Give Credit Where Due
The liberal candidates deserve credit for their campaigns and their success. While Sorensen and Bertagna could still nudge up to victory it's important to recognize that the liberal candidates acheived much last night.
Being out-spent and out-endorsed on the media front, they proved again the importance of a solid ground game in Chico elections. They have a lot to be proud of. Their wins extend through all of the local elective public offices.
Beyond the campaign mechanics, is the actual vote. The liberal message must have resonated with the majority of voters or else they would not have achieved this victory. As a democracy we can all be content knowing that Chico's direction has been determined by a majority of the populace.
Conservative candidates should also be thanked for taking the time and effort to campaign on behalf of their supporters. Losing is not fun, but you can't lose if you don't try, and we're all better off when citizen's stand up and take part in the civic process.
Lon Glazner
Comments
Yes, I agree. It gives us hope that people actually make decisions without the influence of the media. The newspapers so often are so biased that it does a great injustice to the candidates. I would recommend that newspapers change the way they have been doing things. If they endorse, then I have no doubt that their articles are biased. Shouldn't they want to stay impartial? The ER should take a stand and refuse to endorse anyone in the future. My guess is that had the ER stayed impartial, the public may have elected a different city council. David Little seems like a fair guy. I hope he leads the pack to completely remove our local paper from endorsing.
The school board issue makes me pleased that people are brighter than the hype also. The teachers I know said they wanted Rees out too. It's too bad we can't just package Rees and Anderson and trade them for future draft picks to some other district. We have no one to blame but ourselves for electing some weatherman four years ago without any real qualifications except for the fact that he told us when it would rain. It's not his fault he was a crummy board member. It was ours for voting for name recognition instead of quality. That's the problem with most incumbents. We just reelected Rees even after our schools have taken such a nosedive. Let's hope he and Anderson can take a back seat to the three new members and let them run our district.
I grew up in Walnut Creek and our schools were so much better than here. It's such a shame that we are in a college town and our schools are so average at best. As a young parent, nothing is as important to vote for as a school board. I am crossing my fingers that Kaiser and Lerner-Thompson set a new direction. Kaiser seems to be a bright light and leagues ahead of our incumbents.
I am predicting Bertagna may still pull it out because of the absentee ballots. Not sure why those couldn't have been pre-counted?
Posted by: lee marker | November 8, 2006 12:26 PM
“…absentee ballots. Not sure why those couldn't have been pre-counted?”
The ballots to be counted consist of a few elements; the largest group consists of absentee ballots that arrived on Election Day. Most were dropped off at polling places.
Before those ballots can be counted, the signature on the envelope must be verified. That occurs at the County Elections office in the days following the election. 2 years ago 9,628 absentee ballots came in on Election Day. Apparently that number is higher this year.
Unfortunately, our County does not report any iterations of the count from Election Night to the final certified statement of vote. That process involves many things beyond just counting the late absentee ballots. The County has 28 days to complete that process, though they typically get it done in about 14 days.
… And absentee voting continues to grow.
Posted by: Mark Sorensen | November 10, 2006 02:31 PM