The political fallout from former Supervisor Zack Scrivner's resignation, investigation into alleged abuse
Some of the potential replacements alleged Scrivner waited until the last minute so they would not have time to organize campaigns.
'It seems as if it wasn't an innocent withdrawal from his seat,' said former District 2 Supervisor candidate Kelly Carden.
Candidates like Carden, said Zack Scrivner's political grip on the seat extended past his resignation.
Fellow candidate Bernita Jenkins agreed: 'If you've been involved in politics at any time in Kern County, this is what we expected … So, was it intentional? Yes. Could it have been done differently? Yes.'
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With the resignation coming just before the deadline, candidates barely had a week to organize their campaigns and meet the filing requirements.
Though a nonpartisan body, the Kern County Board of Supervisors is known to consist of four Republicans and a lone Democrat.
Scrivner was not only part of the Kern Republican Central Committee — from which he also resigned — but also had all four supervisorial campaigns under Western Pacific Research, the town's top GOP consulting firm run by Cathy Abernathy.
'The timing of this is just typical political games the establishment Republican Party and the Abernathy group play,' said Kern County Democratic Party Chair Christian Romo, referencing the local inside baseball jargon some use to describe local GOP elected leaders and political insiders.
'The Republican party, when they put money like that into someone, you got to see what's going to happen to your investment,' said District 2 candidate Pete Graff. 'It's like watching the stock market. Is it going to go up or is it going to go down? And that stock went down.'
GOP consultant Cathy Abernathy declined to comment.
Did Zack Scrivner get special treatment during abuse investigation?
Candidates said they rushed to get their candidacies certified, and they suspect that rush was the goal of the 'political game.'
'They thought people would back out,' Graff said, breaking down what he called the theories around town.
Carden added, '[Political office] shouldn't be something that's held only for the elite and selected by the elite … That's going to be his legacy, that he's betrayed people of his district … How do we as a district recover from this and move forward?'
In November, former Bakersfield City Councilmember Chris Parlier won the District 2 seat and is completing Scrivner's term which was to end in 2026.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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