“Hello, we’d like two seats please. Yes, two. We’d like to sit together. No, that’s TWO. Two seats. One for each of us. Is that possible?” (Photo credit: Thepot Stirrer of abubblingcauldron.com, which you should read for more on this race!)
Here are the results of Costa Mesa’s City Council race for three available seats.
Sandy Genis 15.982 votes — 17.9%
Steve Mensinger, 14,199 votes — 15.9%
Gary Monahan, 13,945 votes — 15.6%
John Stephens, 13,790 votes — 15.5%
Colin McCarthy, 13,450 votes — 15.1%
Those are, of course, the 2012 results. Genis was able to join the Council as an ally of Wendy Leece. Mensinger joined as an ally of Jim Righeimer. And only 155 votes separated Righeimer’s ally Gary Monahan and Leece’s ally John Stephens for the third seat.
So close, so close! And now, after 2014’s election, that seems like a landslide.
Once again, a female candidate came out first — and two men battled it out for the last seat on the dais, but it was much closer this time:
Katrina Foley, 6,667 votes 26.4%
Jim Righeimer, 5414 votes — 21.4%
Jay Humphrey, 5393 votes — 21.3%.
Jim Righeimer is part of the Jim Righeimer team, of course. Jay Humphrey is an ally of Genis and Foley (and the outgoing Leece.) But here’s the difference between 155 votes and 21 votes — by which I do not mean 134 votes. The difference is that there are legitimate grounds for a recount and legitimate reason for hope that it will be successful in putting Humphrey ahead of Righeimer.
Those Costa Mesans who don’t know a lot about provisional ballots are about to learn.
A provisional ballot is what you cast when you don’t appear qualified to vote in an election because, say, you’ve moved within the city or just moved to the city within the county. Your vote isn’t tabulated on election day; it’s counted provided that further investigation shows that you were qualified to cast the ballot within the city.
My sense is that the most common reason for a provisional ballot is that someone moved apartments since they last registered. Who tends to move a lot? People without a lot of money. Students. Democrats.
So, presuming that there is a recount, starting with a count of provisional ballots, you can expect that it will move in the direction of Jay Humphrey. And you can expect that Jim Righeimer’s lawyers will be there objecting to counting every single provisional ballot. It’s a pretty fitting role for Righeimer, actually.
Righeimer’s pulling ahead of Humphrey, who had trailed for most of the day but finally taken the lead, in the very last count put a damper on what was otherwise a most excellent day in Costa Mesa. Righeimer’s charter proposal, Measure O, went down to a howling defeat. Foley is back on Council. And everything would have been beautiful had Humphrey defeated Righeimer outright. But alas — Fate is not yet done toying with us, and may yet deal us a most unkind blow. (Lesson: VOTE FOR BOTH PEOPLE ON THE REFORM SLATE, NOT JUST ONE OF THEM!)
If he remains in office, Righeimer will of course pretend to treat his razor-thin victory as a total vindication and intensify his efforts to destroy the city. So we’re all going to be looking hard at Costa Mesa, and praying for a provisional miracle.
That was something else to watch Rig go for just barely losing to just barley winning, Talk about a nail biter.
Interesting race, indeed… Humphrey picked up three votes on Righeimer in the 11/5 count report. Lots of ballots uncounted. Glad you enjoyed my copyright-protected photo… 😉
I’ll hope for continued progress there. And yes, I enjoyed your copyright-protected photo as well as the Fair Use provision in copyright law allowing me to use it for purposes of simple identification of individuals. But now that I know that you took it, I’ll credit you.
Hey, we’re good… just yanking your chain a little. I should have had Jay take his glasses off… bad planning on my part. We do have us an interesting race going on… down to 18 votes separating Humphrey and Righeimer with lots of votes left in the hopper to be counted. Sorry about your results… another time…
I spent $2000 to have voters read about Poseidon and fracking and ethics and transparency in a forum where they were especially likely to read what I had to say. It doesn’t feel like a loss to me.
One of these years, when my practice has recovered from putting so much time into speculative and pro bono work, I’m going to run to win, with serious fundraising and all that. Until that time, I’m having to satisfy myself with giving people who would otherwise run unopposed a sense of how many people would love to vote against them. The cool thing is that when I finally do make that “run for real,” my opponents won’t believe it until it’s too late!
I think that Humphrey pulls this one out, by the way, based on provisionals.
Greg gets it.
He never thought he had a chance a winning. He was running for the sake of democracy.
I don’t agree with Greg on a *lot* of issues, but if we had a few more involved souls like him, there would be a lot less corruption in this county.
And yes, spending $2,000 to get his views in front of 40,000 voters at the precise moment they may be open to new information is, at 5 cents per impression, a pretty doggone efficient advertising buy.
GD: “Jim Righeimer is part of the Jim Righeimer team, of course.”
This is the sort of brilliant political analysis we have come to expect from the perennial loser Greg Diamond – at least the Chicago Cubs are lovable – GD … not so much.
I should have warned off the humor-impaired, weak-minded, and dull-witted, like Mr. Trifecta here..
See the comment above yours, skally, in reply to “thepotstirrer,” for my take on my “perennial loser” status. I’m glad to have had the chance to vote against Bob Huff, Tony Rackauckas, and now Brett Barbre — and to make my case against them. None of that would have happened if they ran unopposed.
I’m with Greg on that issue. To allow someone to run unopposed when there might be significant issues that need venting kind of flys in the face of the democratic process. Of course, having 8 people run for 2 seats, as in the case in the Costa Mesa council race this time around, screws things up. That’s the process, though. If Greg is willing to take the time and pony-up the cash to exercise his opponent and make him answer questions – that’s his choice. Who knows.. one of these days he’ll make a successful run for office – stranger things have happened. 🙂 Heck, we elected Chris Steel to city council down here a decade ago and, after four years on the dais, he still couldn’t find the bathroom!