The November 2010 Election is still many days away from its conclusion, but another election that has yet to be even scheduled is grabbing headlines already.
This week, Burlingame Vice Mayor Terry Nagel issued a press release announcing her intention to run for a seat on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors that will be vacated by current Supervisor Mark Church in January of 2011. Church won a Primary Election in June to take the office of San Mateo County Assessor-Clerk-Recorder, a post his father held from 1966-1986, that is currently held by Warren Slocum who announced he would retire last spring.
Church will leave his Supervisor seat in the middle of his four-year term forcing an otherwise unanticipated vacancy. This will leave his remaining colleagues on the Board with an interesting quandary. The board may or may not be allowed to appoint Church’s replacement depending upon the fate of Measure U, currently on the county ballot. If Measure U is approved by the voters the supervisors would require that the supervisors call an election for any vacancy in the first two years and nine months of a Supervisor's term – meaning if Church does not complete more than two years and nine months of his term, an election will be required. As it stands now, if Church leaves in January, he would be under the benchmark.
If Measure U fails, the Supervisors could still call an Special Election but this has not been the practice. Another appointee would be the third Supervisor out five on the board who were initially appointed to the post in lieu of an election. Regardless of what happens with Measure U, at least four credible candidates have emerged including Nagel, all having publicly expressed interest in the recent months. They include Millbrae Councilmember Gina Papan, San Mateo Union High School District Trustee Dave Pine and San Mateo County Community College Trustee Richard Holober.
Both Papan and Holober are residents of Millbrae and Pine and Nagel are residents of Burlingame. The Supervisor seat has been held by former Millbrae officials nearly 25 years. Both Pine and Papan are already in full election mode with operable web sites, collecting endorsements and donations. Holober’s past election web site for college board and State Assembly is not active at the moment.
Pine and Papan faced off against one another in 2002 when both ran for the 19th Assembly District seat occupied by Papan’s father, the late Lou Papan. Both candidates lost to former South San Francisco Councilmember Gene Mullin. Papan came in second and Pine third. Papan also faced off against Holober for the same Assembly seat when Mullin was termed out in 2008, and both lost to former Supervisor Jerry Hill. Again, Papan came in second and Holober third.
Nagel and Pine have never faced off but both share political space in Burlingame. In fact, according to Pine’s web site, he has already locked up many local endorsements within Burlingame including Burlingame Councilmembers Cathy Baylock and Michael Brownrigg as well as many of Pine’s former colleagues from when he served as a trustee of the Burlingame Elementary School District Board including Michael Barber, former trustee Marc Friedman, Liz Gindraux, Greg Land, Mark Intrieri, and former trustee Alison Van Dyke. Pine also has the endorsement of Linda Lees Dwyer, a San Mateo Union High School District Trustee who also hails from Burlingame. With Nagel’s entrance into the race the political base available to either will become an internecine battle.
But Nagel is already late to the game as many endorsements and dollars have already been locked up. Nonetheless, Nagel has built something of a network countywide through her work with the Peninsula Cities Consortium (PCC). The PCC is comprised of cities along the Peninsula have joined together to provide input into the process of reviewing and constructing the high speed rail project between San Francisco and San Jose. The PCC has been a vocal critic of the High Speed Rail project along the Peninsula and has loudly advocated on behalf of many local communities. Member communities include Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Atherton, Burlingame and Belmont with representatives from each city council. Nagel has garnered a great deal of media coverage around the rail issue that may be beneficial in a countywide race, but her entrance is late with a Special election looming sometime next spring and many of the battle lines are already drawn.
The remaining wild card for this election is whether or not the supervisorial election will be by district or at-large or countywide as it is now. In April of this year, San Mateo County officialsreleased a letter (see pages 23-24) from the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, a San Francisco-based civil rights legal foundation, informing the County that the civil rights organization may file a lawsuit against the County for potential violations of the California Voting Rights Act due to the County’s use of at-large elections for San Mateo County Supervisors. At large elections are commonly challenged due to their impact on minority communities whose voting power is diluted if they cannot directly elect representatives from their own communities--a pervasive problem for the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors. San Mateo County remains the only county in California that continues to elect supervisors via at-large elections.
Wild times ahead.
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