At the national level, this election season saw lipstick on pitbulls and pigs, “terrorist” fist jabs, a plumber becoming a campaign figurehead, and Saturday Night Live finding its footing again.
On the local level, to be honest, things weren’t as exciting. Sure, any election is a noteworthy event in that let’s-all-celebrate-democracy sort of way, but there were no caricatures of Santa Maria City Council hopefuls on the cover of the New Yorker. Guadalupe wasn’t the site of a proposed bridge to nowhere.
Undaunted, the Santa Maria Sun staff fanned out through the Central Coast, popping in at political parties throughout the night.
Congress, 23rd District
Lois Capps (D-Calif.) raced through her constituency on Election Day, starting and ending in Santa Barbara and hitting various points in between.
In Santa Maria, she stopped by the Democratic headquarters on Plaza Drive, where volunteers were busy working the phones reminding Democrats to vote. But they didn’t have to work too hard.
“We’re getting either ‘We’re going to vote’ or ‘We have already voted,’” said Roger Hart, vice president of the Santa Maria Valley Democratic Club. “I think a lot of people voted early.”
Capps spent lunch time with the volunteers, calling their efforts inspiring.
“We’ve always had a group of volunteers in the Santa Maria Valley, but never the amount we see now,” she said. “That tells me something about this country, that people are really willing to get out and make a change.”
Capps, the incumbent in the 23rd Congressional District, said she received a great amount of support for her campaign, but was overwhelmed by the support for getting voters to the polls in general.
“It’s very heartening to see people turn to democracy as a way to get their problems solved,” she said.
Later that evening, Capps’ Republican opponent, Matt Kokkonen, announced a dead heat in his race to the 20-or-so friends and family members gathered at his office.
The tally was 0-0, and the polls still had a few minutes before their official 8 p.m. close. Laughter rippled around the room while guests nibbled at tortilla chips arranged in a plastic sombrero, cookies, brownies, and assorted other treats.
Before the numbers really began trickling in, Kokkonen took a few minutes to share his thoughts on the election season overall with the Sun.
“I chose not to do any polls, because it was a waste of money for me,” he said, noting that he carries out what he makes up his mind to do. Whether numbers showed him trailing or leading didn’t matter to him once he threw his hat in the ring.
He went on to describe the 23rd District as the most egregious “Capps-mandered” district (“The only way the land is contiguous is when the tide goes out”), to highlight the benefits of a capitalist society, to worry about trillions of dollars of debt landing on future generations, to tout the benefits of oil drilling off the coast, to explain that he’s been fighting tough challenges ever since he set foot on American soil as a 16-year-old Finnish immigrant, and to wonder at how quickly the electorate focused on the economy during the campaign. While he spoke, he waved around a black Coca-Cola Zero can left over from Halloween.
“I don’t think people want a nice congressperson,” he said. “They want someone who’s going to fight.”
When asked for the most memorable scenes from his own campaign in the long, narrow district—“Did you have your own Joe the plumber?”—he responded, “I am Joe the plumber.”
At around 8 o’clock, NBC News began showing scenes of citizens dancing, waving, and crying, under the heading “Senator Barack Obama Elected 44th President of the United States.” Kokkonen was clicking the refresh button on his computer, inches from the TV, waiting for some news in his own race: “It’s still zeroes,” he said.
When the tallies finally started coming in, showing him trailing Capps by a fair margin, he was still upbeat about the results, pointing out that 41 percent is a “tremendously good” start in a district that was stacked against him from voter registrations alone.
As the evening progressed, Kokkonen stood and thanked his supporters, expressing awe at a country where someone who arrived with one suitcase (“Now I have two”) could one day find himself participating in the democratic exercise.
Win or lose, Kokkonen was planning on visiting his granddaughters in Germany after the election was over.
Ultimately, Capps took 69.04 percent of the votes in Santa Barbara County, Kokkonen 30.81. In San Luis Obispo County, Capps received 61.46 percent of the vote, Kokkonen 38.4.
—Shelly Cone and Ryan Miller
Santa Maria City Council
The race for Santa Maria City Council was essentially over at exactly 8:10 p.m. That’s when the county posted the first returns—the absentee ballots—and the results showed that newcomer Mike Cordero was well in the lead, with 40 percent of the vote. His competitors, Santa Maria City Council incumbents Bob Orach and Leo Trujillo, trailed with 33 and 26 percent of the vote, respectively.
Returns that good are every challenger’s dream and every incumbent’s nightmare, and as soon as the numbers were posted, it was evident that Cordero had just become the newest member of the Santa Maria City Council. Of course, Cordero couldn’t call it—not without being immodest—but his friend and fellow council member Hilda Zacarias could and did.
“I’m calling it right now,” Zacarias said. “It’s Mike Cordero and Bob Orach on the City Council.”
Zacarias ended up making a good call. Cordero’s poll numbers remained virtually unchanged throughout the night, though the gap between Orach and Trujillo narrowed. With all precincts reporting, Cordero ended up with 41 percent of the vote, and by the end of the night, Trujillo still fell short by about one percent of the vote. Orach received 29.79 percent, and Trujillo received 28.48 percent. There were two open spots on the City Council.
“I’m very hopeful, I feel very good, I’m confident,” Cordero said after his decisive win.
A lieutenant and 35-year veteran of the Santa Maria Police Department, Cordero said he would retire from the force to serve on the City Council if elected. After a year of campaigning, it’s time for Cordero to give his notice.
“Mike wanted to put himself out there as another option,” said Cordero’s wife, Linda.
She said she was happy with the outcome, though she admitted that both she and Mike had been nervous.
“We both had big butterflies in our stomachs today,” she said.
All nerves were gone Tuesday night, and the Corderos looked like they were enjoying themselves at their election party at La Hacienda restaurant. In fact, with no real suspense to get their heart rates up, all of Cordero’s supporters seemed calm and relaxed as they sat back, ate Mexican food, and watched president-elect Barack Obama give his acceptance speech.
Councilwoman Alice Patino made an appearance at the party, and Zacarias was there, with a sling on her broken arm. She’d broken it, she said, tripping on a tarp while taking part in campaign training for Obama in Los Angeles.
Law enforcement was heavily represented at the party, with Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown stopping by and openly admiring Cordero’s numbers.
“Those are great returns,” he told Cordero.
Former police chief John Sterling also came to the party, the only one he was planning on attending, he said, despite being invited to a few in Lompoc.
“Mike’s a super guy,” Sterling said. “When we worked together, Mike was always a good and honest person. He truly cares about the people.”
—Sarah E. Thien
Lompoc Mayor
A vintner’s warehouse. A banquet room at Embassy Suites. A campaign manager’s house. There were three different campaigns for mayor of Lompoc, three different venues for their election-night parties, and three very different outcomes.
At Dulcie Sinn’s event, everyone from students to Cacao the dog waited for election results amid the wine casks at Flying Goat Cellars. She reminded those around her of the need for greater transparency in the hiring of city employees, one of her main reasons for running.
“It’s about how people are being appointed. It’s not transparent, it’s not sunshine. It happens in a closed meeting with no input from the public,” she said.
Cheers erupted throughout the warehouse at the news that Obama had won, but not 15 minutes later, word came that the results from the absentee ballots—which make up more than 40 percent of the votes cast in Lompoc—were in: 38 percent for Dick DeWees, 37 percent for John Linn, 24.5 percent for Sinn.
At Embassy Suites for the DeWees soire;e, the national election vibe countered the mood in the room. More than two-thirds of the people gathered clearly weren’t watching Obama’s acceptance speech.
The mayor himself, cheerful and upbeat in a dark suit, felt that while the economy “absolutely” played a part in the mayor’s race, he would “let the pundits figure that out.” Asked if he noticed anything different about his campaign this year: “Last time around, I ran unopposed; this time around, I’ve got two opponents, so that’s definitely a change,” he said with a chuckle. “Mainly though, if you have a winning template, you follow that. I just feel we ran a really good campaign.”
Part of that “really good campaign” came from getting word out to the youth vote, helped in large part by 19-year-old Miranda Rich, Lompoc’s 2007 Flower Festival Queen.
Linn’s party had the same air about it as the DeWees and Sinn soire;es: waiting for the ballot count past the first absentee tallies.
Over a “fat pill,” also known as strawberry pie (“If you eat it standing up, you don’t gain any weight”), Linn discussed why he decided to run for the mayor’s office. He said that 10 years for one mayor is enough. That, plus his concerns about too few public servants, were enough for him to make a bid.
“Since 1986, we haven’t added a single additional firefighter to the department in Lompoc, and during that time the city’s population has grown approximately 50 percent. We’ve got the best-trained and -equipped firefighters here in Lompoc; we just need more of them.”
In the end, Mayor DeWees gained a narrow lead, with 38.08 percent to Linn’s 37.46 percent. Sinn took 24.26 percent of the votes.
As DeWees said, it will be up to the pundits to figure out why.
—Nicholas Walter
Superior Court Judge, Office No. 5
Election night parties can be impersonal and extravagant. However, the parties thrown by the two men running for Superior Court Judge in Santa Barbara County, Jed Beebe and John MacKinnon, felt more like late-night family gatherings than political soire;es. The fact that both of the parties were hosted at the candidates’ homes no doubt reinforced the familial feelings swirling about at each event.
At Beebe’s home, dozens of campaign volunteers chatted over Subway sandwiches, with their eyes glued to the television screen, breathlessly awaiting the results of the presidential election. In the other room, Beebe and some of his supporters congregated around the family computer, constantly refreshing the online polling results for the court researcher’s personal race.
Beebe went into the final run-off race trailing county senior attorney MacKinnon by almost 20 percent in votes. In the June primary, MacKinnon garnered approximately 40 percent of the votes, which put him in the lead but failed to clinch him the judgeship. According to county regulations, the winner was required to win by 50 plus 1 percent.
At his party, Beebe said he owed much of his success to the volunteers who stepped up to aid in the campaign.
“I figured I had some catching up to do,” Beebe said. “There was a lot more effort in the second part of the campaign.”
After the primary, he said, the campaign became more organized through the formation of the Committee to Elect Jed Beebe. The campaign also strove to better publicize Beebe’s endorsements from 14 retired and current county judges through newspaper ads and radio and television commercials.
“He’s an extremely intelligent, polite individual who understands the law,” Judge Rodney Melville said of Beebe. “He’s dedicated to the law.”
Regardless of the election results, Beebe said he will have no regrets about his campaign.
“I’ll still be involved one way or another in the court system. I love my job, I really do. It’s part of why I wanted to become a judge,” he said.
Over at the opposing campaign’s party, MacKinnon also said he was pleased with the way his campaign was run, and credited his success to the “broad support” he received throughout the county.
“We tried as much as we could to stay in the lead the whole time,” MacKinnon said. “Jed definitely did run a good campaign, and he did come on strong in the end.”
At the MacKinnons’ house, crowds of supporters also stood in two different rooms—one watching President Barack Obama’s acceptance speech and the other keeping track of the judges’ race.
While waiting for the results to refresh on a big projection screen, MacKinnon said one of the major differences between the judgeship race and other campaigns is no matter who wins the election, the candidates will most likely have to maintain a working relationship, “which is unprecedented in other races.”
“John has been such an inspiration,” said supporter Kathy Staples, an organizer for the Santa Maria Restorative Justice Task Force.
Ultimately, Beebe landed 51.53 percent of the vote, followed by MacKinnon’s 48.05 percent.
The morning after the election, Beebe told the Sun that he received a “very generous call” from MacKinnon, congratulating him on the win.
“I hardly know what to think,” Beebe said. “I’m just so very grateful to everyone who voted and worked on the campaign.”
Beebe said he expects to be sworn in as judge some time around the first of the year.
“The governor could choose to make an earlier appointment, but they’re so busy in Sacramento I think that’s very unlikely,” he said.
—Amy Asman
Measure A
Measure A garnered the two-thirds vote needed to pass on Election Night with 78.63 percent of voters in favor of the county’s only local ballot measure.
Measure A will continue an existing half-cent sales tax to fund countywide road repair, traffic relief, and other transportation improvement projects. The new measure is designed to continue funding transportation projects for the next 30 years, after its predecessor failed to garner the required two-thirds vote at the polls in 2006.
Major North County projects that are set to be funded by Measure A include the Union Valley Parkway Interchange in Orcutt ($10 million), the widening of the Santa Maria River Bridge ($10 million), and the installation of passing lanes on Highway 246.
—Amy Asman
Guadalupe
In the Guadalupe City Council race, change wasn’t in the cards. That’s because three incumbents ran unopposed. Mayor Lupe Alvarez will serve another term, as will City Councilmembers Virginia Ponce and Ariston Julian. The city could’ve chosen to cancel the election and appoint the incumbents, but it missed the deadline to do so.
—Shelly Cone
A few more
All numbers are for Santa Barbara County, posted on www.sbcvote.com as of the morning of Nov. 5.
U.S. President: Barack Obama, 59.72 percent; John McCain, 37.91.
U.S. Representative, 24th District: Elton Gallegly, 62 percent; Marta Ann Jorgensen, 37.83.
State Senator, 15th District: Abel Maldonado, 64.55 percent; Jim Fitzgerald, 35.23.
State Senator, 19th District: Hannah-Beth Jackson, 55.23 percent; Tony Strickland, 44.42.
State Assembly, 33rd District: Sam Blakeslee, 61.87 percent; Robert Cuthbert, 37.94.
Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors, 3rd District: Doreen Farr, 51.38 percent; Steven Pappas, 48.37.
Santa Maria Mayor: Larry Lavagnino, 77.07 percent; Ernest Armenta, 22.39.
Lompoc City Council (two seats): Cecilia Martner, 24.27 percent; Bob Lingl, 23.69; Will Schuy, 18.42 percent; Darrell Wade Tullis, 14.61; Dewayne Holmdahl, 12.63; David Grill, 6.19.
Allan Hancock Community College District—TA No. 1: Henry M. Grennan, 56.53 percent; Samuel Marin, 43.10.
Lompoc Unified School District (three seats): Sue Schuyler, 25.07 percent; Tim Moncier, 22.8; Kay Eatmon, 18.56; Sean F. Johnson, 16.59; Angela Wynne, 8.56; Mohammed H. Yazdani, 7.96.
Guadalupe Union School District (two seats): Maria Luisa Baro, 47.90 percent; Anna Marie Santillan, 33.41; George Alvarez, 18.14.
Santa Maria-Bonita School District (three seats): Craig M. Beebe, 22.83 percent; Ken Milo, 20.39; Ike Ochoa, 20.03; David Riloquio, 19.09; Daniel A Cadena, Jr., 17.41.
Santa Maria Public Airport District (three seats): Hugh Rafferty, 29.30 percent; Chuck Adams, 26.37 percent; Carl Engel, Jr., 23.39 percent; Geoff Brenn, 20.53.
The Sun staffers are tired after staying up all night to cover the election. Send comments to mail@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Nov 6-13, 2008.