Jeff Stone, longtime Riverside County leader, planning to retire – Press Enterprise

While scrolling newspaper stories about longtime local politician Jeff Stone, I came across Karel Lindemans, a former Temecula City Council member.

Asked whether his colleague was ready for a run at a Riverside County supervisorial seat after serving on the council just three years, Lindemans said: “He’s bright, he’s articulate, he’s concerned. God, what more do you want?”

This from a guy who lost a council race to Stone. Even his rivals admired him.

After 33 years in elected office and 12 campaigns, Stone recently announced his retirement from public life. He’s not running for reelection to the Nevada state Senate.

Nevada? From the city council to the Riverside County Board of Supervisors to the California state Senate to a position in the first Donald Trump administration, Stone seemingly never saw a political office he didn’t want.

He was 9-3 in his runs for office, meaning voters, too, usually agreed with what Lindemans said when Stone started.

He’s had a knack for finding the right issue to focus on, starting with his opposition to the city of Temecula giving a couple of million in incentives to lure Walmart to an area where the mall now sits. While the business community was livid over his opposition, Stone contended that Temecula could do better than lure a discount chain store (the city already had three) to that valuable real estate.

As was often the case, Stone was right.

Another specialty was acronyms he crafted to dress up otherwise drab policy ideas, such as SCRAPE (Save County of Riverside Against Preventable Expenditures) and REST (Revenue Excess Sharing in Temecula) and the long-winded GET A GRIP, a nickname for an anti-graffiti team for the same city. Stone still remembers what all eight letters stood for.

Given the symbol for Stone’s Republican Party is an elephant, he has the memory of one.

My personal favorite Stone moment was when he stormed to Portland, Oregon, to oppose the notorious Jeff Gillooly’s effort to rename himself Jeff Stone. He designed the plot to maim famous skater Nancy Kerrigan.

The then-Temecula Stone represented more than 20 other Jeff Stones nationwide in opposing Gillooly. It took a judge all of 10 minutes to rule against the original Stone and for the new Stone. Late-night TV comics roasted Stone, leaving none unturned in their quest for humor. But if you’re from the camp of no publicity is bad publicity, which Stone clearly is, he had the last laugh. Better yet, he wasn’t even “stoned” during the whole wacky episode.

OK, I’ll stop.

Stone and I always had a lot of laughs, and I appreciated that he never got mad, at least to my face, about things I wrote, something that probably happened. He always accepted that I was just doing my job as a journalist, just like I respected that he was only trying to make government better. If he can be entertaining along the way, all the better.

He said his favorite political office was as a Riverside County supervisor representing a district that included Temecula, Murrieta, Hemet and San Jacinto.

Stone liked having control over the county’s destiny, including judicial, legislative, law enforcement and the executive.

“I’m very proud of our accomplishments,” he said.

And the family tradition of politics continues with his sister Lori, a member of the current Murrieta City Council. His son Jason is a superior court judge in Menifee.

He resorted to the rare cliché when describing his election success, saying he always “listened to the people.” It’s hard to argue, given his winning percentage in elections.