News

3rd UDPATE:
The final election night report is up and shows incumbent Estelle Fennell cementing her landslide re-election bid, having won 77 percent of the vote to challenger Glen “Bud” Rogers’ 22 percent.

While there are still votes to be tallied, the final election night count has Fennell finishing with 3,503 of the 4,563 votes cast in the race.

2nd UPDATE:
With 82 percent of precincts now reporting, incumbent 2nd District Supervisor Estelle Fennell is holding steady, with 78 percent of the vote to challenger Glen “Bud” Rogers 22 percent.

Fennell now has 2,480 votes to Rogers’ 693, having dominated both the early vote counts and the Election Day turnouts by more than 50-point margins.

UPDATE:
With 43 percent of Humboldt County precincts reporting, including at least a couple in SoHum, things aren’t looking much better for challenger Glen “Bud” Rogers, who’s trailing incumbent Estelle Fennell by 56 points.

Fennell has largely retained her early lead, now holding 77.5 percent of the vote to Rogers’ 22 percent with 2,436 votes cast in the contest. So far, Fennell has taken 74 percent of the Election Day vote, a slight drop off from the 78 percent of the early ballots she took in the first election night report. There are still plenty of votes to be counted — the race saw a total of 6,950 ballots cast four years ago — but Fennell’s lead is looking insurmountable.

PREVIOUSLY:
Incumbent 2nd District Humboldt County Supervisor Estelle Fennell has leapt out to a commanding early lead in in her re-election bid, taking 78 percent of the first batch of ballots cast in the race that sees her pitted against challenger Glen "Bud" Rogers.

Fennell has taken 1,546 of the 1,974 ballots counted thus far — all vote-by-mail ballots that showed up early to the Elections Office or those cast in person in the office prior to Election Day.

Fennell, who edged out incumbent Clif Clendenen to take her board seat in 2012, made a name for herself locally serving as news director at KMUD for 17 years. Then, Fennell worked as the executive director of the Humboldt Coalition for Property Rights for three before making a run for supervisor.

She’s campaigned largely on her experience in the position, saying she’s set up office hours in Garberville and Fortuna, helped facilitate the Supervisors’ first ever official meeting in Redway and worked to get Supes meetings live-streamed in Southern Humboldt, all to make her more accessible to her constituents. Fennell has also made a point of trumpeting her work to benefit the 2nd District directly, noting her work to repair the Garberville library, permit the Southern Humboldt Community Park, secure funding for a water tank in Fortuna and to clear fire hazards in the Bear Canyon area north of Garberville.

Rogers, a Vietnam veteran from the San Joaquin Valley and substitute teacher turned banjo maker and KMUD DJ, meanwhile has kept a hyper local focus in his second run for a board seat. (His first ended unsuccessfully in 2004, with a loss to incumbent Roger Rodoni.) Rogers has focused on bringing new ideas to the board, like creating tiny home villages for the homeless, morphing Humboldt into a charter county with a public bank and exercising more autonomy to take on big issues, like chemtrails — the alleged control of the weather and populace via the secret distribution of hazardous chemicals into the atmosphere.

Rogers has also taken a stand against the U.S. Highway 101 widening project at Richardson Grove, saying it’s a way to allow big box stores a stronger foothold in Humboldt County.

The differences in the two candidates is stark, perhaps underscored by their disparate campaign financing efforts. By the end of April, Fennell had raised almost $45,000 and already spent almost $25,000 on local advertising and signs. At the same point, Rogers had yet to raise a dime, according to campaign finance disclosure reports filed with the county.

For more on the candidates and the race, including their favorite movies, books and role models, check out past Journal coverage here.

3rd UPDATE:
With 100 percent of Humboldt County precincts reporting, the final election night tally has Harbor Commissioner Mike Wilson finishing with 82 percent of the vote to become the county’s next 3rd District supervisor.

While there are still votes to be counted, Wilson finishes the night with 5,076 of the 6,204 ballots cast in the race.

2nd UPDATE:
Results from 100 out of 121 Humboldt County precincts are in, and Mike Wilson’s lead has grown. With Election Day ballots even higher in Wilson’s favor than mail-ins, the 3rd District candidate now has 80.47 percent of the vote to Uri Driscoll’s 18.78 percent.

Total vote tally so far:

Wilson: 3,544
Driscoll: 827

Previously:

Mike Wilson’s lead dropped less than a percentage point with the second report of the night, which counted 52 of 121 Humboldt County precincts reporting.

It appears not many 3rd District precincts were included, though, as the second report only adds 135 total votes to the race. Wilson got 94 of those, with Uri Driscoll pulling 39. The totals are as follows:

Wilson:
Total votes: 2,127
Percentage: 79.66

Driscoll:
Total votes: 520
Percentage: 19.48

Previously:

Third District Supervisor candidate Mike Wilson holds a commanding lead in the first report of Election Day.

With vote by mail ballots and early votes tallied, Wilson took 2,033 votes — 80 percent — to Uri Driscoll’s 481 votes.

Ballots cast at the polls today have yet to be tallied.

This is the first supervisorial campaign for either candidate. Current 3rd District Supervisor Mark Lovelace announced last year he would not seek re-election for a third term.

Wilson has served on the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District board for 10 years, presiding over that board's shift in the politics toward expanded aquaculture, conservation and recreation projects, including the district’s cleanup of the Samoa pulp mill.

He’d won wide support among the 3rd District’s left-leaning politicos, saying that, if elected, he would continue his effort to plan for an economic and environmental future for the county. That requires responses to homelessness, a commitment to economic diversity, an adaptive marijuana industry and the flexibility to address those issues with limited budgets. He’s also been a long-time trails supporter.

Driscoll has never served in public office, but said his experience as a farrier and a variety of other jobs made him the ideal candidate for the 3rd District. He too said the county’s economy was a primary issue and expressed concerns about homelessness, affordable housing and drug use.

A strong local economy would have limited the influence of “outside forces,” he told the Journal, and he called for robust industrial and commercial zones as well as protections for agricultural lands.

See previous coverage on the candidates and the 3rd District election here. See updating results for the 2nd District Supervisor's race here, and see local presidential primary results here.

Whether you’re feeling the Bern, heading for the Hill or dying to see Trump make Humboldt great again, we realize there’s a lot of interest in the outcome of this presidential primary. And, we figure, you want to see how your neighbors feel about the whole thing. With that in mind, we’ll update this post periodically with how the big dogs are faring, both up on our little stage here behind the redwood curtain, and in the delegate-rich battleground that is California. But, please, keep it civil out there.

First Return:

Humboldt's early voters are clearly feeling the Bern, as Sanders has grabbed 59 percent of the first batch of ballots counted to Clinton's 37 percent. Those numbers more than flip statewide, with Clinton holding 64 percent of the early vote to Sanders' 35.

On the Republican side of things, presumptive nominee Donald Trump has taken 73 percent of Humboldt's early vote while John Kasich and Ted Cruz have each pulled more than 9 percent of the vote despite having long since dropped out of the race.

SECOND RETURN:
When Hillary Clinton strolled on stage in Brooklyn tonight to declare victory in her quest to become the first woman to become the presumptive nominee of a major political party in the nation’s history, she did so to the sounds of a Eureka native.

On the heels of her wins in the New Jersey and New Mexico primaries — wins that are projected to make her delegate lead completely insurmountable — Clinton took the stage in Brooklyn ready to turn the page on the primary season. She chose Sara Bareilles’ “Brave” as the appropriate theme song for the moment, which apparently tickled the singer, who tweeted out:

YAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSS https://t.co/PT7hm8tSm5

— Sara Bareilles (@SaraBareilles) June 8, 2016

Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders is continuing to do well in Humboldt, having taken 62 percent of the vote so far and doing markedly better at the polls — where he’s drawn 72 percent of the vote — than he did in the early voting (59 percent of the vote). But Clinton still holds a hefty lead in the Golden State, as she holds 62 percent of the vote with just over 20 percent of precincts reporting statewide.

On the other side of the aisle, Donald Trump’s holding steady with 72 percent of the HumCo vote, though it’s worth noting that the long departed John Kasich and Ted Cruz continue to pull votes, taking in 9 and 10 percent of the vote, respectively, potentially a sign that the Republican party is still hesitant to rally around its controversial presumptive nominee. Those numbers aren’t far off their statewide counterparts, which have Trump with almost 78 percent of the vote, Kasich with 11 percent and Cruz with 8 percent.

THIRD RETURN:
With 82 percent of precincts reporting, the plucky Bernie Sanders continues to hold a strong Humboldt County lead over now presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. And, statewide, with 40 percent of precincts reporting, Sanders continues to cut into Clinton’s lead.

In Humboldt, Sanders has taken more than 65 percent of the Democratic primary vote to Clinton’s 32 percent. Throughout the Golden State, Clinton still holds a commanding 20-point lead but it has shrunk slightly. Sanders is now pulling 39 percent of the vote, up from 35 percent in the first returns, to Clinton’s 59 percent, down a handful of points from the 64 percent of the vote she held early on.