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Mari-malady?

And now a word from the grouchy word guy. I did a quick Google search this morning and found not a single reference to “Lipitor patients,” “aspirin patients,” “penicillin patients” or even “anti-biotic patients.” So why do I read so much – including a couple of references in our paper [...]

By | November 17th, 2010|0 Comments

Seeking meaning in the middle

I was part of a post-election panel at Sonoma State University today where we talked a lot about the Democrats and Republicans. In retrospect, I think we overlooked a potentially decisive group of voters – those who either aren’t members or aren’t committed to either party. That’s non-aligned bloc is [...]

By | November 3rd, 2010|0 Comments

The biggest election surprises

Here are the three biggest surprises of Tuesday's local elections: 1. David Rabbitt's significant victory in the 2nd Supervisorial District race. Many felt Pam Torliatt might win this election outright in the June primary. She earned 40 percent of the vote, meaning she only needed to pick up 10 percent from the votes from [...]

By | November 3rd, 2010|0 Comments

Public safety unions and the election

One of the biggest stories of this election is the role of public safety unions in Sonoma County races. We’re used to seeing public safety heavily involved in elections in Rohnert Park. But this year we saw big spending and aggressive campaigning by police and firefighter unions in races in Santa [...]

By | November 3rd, 2010|0 Comments

Major impact: Props 22, 25 and 26 pass

This may end up being the biggest story of the state election - the passage of propositions 22, 25 and 26. It's a bad news, good news, bad news story for state finances. Prop. 22 is the measure that would prevent the state from borrowing or otherwise taking funds used for transportation, redevelopment [...]

By | November 2nd, 2010|0 Comments

A few exit poll nuggets

Beyond the headlines – Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer winning – there are some interesting details coming from California exit polls. Among the details, courtesy of the Los Angeles Times and the Sacramento Bee, are: -- Voters in the gubernatorial election were more inclined to support an insider with experience [...]

By | November 2nd, 2010|0 Comments

Observations on local absentee returns

Yes, it is early and these are only counts from absentee ballots. But this is not like the days of old when early mail-in ballots represented a small percentage of the vote. So far, the county has counted just shy of 87,000 ballots, 35 percent of the total number of [...]

By | November 2nd, 2010|0 Comments

Election Day vs. the Giants

If  turnout is low in today’s election, don’t blame the Giants. But you know some candidate somewhere will – particularly if he or she loses a close race. Normally, on Election Day, from the moment you open your newspaper in the morning, you're flooded with reminders of what's on the ballot - and [...]

By | November 2nd, 2010|0 Comments