The Election Results
Helen Putnam Park at Night.
Several races didn’t go the way we had hoped, including mine.
It doesn’t look like we are going to win this one, but the “winner” only got a little over 40% of the vote in District 6, so 6 in 10 voters did not pick the “winner”. Hopefully that will humble him a little, but I won’t get my hopes up about that.
Thank you all very much!
The length of my campaign was barely over two months, from official announcement on Labor Day Weekend to Election Day. In that short period of time, there were 44 people who either volunteered or donated to this campaign. I am so appreciative of all you have done.
I had to learn a lot of things from scratch, from filling out the proper campaign paperwork, to designing a sign and creating a website and flyers. My incumbent opponents already had these things in place for years and each of them outspent me a little over 3 to 1, but I still had a very respectable showing, just 6 points behind Mike Healy, our longest serving incumbent.
We Changed the Conversation in Town
One of the biggest issues I was running on was to bring our planning department back in-house and not have it all outsourced to the M Group. Imagine my surprise when all 7 city council candidates said they were in favor of the same thing, so that is one thing accomplished (if the candidates weren’t lying).
The other main goal was to stop the 6-story overlay in our historic downtown. Even though there is a majority on the council that is in favor of it at the moment, I am hopeful that this will be stopped. The Draft EIR for this overlay and hotel is a joke, and there is some serious legal counsel on hand for the opponents of this overlay. This is not like the ragtag group of us who sued to stop Sid Commons to protect our wetlands and made mistakes in not getting some things on the record. And if a lawsuit doesn’t succeed, I am sure a referendum will take the overlay down in short order, so I think that goal is also essentially accomplished.
Unfortunately, there is also a 25 year General Plan on the horizon. I don’t trust the current city council to get that one right, but a lot of voters aren’t aware of what’s going on and one can’t do much about that.
Campaign Signs
If you would like to keep my yard sign as a souvenir, feel free to take it down. Tomorrow (Thursday), I am going to take down all the signs that I see around town. If I miss your property, let me know this weekend and I will come pick it up early next week (this weekend I will be photographing in Yosemite to get away from the aftermath of this election).
I will keep this website and my social media pages up and running, and I will continue to be involved in local politics behind the scenes as I have before. In 18 months, we can see what the local political landscape looks like in town, and maybe we can all try again to change things for the better in Petaluma.
Lance
If you feel like helping me out with campaign debt, any help is appreciated.