Battle brewing between Ruskin and ChurchFollowing the announcement by Warren Slocum that he would not seek reelection this year, San Mateo County Supervisor Mark Church, announced that he would go ahead and seek the seat Slocum now holds, San Mateo County Assessor-Clerk-Recorder.
Slocum is currently the only second Elections Chief and Recorder for San Mateo County, having taken the reigns from the former Clerk Marvin Church since 1967, the father of Supervisor Mark Church, who is now seeking his dad’s old seat.
Church has moved fast by garnering endorsements from all over San Mateo County; however, despite his fast actions to lock up the seat, he may still yet have competition. It is rumored that Assemblyman Ira Ruskin may be interested in running for the Assessor-Clerk-Recorder seat.
Ruskin, who is being forced from office due to term limits from his seat representing southern San Mateo County, would make a formidable opponent able to raise resources from Sacramento and who would easily win in the southern portion of San Mateo County where he enjoys a degree of popularity.
While Church has been in countywide office for a decade, he has never had to seriously campaign for office and is not particularly well known. In fact, Church has never been particularly visible as a county Supervisor, never championing any particular issue of note nor doing anything beyond the usual to outreach to his constituents. As a result, there is little reason to believe that an adequately funded competitor, with a good title and a degree of name recognition, wouldn’t give him a run for his money.
If Ruskin runs, Church will face the first real test of his near 20 years in local office.
San Mateo County Coroner may finally face the music
Sa
n Mateo County Coroner Robert J. Foucrault will seek his third full term in office this year, but unlike most incumbent elected county administrators, Foucrault has an opponent, as well as some issues to be concerned about.
Foucrault will face a former Coroner’s Office employee, Stacie Nevares, in the June 8, 2010 Primary Election. Nevares is currently an employee of the University of California, San Francisco Police Department managing personnel policies, media and community relations activities among a variety of ministerial duties.
Prior to her work at UCSF, Nevares was an assistant to the San Mateo Coroner. At the Coroner’s department, she was responsible for all communications and public outreach, and helped develop the San Mateo County Homicide Protocol.
Foucrault has worked in the County Coroner's office since 1992, including positions as Chief Deputy Coroner and Acting Coroner. Foucrault previously worked in various capacities in positions with San Bruno, Millbrae, San Francisco and San Mateo County. Foucrault was first appointed to the Coroner’s post in 2001 following the death of former Coroner Bud Moorman.
Nevares ran against Foucrault in an ill-fated write-in campaign attempt in 2006 as a protest effort in response to a raft of allegations against Foucrault and his administration just prior to the June 2006 election.
Only weeks before Foucrault’s reelection bid for a second term, the county was rocked by numerous allegations of sexual harassment and a variety of lewd and highly salacious behavior within the department that stretched back many years. The allegations, made primarily by a former deputy coroner, included “…sexual banter, innuendo, decorations of a sexual nature on a birthday cake and teasing about one employee’s sexual orientation” according to one investigator’s report.
Other findings included a birthday cake for an employee that was decorated with a naked woman figurine, the fact that employees accessed adult Internet sites on their work computers and a life-size fake skeleton had breasts drawn on it. Most embarrassingly, Foucrault himself denied a claim by employees that he "mooned" two deputy coroners after hours in 2003 - a claim that was never directly substantiated but one that an investigator concluded likely happened.
Despite the allegations against him Foucrault won a landslide reelection in 2006 simply because it was just too late in the election cycle for anyone to mount a campaign against him. Four years later, many voters have likely forgotten about the scandal – but not Nevares and perhaps not many in the County’s progressive political faction.
Still, Foucrault’s foibles have not deterred current and former county politicians from actively supporting him, including current San Mateo County Sheriff Greg Munks, who was himself embroiled in a sex scandal a year later when he was detained by federal and local law enforcement at a Las Vegas brothel in April of 2007, and former San Mateo County political boss Mike Nevin, who both are raising money for Foucrault.
It will be interesting to see who will publicly support Foucrault despite the scandal. Despite the scandals, Nevares will have an uphill battle to oust an incumbent in an elected office that few voters pay attention or even understand.
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