Why a Chula Vista School Board Member Ran for a Seat He Already Held

Last summer, Chula Vista Elementary School District trustee Francisco Tamayo did something most politicians don’t ordinarily do. He filed paperwork to run for the office he already held. 

Tamayo, a Democrat, was two years into a four-year term on the district’s school board. Nevertheless, he declared himself a candidate for a second board seat, entering the race to unseat fellow board member Kate Bishop, also a Democrat, who was up for re-election. 

At the time, Tamayo, told a news reporter he was running against Bishop because she had made racist remarks against Latinos and promoted a progressive “mentality” on LGBTQ issues that Tamayo said “should not exist in our district.” 

When he defeated Bishop in the November election, Tamayo effectively held two board seats at the same time — Bishop’s and his own. At a school board meeting a month later, Tamayo formally resigned from the seat he had won in 2022, the board officially swore him into Bishop’s seat and moments later he and other board members voted to give themselves the power to appoint a replacement for the seat he had just vacated. 

Now, a month after voting to appoint a new board member, Tamayo and fellow Democratic school board member Lucy Ugarte face possible censure by their own political party for allegedly conspiring to seize control of the board by ousting Bishop and replacing her with a friendlier ally, a Democratic party official said this week. 

To make matters worse for Tamayo and Ugarte, the board appointment process veered in an unexpected direction. Because of a quirk in the rules governing board appointments, Tamayo and Ugarte ended up being forced to appoint a Republican to the board. What was once a stable 4-1 Democratic majority, has now become an unpredictable 3-2 majority.  

Jason Bercovitch, a Democratic Party vice chair overseeing south San Diego County, said the party is moving to censure Tamayo and Ugarte because party members are “appalled” at the trustees’ conduct and “extremely concerned with what’s going to be happening in the Chula Vista Elementary School District” now that the board is no longer controlled by likeminded Democrats. 

“They’re putting their own personal vendetta over the students they were elected to serve,” Bercovitch said. “Neither Francisco or Lucy should ever be eligible for an endorsement from our party again.” 

Tamayo did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Ugarte asked for questions to be sent to her via email but then did not respond to a list of questions. 

Their possible censure, along with the series of leadership changes on the board, comes as the district, the largest elementary school district in the state with more than 28,000 students, faces a possible $15 million deficit and ongoing challenges stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic. 

“There are so many uncertainties with regards to funding,” said board member Delia Cervantes, a Republican who was not involved in the effort to oust Bishop. “What’s best for our students is to provide our students with the resources they need…These are our babies. These are our future.” 

Bishop said the turmoil surrounding her ouster distracted board members from district business and threatened to create a negative public perception. 

“There are people who think Sweetwater corruption is coming to Chula Vista Elementary School District,” Bishop said, referring to the Sweetwater Union High School District, where several Chula Vista leaders have current or past ties. The Sweetwater district in recent years has been embroiled in a series of ethical and financial scandals. 

“I’m not trying to have sour grapes here, but the rules of engagement were broken again and again,” Bishop said. “This is a small microcosm of the larger issue of lawlessness in our government right now.” 

Tamayo was first elected to the Chula Vista Elementary school board in 2014. He won re-election in 2018 and 2022. Along with Ugarte and fellow Democratic school board member Cesar Fernandez, Tamayo was a staunch ally of the district’s teachers’ union.  

Bishop, an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ students and other progressive causes, said she also considered herself a union ally when she ran and won a seat on the Chula Vista board in 2020. 

But she said she began to question some of the board’s priorities after the hiring of the district’s current superintendent, Eduardo Reyes. 

Reyes, a former human resources manager for the Sweetwater Union High School District who also served as a Chula Vista Elementary school board trustee, resigned from the Chula Vista board in 2021 to apply to become the district’s superintendent. The remaining board members appointed Fernandez, who had been a colleague of Reyes’ in the Sweetwater district and a campaign donor to Ugarte, to fill Reyes’ seat. Once Fernandez was sworn in, the board voted to hire Reyes as superintendent, leading some critics to say cronyism tainted the hiring process. Both Fernandez and Reyes said there was nothing improper in the board’s actions. 

Bishop said that after she questioned the hiring arrangement and attempted to make board proceedings more transparent, Tamayo and other Democrats on the board began engaging in “an intentional, sometimes coordinated effort to silence my voice.” 

Bishop acknowledged she sometimes had been a polarizing figure on the board, clashing with other board members on issues such as a 2023 proposal to fly the rainbow Pride flag at district headquarters. 

In 2021, she apologized and relinquished her post as board chair after old Twitter posts surfaced in which she joked about her sexuality and made off-color comments about politicians and her own children. 

Still, Bishop said her outspokenness did not justify Tamayo’s effort to unseat her in the November election. 

Many of Tamayo’s election ads urged voters to “Re-elect Francisco Tamayo,” giving the impression he was running for re-election, even though his term did not expire until 2026. 

He and Ugarte also ran together as a team, with campaign signs posted next to one another throughout the district and mail ads promoting both candidates side by side. Though a local Democratic caucus had rated Tamayo “unacceptable” for running against a fellow Democrat, some of the ads he appeared in alongside Ugarte were formatted in a way that could lead viewers to believe the Democratic Party endorsed him. 

Bob Ottilie, a San Diego elections lawyer who has represented numerous candidates in local races, said he had “never heard of” a candidate running for a seat on a school board while simultaneously holding a seat on the same school board. All board seats in the Chula Vista district are elected at large, meaning Tamayo was asking district voters to elect him to a position they had already awarded him two years earlier. 

“You could say it’s genius, or you could say it’s a gross misrepresentation to the public,” Ottilie said. “A reasonable person informed of the facts would suggest it’s the type of conduct that gives politics a bad name.” 

After Bishop lost to Tamayo, Democrats held a 3-1 advantage on the five-member board. But more twists were in store. Fernandez, one of the three Democrats, had just been elected to the Chula Vista City Council. He resigned his school board seat, which then left Ugarte and Tamayo with a slim 2-1 majority. 

District bylaws stipulate that all board appointments must be approved by at least three board members. The need for three votes to appoint a trustee effectively gave the deciding vote to Republican Delia Cervantes. 

At a special Jan. 17 board meeting to fill the two vacant board seats, Cervantes held out until Tamayo and Ugarte agreed to appoint a Republican named Keren Ramirez Dominguez to replace Fernandez. The board also appointed Democrat Jessica Tolston, a law enforcement employee of the Department of Homeland Security with no previous involvement in district politics, to fill the seat Tamayo vacated after defeating Bishop. 

Fernandez, who observed the appointment process after leaving the board to take his seat on the Chula Vista Council, said he believed Cervantes injected her political views into the appointment decision. 

“I’ll cut to the chase,” he said. “What frustrated me was watching Delia Dominguez Cervantes, the conservative on the board, basically hold that meeting hostage unless she got what she wanted.” 

Cervantes disagreed. She said she tries to keep “politics” out of her decisions on the board. “The children are not political,” she said. 

Fernandez expressed dismay about the board’s new makeup. “Now, there are two conservatives on the board, two liberals and a mom who’s a political unknown,” Fernandez said. 

The Jan. 17 board meeting began with presentations from six finalists for the two vacant board seats. Following the presentations, board members debated over who to appoint. 

Cervantes immediately proposed appointing Dominguez, who ran unsuccessfully against Fernandez in 2022. In both her application materials and her presentation to the board, Dominguez highlighted her involvement in her local church, the Chula Vista branch of a San Diego-area evangelical megachurch that has drawn criticism for its outspoken conservative political advocacy. 

“Real success is when we serve God and can serve others,” Dominguez said in her presentation. 

Cervantes also voiced her support for Democrat Armando Farias, a school administrator in another district who formerly served on the Chula Vista board but was unseated by Ugarte in 2020. Farias, who also ran unsuccessfully against Fernandez in 2022, has been publicly critical of Ugarte and other Democrats on the board. 

Ugarte said she would not vote for any candidate who previously had run for office in the district. Both Dominguez and Farias have run in district elections. 

For nearly an hour, the three board members debated candidates and took a series of failed votes, their voices gradually rising. Finally, Tamayo called for a recess and board members left their seats one at a time. They returned 20 minutes later and began discussing a compromise. 

Before she took her final vote, Cervantes excused herself to pray and turned away from the room for a period of silence. At last, she faced the audience and, together with Tamayo and Ugarte, voted to appoint Dominguez and Tolston. 

In her application materials and presentation to the board, Tolston highlighted her law enforcement background, her church involvement and her desire to serve the district’s “significant military and law enforcement community.” 

“This is something that will bring us together,” Tamayo said shortly before the compromise vote. “The students are our highest value. 

Bercovitch said he is currently drafting the Democratic Party’s censure resolution against Tamayo and Ugarte and expected the party’s central committee to vote on the matter as soon as next month.