Rikke Van Johnson trailing by more than a 1,000 votes and others in the 10-person field further behind. (SB Sun / Ryan Hagen)

The tumult and odd results in this election shouldn’t really be a huge surprise, as the city is going through bankruptcy. And perhaps voters were simply turned off by the whole process, but really, people, now is the time to engage, not ignore your local government. But hey, maybe we can make some trivia questions out of this.