Changes are coming to the powerful Imperial Irrigation District.
The dust is still settling on the 2020 election, with some votes still to be counted, but after one incumbent on the board of directors fell in the primary, a second is losing in the general. The board likely will see two new directors seated, reshaping the direction of an agency that delivers both water and electricity to a wide swathe of Southern California.
In Division 2, 24-year-old JB Hamby bounced long-time Director Bruce Kuhn in the primary and was trouncing fellow challenger Ryan Childers by 31 percentage points as of Wednesday. Farther to the south in Division 4, Director Erik Ortega was likely staring down a loss in his reelection bid, as challenger Javier Gonzalez had 5,365 votes to his 4,872 votes with all precincts partially reporting.
Campaign funding for the two IID races included tens of thousands of dollars from unions, Vincent Battaglia of Renova Energy jumping into the fray to “disrupt” the board, and the apparent winners either relying on family money or staging their bids with very little cash. The Desert Sun reviewed hundreds of pages of campaign finance disclosure forms to uncover who tried to pull the strings in an election that could shake up the largest user of Colorado River water.
By late October, Gonzalez had only spent about $3,000, according to the filings. Hamby’s campaign, meanwhile, was funded mainly through SandiaTec, an agriculture company in Brawley run by his father, Mark Hamby. Neither were supported by organized labor, who instead dropped significant independent expenditures on their opponents.
“What did that get the unions?” IID board President Norma Sierra Galindo asked on Wednesday. “It got them a handful of dog s—.”
The makeup of the five-member board comes with significant implications. The directors are set to vote on an agreement on Tuesday that could effectively lock in union labor for IID projects for the next decade, and the water district is embroiled in legal battles with farmers and other California water districts over its power on the river.
In addition to delivering water to nearly half-a-million acres of farmland and the valley’s residents, IID provides electricity to more than 150,000 people, including across the eastern Coachella Valley.
“This new board is going to be very eclectic, for lack of a better term, and I think it’s going to take some patience from those of us who are the three veterans,” Galindo said, adding that she would “give both of them the time of day and the respect and the benefit of the doubt that any public servant deserves.”
Electrification without representation
Although thousands of IID’s electricity customers live in Riverside County, they have no vote on the board of directors.
IID’s directors are elected solely by water ratepayers due to a deal struck with the Coachella Valley Water District in 1934. The setup rankles many in Riverside County who say it disenfranchises voters. For its part, IID has vociferously fought attempts to give votes or seats to Imperial Valley’s northern neighbors, arguing that they could lose control over their own water rights.
“(IID) took a conversation about suffrage and voting and made it about their water rights. That’s BS,” said Battaglia, founder and CEO of Palm Desert-based solar company Renova Energy.
Battaglia is a long-time IID antagonist and does little to hide his goals: shaking up the board, bringing voting representation to Riverside County and opening up IID’s service area to rooftop solar installers, Renova included. During the race, Renova spent about $4,000 via independent expenditures to air radio ads in support of Hamby and Gonzalez, according to the filings.
Battaglia said he worked with a political action committee affiliated with the Greater Coachella Valley Chamber of Commerce to place the ads. The chamber could not be reached for comment.
In the lead-up to the election, both Gonzalez and Hamby told The Desert Sun that they would oppose adding board seats from Riverside County. When asked if he would be in favor, Gonzalez said, “absolutely not,” while Hamby labeled the idea as an attempt to “hijack” IID.
Battaglia didn’t tell either of the candidates about his support up front and ultimately pulled the ads when he realized they could hurt the people he meant to support.
“I guess I’m kryptonite in some circles down in the IID,” he said.
Still, Battaglia remains confident that Hamby and Gonzalez “will be disruptors” once they understand that the idea of extending representation for all IID’s electricity customers “does not threaten water.” He invited both candidates to Renova’s campus to discuss.
Gonzalez said he would consider the invitation in the future, and Hamby said he is waiting on ethics training from the board before deciding how to proceed.
Hamby added that he wants to avoid the “nuclear option” of rebuilding the board, but he is cognizant of the Coachella Valley’s desire to grow new, often electricity-hungry economies in IID’s service area. Perhaps, he said, that means finding creative solutions such as setting separate rates for different areas to fund local infrastructure construction.
“If we can relieve the biggest pressures, we don’t end up having these big, scary in-front-of-the-California-Legislature questions,” Hamby said, referencing Battaglia’s past attempts to work with Assemblymember Chad Mayes, I-Rancho Mirage, to legislate the issue.
Organized labor flexes muscle
Battaglia’s contributions were only a fraction of the total spending in the race.
Childers reported bringing in more than $100,000 by mid-October. That was a mix of his own money and contributions from farmers, unions and geothermal companies, an industry which also gave heavily to other campaigns. Ortega’s filings were missing several data points, but they suggested that he raised much less than Childers. Instead, he benefited from a significant amount of outside spending.
The true financial muscle behind Ortega’s run came from unions’ independent expenditures.
Disclosure forms show that a political action committee called San Diego Works! came to his aid, spending tens of thousands of dollars in support of him and Childers in the general election. The group was sponsored by San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO, the country’s largest group of labor unions.
The unions’ spends come as IID negotiates with organized labor over the potential to institute a project labor agreement, or PLA. Such setups mean that a project manager — in this case IID — hammers out a contract with a set of unions prior to work beginning.
Proponents say PLAs guarantee a steady supply of labor while also protecting workers’ rights. Opponents say the contracts are anti-competitive and push out non-union companies. For an entity like IID that needs significant labor to build and maintain water and electricity infrastructure, the presence or absence of a PLA would mean big business for different interests.
The candidates seen as the most pro-union also received assistance — via a variety of independent expenditures, cash donations and in-kind contributions — from the Plumbers and Steamfitters, Southern California Pipe Trades District Council, International Union of Operating Engineers, Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters, United Domestic Workers of America and others.
Ortega, Childers, the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council, and the law firm representing its political action committee didn’t respond to requests for comment. Childers’ campaign email address appeared to have already been deactivated.
The likely winners saw very different funding streams.
In Division 2, which covers Heber and part of El Centro, Hamby’s campaign was largely paid for by his family. His disclosure forms showed more than $50,000 in bills still to be paid to his father’s SandiaTec as of mid-October.
“Most of our funds came from ourselves, which I think demonstrates a lot of commitment to our cause here,” the younger Hamby said. “The money in this context that we spent on our own campaign really pales in comparison to the rest of it, which was knocking on doors when it was 117 degrees out in a pandemic.”
He also received several multi-thousand-dollar donations from farmers.
Gonzalez raised a mere $3,050 as of Oct. 26, which he spent on banners, Facebook ads, gas for a mobile ad truck and — he stressed several times — a bullhorn to literally amplify his message.
“Ortega relied too much on the unions. People want to see the candidates,” Gonzalez said, adding that his focus in Calexico “was just getting in front of the voters and spreading the message that we’re being forgotten.”
The future of the Inland Empire’s water districts
Imperial County spokesperson Linsey Dale said that about 4,000 provisional ballots were still left to be tallied as of Nov. 23, marking a “long, manual process” to finish counting. The county had already counted about 50,000 mail-in votes but was still working through ballots that had been challenged due to issues such as unmatched signatures. The county had until Nov. 30 to settle any outstanding challenges.
If Gonzalez is able to hold onto his slim lead over Ortega, his election will introduce further friction into IID’s board. After Galindo told the Imperial Valley Press that Gonzalez didn’t understand IID’s mandate, he took to Facebook to fire back.
“Mrs. Galindo needs to respect every elected board member and the decisions they make. We can see nothing is said of those that always go along with her decisions,” he wrote.
Galindo also said she might find it “quite difficult working with Hamby” because of his connections to the agribusiness world.
Meanwhile, other local water districts saw only a fraction of IID’s fireworks.
The Coachella Valley Water District, for example, had two seats open on its board of directors this year. Neither race fielded challengers who qualified for the ballot, so the incumbents were automatically reseated. Neither director — Anthony Bianco and Peter Nelson — reported raising campaign funds.
In the Desert Water Agency’s lone competitive race, incumbent Kristin Bloomer reported raising about $11,500 by election day, much of that coming via an eleventh-hour, $5,000 contribution from local philanthropist and Palm Springs International Film Festival board Chairman Harold Matzner. Her challenger, Ray Amico, reported spending several thousand dollars of his own money but was ultimately set to lose in a landslide.
Mission Springs Water District’s board of directors fielded two competitive races, both of which saw the incumbents leading with nearly all votes counted. Those candidates, Randy Duncan and Russ Martin, reported receiving several thousand dollars in donations.
While Duncan did not disclose the source of his contributions, Martin’s came from developer Skyborne Ventures, agribusiness consultant Fiore Management, El Morocco Inn and Spa, and others.
Final vote counts in Riverside and Imperial counties will be certified on Dec. 3.
Mark Olalde covers the environment for The Desert Sun. Get in touch at molalde@gannett.com, and follow him on Twitter at @MarkOlalde.