oldbellflowerC. “Sonny” Santa Ines was five years old when he made his first political speech—at a campaign rally for his father, who was running for a city government office in The Philippines—made his most-recent one Tuesday night when he was elected to the Bellflower City Council.

“Growing up, I couldn’t wait until I was old enough to vote,” Santa Ines said in an interview with GreaterLongBeach.com. “But just as I reached voting age in 1972, President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law.”

Nearly 40 years later, Santa Ines received 1,866 votes Tuesday to lead a field of seven candidates vying for three seats on the Bellflower City Council. Two incumbents—Mayor Ray Dunton (1,623) and Randy Bomgaars (1,412)—were re-elected and former school board member Rick Royse finished fourth (1,128).

The other incumbent, octogenarian Ray Smith, finished fifth (1,001) in what may have been his final campaign. Smith was first elected to the Bellflower City Council in 1966 and served one term. Nearly 30 years later, in 1994, he ran and won again—and then again and again and again—serving continually until his loss Tuesday.

Smith was born in Long Beach, graduating with Jordan High School’s Class of 1946, and stint in the armed services, graduating from Long Beach City College. But he made a living and a life for himself in Bellflower, where he worked—and still does—as a realtor, served as president of the Chamber of Commerce and is a member of the Bellflower Masonic Lodge #320.

Santa Ines’s victory came in his second run for the City Council after living in Bellflower for 26 years and raising two children to adulthood with his wife, Irma. He has a Masters degree in Business Administration from Long Beach State and is the chief financial and administrative officer of the Weingart Center Association, a nonprofit organization providing services to the homeless community on Skid Row in Los Angeles.

Santa Ines is a board member of the Los Cerritos YMCA, a former Bellflower planning commissioner, past chairman of Bellflower Town Center Design Review Committee, a former member of the Bellflower Unified School District’s Citizens’ Task Force and a past chairman of the Bellflower High School Site Council.

Nonetheless, his frustration with Bellflower’s tight political world led him to include a call for term limits in his campaign. Santa Ines has also become the only non-white member of a council that will remain all-male.
Bomgaars won his fifth term on the council. He is a fifth-grade teacher at Jefferson Elementary School in Bellflower. He and his wife, Jennie, have been married for 37 years and have three children and two grandchildren.

He graduated from Valley Christian High School in Cerritos, attended Cerritos College, earned a Bachelor’s degree from Cal State Long Beach and a Master’s degree from Pepperdine University.

Dunton, 53, owns and operates Ray-A-Motive and was first elected to the council in 2007. Before that, he was a planning commissioner from 1999 to 2007. He has lived in Bellflower for 48 years. He is a member of the Bellflower Kiwanis Club, the Bellflower Chamber of Commerce and the Los Mochis Sister City Committee.

Like most cities in this era, Bellflower’s biggest challenges are economic—in the form of a $1.4-million deficit. But solving that dilemma became more difficult last November when citizens defeated—by 13 votes—a ballot measure that would have temporarily increased the utility tax by two percent.

The council must now weigh cuts in vital services, including sheriff’s patrols and substation hours, school safety programs, crossing guards, park services, and drug and gang prevention programs.

The bright side? The city’s lowest crime rate in 40 years.