Hundred Flowers Bloom

(Nov. 15, 2007) The big headlines from last week’s Bay District election focused on the McKinleyville area, and rightly so. Up there, port development skeptic and fisheries biologist Pat Higgins utterly crushed 16-year incumbent Charles Ollivier, perhaps the loudest voice in favor of the dubious proposal to bring mass industry back to Humboldt Bay (see “Views of the Bay,” Oct. 25). Higgins’ margin of victory is a mandate, by any definition of the term — he beat Ollivier 65-35. Probably the main plank of his platform was his enthusiastic support of the proposed Eureka-Arcata pedestrian trail, and his cruise to victory could fairly be interpreted as a progressive surge up in the once-conservative Fifth District.

But what of the Second District — the southern section of the county, stretching from Fortuna to the Mendocino County border? Down there, incumbent Roy Curless, an Ollivier ally, barely edged aside challenger Carlos Quilez, who shared Higgins’ skepticism about the direction the Bay District has taken in recent years. What does that squeaker of a race say about politics in the Second District?

Bill Thorington, Fortuna resident and CEO of the Mazzotti’srestaurants, worked on Quilez’s campaign. And while the defeat of his candidate stung, on Tuesday Thorington found plenty of reasons to be heartened by the result.

“I think the people voted strongly for a progressive candidate,” Thorington said. “The election was extremely close, which tells me that the people from SoHum and Fortuna alike voted for the progressive candidate. And no matter where you live, the conservatives voted for the incumbent.”

Looked at in one light, the Curless-Quilez matchup can be seen as a dry run for next year’s main event — the effort to unseat Second District Supervisor Roger Rodoni, the conservative-slash-libertarian who has held the seat for the last three terms. Thorington is one member of an ad hoc group of Second District residents of a progressive bent who have been meeting over the last year or so in an attempt to craft a strategy to depose Rodoni when he comes back up for election next year.

Previous attempts to topple the incumbent have fallen far short. That may be because Rodoni has in the past managed to appeal to both sides of the Schizophrenic Second: Though he’s a strong advocate of property rights and extractive industries, which appeals to the conservative Fortuna area, he also takes a laissez faire approach to the marijuana industry. That wins him many friends up in the hills around Garberville.

But Thorington and his group consider these old stereotypes about the district to be far outmoded. Recently, the group commissioned a poll that showed SoHum and Eel River Valley voters to be on the same page on many key issues — small-town values, community forestry and the health of the Eel River, to name a few. The poll and Quilez’s narrow loss, together with the sudden universal unpopularity of the Pacific Lumber Company, may give Rodoni opponents an opening.

But already there’s some strife, due to the fact that two center-left candidates have already announced their candidacy: Fortuna apple farmer Clif Clendenenand former KMUD News Director Estelle Fennell, who announced her candidacy on Monday. This causes Thorington to fret somewhat. Mindful of the election of three years ago, when three progressive candidates failed to garner 50 percent of the primary vote against Rodoni, Thorington fears that a great number of candidates will blur the focus of next year’s race. (If Rodoni gets more than 50 percent of the vote in the primary election, he will be returned to office; otherwise, the top two finalists in the primary face off in the general election.)

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