My Post-Midnight Take On The Election

WHAT A NIGHT!
Last night and this morning I tried to work as fast as I could to snatch the election numbers every time they were updated and throw them out there for your viewing pleasure.  Between phone calls and just being old and tired, it took me almost the full 30 minutes between updates last night to get it all done.  And, as reader Honeyman so kindly pointed out, I dropped the ball at 10:30.  Fortunately, no harm, no foul because - as it turned out - the fun was just beginning!

KATRINA, THE CAMPAIGN QUEEN
Here are a few impressions I've been left with from last night.  Regardless how the final vote now turns out in the Costa Mesa City Council race, a couple things are clear. First, Katrina Foley is an excellent campaigner.  She ran a positive, forward-looking, uplifting campaign and managed the mass communication and feet-on-the-ground part of it the best.  She and Jay Humphrey - thrown together as a de facto ticket by circumstances -  brought significant synergy to the race.

MONEY, BUT NO MANDATE
Second, even if he manages to defeat Humphrey - he leads him by 21 votes at this point, with the provisional ballots yet to be counted and the probability of a recount hovering overhead - it is crystal clear that Righeimer and his cronies have NO mandate from the voters.  While the final campaign expenditure numbers are not yet in, it looks like he will have spent nearly $200,000 on this campaign and Lee Ramos - his chosen running mate who finished far back in the field - spent another huge chunk of cash.  And that's not counting the huge piles of cash spent on their behalf by political action committees and other GOP sources.

CRONIES CRASH
And, his cronies - Ron Amburgey in the Mesa Water race and Brian Peotter and Chuck Perry in the Costa Mesa Sanitary District Race - failed miserably to resonate with the voters.  Peotter had a strange campaign - promising to fire himself if elected - and Perry apparently didn't really want folks to know who he was because he refused to use his whole name on his campaign signs.  I guess he assumed he'd get some positive input from folks thinking they were electing his brother, who already sits on the CMSD Board.  Both men finished well behind the incumbents, Mike Scheafer, Bob Ooten and Arlene Schafer.  Amburgey's casual-to-a-fault demeanor certainly didn't stack up with the voters when compared to incumbent Jim Atkinson.

 EPIC FAIL!
The biggest story, by far, is Righeimer's showing.  The voters have made it clear that his approach to management of this city falls far short of their expectations.  No better indicator of that can be found than the abysmal showing by Righeimer's latest Charter scheme - Measure O.  That document, created by a hand-picked team of cronies, is even worse than Measure V two years ago.  The voters showed the good judgment to discard this one, too, by an even greater margin than Measure V.  The voters cannot make it any clearer - they are NOT ready to change the form of government by imposing a Charter with insufficient controls to prohibit mischief by those in charge.  Some of Righeimer's supporters - Andy Smith, a member of the Charter Committee and the man behind all the "Yes on O" signs around town, has already stated that another campaign for a Charter would begin immediately if Measure O was defeated.  Well, enough is enough!  What part of NO don't you guys understand?

MORE RIGHEIMER EMBARRASSMENT
And then there is the embarrassing Measure P situation.  In my opinion, Measure P was just a ploy to get Righeimer's face before the voters.  It is an advisory measure with no standing in law.  Apparently Righeimer wanted to use the results - he assumed the voters would overwhelmingly support the rejection of toll lanes on the I-405 Freeway adjacent to Costa Mesa - to point out to state officials that we didn't want those toll lanes.  Then came the debacle of the ballot language, in which somebody working for the City of Costa Mesa botched it - big time.  They placed two questions on the ballot - opposite ends of the issue - and the voters were supposed to figure out which one to answer, and how to answer it.  It cost about $12,000 to place that meaningless item on the ballot and probably at least that much on multiple mailers to the voters trying to salvage the situation.  The results indicate to me that those efforts failed.  The results - nobody will ever know what they are supposed to represent because of the ballot statement gaffe - certainly show no overwhelming outcry.

NO SURPRISES IN SCHOOL BOARD RACES
The school board races were interesting.  Incumbents Vicki Snell and Walt Davenport soundly trounced their challengers and Charlene Metoyer whipped Michael Collier in the race to fill Katrina Foley's seat - the one she defeated Collier to win four years ago.  Snell beat journalist Steve Smith and Davenport defeated activist Lisa Manfredi and Fidel Mora.

THE LEGEND PREVAILS
Legendary long time coach and former Orange Coast College President Dave Grant soundly thumped teacher and union activist Joel Flores for the seat on the Coast Community College District Board.

DOUBLE-DIPPING DEWANE

Incumbent Shawn Dewane, self-professed "financial expert" and also a member of the Mesa Water District Board, handily defeated termed-out councilwoman Wendy Leece for his seat on the Orange County Water District Board.

 HARPER DEFEATS CURRY!

 I was surprised that Newport Beach councilman Keith Curry was so soundly defeated by Huntington Beach Mayor Matthew Harper for the 74th Assembly seat being vacated by Allan Mansoor.  Curry's son-in-law, Tony Capitelli, also finished far back in the pack in the Costa Mesa council race.

IS WALMART HIRING?

Speaking of Mansoor, as of this writing it looks like carpetbagger Michelle Steel thumped him like a drum in the race for John Moorlach's Orange County Supervisor seat.  This is really no surprise.  She had the backing of the OC GOP and raised four times the cash than Mansoor for this race.  I kind of feel bad for the guy, since he was used and tossed aside by his "friends" in the OC GOP.

HO-HUM

As usual, Dana Rohrabacher trounced Democrat Suzanne Savary in the "competition" for his congressional seat.  How many dozen times has he won this race now?  I've lost track.

NEXT DOOR...

Not Costa Mesa, but close to home, over in Newport Beach it looks very much like political king-maker Dave Ellis found a way for his entire stable of candidates to win.  Diane Dixon - Wendy Leece's sister, ran unopposed.  Kevin Muldoon beat Tim Brown and Roy Englebrecht.  Mansoor field rep. Scott Peotter seems to have defeated Mike Toerge in a very close race and, in a stunner, incumbent mayor Rush Hill was trounced by boat manufacturer Marshall (Duffy) Duffield, even though Duffield had heart surgery late in the campaign!  It looks like he got everyone elected except himself.  In a close race, he didn't win a seat on the Municipal Water District of Orange County.

MEASURE 'Y"

And, the very controversial ballot measure that pitted neighbor against neighbor in Newport Beach, Measure Y, went down in flames.  Things got so contentious over the individual races and Measure Y that some wags began comparing Newport Beach politics to Costa Mesa's, for goodness sake!

TIME FOR DREAMS

That's all for now, folks.  It's well into Wednesday and we'll just have to see what happens with the council race.  As soon as I have information I'll post it.  Until then, I'm heading to bed with the visions - like sugarplum fairies dancing in my head at Christmas - of a Righeimer-free city council come the first week of December floating around in my dreams.  Ah.......