Because of the timing of when the Courier goes to press early Tuesday evening we’ve not been able to include the election results the following day.

The Ceres Courier is the first in a string of the company newspapers that run on the press Tuesday nights and extending our deadline to include election results (which begin trickling in after 8 p.m.) would gum up the entire operation.

But we will strive to give you updates on our website on Wednesday morning.

I wonder if it will be a month before we find out who our next congressman will be like the vote counting fiasco of the Duarte-Gray election two years ago. That was the closest race in the country with Gray winning by a mere 84 votes. However, I doubt if the race between Gray and Kevin Lincoln, the Republican former mayor of Stockton, will be as close.

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I spoke to a police sergeant and a Chamber of Commerce official, and both expressed their belief that Measure P had no chance of winning the simple majority needed for passage to bolster city revenues. A number of folks on social media also noted that they don’t want Ceres being branded as the city with the highest sales tax rate in the county. Folks are simply tired of the taxes!

There never was a question in mind that Gary M. Condit would defeat Dorie Perez to take the District 1 council seat now occupied by the retiring James Casey. Fresno raised Perez may be well educated but she was the “odd man out.”

The real contest to watch is District 2. Will Rosalinda Vierra hang onto her seat or is it handed to Jorge Guerrero on account of his Ceres Youth Baseball ties and endorsements from key Ceres folks?

Curiously, someone well steeped in the community suggested to me on Thursday that if Guerrero – known to be somewhat of a hothead – wins a seat, what tension does that create with fellow councilmembers since he has ruffled just about every feather on that panel, particularly Vice Mayor Daniel Martinez with whom he had a “pretty heated” verbal altercation at the Bel Passi baseball complex in Modesto last year.

When asked what he would do about homelessness, Guerrero offered no ideas. Instead he cited how one of his players from Ripon remarked that Ceres has homeless not seen in his hometown. Perez later pointed out that there are marked differences between Ceres and the richer community of Ripon.

Guerrero also inferred that Ceres has a homeless problem because the city approved the Aegis Treatment Center, a methadone clinic on Mitchell Road.

Despite the public outcry, the city was powerless in 2019 to stop the clinic from operating in the commercial zone since permitted uses include medical offices. Then Community Development Director Tom Westbrook said the city couldn’t stop Aegis Treatment Center because it was setting up in an existing building as a permitted use and tenant improvements needed no city approval.

Because the city had no experience with methadone clinics, Westbrook and then City Manager Toby Wells checked out Aegis facilities in other communities and reported that none of the cities had problems connected to them.

The clincher was Guerrero stating: “We told the council not to open a clinic where they received treatment because that was going to be a problem. We were going to have more homeless people coming to town. And the three people who always vote the same way, ignored the comments. Now we have a big problem.”

His comments were off-base because there was no vote – it was a permitted use that needed no vote – and the three he was referring to (Mayor Javier Lopez, Vice Mayor Daniel Martinez and Councilwoman Rosalinda Vierra) were not on the council in 2019! Lopez was elected in 2020, and Vierra and Martinez both in 2022.

Ceres mostly certainly did have homeless before Aegis. My daughter, who worked at the Starbucks at Hatch and Mitchell, told me of plenty of experiences of seeing the walking dead coming into use the bathroom and shoot up and bathe themselves. Many were living under the Tuolumne River Bridge to the north.

Having said that, there has been more of an effort to deal with homeless in Ceres in the past six years than previously and it has made a difference.

This I know: we will never solve the homeless problem until we do three things: Solve the drug problem; force the chemically addicted into treatment programs; and end the environmental regulations that strangle the building of new housing in California.

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As the election neared I felt a sense of dread in anticipation of the outcome, mostly because of the socialists trying to worm their way into office.

It’s like the quote we ran last week: “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”

I voted the day I received my ballot as I had done my homework and employed the best logic I could and yet I heard a lot of senseless chatter of how people planned to vote.

It went like this: “I hate Trump so I’m voting against Republicans.” Why do you hate Trump? “Well, he talks mean.”

“Gas prices are too high so I want to clean house.” Okay, so $5.50 gas is the reason Iran should have nuclear weapons and terrorize the world?

Clean house when the crime rate has dropped because of criminal illegal aliens have been deported? Why?

When we were fighting World War II Americans sacrificed much. There were rubber, food and gas shortages and ration books. They bought war bonds and suffered losses of family members and we think $5 gas is a huge sacrifice we can’t put up with when it comes to world security?

In Texas a man told CBS: “I support Trump but I’m voting for Talarico (a Democrat).” Reporter: “If you like Trump why are you voting for someone who would vote against him?” Dumb voter: “I just believe in checks and balances.”

I see, so you mean checks and balances to where nothing can get done because you elected a senator who will fight the guy trying to improve things in this country? Real smart.

In California, most voters supported the idea of voter ID. But we have such a dishonest Attorney General (Rob Bonta) that in July he decided to title Prop 39 this way: “PROHIBITS CITIZENS FROM VOTING UNLESS THEY PRESENT GOVERNMENT-ISSUED IDENTIFICATION.” The original ballot title was: “ESTABLISHES ADDITIONAL VOTER IDENTIFICATION AND CITIZENSHIP VERIFICATION REQUIREMENTS.”

There’s a difference with presentation, folks.

As attorneys general, both Bonta and Becerra have made dishonest titles a common practice in an effort to push their pet causes or quash initiatives they dislike.

The other depressive mood stems from the fact that California finally found a Republican with fire in his belly and a quiver full of ideas to turn this state around and all the polling told us that Steve Hilton had a chance of a snowball in hell of being elected governor. Despite the fact that folks overwhelmingly say California is headed the wrong direction, they planned to vote for Becerra anyway, pollsters told us.

If Becerra indeed won yesterday’s election, Californians can expect to stay on the same wrong path, experience the same housing shortage, the same rate of homelessness, the same failed school system, higher taxes on driving, more regulation and more control.

Nothing will change because of blue voters who’d vote Democrat just because they always had. If you hated Newsom, you’ll hate Becerra. They are two peas in a pod even though Becerra probably has less ego and arrogance.

It was also very disappointing to hear Alexandra Duarte campaign incessantly stress that California is unaffordable without explaining how she, as one member of the State Senate, in a Democrat supermajority Legislature, could affect any change. Anyone who voted for Duarte and expects the cost of living to go down might as well as believe in the tooth fairy or Bigfoot.

I’m a Republican I quite frankly was more impressed with Jaron Brandon, a Democrat, who expressed more specific ideas about ways to turn California around.

Did I vote for him? No, because I couldn’t trust that he wouldn’t vote to raise taxes and lower regulations. The DNA of a Democrat is to tax, tax, tax.

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Did you hear the latest out of Sacramento? After banning 70 percent of car tires, and plastic garbage bags, the state, through CalOSHA, found something new to ban: quartz countertops! That’s right, they demand the phasing out of artificial stone with more than one percent crystalline silica, common in kitchen and bathroom countertops and other construction surfaces. They claim more than 650 stoneworkers have inhaled the particles and gotten sick or died as a result.

Instead of banning, why not allow the industry to solve the problem with better masks or vacuuming air in work spaces or training? I bring up training because Cambria, the largest manufacturer of the product, maintains that their products can be handled safely with proper precautions. And according to an article I read, dozens of Latino men, often immigrants who didn’t know about the dangers of handling engineered stone until they got sick, have undergone lung transplants or died from silicosis since 2019.

So sounds to me like companies were failing to train workers regardless of the language they spoke.

The knee-jerk reaction is always ban instead of pursuing other options.

As Republican Assemblyman Carl DeMaio stated: “The philosophy of Republicans is affordability, common sense and freedom. That’s basically it. We’re not against regulation, we’re not against workplace safety but we believe we are better at doing it than Democrats (who say) ‘We’re just going to ban it.’ Oh don’t for a moment think they’re concerned about your public safety. If they were they wouldn’t give sanctuary to illegal immigrant criminals, protecting them from being deported. They want to allow them to be re-released onto the street. They wouldn’t be talking about defend the police and cutting back and making it harder for police officers to do their job. They wouldn’t be passing thing like Prop 47 and 57 which took tools out of the hands of police and prosecutors to keep us safe and released criminals from prison.”

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Speaking of releasing criminals from prison early, I trust that you read the report we published last week about an early released felon named Corey Chappell who caused trouble for Ceres Police on Oct. 21 when he led them on a chase riding a stolen motorcycle and throwing a stolen gun.

Some people just are too stupid to change their ways and that’s why they should remain behind bars longer. Some people cannot ditch their criminal ways and thus the state of California should be building more prisons, not closing them.

Keep in mind that Xavier Becerra joined Jerry Brown in backing measures that made the criminal justice system less punitive.

— This column is the opinion of Jeff Benziger, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Ceres Courier or 209 Multimedia Corporation. How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com