The election keeps on giving
Remember Nov. 7?
If you’re like most of us, you may struggle to remember what you
ate for breakfast, but waaaaay back at the beginning of last month
voters went to the polls.
Remember?
The election keeps on giving
Remember Nov. 7?
If you’re like most of us, you may struggle to remember what you ate for breakfast, but waaaaay back at the beginning of last month voters went to the polls.
Remember?
The GOP took kind of a thumping, which means one of several things, depending on which pundit delivers your brand of sarcasm.
Voters locally said “no” to three ballot measures floated by the city of Hollister, which probably means voters are still bruised by the disastrous decision-making of past council’s and city staff members. Think of it as paying for the crimes of our fathers. One city department head this week posited that had the city’s failed sales tax measure been worded “Do you have a problem with a sales tax hike?” we’d all be paying more sales tax today, because voters were casting “nay” ballots in a referendum of confidence in the city.
There’s a lot that distinguishes us in San Benito County: the one-size fits all exclamation, “puta!”, our hillsides, free of McMansions, our neighborliness and our inclination to turn local politics into a blood sport.
Mexico may have bullfights, but we’ve got supervisorial elections!
After the polls closed at 8 p.m. Nov. 7, voters waited for the one contested supervisorial race. And waited. And waited some more.
The election was for District 4, which covers some 80 percent of the county’s land area, encompassing the southern edge of Hollister, Ridgemark and the vast, mostly unpopulated (by humans, not livestock) country to the south.
The stars in this political drama were incumbent Reb Monaco, a retired junior high school teacher and organic walnut grower, and Tracie Cone, who sold this newspaper and retired to a ranch in Panoche Valley, where she raises wine grapes and miniature cattle.
Still waiting
Another thing that distinguishes this county is that election tallies have a certain deliberateness about them. There’s a reason for that. While millions of votes are tallied in Los Angeles County within hours of polls closing, here County Clerk John Hodges is reluctant to call things hastily. If anyone ever learned Yogi Berra’s “it ain’t over ’til it’s over” message well, it’s Hodges.
So, voters waited for the outcome of the District 4 election and waited some more. But Hodges, a native of the county, understands that San Benito is not Los Angeles. More than once, elections have been decided by a handful of ballots.
Every vote does, indeed, count.
So until the official canvass is in, he’s going to remain coy about the outcome.
When that momentous occasion arrives and election results are certified on Dec. 5, it appears that Monaco will have edged his challenger by a mere 60 votes.
That says several things. First, as an incumbent, Monaco did not get a free pass. Cone is a tenacious adversary, and voters may have been nervous about the amount of monetary support Monaco got from development interests.
But speaking of tenaciousness, Cone is not about to mosey off to her ranch quietly. She’s enlisted a longtime ally, District Attorney John Sarsfield, to challenge the outcome of the election, based upon a complaint from a lone voter.
A Ridgemark resident claimed that the voting machine he used would not record a vote for Cone. No one else reported the same experience on that particular machine, and it was tested and certified prior to the election.
Nevertheless, the issue is being brought before the county’s civil and criminal grand juries.
Here’s a bold prediction: the grand jury will look this one over, shrug and in January, Monaco starts his second term.
Meanwhile, at least some voters who are already justifiably cynical about the whole exercise in participatory government will probably shrug and decide that, if winners can’t win and losers can’t lose in a timely manner, why bother getting involved at all?
Of course there is every reason to get involved, especially in San Benito County, where one vote – or 60 – can decide an election.
Notebook is compiled by Pinnacle publisher Mark Paxton, with occasional contributions by other staff members as noted.
