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Antioch residents deserve a mayor who will put the city’s interest ahead of personal political ambitions and self-promotion.
A mayor who doesn’t have a documented history of misogynistic behavior that includes sexual harassment and groping of subordinates.
Who understands that the mayor and City Council are elected to set policy for the city manager to carry out, not to directly micromanage city operations.
After four years of divisive chaos, voters in the Nov. 5 election should oust Mayor Lamar Hernandez-Thorpe and replace him with Ron Bernal, who retired as Antioch’s city manager in 2021 and wants to help heal the community he worked in for 23 years.
Bernal would bring a refreshing measure of calm leadership. He would work to staff-up Antioch’s badly depleted police force while addressing the city’s multimillion-dollar structural budget deficit.
To ensure Bernal has a City Council majority to work with, voters in District 2 should also elect Louie Rocha, Antioch High School principal for 16 years before his retirement in 2022. And in District 3, voters should select Don Freitas, who previously served on the City Council for 10 years, including eight as mayor.
Bernal, Rocha and Freitas have proven records of leadership and a clear recognition of what the roles and boundaries are for members of the City Council.
The same cannot be said for Hernandez-Thorpe. For most of the past four years, he has meddled in day-to-day operations of the city. His two allies on the council, Monica Wilson and Tamisha Torres-Walker, who are not up for election this year, have enabled his behavior, making it impossible to rein him in.
Which helps explain why, since Bernal retired at the end of 2021, Contra Costa’s second-most-populous city has failed to hire a permanent city manager with experience as the top administrator of a municipality.
And why Steve Ford, the only permanent police chief the city hired during Hernandez-Thorpe’s mayoral term, resigned after less than a year on the job.
Ford was brought in as a reformer to clean up the city’s police force after the discovery that cops were exchanging racist, sexist and homophobic texts. But he quit after he couldn’t dissuade the mayor from meddling in Police Department operations.
As we said in 2022, Hernandez-Thorpe should have resigned after the release of the investigation detailing his inexcusable treatment of two subordinates while he was executive director of the Los Medanos Healthcare District.
Contra Costa County, which assumed liability for the now-defunct district, paid out $350,000 to settle the claims of the two women. Hernandez-Thorpe denied the allegations and told the investigator that one of the women had come on to him.
The investigation found sufficient evidence that Hernandez-Thorpe grabbed the bare leg of one of the women, made inappropriate comments to her and even commented that his behavior constituted sexual harassment. And it found that Hernandez-Thorpe made inappropriate and vulgar comments to the other woman, then grabbed her buttock.
Antioch voters deserve better.
Mayor – Ron Bernal
Ron Bernal (Photo courtesy of Ron Bernal)
Bernal knows all aspects of Antioch city government well, having served the city as assistant city engineer, public works director and then city manager.
He understands the budget and the financial challenges well. When he retired in 2021, the council was in solid financial shape. At the current spending pace since, the city will use up almost all its reserves by 2028.
Having worked on the staff side, Bernal appreciates the importance of councilmembers staying in their policymaking lanes, and then leaving it to the city manager to carry out the direction.
Hernandez-Thorpe said he could not find time in his schedule last week for an interview.
The third candidate in the race, Rakesh Christian, ran unsuccessfully for Hayward council in 2014, governor in 2018 and Antioch mayor in 2020. His history of antisemitic slurs and other verbal abuses make him temperamentally unsuited for the job.
District 2 – Louie Rocha
Louie Rocha (Photo courtesy of Louie Rocha)
Rocha has been a teacher, football coach, counselor, assistant principal and principal in Antioch.
The son of school board trustee Mary Rocha, he understands the key problems of the city budget, that it has been using one-time money to pay for ongoing programs and services, forcing it to siphon off reserves. City spending, he says, must be trimmed to match income.
As for public safety, the city needs to find a way to bolster its badly understaffed police. People feel unsafe, he says.
With incumbent Michael Barbanica running for county supervisor, District 2 has an open seat this election.
Dominique King, the other candidate in the council race, ran unsuccessfully for the school board in 2022 and is currently chair of the city Parks and Recreation Commission. But she seemed confused when discussing city finances.
District 3 – Donald Freitas
Don Freitas (Photo courtesy of Don Freitas)
Freitas would bring thoughtful and respectful leadership to the City Council. In addition to his previous time as mayor and a member of the council, he served as a director of the Contra Costa Water District for 16 years and worked for the Contra Costa Public Works Department for 32 years.
In other words, he understands local government from both sides, as a board member and as a staffer. He’s just the sort of experienced leader Antioch needs to restore financial and political stability.
The other two candidates are Antwon Webster and Addison Peterson. Peterson declined our interview request.
Webster, a logistics manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, ran unsuccessfully for council in 2020. This time, he seemed unrealistic when discussing the budget, confused about the role of a councilmember and supportive of Hernandez-Thorpe’s record.
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