Post Election Wrap-up - Measure P passes?
15 minutes ago, the County posted the “100%” reporting numbers. Remember Measure H! That’s all I can say. There will be day of election absentee ballots to count and if necessary, provisional ballots (which I believe are only counted if it’s believed they cound effect the outcome of a local race.
Such a bittersweet night. Watching Obama win was a real high, but coming on the heels of the initial “yes” on Prop 8, it was certainly tinged with sadness. Though at least Alameda County voted down Prop 8 at over 61% no. (sadly, it’s not just our county’s decision.)
Locally, there were a couple of stunners. First, it looks like Measure P is going to Pass. That totally floored me. We’ll see with the counts, but given the direction of the day of election votes, it’s hard to assume that it won’t stay passed. There’s hard fiscal work to be done at the council, but this will soften the blow.
Congrats to all the electees. Now the fun, hard work begins anew.
The two incumbent school board members were tossed out (and given that neither the incumbents, nor the electees are really seen as ideologically similar, it’s hard to see it as anything but replacing the incumbents). The newly constituted School Board is going to have a lot of catching up to do fast. It will be interesting to watch. Having endorsed David Forbes, I have to say that I think his non-election is a real loss for the board.
The council race went as expected, the two incumbents being easily elected on the strength of 66% polling numbers saying people are happy with the direction of the city. Tracy Jensen exceeded many expectations by capturing nearly a quarter of the vote.
The charter amendments passed easily. Oddly, the Historic Advisory Board amendment, which makes the HAB follow the same voting rules as the rest of the city’s boards and commissions, was the weakest “Yes” at less than 57% Yes. The rest had between 61 and 82%.
AC Transit’s Measure VV passed, saving riders from fare increases. The Parks bond, WW, passed as well.
Statewide, the High Speed Rail bond passed, that was kind of unexpected given the last polls done.
At East Bay MUD, Doug Linney was easy re-elected (65%) and Chris Peeples of AC Transit was thankfully re-elected as well (64%), as was non-Alameda related Director Greg Harper (73%).
AC Transit At-Large Director Rebecca Kaplan was elected to the Oakland City Council At-Large seat. A really great thing. And a shout out to Ann Cheng, the top vote receiver in El Cerrito’s City Council race.
And now we get back to work. Tonight, the ARRA (city council) will be hearing from SunCal about their plans for Alameda Point. City Council Chambers at 7pm. This is the meeting to give your input on the plan. There are many milestones/conditions that need to be identified, tonight’s meeting is a key place to identify them.
Mark Irons
November 5th, 2008 at 10:00 am
I find it amazing that the electorate would boot incumbent SB candidates but elect Ron Mooney, which to me illustrates that a lot of them voted against what they probably perceive as their own interests because they don’t know the candidates or issues well enough.
Similarly, the vote count on the charter amendments had a wild spread, which would seem to indicate that voters considered each of these rather vague and obscure language changes separately, as opposed to either approving or disapproving the concept of change. I would almost be encouraged by this but again it doesn’t appear we understand what we are voting for.
On HAB as an example, I don’t know what differentiated that measure by the text. What I understand to be the real significant change there is that HAB will need a minimum quorum to pass a motion when there is only a bare quorum present, where as they have been able to pass motions 2 votes to 1 with a minimum quorum present. But this was absolutely not explicit on the ballot language. What I suppose people did see was the reference to rules change for removal. Though that was not very explicit either, it must have made voters suspicious of something.
The Sun’s very incomplete explanation of the impacts of the measure was that it would make “HAB serve at the pleasure of City Council”. Did it previously serve at the pleasure of the mayor, or the city manger? I don’t even know.