Editorial: Few surprises in Inland Empire elections

While there are still many votes left to be counted, election results as of Wednesday afternoon offer few surprises.

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, for example, will not be promoted to governor of California. He did receive substantially more support in the Inland Empire than elsewhere in the state. As this writing, he received 11.3% of the vote statewide compared to 22.6% of the vote in San Bernardino County and 27.45% of the vote in Riverside County. While the top vote-getter in Riverside County, he trailed fellow Republican Steve Hilton and Democrat Xavier Becerra in San Bernardino County.

Down ballot, the highest profile incumbent to be defeated is San Bernardino County Treasurer Ensen Mason, who was subjected to a particularly dirty campaign backed by the San Bernardino County political establishment. Mason argues the county is corrupt, while the county launched politically-motivated investigations against him in search of wrongdoing. What treasurer-elect Rancho Cucamonga Councilman Ryan Hutchison will do differently from Mason remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, San Bernardino Mayor Helen Tran, who appears on track to win her re-election bid outright, also appears to have mostly succeeded in her push to oust three incumbent council members. With Councilman Fred Shorett on track for a runoff, Theodore Sanchez and Sandra Ibarra as of this count are in third place against their respective challengers.

It was a good night for supervisors, with all the county supervisors on the ballot cruising to victory. With the exception of San Bernardino County Supervisor Curt Hagman, the others faced generally low-chance opposition with minimal support.

What’s a positive surprise in Riverside is the seemingly lopsided rejection of the city’s disreputable attempt to raise the city’s Measure Z sales tax and remove the planned 20 year sunset date to make it permanent. As of this writing, 58.49% of the voters rejected Measure Z, which should be a major embarrassment to City Hall and the firefighters union.

Stay tuned, though, as there are many votes to count and in California elections have a way of dragging out.

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This story was originally published June 3, 2026 at 3:38 PM.