MarinIJ: Marin County Election Nears With Much at Stake

Marin County is barreling to one of its busiest elections ever on Tuesday, with dozens of offices and millions of dollars in tax revenue on the line.

The election includes tax measures, legislative seats, special district seats, education board seats and council races in San Rafael, Novato, Larkspur, San Anselmo, Tiburon, Sausalito, Ross, Corte Madera and Fairfax.

The county elections office said it had already received 60,000 mail-in ballots as of Friday, or about a third of the ballots it sent out in early October to all registered voters.

The race with the highest profile in Marin County has been for the 12th District seat in the state Assembly. Marin County Supervisor Eric Lucan of Novato and and Rohnert Park Councilmember Jackie Elward are competing for the seat held by Damon Connolly, who is running for state Senate.

Both Lucan and Elward are Democrats. In the six-candidate primary election in June, Lucan finished with 28.3% of the vote, followed by Elward with 22.6%.

The race has gained attention because of the financial support that Lucan has received from Grow California, a political action committee funded by cryptocurrency billionaires Chris Larsen and Tim Draper. Lucan said he has no connection to the organization’s efforts on his behalf.

Elward, for her part, has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in support from a political action committee consisting mostly of unions. She also has benefited from ads run by TechEquity Action, an Oakland nonprofit opposing the influence of tech money in politics.

“For the past few months, we’ve had volunteers knocking on doors every Saturday and Sunday in both Marin and Sonoma counties,” Elward said. “We also have volunteers making calls from the labor union hall, and our unions and community organizations have been a big part of our voter outreach.”

Lucan, who also has received labor support, said his campaign planned canvassing over the weekend “with our team of interns, mostly high school and college students who have been canvassing with us for the past several months.”

“We’re certainly encouraging all of our supporters to reach out to their friends with text messages and social media content to remind folks to vote,” he said.

The two candidates have received more than $1 million in contributions combined since the beginning of the year, not including the expenditures by political action committees.

Connolly, a Democrat who lives in San Rafael, is competing with Republican Tief Gibbs of Novato for the District 2 state Senate seat held by Sen. Mike McGuire. McGuire, a Sonoma County resident and a Democrat, is running for the U.S. House of Representatives in California’s 1st Congressional District.

The district map was reshaped after California voters passed Proposition 50 last November. The measure, prompted by a redistricting initiative in Texas, gave California Democrats a green light to gerrymander the boundaries of five Republican-held congressional districts to favor Democratic candidates.

The redistricting altered the 1st Congressional District, seemingly paving the way for a McGuire victory. But it made life a bit more difficult for Rep. Jared Huffman of San Rafael, because the conservative counties of Shasta and Modoc were removed from the 1st District and attached to the 2nd District, which is represented by Huffman.

Huffman, a Democrat, is seeking a seventh term in a race against Robin Littau, a Republican who lives in Redding and edits Joyful Living magazine.

In the past, because of the dominance of Democrats in California politics, local Democrats have volunteered their services to help the party in other states. That is not the case in this election, said Pat Johnstone, who heads the Democratic Central Committee of Marin.

“This cycle there was plenty to do right here in California,” Johnstone said. “We passed Prop. 50 but then we have to win those seats.”

In other Marin elections, the two ballot measures attracting the most attention are both parcel taxes that will require a simple majority to pass because they were placed on the ballot by citizen’s initiative.

Measure CC proposes an annual parcel tax of 14 cents per square foot of improved building area to modernize MarinHealth Medical Center. The term is 30 years.

The initiative is vehemently opposed by Clayton Hess, one of the four candidates running for the Marin Healthcare District board, which oversees the medical center. Hess is an oncologist who runs an oncology screening and treatment center in Nevada County while living in San Rafael.

Hess says Measure CC is an unnecessary imposition on taxpayers. The other three board candidates — Jonathan Goff, Kendra Hoepper and Brian Su — said it is needed, particularly for state-mandated seismic upgrades to parts of the hospital campus.

Measure P proposes a parcel tax to raise about $12.5 million a year over 15 years to provide childcare scholarships to low- and middle-income children; boost the wages of childcare providers; and upgrade early care and education facilities. The rate would be 5 cents per building square foot.

The measure is opposed by Coalition of Sensible Taxpayers, but it has received strong backing from the North Bay Leadership Council, an employer-led public policy advocacy organization.

Joanne Webster, the council’s chief executive, has said that Marin’s shortage of affordable childcare makes it harder for businesses to recruit employees. If that is true, the Coalition of Sensible Taxpayers said, businesses should pay for the childcare, not residents.

A Marin County sales tax measure proposed to expand support for childcare in 2016 was supported by 63% of the voters, not enough for the two-thirds threshold to pass.

“We’ve already contacted more than 20,000 Marin voters through door-to-door canvassing and phone banking, and we’re continuing that work right through Election Day,” Webster said.