In the wake of the June 8 Primary Election, there are winners, losers, and the survivors remaining for runoff elections to come. 21st Assembly District
In the 21st Assembly District, San Mateo County Supervisor Rich Gordon bested two opponents in the Democratic Party Primary including Silicon Valley entrepreneur Josh Becker and former Palo Alto City Councilmember Yoriko Kishimoto.
The 21st Assembly District is considered a safe Democratic seat which all but guarantees that Gordon will take a seat in California’s lower house after November.
Gordon’s broad institutional support and deep roots in the community proved too much for far less experienced candidates to overcome.
3rd Supervisorial District
The race to replace Gordon in the 3rd Supervisorial District seat he now occupies will continue to November with two candidates to fight it out in a runoff election.
Former Sheriff, Don Horsley, the long assumed front runner since he started campaigning for the seat when he left the Sheriff’s post almost four years ago, commanded 38.6 percent of the vote, easily the largest block but far short of the 50 percent plus one required to prevent a runoff. Horsley will face Coastside activist April Vargas who garnered 24.2 percent.
Horsley, who amassed a war chest in excess of $200,000 and enjoyed the support of organized labor groups, was able to spend far greater sums on political advertising than Vargas and the results are predictable. But Vargas deserves credit for running an effective grass roots campaign with far fewer resources to place in the race.
Third place candidate and Sequoia Healthcare District Director Jack Hickey may have seen his numbers diminished by the candidacy of fourth-place finisher and San Carlos Councilmember Matt Grocott. While Grocott spent next to nothing on his campaign, he nearly ran the table on local newspaper endorsements – a bounty of free media. Grocott, like Hickey, ran on a conservative platform of reducing government spending and going after public employee union pensions and salaries. With two like minded candidates, the conservative vote may have split among the two.
Lastly, local gadfly Michael Stogner rounded out the list in fifth place.
Tax Collector-Treasurer
Another race that will be extended to November is the contest for the San Mateo County Treasurer-Tax Collector.
Current Deputy Treasurer Sandie Arnott, who has worked for current Treasurer Lee Buffington for the last 20 years of Buffington’s 25 year tenure, was the top vote-getter with 38.4 percent. Arnott’s top placement has surprised some due to the baggage she carried into the election.
Discussion of the campaign was overshadowed and dominated by Buffington’s management of the county investment pool, a half-billion dollar fund comprised of local city and school district funds - largely sums of money held in reserve or bond funds earning short-term interest through the large investment pool. The fund lost approximately $155 million in the wake of the collapse of the Lehman Brothers investment firm, which Buffington’s office did considerable business with.
Buffington’s role in the huge losses has been debated endlessly, and by extension that of his deputy, and there are reasonable arguments on both sides of the issue as to whom is at fault for the size of the investment losses. As a consequence, Arnott spent the majority of her campaign defending her role in the Treasurer’s Office and fending off fierce attacks. This includes an entire unattributed web log blasting Arnott for her role in the Lehman debacle.
Arnott was outspent and did not garner the kind of endorsements of at least two of her opponents. Despite all of the publicity surrounding the Lehman losses, limited campaign cash, and endorsements, Arnott topped the list on June 8. The likely explanation: a ballot designation that mirrored the title of the office in a down-ticket election about which most voters know little about.
Coming in behind Arnott was San Mateo County Community College District Trustee Dave Mandelkern who garnered 27.8 percent of the vote.
Mandelkern kicked in a good deal of his own money to advertise his candidacy and enjoyed the backing of organized labor and the county’s Democratic Party committee – the combination of which may have helped him outpace the third-place candidate Joe Galligan, a CPA and former Burlingame mayor and city councilmember by 1800 votes.
Galligan also has deep family roots on the Peninsula and garnered many of the higher profile endorsements from local elected officials and has received the two of the major local newspaper endorsements including the Daily Post and the Daily Journal, both of which give Galligan high praise.
But the political and media endorsements were simply not enough this time around.
In fourth place is investment advisor Richard Guilbault. For Guilbault, this was his fourth attempt for the seat in the past two decades and perhaps his least successful.
Despite the second place finish, expect to see political and media endorsements flow to Mandelkern for the runoff as the legacy of Lehman Brothers will continue to dictate the terms of this election.
County Coroner
In a much less interesting race San Mateo County Coroner Robert J. Foucrault will cruise into his third full term in office. Foucrault handily bested former Coroner’s Office employee Stacie Nevares by garnering almost 70 percent of the vote.
Nevares ran on a reform platform primarily focused on Foucrault’s numerous foibles in his current term in office that included allegations in 2006 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.
Despite lawsuits and a lack of repentance, Foucrault has likely secured for himself a permanent position which will stand as a confirmation that incumbency in San Mateo County will absolve nearly every sin and continue the County’s riches of embarrassment.
Results for all local contests can be found on the San Mateo County Elections Office website.
Only time will tell what will be the final outcome for these races in November. The campaigns now lie in the hands of the fates.
Contact Bruce Balshone at bruce.examiner@gmail.com
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