James Clinton “Clint” Davies, a former Tehachapi resident and candidate for Tehachapi City Council in 2018 died in a traffic accident in Rosamond on June 15, according to a report from Kern County Sheriff-Coroner Donny Youngblood.
The California Highway Patrol is investigating the accident, a head-on collision on Rosamond Boulevard at 46th Street West. The accident took place at about 10:40 p.m. and involved a Tesla and a Chevy Blazer. Davies was reported to be a passenger in the Tesla. He and the driver, Alex Francisco Cuesta, 38, died at the scene.
Davies, 45, moved to Tehachapi around 2015 and ran for a seat on the City Council in November 2018. He and Joan Pogon-Cord both challenged incumbent Dennis Wahlstrom for the city’s District Four seat. Pogon-Cord won with 65.54 percent of the vote, garnering 291 total votes compared to 78 for Wahlstrom and 75 for Davies.
He still lived in Tehachapi on May 7, 2019, when he requested a meeting with Police Chief Kent Kroeger and recorded his conversation with the chief without Kroeger’s knowledge, later posting it on Facebook.
Tehachapi police arrested him on that charge and in January 2020, a Kern County jury found him guilty of one felony count of eavesdropping. He was sentenced to three years of probation supervision conditioned on a county jail term of 76 days, with credit for time served of 76 days.
Earlier this year his conviction was reversed by the Fifth Appellate District, although at the time of his death, he still faced the prospect that the Kern County district attorney might retry the case. A status conference on the case was set for Aug. 1 in Mojave. He was also due in court in Bakersfield on July 29 for two DUI charges and a vandalism charge.
Davies was at a Tehachapi City Council meeting in June 2019 when he was arrested by Kroeger on suspicion of disrupting a public meeting and being publicly intoxicated. He was escorted out in handcuffs. Previously he had refused to take his seat after then-Mayor Susan Wiggins told him his comment time was up. According to Kern County Superior Court records related charges against him were dismissed in the furtherance of justice.
