Clovis City Council has room for fresh faces — as long as they’re conservative faces
There’s rare room at the top in one of California’s fastest-growing cities.
Following Clovis Mayor Jose Flores’ surprise retirement announcement and Councilmember Bob Whalen soon to assume office as a Fresno County Superior Court judge, the Clovis City Council will include at least two new faces once the votes in the November election are counted.
Two new conservative faces, that is. Moderate and (gasp) liberal-minded thinkers need not apply.
If it seems like members of the Clovis City Council remain in office for decades, that’s because many do. Without term limits (like those imposed in Fresno), there are no legal restrictions forbidding that. And without district elections (like in Fresno and Visalia), they are beholden only to the homogenous viewpoint.
Once his current term ends in November, Flores will have served 24 years as an elected lawmaker in Fresno County’s second-largest city. Whalen, meanwhile, is concluding a 20-year run before he wields the gavel and dons a black robe.
Clovis is also the place where Harry Armstrong spent 46 years on the council between 1970 to 2016 ― and was reelected to a 12th four-year term ― until health issues forced him to resign.
Clovis City Council seats can often feel like lifetime appointments, even if they’re not.
Which is what makes this particular juncture so interesting, at least in Clovis political terms. Regardless of who gets the most votes in November, Mayor Pro Tem Lynne Ashbeck will become the only council member elected prior to 2016.
The other two current Clovis City Council members, Vong Mouanoutoua and Drew Bessinger, took office in 2017. Mouanoutoua was reelected (along with Ashbeck) in 2021, while Bessinger is up for reelection this fall.
It just seems like Mouanoutoua and Bessinger have been around longer, if only because they sound and act like the rest of the conservative politicians that preceded them.
In Clovis, there is no other kind.
Clovis more conservative than Fresno County
Aside from Bessinger, only one candidate has officially declared for the November ballot. That person is former Clovis Police Chief Matt Basgall, who retired in 2019 and has more recently spoken up at council meetings for increased police funding.
Not exactly a liberal cause.
Two other interested candidates have taken out papers in advance of the Aug. 17 filing deadline. Contrary to a Twitter rumor, one of them is not Mason Magsig, the teenage son of Fresno County Supervisor Nathan Magsig. A family source (i.e. Mason’s dad) tells me 2022 is likely too soon for the recent Clovis High grad to consider a run.
“But he is interested in running one day,” the elder Magsig said.
If party affiliation counts for anything, Clovis remains more conservative than the rest of the Fresno County electorate. Of the city’s 73,009 registered voters, 44.1% are Republican, 30.2% are Democrat and 18.2% are No Party Preference. (In Fresno County as a whole, the split is 39.6% Democrat, 32.2% Republican and 20.8% NPP.)
So it makes sense that Clovis politicians are, by and large, conservative Republicans. That won’t change for as long as city leaders continue to resist district elections.
In Clovis’ at-large system, all three council seats up for grabs in November will appear on the same ballot, rather than voters choosing one candidate in their particular district. This allows for the majority to prevail and leaves the minority powerless.
By minority, I mean viewpoint ― not skin color or ethnic background. Flores being Latino and Mouanoutoua being southeast Asian gave city leaders all the ammo they needed to refute a Visalia legal firm’s contention that Clovis’ at-large voting system was racially polarized and in violation of the California Voting Rights Act. No lawsuit has been filed.
Visalia, a city 50 miles south with a slightly larger population, switched to district elections in 2016 and recently underwent its first redistricting process. Dozens of other California cities have done likewise.
Clovis politicians, on the other hand, dodged that once-a-decade task because there weren’t any district boundaries to redraw. As long as that remains true, it won’t really matter how many open seats there are on the Clovis City Council. Because only conservative views will count.
