The November 2010 elections yielded few surprises in the sleepy political landscape that is San Mateo County. At the top of the local ticket, the preselected political machine candidate and former county sheriff Don Horsley cruised to victory in his bid to replace outgoing county supervisor turned Assemblymember Rich Gordon. This is despite the spirited but heavily outgunned grassroots campaign mounted by local activist April Vargas.Horsley raised hundreds of thousands of dollars primarily from union and real estate development interests which proved to be far too much to overcome. Similarly, upstart candidate for county treasurer Dave Mandelkern narrowly lost to the acting incumbent Sandie Arnott. Mandelkern lost by a single percentage point, scoring 49.5 percent of the vote and outspending Arnott by a huge margin. Mandelkern also enjoyed the endorsement and support of much of the county’s political machine, as well as the Democratic Party and labor unions alike. But in a down-ticket race with few voters actually aware of the office, Arnott’s ballot designation alone was enough to allow her to win the seat she was bequeathed by her predecessor and mentor Lee Buffington who held the seat for over 20 years.
Arnott’s recent tenure in the County Treasurer’s Office was marred by the 2008 loss of $155 million in city and school district investment dollars due to the collapse of the former Lehman Brothers investment house with which the Treasurer’s Office did ample business with. Arnott and her predecessor were roundly criticized for those substantial losses, but despite all of those odds Arnott will retain the seat. Such results should come as no surprise as San Mateo County is also the county that reelected its sheriff without opposition despite the fact that he was detained in a Las Vegas brothel with his undersheriff not six months after taking office in his first term. Go figure.
City Elections
Some city elections did yield some interesting results despite the predictable outcomes at the county level. In the City of Pacifica city council election, two incumbents sought to return to office including three-term incumbent Jim Vreeland and two-term incumbent Sue Digre. Two-term incumbent Julie Lancelle opted out of seeking a third term in office leaving a seat on the ballot without an incumbent in the hunt.
Despite early support from many quarters, city planning Commissioner William “Leo” Leon failed in his bid to capture the seat. Instead, political newcomer Len Stone won the day placing first in the nine-way contest for three seats. Stone, 29, has roots in Pacifica, owns a local insurance agency and is the incoming president of the Pacifica Chamber of Commerce – a position he will now likely have to recuse himself from as most local chambers also receive some city funding. Stone ran on a platform perceived to be more supportive of development which has not been the prevailing perspective in Pacifica to date.
In the City of Menlo Park first-term incumbent Heyward Robinson failed to secure a second term in a six-way race for three seats. Only two incumbents, Robinson and Rich Cline, sought reelection along with Planning Commissioner Kirsten Keith and a slate of candidates determined to toss out the current regime. Keith and newcomer Peter Ohtaki secured seats on the council. Keith was tacitly supported by the current council majority but Ohtaki – a current member of the Menlo Park Fire District Board and the highest vote getter - is a perceived fiscal conservative who successfully rode the anti-union wave of Measure L, the grassroots ballot measure placed on the local ballot designed to curtail public employee compensation and pension payouts.
Measure L proved to be a major dividing line in the local election as it passed with over 71% of the vote and carrying Ohtaki and Keith – both Measure L supporters – to the two top spots on the ballot. Robinson, a vocal opponent of Measure L, despite incumbency, fell to fourth place. Cline was also an incumbent but one who took a lower profile approach on the question of Measure L and will live to see another day.
Measure U
With the passage of Measure U by 66% of the voters, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors will no longer be able to appoint colleagues to midterm vacancies so long as there remains at least two years and nine months of an unexpired term – the most likely scenario for supervisorial vacancies such as that created by former Supervisor Jerry Hill who abandoned his position two years into a four year term to run for the State Assembly in 2008. Hill’s departure lead to the appointment of former San Mateo City Council Member Carole Groom to fill Hill’s seat despite a torrent or protest from many quarters in the county and many newspaper editorial boards.
Groom’s appointment led directly to a proposed change to the County’s charter to prevent such appointments in the future. Measure U passed by a huge majority with absolutely no campaign behind it. The measure’s passage is indicative of the desire for electoral reform in the county and should serve as a warning sign to sitting county supervisors that their continued antagonism to reforms may come with a political price tag.
Last summer, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, by a vote of 4-1 with then Supervisor Rich Gordon voting in the minority, affirmed the machine-politics rule of San Mateo County by denying county voters the option to vote on a local ballot measure to change the way in which supervisors are elected from an at-large or countywide system to a district-based system like that employed in every other county in California. The vote was a repudiation of the recommendation made by the San Mateo County Charter Review Committee to alter the system in which the five full-time political offices are elected by placing a measure on the November 2010 ballot. San Mateo County remains the only California county to elect supervisors via an at-large system.
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