the town dandy / By Hank Sims

About Schmidt

So, bravo, Vevoda, Pitino and Plumley! Bravo!

Matters are more complicated in the Second District. Much more complicated. This because there was no clear victor in Tuesday’s three-way race, and also, of course, because the incumbent, Roger Rodoni, was killed in an automobile accident just a month before the election. He remained on the ballot.

As it happened, Rodoni and challenger Clif Clendenen ended Tuesday in a virtual tie. Just 16 votes separated them, out of 6,629 counted. Rodoni was ahead, finishing first out of three, but that will change. There were still thousands of absentee ballots left to be counted when polls closed, and by the time the final report is prepared, around the end of this month, Clendenen will almost certainly have pulled ahead. As has been previously discussed in this space (see “Town Dandy,” Nov. 16, 2006), late absentee votes skew heavily toward the lefty demographic. In this race, that means that the late votes will trend toward Clendenen and SoHum’s Estelle Fennell, away from Rodoni.

What happens next? It had been everyone’s understanding that the California Elections Code was written in such a way that the top two living vote-getters — Clendenen and Fennell — would compete in a runoff election in November. Now that appears not to be the case. The current understanding seems to be that write-in candidates will be allowed in November, meaning that Rodoni’s wife, Johanna, whom Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been appointed to fill the remainder of Rodoni’s current term on the board, may compete as a write-in candidate if she so chooses. This would essentially amount to a do-over of the recent election, with Team Rodoni’s stuffed campaign coffers put to the service of a Johanna write-in race. This time around, a simple plurality of the votes would take the day.

According to Carolyn Crnich, the county’s clerk-recorder, the office of the Humboldt County Counsel has endorsed the notion that a write-in campaign is kosher, despite what had been previously thought. Also, the Times-Standard received corroborating confirmation from the California Secretary of State’s Office. Still, some have their doubts, and it wouldn’t be too surprising to see the matter end up in a court of law in the next few months.

The quick reversal of opinion on the legality of a November write-in has led, inevitably, to dark mutterings about intimidating phone calls to elections personnel, supposedly by attorneys employed by one moneyed right-wing interest or another. It was said that expensive sharks promised to bring a world of hurt upon anyone who dared to disallow a Rodoni write-in campaign.

“You’ve been reading the blogs!” Crnich accused the Journal when questioned about the matter. (Guilty.)

“I don’t know where that came from,” she said. “Not true! I have not received phone calls from any attorneys, or at least from anyone identifying themselves as attorneys. And I haven’t received any bullying phone calls from anyone.”

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