Riverside County 3rd District Supervisor Jeff Stone was elected to the state Senate last week. Stone’s last Board of Supervisors meeting is Nov. 25. He will resign his county position Nov. 30 and the next day, Dec. 1, will be sworn in as a state senator.
Gov. Jerry Brown will choose Stone’s replacement for the 3rd District and has no deadline to make the decision. Stone’s term ends December 2016. He was re-elected in 2012 and is serving his third term. The position is non-partisan.
Stone said he has asked to meet with Brown to describe the district and the major concerns and needs of its residents. “Hopefully, he will meet with me and then know the challenges when he interviews people,” said Stone.
One possibility is Temecula councilman and former Mayor Michael Naggar, who had announced in 2013 that he would like to succeed Stone, who had said after his 2012 re-election that he would not seek another term. Naggar has been on the Temecula City Council since 1999 and his current term ends in 2016.
Others have suggested another Temecula councilman and also former Mayor Chuck Washington. He was elected to the council in 2003.
Other media have said that Rose Salgado, who serves on the Soboba Foundation Board of Directors, the Valley-Wide Regional Park District and the San Jacinto Unified School District Board of Trustees, would be interested.
Current 4th District Supervisor John Benoit was a state senator, representing the desert and Idyllwild, when former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed him in 2009 to the county board to succeed Roy Wilson who died shortly after his resignation.