Unofficial Results for the
2009 Claremont Municipal Election
Top 2 Win:
(See UPDATE just below)
Corey Calaycay - 3,083 votes, 40.1%
Larry Schroeder - 2,767, 36%
Bridget Healy - 1,842, 23.9%
Total Ballots Cast - 4,717
Turnout - 22.4%
UPDATE: Provisional ballots and absentee ballots turned in at the polls now counted (midday Wednesday):
Corey Calaycay - 3,195 votes, 40.2%
Larry Schroeder - 2,853 votes, 35.9%
Bridget Healy - 1,900 votes, 23.9%
Total Ballots Cast - 4,876
Turnout - 23.1%
Click to Enlarge
Our congratulations to the two winners of last night's city election, Corey Calaycay and Larry Schroeder. We'll have more commentary later, but you can see there are a number of noteworthy items in the results from yesterday's city election.
Here are a few preliminary observations:
First, for the first time that anyone can remember, the candidate backed by the Claremont 400 lost. BIG. Nearly 1,000 votes separated Larry Schroeder from Bridget Healy, the candidate of choice for our dear Claremonsters. Healy lost (came in third) in every precinct except the central Village. This was astounding considering that Schroeder had nowhere near the funds to spend that Healy did and had to kick in $4,500 of his own money to help his campaign.
Second, turnout was extremely low, which in the past has helped the 400's candidates. This time turnout was at around 22.4%, much lower even than the 29-34% of the last four elections. But it didn't help Healy at all. In fact, the results seem to underscore just how weak a candidate Healy was. Even though she came in second in the Pilgrim Place area (Precinct 8), Healy couldn't generate enough excitement there to get the traditional 400 candidate advantage to carry her over Schroeder. Turnout in Precinct 8 was only 37.7%, which is well below the 50% or so the 400 has come to expect from the heart of the Claremont Village.
Third, the Preserve Claremont folks from four years ago are pretty much dead as a movement. Corey Calaycay was their prime target in the 2005 city election and almost didn't win that year. This time around, however, Calaycay got over 3,000 votes, which is a pretty high mark for such a low-turnout election. Also, a number of people we would have considered in the 400, Randy Prout, Butch Henderson, Paul Held, Valerie Martinez, Nick Quackenbos - former Preserve Claremonters all, actually supported Calaycay this time.
Those pro-Healy letters in the Claremont Courier last Saturday signed by former League of Women Voters president Sharon Hightower and by eight former Claremont mayors (including Held and current mayor Ellen Taylor) got no traction at all. Or, worse for the 400, they had a net negative effect because people saw them as trying to look to the past rather than to the future.
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Why did Healy lose? We keep trying to figure that out. Maybe it was because she was too closely tied to former Claremont City Manager Glenn Southard. The 400 have never really understood the depth of the antipathy in town towards Southard, and they severely underestimated how much Healy, who was Southard's former assistant, was seen as one of the people most responsible for maintaining order in Southard's administration.
Or, it might have been the carpetbagger issue. Healy ran off from Claremont four years ago after the Preserve Claremont people, most of whom supported Healy this time, failed to keep Calaycay from getting elected. You'd think the 400 could have found someone else from among their ranks who stayed, who didn't run away, someone who volunteered and worked in the community. But the Helaine Goldwaters of the 400 crowd were just so arrogantly sure of themselves that they would not listen to reason and pushed the Healy candidacy on their friends. That hubris factor certainly cannot be discounted in Healy's downfall.
It also might be that voters looked around and found things in town to be running better than they had under Southard and some of the past city councils. Sure there are disagreements on the council; but, apart from Ellen Taylor, things seem to be much more civil now. So a good number of people could have figured there was no need to change. People may actually prefer how City Hall works now compared to years past.
Healy's city pension may also have been a concern for voters. She is, after all, collecting around $100,000 a year from a CalPERS pension for her 18 years as a Claremont city employee (plus more from Pomona and Indio), and Claremont's $10 million pension account account deficit certainly represents a huge potential problem for the City. Healy's pension belies her claim that she gave of her time to our community out of some form of pure altruism (as opposed to a more mercenary tendency).
And then there's the deposition factor, which came late in the race. But Schroeder out polled Healy in the absentee ballots, and most of those would have been cast before last week's disclosure of some inconsistencies in Healy's campaign claims. So, he was beating Healy anyway.
Let's also not forget that Healy was just not a good candidate. She was a poor, unexciting speaker, appearing at forums to be more like a civil servant presenting a project report (which you'd expect given her former career) than a person seeking elective office. Lack of energy seemed to translate to indifference in many voters eyes, and those people probably figured, "If she doesn't care enough to run as hard as the other two, why should I vote for her?"
Whatever the reasons for last night's smackdown, we shouldn't expect the 400 to go gentle into that good night or that they will even take any lessons from their huge defeat. Self-reflection has never been their strong suit. Raging against the dying of the light is more their style. We can expect them to try to co-opt Larry Schroeder now that Healy's history. But they may have an uphill battle. From what we're hearing on the streets, some the 400 elders, wanting to avoid a campaign and seeking to hand Healy an uncontested seat, tried to tell Schroeder not to run last year, and he's not likely to forget that anytime soon.
To his credit, Schroeder was strong-willed enough to go ahead and run anyway, without much support from the 400 at all. All of which may indicate he's secure enough in himself to be his own man on the council. But rest assured you'll still see much sucking up to Schroeder on the part of the 400, who have no shame or sense of humility.
We also should not forget that Calaycay won big too. If things go according to form, he should be the next mayor, and there is no small measure of justice in Calaycay's replacing Ellen Taylor in the mayor's chair. The next council will be seated next week on Tuesday, March 10th, and we'll begin to see then how much things have really changed in town. Like you, we're expecting a kinder, gentler city government. Lord knows, we've all earned it.
* * * * *
A sad personal footnote: Our write-in campaign lasted precisely 12 hours. You're not going to have Claremont Buzz to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is our last press conference, etc., etc., and so on and so on.
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