Kern County First District Supervisor Mick Gleason won’t be seeking another term in office. The retired Navy captain and China Lake commanding officer said Tuesday that after years of public service, it was time to spend more time with his family.

“I think it’s just time to go,” Gleason said. “I’ve done two terms, eight years, and I’m satisfied that I had a positive impact on Kern County.”

He noted that after talking with his wife, Robynn Gleason, the decision was hard but clear.

“Our family is growing and we have grandkids coming along, so there were other things we want to focus on,” Gleason said. He added that between his time in the Navy and as a county supervisor, he’s spent 35 years of service.

Gleason took office following the 2012 November election after a long campaign that saw eight candidates vie for the position.

In the November election, he defeated former state senator Roy Ashburn, taking nearly 60 percent of the vote. He took over from Jon McQuiston, who stepped down after a long career.

Prior to that, Gleason served 27 years in the U.S. Navy as a fighter pilot and eventually commanding officer of Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, from which he retired as a captain. Following retirement, he took senior program manager with General Dynamics and helped launch the China Lake Alliance.

Gleason noted that he had no experience in campaigning back in 2012.

“It was a tough deal, an interesting campaign and I did very well and was fortunate enough to carry the day in a tough campaign against Roy,” he said. “Roy was a really good campaigner.”

Gleason entered office at a time when Kern County’s economy was still riding the boom of high oil prices, but he would also face challenges with budgetary issues like the Kern Medical Center’s deficit.

He’s also helped preside over the implementation of the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority following the passage of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act in 2014.

The IWVGA is a joint powers agreement between Kern County, the Indian Wells Valley Water District, the City of Ridgecrest, and San Bernardino and Inyo counties. The former three agencies serve as the core leadership and rotating leadership of the board. The Navy and the Bureau of Land Management serve as non-voting associate members on the board.

SGMA mandates that critically overdraft groundwater basins like the IWV form a groundwater sustainability agency and hammer out a plan that will achieve a sustainable safe yield in the basin by 2040. That plan is due to be submitted to the Department of Water Resources by Jan. 31, 2020.

Remaining goals

Gleason said he has two primary goals in the year he has remaining in office: finish the IWVGA’s sustainability plan and drive home the vision of better relations between West and East Kern.

The sustainability plan has been gaining momentum, he said, with draft sections coming out for review by both the IWVGA board and by policy and technical advisory committees.

“I think we are on the very edge of getting that done,” Gleason said. “We need to get it done and get it moving. The satisfaction I will get from that will be significant because we give it to the Navy and say ‘you have no worries, we don’t have a threat to our base because we have a sustainment plan.’”

The Navy has consistently noted that the water issue in the IWV is considered an encroachment issue for NAWS China Lake’s mission as a center for weapons systems research, development, acquisition, testing and evaluation. The Navy has also stated it intends to fully participate in SGMA’s effort mandated by the state.

Gleason said the IWV plan will require three phases: develop the plan, implement checks and balances within that plan and augmenting the water supply.

“Those checks and balances will have to accommodate changes in climates, water supply, economies, and technology,” Gleason said.

Gleason noted augmenting the water supply will take time to develop. Options could include anything from treating the basin’s brackish water supply to importing water from outside the basin. Importing water so far looks expensive.

One option involves taping into the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s aqueduct that carries water from Inyo County to the south. Conceptual costs for infrastructure could cost $55 million. The other option is building infrastructure from the Antelope Valley East Kern Water Agency’s connection in California City, which would upward of $170 million.

Neither option includes the cost of water that would need to be purchased.

“How does a community of 35,000 people afford that?” he said. “We don’t have the tax base to afford it.”

Gleason said any option to augment water supplies will take years to develop and execute.

“Those are going to be some huge lifts to do, but we have time to do it,” Gleason said. “We’re going to get there, we’re going to need help but I think working as a team we can make it happen.”

Gleason’s other goal is to bring East and West Kern together.

“A unified Kern is something that is achievable and something that is beneficial to all constituents throughout Kern County and the state of California,” he said. “We could really do a lot of good stuff if we leverage the best of what we have on both sides of the mountain.”

However, he said “that’s going to be tough.”

Gleason said the dynamics of the county economy are changing. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration is prepared to roll out stricter regulations on the county’s oil industry and agriculture as a whole may be changed by the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.

Recently, Scott O’Neil, executive director for the Indian Wells Valley Economic Development Corporation, made a presentation to the county Board of Supervisors on the importance of East Kern’s economic strength.

O’Neil said it holds potential for renewable energy in the form of solar and wind and a strong aerospace and defense industry leveraged by Mojave Air and Spaceport, China Lake, Edwards Air Force Base and NASA Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center.

Gleason noted the district’s resiliency, pointing to the 2016 Erskine Fire that ravaged the Kern River Valley. At the time, the Erskine Fire was considered the 15th most destructive fire in the state’s history. From June 23 to July 11, it burned 47,8800 acres, destroyed 309 buildings and homes and killed two people.

“It left the Kern River Valley a mess,” Gleason said. “I spent days up there after the fire in the shelters with people who lost their homes. It didn’t attack wealthy homes, it attacked mobile homes in Southlake.”

However, he said he saw Kern County rally together to help, adding that the county’s Emergency Operations Center team played the part of heroes in coordinating relief and firefighting efforts.

He said the same applies to efforts shown in Ridgecrest following the July 4-5 earthquakes. Ridgecrest, the IWV, Searles Valley in San Bernadino County and China Lake were rattled by a 6.4 magnitude earthquake July 4 and a 7.1M the following night. With the epicenters located aboard China Lake, the base sustained the most damage, along with Trona.

Dozens of homes and businesses were damaged in Ridgecrest as well, with two homes lost to fire.

“I remember sitting up in the EOC with [Mayor] Peggy [Breeden], [City Manager] Ron Strand and everybody else and watching all the fire engines going one way, the helicopters going another … my biggest responsibility for that thing was to get out of everybody’s way so they could do their job fine.”

‘Kern County has changed’

Gleason said looking back on his seven years, he said he could solidly say he contributed to the county’s transformation.

“Kern County has changed and I think I played a role in that change,” he said.

He said the start of it was the Kern Medical Center situation. KMC is the county’s public hospital but was also a source of financial distress for the county.

After the troubles came to light in 2013, the board fired KMC’s chief executive officer Paul Hensler and began looking at reforms.

“Kern Medical Center was a disaster,” Gleason said. “What fixed that disaster was a confluence of a lot of different things .. but the kernel that started everything was that the board of supervisors realized that we are elected officials, not hospital administrators.”

He called the board’s then-responsibility to oversee all KMC budget decisions “dumb.”

The board began implementing changes at KMC when it hired then Bakersfield Mercy Hospital CEO and president Russel Judd as the new head in November 2013. The board hired Judd through a management firm he created and brought on his own team.

Control of KMC transitioned from a county department to the semi-autonomous Kern County Hospital Authority in July 2016.



“Government can change but there has to be a step function to make that change,” Gleason said. The hospital’s budget woes created that step “that forced us to change the way we managed that hospital,” he added.

The second issue that forced change in Kern County was the collapse of oil market prices between mid-2014 and 2016. The county derived a large portion of its tax revenue from the oil industry; when a barrel of oil went from nearly $100 to $40, revenue also began to plummet.



“That caused a massive change in our budget that we had to solve,” Gleason said. The county implemented a four-year spending plan that promoted consolidation of services.

“We’re just now crawling out of it and it’s amazing that we’ve crawled out of it without reductions in service and we are better operation because of it,” Gleason said. “The step was the crash of the oil market and the end result was a learner, more efficient government.”

MALDEF lawsuit

Gleason has faced seeing his district changing in the wake of the lawsuit filed by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the final ruling in 2018.

A lawsuit, Luna et al v. County of Kern et al, filed in 2016 claimed that “a redistricting plan adopted in 2011 by the Board of Supervisors violated Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act,” according to a 2018 MALDEF news release.

MALDEF claimed that “the boundary between District 1 and District 4 unlawfully fractured a large cohesive Latino community, submerging their votes in a larger white electorate in both districts, thereby diluting Latino voters’ ability to participate effectively in the political process.”

A federal judge sided with MALDEF in February 2018, forcing the county to re-draw the maps. As a result, Gleason’s district lost Delano, Shafter and McFarland, which were incorporated into David Couch’s District 4. The change required Couch to go through an early re-election process for his seat.

Gleason, meanwhile picked up southwest Bakersfield, including parts of Rosedale, which have very active voters.

The retired Navy captain has never shied away from his feelings on the ruling, calling the re-districting a “gerrymandering of the map” to form to minority districts that reflect Kern’s significant Latino population.

“In my opinion, one person wearing a black robe made a decision that impacted all of us in Kern County,” he said, referring to U.S. District Court Judge Dale A. Drozd. “He mandated that we gerrymander these districts to satisfy the MALEF lawsuit.”

Gleason disagrees with the ruling, adding it’s “bad for the county and for the state and the average citizen in the county who just wants to raise a family in a safe environment.”

“Instead of creating a blended community where we’re all working together to be a better county, he created ethnic battlegrounds and barriers between Hispanic and non-Hispanic communities, which is just stupid,” Gleason said.

He called the people behind the MALDEF lawsuit a “thin veneer of political activists who are trying to change America.”

He noted that MALDEF misses the point and that most people, regardless of race, “just want to be Americans … those are the people who vote, not the political activists who are trying to change things.”

Outlook on future candidates

Gleason said whoever replaces him as First District Supervisor will need to understand the entire First District, which runs from Rosedale in Bakersfield through Kern River Valley and into East Kern, including the Indian Wells Valley, Ridgecrest and Johannesburg.

“The qualities that person he or she brings to the table are going to be having an open mind and a spirit to work with people to solve problems,” Gleason said. He added the person will need to be honest and transparent and have a lot of energy.

“This job, especially for District One, just requires a lot of energy because there is a lot of traveling involved,” Gleason said. “There’s a lot of people you’ve got to get to know and a lot of different ways of thinking, cultures and economies.”

He noted that while it would be nice to have someone from East Kern take over, it was unlikely to happen.



“It would have to be a really good candidate because the math for District One just doesn’t work out,” Gleason said. “If you look at that math, District One used to be dominated by Ridgecrest voters.”

Prior to the redistricting of the supervisorial districts caused by the MALDEF lawsuit, District One included the Kern River Valley, Delano, McFarland and Shafter and parts of northern Bakersfield. While Delano is the second-largest city in the county, Gleason said Ridgecrest voters consistently turned out to vote compared to Central Valley communities.

He noted that changed with the redistricting when he lost Delano and McFarland and picked up west Rosedale and Bakersfield, where he said eligible voters turn out more.

Gleason said there are no immediate plans to relocate from Ridgecrest. He and Robynn, however, have grandchildren in both Seattle and Pheonix, Arizona and plan to spend more time with them after his term is done.

“We like Ridgecrest,” he said. “We’re just doing this (not running) because we just need a change in the tempo of our lives.”

He added it won’t be a full-time retirement.

“I’ve got to do something, man,” he said. “It’s too early too tell, but I’m sure that there are plenty of opportunities and I’m looking forward … and anything I can do to help out Ridgecrest and the Indian Wells Valley, I’m all in.”

He added with a laugh, “I think I’m going to try out for the senior PGA Tour. ”