Elections chief challenges Monaco, Cone
San Benito County Clerk John Hodges, who recently announced that
he would not seek re-election, will not ride off into the sunset.
Hodges announced Wednesday his intention to file for candidacy for
the District 4 supervisorial seat.
Elections chief challenges Monaco, Cone
San Benito County Clerk John Hodges, who recently announced that he would not seek re-election, will not ride off into the sunset.
Hodges announced Wednesday his intention to file for candidacy for the District 4 supervisorial seat.
District 4 encompasses most of San Benito County’s sparsely populated southern reaches, stretching north into the Ridgemark area. Hodges is the third announced candidate in the race, joining one-term incumbent Reb Monaco and former Pinnacle Publisher and rancher Tracie Cone.
“The reason I’m running is I have a lot to give back to the county after all of the years that I spent working in the assessor’s office, being the assessor, working in the recorders office, the clerk’s office, the auditors office, the registrar of voters office, as mayor of the city of Hollister,” Hodges said last week. “I have a lot to offer the county and District 4.”
Hodges, 66, was elected county clerk in 1982, and took office in January 1983. He typically oversees a staff of 22 that swells to as much as 150 during election days.
Prior to gaining office, Hodges served on the Hollister City Council and established a tire business in Hollister that he ran for 10 years.
“At the time, there were five tire shops in town and they told me it couldn’t be done,” Hodges recalled. “Within 10 years, I had the largest auto service center in Hollister.”
Hodges was born in District 4 and today lives in the Hidden Valley area. He attended San Benito High School and Gavilan College. He is the father of five adult children, three of whom remain in the county.
An easygoing but colorful man, Hodges is distinguished by Western wear and a handlebar moustache. After hours, he continues to raise cattle.
“John’s been a public servant for a lot of years and if he feels his service is needed, then he should run for the board,” said Board Chair Pat Loe. “Truthfully at this point I thought he’d enjoy retirement.”
Hodges said he is proud of his record in office. “I feel fortunate that I was able to have the latest equipment, state of the art equipment, in recording, elections, the auditors office, [and] that I was able to stay within budget and be able to run a fine operation,” he said.
However, Hodges’ career has not been without its complications.
During the 1998 floods, Hodges wrote $10 million in checks to contractors, with the help of then-Public Works director Max Bridges, without budgeting for the flood repairs or telling the board about the contracts.
Mark Tognazzini was the interim county administrative officer at the time, and agreed that while the county was in a state of emergency, the check writing took everyone in administration off guard.
“The lesson is that there should have been closer vigilance, communication and prioritizing,” Tognazzini said at the time.
In the summer of 2001, then-CAO Gil Solorio discovered that Hodges had been writing monthly checks to Robert Vasquez, the county arts commissioner. The problem was, again, the county had not budgeted for the money. Vasquez was supposed to reimburse the county for his salary by applying for state grants, which he never did in the two and a half years he held the office. About $119,000 later, the supervisors abruptly abolished the arts commission and the county-sanctioned title of arts commissioner.
Vasquez took the rap for the budget foul-up, but it was Hodges’ job to have caught the error. In the end, Solorio spent hours in research and phone calls to obtain retroactive art grant funds from the state to make up the deficit it made in the budget.
The Internal Revenue Service slapped the county with a $152,000 fine after Hodges admitted he had filed county payroll taxes late – twice in one year. In a move to gain control of county finances and the auditor’s office, the board, with the help of Solorio, hired finance expert Dan Vrtis at a salary of more than $100,000 a year. After Vrtis came on board in late 2001, he was able to get the $152,000 back from the IRS, and Hodges felt vindicated.
“We were in the right all the time,” Hodges said at the time. “I was bound and determined to get that money back, and to lay out to the IRS exactly what happened.”
In September of 2001, Vrtis became aware that the county was missing $500,000 from a fund that was supposed to be the seed money to cap the John Smith Landfill. It turned out Hodges had used the money to pay other county bills instead of placing it in a special account to gain interest, as county supervisors had assumed.
In late 2003 and throughout 2004, Hodges’ office was plagued with election blunders. LULAC started complaining that Hispanic voters were disenfranchised for a lack of bilingual election and voting materials, and that some poll workers could be hostile to people whom only spoke Spanish.
In the days following the March primary, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and other citizens started raising questions about the elections process. Candidates and voters accused Hodges’ office of accepting absentee ballots improperly, thereby possibly allowing one candidate, Jaime De La Cruz, to pull ahead of opponent Supervisor Bob Cruz in the District 5 race by only 10 votes. The county asked the District Attorney to investigate the matter, Cruz’ wife Marian sued Hodges and the Secretary of State’s office launched their own investigation.
Then in May, the federal government weighed in on Hodges’ election process. Back in March, seven Department of Justice agents had observed the primary. Their findings would force the county to make changes in the elections department to accommodate Spanish-speaking voters, or face litigation from the government.
One of Hodges’ most outspoken critics is Mickie Luna, who founded the local chapter of LULAC. Luna and other members of the group found that the elections office had not provided some materials printed in Spanish as well as in English, as the law requires.
