As we've noted in the past, Claremont is a small town. Claremont resident and Daily Bulletin columnist David Allen ran into a couple local personalities at his polling place at Sycamore School in the Claremont Village this past Tuesday.
As Allen's column reported, Allen spent a little time chatting with former Claremont Chamber of Commerce president Sonja Stump and current Claremont Mayor Ellen Taylor, two of the people responsible for the Claremont Trolley, among other things:
On Tuesday, there was a line of a half-dozen people out the door and a full house inside. It's the busiest I can remember Sycamore in three presidential elections and numerous primaries and off-year balloting.
"We had 62 people in line before we opened at 7," poll worker Larry Clark told me. "I'm sure it will be a record."
By 9:25 a.m., 218 people had voted, with more streaming in.
"We've had days when we haven't had this many people all day," precinct captain Sonja Stump said.
Mayor Ellen Taylor cast her vote minutes after I did. (We canceled each other out on Measure R.) The mayor affixed her "I voted" sticker and said she was off to Starbucks to claim a free cup of coffee.
Earlier, Stump had demonstrated the Ink-a-Vote method to those of us waiting in line. This prompted an elderly Massachusetts transplant to say she preferred her home state's voting levers and curtained booths.
"No one here is going to look over your shoulder," Stump kidded her.
"And yet people in California are all about their personal space," the woman continued. "They want space all around them. No line in Massachusetts would be spaced out like this. People stand closer together."
Allen had a column in today's Bulletin recapping the election. Allen mentioned Pomona's John Mendoza, who was involved in not one, not two, but three contests Tuesday:
In Pomona, John Mendoza was all over the ballot. He ran for two offices: Three Valleys Water Board and City Council. He won the former and was runner-up on the latter.
Yet only 28 percent of voters supported a utility tax increase put on the ballot by, yes, John Mendoza.
I guess voters like Mendoza more than they do his ideas.
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