The Results Are In

The unofficial results from Claremont's municipal election are in, and the winners are:

SAM PEDROZA - 24.3%, 3,336 votes
OPANYI NASIALI - 19.7%, 2,697
JOSEPH LYONS - 18%, 2,470

Robin Haulman ended up with 2,275 (16.6%) , or 195 votes behind Lyons. Jay Pocock had 1,430 votes (10.4%). You can see the vote totals here.

Haulman's loss was a bit surprising. She was the Claremont 400 candidate of choice, and the turnout was a pretty low 23.9%, which usually favors the 400. Haulman actually outpolled Lyons in most of the precincts' absentee ballot totals. But among yesterday's voters, she lost to Lyons, the 400's backup candidate. So perhaps the combination of missteps by Haulman and her campaign together with Bob Gerecke's dirty tricks changed voters' minds about Haulman by the end of the election.

Incidentally, a glance at today's Claremont Courier informs us that Lynn Savitzky and Cynthia Humes, two of the seven signers of that Bob Gerecke attack ad against Opanyi Nasiali, have disavowed any knowledge of the ad (image, left - click to enlarge).

Apparently, Gerecke and the Claremont Democratic Club, which was circulating the ad at the Claremont Farmers Market last Sunday, used Humes' and Savitsky's names without their permission. As always, Bob is a real class act.

No one's said anything about this, but Sam Pedroza, just as he did in 2007 with Preserve Claremont, enjoyed the benefit of the attack ad without having to take any responsibility for it. He had the full support of the people behind the ad. Gerecke and the Democratic Club endorsed Pedroza, walked precincts for him, and conducted phone banking in support of Sam.

And, just as he did in 2007, back when he had a little more solid backing from the 400, Pedroza ignored the clean campaigning pledge he and the other candidates signed. Another minor commentary on Sam and the worth of his word.

City Election News

COURIER ENDORSES PEDROZA, NASIALI, AND ?

Besides the story of Flyergate, last Saturday's Claremont Courier also carried to Courier's endorsements for the March 8 municipal election.

Like the Daily Bulletin, the Courier endorsed incumbent Sam Pedroza, who looked a little gaunt in his Courier photo, his weight loss apparently the by-product of a bicycling regime of one sort or another. As much as we hate to admit it, we really can't fault either paper for choosing Pedroza as one of its endorsees. We don't usually agree with him, but he gets the nod incumbents usually get absent any scandals or missteps in office.

The Courier also echoed the Bulletin in its endorsement of Opanyi Nasiali, who is running for the third time. The Courier cited Nasiali's volunteer work and his participation as a City commissioner and economic sustainability committee member. The Courier also pointed out that Nasiali worked both on the successful Johnson's Pasture Measure S bond campaign in 2006 and on the campaign against the $95 million Measure CL school bond.

While the first two picks were easy calls, the choice for the third and final seat was a tough one. Claremont 400 candidate Robin Haulman might have been the Courier's pick, but her campaign continually shot itself in the foot, with the final disgrace coming at the February 17 League of Women Voters candidate forum when Haulman's husband Alexander Sweida swiped a bunch of candidate Jay Pocock's fliers and threw them in the trash. So between her actions and her hubby's, Haulman's chances of that coveted Courier endorsement were nil.

Presuming the Courier didn't take Citizen Michael John Keenan, Joseph Armendarez, or Rex Jaime seriously, that left the Bulletin's third choice, Jay Pocock, and former Democratic State Senate candidate Joseph Lyons. The Courier went for Lyons, who because of his lack of past civic involvement has been something of a cipher. Lyons really is the a great Claremont 400 candidate, relying on them for their votes, especially from local retirement communities like Pilgrim Place, and apparently without any of his own opinions or experience in city issues to muck things up for the 400.

We'll see how the Courier and Bulletin endorsements hold up. The last three or four council elections the Courier has been the more accurate of the two newspapers, but a lot can happen between now and March 8. We await the Claremonsters' usual election eve surprise, either through a letter or ad in the Courier the Saturday before the election, or through a last minute mailer landing in the last few days of the campaign. The 400 usually tries to stir up some imagined scandal very late in the game - too late to be rebutted by their target.

As Flyergate, Pasturegate, Signgate, and Shillgate (say, they really are giving new meaning to the term "gated community") have shown in this election, the one thing we can count on is that the Claremonsters will do just about anything to win, and, much like Wile E. Coyote's schemes, their tricks often blow up in their faces.

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Speaking of Flyergate, Courier reporter Tony Krickl has the Paul Harvey "Rest of the Story" on his Courier City Beat blog. LWV president Ellen Taylor doesn't come off much better than Haulman's husband does in Krickl's post:

Further defending his actions, Sweida said he was just following the League of Women Voter's policy on negative campaign material. He asked Ellen Taylor, president of Claremont's chapter of the League, if he could remove the fliers. Taylor told him to go ahead, even though she didn't inspect the material beforehand to see if it actually contained "negative" information.

This incident is troubling from many perspectives. With his actions, Sweida has certainly embarrassed his wife and may have cost her the election. Dirty tactics like this just don't sit well with voters.

Taylor defended her decision by saying the League is anti-biased in local elections. However by approving this behavior, she showed a clear bias against Pocock. And that reflects poorly on the entire organization.

And what do other League officials think about what happened?

"It would be better to actually look at the material before making a decision on what to do with it," said Jack Mills, Vice President of the League.

Krickl also quotes Mills as saying that he is unaware of any LWV policy against negative campaigning.

Here We Go Again

Reporter Tony Krickl has an article in yesterday's Claremont Courier that tells of a post-debate incident at last Thursday's League of Women Voters forum. Krickl's article said that Alexander Sweida, the husband of City Council candidate Robin Haulman, took about 50 fliers belonging to candidate Jay Pocock and threw them in the trash.

Not surprisingly, former Claremont mayor Ellen Taylor, a/k/a The Cookie Monster, a/k/a Queen Ellen, was centrally involved. Taylor (photo, right) is the Claremont LWV chapter president.

Krickl reported that after the LWV forum ended, Betty Crocker, who works for candidate Opanyi Nasiali's campaign, was talking to Sweida when she saw him accidentally drop "about 50 [Pocock] fliers" onto the floor. Sweida scooped up the fliers and by his own admission threw them away. Krickl quoted Crocker as saying "He looked like he got caught caught with his hand in the cookie jar," which turned out to be a apt metaphor, considering Taylor's involvement in Thursday's incident.

Krickl spoke with Sweida, who claimed he took offense to the fliers because "he felt they contained lies about his wife." The article said the part Sweida took exception to was a line that said "Haulman and [Joseph] Lyons support tax increases (DO YOU?)."

For your reference, here's a Pocock flyer insert from yesterday's Courier. It contains the exact quote cited by Krickl:

Click on Image to Enlarge

In the Courier article, Sweida defended himself by saying he checked with Taylor first and asked "if he could dispose of the material because he felt it contained negative claims about his wife." Notice that he did not used the word "lie." Taylor gave the okay, and Sweida said, "I was just complying with the League's policy on negative campaign material...."

Incredibly, Taylor, who was quoted in the Krickl article, said she didn't review Pocock's fliers before giving Sweida permission to throw them away, she just took his work and allowed him to do it.

Well, we just don't know where to start. Setting aside the First Amendment, which Taylor and the LWV apparently support only on a situational basis, from our perspective this incident simply underscores what we've said all along: The LWV is very closely aligned with certain candidates in every election, picking and choosing who wins and who loses, their hypocrisy is embodied in their actions, and anyone considered an outsider in Claremont local politics faces an unlevel playing field.

Taylor tried to claim that the local LWV is an unbiased organization, and she cited the fact that they had San Dimas resident Ruth Currie moderate the candidate forum. Taylor didn't say that this is a new development for the LWV and that during the last City election in 2009, former LWV president Barbara Musselman moderated the LWV's forum. Musselman, along with people like Katie Gerecke, another former LWV president, supports Haulman and Lyons in this election.

If nothing else, this latest incident should put to rest any idea of impartiality or credibility on the LWV's part, at least when it comes to Claremont's local issues. In this campaign, as in every Claremont city election, the LWV is very much in the corner of their chosen ones. For instance, at the beginning of the debate Thursday, Haulman was introduced as the only woman running this time. Odd how the LWV used gender as a factor to single out one of their favored candidates and overlooked race with respect to the only African-American running, Opanyi Nasiali, or Rex Jaime, the only Filipino-American in the contest. Consistency, as is usual with the LWV, is not in evidence.

Now what about Alexander Sweida's claim that the Pocock flyer contained a lie about his wife's position on taxes? We checked the video for the mid-January Active Claremont candidate forum and discovered that the very first question posed by moderator and former council member Jackie McHenry was:

Do you believe that a tax increase is necessary to address revenue shortfalls [in Claremont]? If so, what taxes do you believe should be raised?

The first two candidates to answer were Joseph Lyons and Robin Haulman. Both cited the Mayor's Committee on Economic Sustainability, and both Lyons and Haulman supported a hike in the City's utility tax. So you tell us, where's the lie in Pocock's line about Haulman and Lyons?

Here's video of Lyons and Haulman answering the tax question last month (notice how Haulman refers to her cheat sheet for her response):




Those of you out there in the real world, those outside the Claremont city limits, can see here just how crazy our local politics are. A truth refracted through the narrow lens of the Claremont 400 and the Claremont League of Women Voters becomes a lie, the perpetrator lays blame on his victim. Just as in the case of Haulman's false claims about her involvement in saving Johnson's Pasture, the truth matters not one bit.

Let's not let the Claremonsters confuse the issue. The central point in this instance is not whether a given candidate does or does not support tax increases; the heart of this matter lies in the sorry ethical behavior of those who control the reins of power and in the corresponding actions of those who would be kings and queens of this ridiculously small and silly fiefdom.

On the Campaign Trail

THE BULLETIN ENDORSES

The Daily Bulletin came out with its endorsements earlier this week, and there was at least one surprise.

As expected, Sam Pedroza made the cut, which we would expect given that he's the incumbent, and the local papers generally defer the such. Also, Sam's brought home plenty of Sacramento pork in the form of three large grants totaling several million dollars from the San Gabriel and Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy (more of which in a future post). So Sam's done Claremont's part to both save and destroy the environment while at the same time contributing to California's $25 billion budget deficit.

The Bulletin also endorsed Opanyi Nasiali, which was a mild surprise, seeing that the Claremont 400 have never liked him because he's not their black man. Ever since the Irvin Landrum shooting in 1999, the 400 have been all for supporting African-Americans (have we dropped the hyphen? - we can't keep it straight). Nasiali's both African and self-made American, but that seems to irk the 400 to no end and also, for some reason, the local Democratic Club, who are apparently desperate enough to have their volunteers running around generating complaints while putting up Pedroza and Robin Haulman signs.

Nasiali, by the way, is living proof that no good deed goes unpunished. In 2006, Nasiali argued successfully against the $45 million or so Parks and Pasture Assessment District, saying that it was wasteful and that a more limited general obligation bond would be a better way to go. To prove his point, after the assessment lost 56% to 44%, he turned around and helped lead the successful Measure S campaign, which ended up winning 72% of the vote. Nasiali also convinced the Claremont College presidents to agree to allow the colleges to waive their non-profit status under the bond, which lowered the overall Measure S tax burden to individual property owners. The 400, hypocrites that they are, ignored Nasiali's key contributions in building a true community consensus on the Johnson's Pasture issue and worked actively to defeat him in the 2007 council election.

Lastly, the Bulletin endosed newcomer Jay Pocock, who (with Nasiali) helped lead the No on CL campaign against the Claremont Unified School District's $95 million school bond. That measure lost 60% to 40% and was eerily similar to the Parks and Pasture/Measure S campaigns in that the No side argued, again successfully, that there was a better way help the schools. Sore losers that they are, the CUSD school board and the Claremont 400 are aiming for payback in the city council election. Still, the Bulletin went for Pocock over Haulman, the 400's candidate of choice, for the last of the three seats up for this election.


MORE EVENTS

And word comes to us from another candidate, Citizen Michael John Keenan (image, left), that the Claremont Forum, which also sponsors Claremont's Sunday Farmers Market, will be the site of a Keenan campaign even tonight from 7pm to 9pm, so says CMJK:

Bill McClellan has agreed to play some of the folk like-struggle-getting-to-the top inspirational acoustic music. Some buddies may sit in too! Find Bill at http://www.fairmarketband.com/ or http://www.fairmarketband.com/.

There will be a table of Trader Joes fare and a table of Trader Joes drinks. Definitely a Sangria and an Ale selection. Tea, Coffee and Juices for the ineligible imbibers should they show up.

The Claremont Forum is located at 586 W. First St. in the Claremont Packing House.

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Oddly, in this council race the Claremont Democratic Club is not supporting Keenan, who is a registered Democrat, nor are they supporting another Dem, Joseph Armendarez. As we've said, they are actively campaigning for Haulman, Pedroza, and candidate Joseph Lyons, who admitted at last month's Active Claremont forum that he had never attended a City Council meeting before deciding to run in this election and who has never really been involved at all on local issues.

To be fair to the Democratic Club, Joe Armendarez has been similarly disinterested in Claremont issues, at least for the past 10 years or more. Keenan, however, has been very active in nearly every important Claremont issue for at least the last dozen years, and he has probably attended more City Council and city commission meetings than Haulman and Pedroza put together. So the lack of support for him from the local Dems puzzles us, since they claim to not endorse any single candidate and say they're merely trying to support the Democrats running for council. Based on his community involvement, Keenan deserves the club's support as much as Pedroza or Haulman and certainly has earned it more than Lyons, who may be a nice guy but who seems lost when it comes to what's happening locally.

If you want to ask the club or their president, Zephyr Tate-Mann, about this, you can take it up with them this weekend. Our friends within the Democratic Club who aren't happy with the direction the club's taken, have told us the club will be precinct walking tomorrow for Haulman, Pedroza and Lyons. A special Insider shout-out to any reader who forwards a photo of Zephyr or her hubby Rudy on one of their walks! Rudy, who hails from Louisiana, brings his own muddy bayou brand of electioneering to Claremont. Rudy runs every local issue through the narrow prism of his party politics rather than any out of any sense of community interest or fairness.

We hear, but haven't been able to confirm, that the Manns and company will be out walking in two shifts from 10:30am to 12:30pm and 1:30pm to 3:30pm, so keep your eyes peeled. You can start watching for them at the United Food and Commerical Workers (UFCW) Local 1428 hall at 705 W. Arrow Hwy., where they'll assemble before their morning and afternoon walks.

We understand that the Manns and the Democratic Club will also be phone banking. (A special Insider award to whomever can forward us a digital recording of one of these calls.) If you like what you see and hear from them, or if you want to complain, you can reach them at the club's phone number, (909) 632-1516, or you can contact Zephyr at (909) 626-2858, which is the contact number listed by the party for her here.

We'd give you the same information for the local Republican club, but they seem to be sitting this one as an organization, apparently because it's supposed to be a non-partisan race.

Community Service

The debate over the Claremont Unified School District's $95 million Measure CL bond has raged in the pages of the Claremont Courier's reader letters section these past few weeks. Citizens on both sides of the school bond issue have used letters to the Courier as a sort of community forum.

The Courier itself seems to have slanted its coverage more towards the Yes on CL side, presenting an interview with members of the Yes on CL committee, taking readers on a CUSD-sponsored dog-and-pony show tour of Claremont High School, tossing in an article praising the district's test scores, as well as what amounted to an interview with Yes on CL's campaign consultant Jared Boigon of TBWB Strategies, who has been stage managing the yes campaign from San Francisco (at the cost of many tens of thousands of dollars, we might add).

Still, there not many other places to find both sides of CL the argument presented, the Courier did manage this past Wednesday to throw the No on CL group a bone by featuring an interview with their spokespeople, Donna Lowe, Opanyi Nasiali, and Jay Pocock. In a normal election year, our various local service organizations and institutions would be holding election forums where matters such as the November school bond could be debated.

For example, The Kiwanis Club, the Claremont Chamber of Commerce, Pilgrim Place, the Claremont Manor, Our Lady of Assumption Church, and Active Claremont all traditionally hold city council candidate forums, as they will next spring in advance of the March, 2011, municipal election.

The local League of Women Voters chapter holds the forum with the greatest cachet. It's usually one of the best attended of the candidate debates, and a good showing there can certainly help a prospective council member's chances of winning a seat.

Which is why this blurb from Daily Bulletin reporter Wes Woods' Claremont Now blog strikes us as odd:

Pros and cons on the nine California propositions for the Nov. 2 general election will be discussed at 2 p.m. Sunday Oct. 10 at the Claremont Public Library, 208 Harvard Ave.

The league and the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Pomona Valley Alumnae Chapter will host a 59th Assembly District candidates forum. The forum will run from 7 to 9 p.m. Monday Oct.11 in the Padua Room at the Alexander [Hughes] Community Center at 1700 Danbury Road.

We would have expected the LWV, an organization that prides itself on its non-partisan efforts at educating voters on local, state, and national issues, to have been one of the first to offer both sides of the Measure CL debate to give their reasons why voters should be for or against the bond. This is clearly an issue that's generated a great deal of community interest and one that will affect CUSD property owners' pocketbooks for years to come. Yet, Measure CL is conspicuously absent from the League's fall election events.

Similarly, the Chamber of Commerce and other local organizations, including Sustainable Claremont, have endorsed the bond without giving opponents a chance to present their views. Whatever side one favors in the Measure CL election, all this lack of activity by our so-called communitarian organizations gives a good insight into how things work in our little, close-minded community.

As always, it's not what you know but who you know. It's a good ol' girls and boys network of the same circle of people running each and every group mentioned above, along with the Claremont Education Foundation, the Claremont Community Foundation, the Red Cross, and a host of other local charities.

The result is that opponents of any issues have an extremely hard time making their cases to the voters. Forums, by their very nature, require each side to have equal time. So even if the LWV tries to tailor the debate questions to the strengths of the people it favors, they still have to give opponents a chance to respond.

The absence of any school bond forums makes us wonder if the League and their fellow Claremont 400 organizations recognize Measure CL's weaknesses and are trying to help it by not holding any public debates. This goes along with the perception that bond's proponents are trying to avoid substantive discussions of the measure.

All of the Yes on CL mailings, for instance, speak in generalities, and the proponents, as well as the school board, have failed to offer up any specific details of how the money will be spent. For instance, the most recent mailings, which went out this past Monday and Tuesday, don't make any mention the $95 million price tag. And you'll never hear them talk about the $250 million total price after financing the bond for 40 years - an extra long payment schedule CUSD had to use to keep the payments per household at $45 per $100,000 of assessed value.

Further, CUSD has actually ignored public records requests and has withheld public information on the bond's financial details because they know that their own numbers will torpedo their arguments (another thing you won't hear about in the Daily Bulletin or the Claremont Courier).

The one organization that is holding a forum is Active Claremont. The AC school bond forum will be 7pm Thursday, October 21, in the Santa Fe room of the Alexander Hughes Center. Both sides will answer questions submitted by those in attendance.

By the way, Active Claremont, unlike the League or the Chamber of Commerce, is truly neutral, which probably explains why they're willing to host the debate. They don't endorse one side or another, they just let them talk. So let's stop giving false praise to those other groups for their community building efforts. The real communitarians in Claremont demonstrate their respect for all people and opinions in town through their actions, not their words.