Firefighters Lead In 2 Temecula City Council Races

TEMECULA, CA — Two firefighters vying for separate seats on the Temecula City Council are ahead, according to the latest General Election returns posted Friday night by the Riverside County Registrar of Voters.

Veteran firefighter Curtis Brown is leading the pack by 522 votes in the District 1 contest, while city of Anaheim dual-specialty firefighter Brenden Kalfus is ahead by 222 votes in the District 3 race.

If Kalfus' lead holds, he would unseat longtime incumbent Maryann Edwards. But ballot counting is not over in Riverside County. Approximately 205,000 vote-by-mail and 10,000 provisional ballots still must be processed. Ballots that are postmarked on or before Election Day also remain to be counted, the Registrar reported Friday night.

Not only does Kalfus have a lead over Edwards, he is also ahead of the other District 3 candidate, Kathy Sizemore, by 1,083 votes, Friday's update showed.

Edwards is a fixture in the city. She was appointed to the council in 2005 to fill a temporary vacancy created when Councilmember Jeff Stone was elected to the Riverside County Board of Supervisors. She subsequently ran for reelection four consecutive times and was victorious in every race.

Edwards has sat on dozens of commissions, steering committees and boards, and continues to weigh in on some of the city's most important issues.

Edwards is married with three grown children. The family moved to Temecula from Orange County in 1988, although at the time the city was not yet incorporated.

Kalfus, a married father of five, grew up in Temecula and attended Temecula Valley High School where he earned a baseball scholarship to Saint Mary’s College of California. He went on to play pro ball for the Toronto Blue Jays.

Post baseball, he pursued a firefighting career and currently serves as a dual-specialty firefighter (paramedic and arson investigator) for the city of Anaheim.

In the District 1 race that determines who will take over when Mayor Matt Rahn departs, Brown is the frontrunner. He currently serves on California's Emergency Medical Services Commission following his 2021 appointment by Gov. Gavin Newsom. He's served as assistant region chief at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection since 2020. He's held several other positions at Cal Fire since 1996, including staff chief, assistant chief, battalion chief, training captain, fire captain, fire apparatus engineer and program manager for the EMS Program. He also served as fire chief in Temecula.

Brown's District 1 challengers are Temecula Planning Commissioner Lanae Turley-Trejo, who is serving her third term that expires at the end of 2023, and businessman Jeff Chrapczynski.

Rahn's current term on Temecula City Council expires at the end of the year. He is seeking to become the state's 71st District Assemblymember but is trailing Kate Sanchez by 1,386 votes, according to Friday's update.

Incumbent Temecula Councilmember Zak Schwank, who represents District 5, is ahead of his only challenger, Bill Weston, by 429 votes, according to Friday's update.

Read more: Real-Time Results: Temecula General Election 2022