Riverside County Supervisors Cruise to Reelection

Two Riverside County supervisors were preparing for new terms Wednesday, thanks to easy victories in Tuesday’s election.

Supervisor Kevin Jeffries, who has represented the First District since 2013, fended off challenges from sheriff’s Deputy Melissa Bourbonnais and community activist Debbie Walsh. In the county’s Third District, Supervisor Chuck Washington topped four challengers.

Jeffries stood on his record as a cost-cutter, government transparency advocate and opponent of the explosive growth of mega warehouses in his platform.

The incumbent is the only supervisor who has consistently declined salary increases out of a publicly avowed deference to county taxpayers, and he has made pension reform to net budgetary savings a chief priority going forward.

Washington was originally appointed to the Board of Supervisors seat by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2015, after then-Supervisor Jeff Stone was elected to the state Senate. However, Washington won election in his own right a year later.

In his platform, the incumbent highlighted his efforts to expand the ranks of sheriff’s deputies to combat gangs, reduce governmental interference in the approval of some developments to promote jobs growth and the expansion of travel corridors in the southwest county region to reduce congestion.

He was challenged Tuesdya by Courtney Sheehan, Joe Scarafone, Mike Juarez and Edison Gomez-Krauss.