the town dandy / By Hank Sims

Full Court Depress

(Nov. 13, 2008)  Election night was a blast at northcoastjournal.com, and on the air with our friends at KHUM radio. For one, the occasion was the debut of the Journal‘s electronic intern, who was tasked with bringing home all the latest results so participants in our online chat room never had to leave the page. Visitors to our website will be hearing much more from this zippy little robot wunderkind in the near future.

Biggest surprises of the night? It was strange to see the electorate give the thumbs-down to two-term Arcata City Councilmember Michael Machi‘s reelection bid. Machi, the current Council’s longest-serving member, had become something of a brand name. A faction of the city’s progressive majority nurses a special loathing for him, which by itself gives him a solid constituency on the other side of the aisle. But most Arcata elections are split between a dozen candidates, meaning that Machi’s 20 percent or so amounts to an easy victory. This time around the field was thinner.

But Eureka provided the evening’s strangest returns, and in doing so reinforced its reputation of having the most interesting polity on the North Coast. How to explain the results in the City Council race, where the candidates on the progressive “slate” ticket met with such different results? Newcomer Linda Atkins, one of the slate candidates, nudged aside incumbent Polly Endert (by a margin of 53-47); Atkins’ co-candidate, former long time Old Town restaurateur George Clark, was handily defeated by County Coroner (and former Councilmember) Frank Jager (63-37).

Why the split result? “It certainly says that Eurekans are as independent-minded as Humboldt County,” says termed-out Councilmember Chris Kerrigan, whose political consultancy managed the joint Clark/Atkins campaign. He credited Jager’s huge name recognition and general likeability as obstacles that were hard to overcome.

Still: Atkins has only been in town a few years, and she had almost no money. How’d she do it? Well, everyone seems to agree that she had a remarkable grasp of the issues and presented a compelling case for her candidacy. She acquitted herself very well in the debates, and people who met her when she knocked on their doors seem generally to have impressed. And that was enough. In Eureka, anyway, it wasn’t the ad campaigns or the endorsements or the GOTV strategy — it was the person.

Future candidates, take note.

We don’t hold any special brief for Measure T, the 2006 Humboldt County citizen’s initiative that banned “out-of-town” corporations from donating to county political campaigns. The measure was always more about “corporations” and their rights than elections and good government, which are issues that aren’t really appropriately tackled at the level of local government. It wasn’t at all surprising when the Sacramento-based Pacific Legal Foundation filed suit to have it overturned a few months ago.

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