My 2022 Santa Cruz Primary Ballot
Overview
It’s election time again. As usual, I’m a bit late getting my ballot together and putting together this writeup. That said, I’ve finally gone through all of the propositions, researched most of the candidates, and made my decisions. I’ve listed each of the ballot propositions (which are specific to Santa Cruz), a link to the the informations page about the proposition, my vote , and a (hopefully short) blurb about why I voted how I did.
Further down, I’ve included the list of statewide and local offices on the ballot, along with some links to the some of candidate pages, and, of course my vote. As far as my choices in these races go, I’ve tried to choose strategically, in an effort to keep the crazies (ie. Republicans) off of the November ballot. This means I often chose the. person I perceived to be the second most populate Democrat, provided they were a serious candidate, even if I might not ultimately vote for them in the fall.
Going through all of the candidates is a time consuming chore. I ignored most, but not all, non-Democrats, and it still took me forever to do some minimal research on the candidates. In the future if I ever hear anyone complain about political parties, I’m going to invite them to look over a CA open-primary ballot, where it would take a week to do research on each candidate. We certainly have some problems with political parties in this country, but it sure saves a lot of time to be able to just vote straight D (or in this case to vote for the establishment D choice).
Measure B — Hotel Tax
• Mild No
I don’t care too much about this one, and I understand that Santa Cruz needs the money, but I’m just generally against taxing our visitors. IMHO, it’s a form of taxation-without-representation. In this case, the listed uses for the revenue aren’t even things that the visitors make use of. It might be understandable for visitors to pay for traffic mitigation, water services and similar, but why should our visitors fund mental health services, homelessness programs and affordable housing?
Measure C— Single Use Cup Revenue
• Strong YES
So we instituted a sort-of tax whereby customers were forced to pay 25 cents for each cup they used, and the business owners got to keep the revenue for the tax? That’s just bizarre. It actually incentivizes business owners to use plastic cups. WTF? I’d be a strong yes if the county took the entire 25 cents, and I’m certainly a strong yes for the 12.5 cents.
Measure D— Reduce/Eliminate Rail from General Plan
• Strong NO
Ahhh. Measure D, If ever there was an issue where social media was used to generate misinformation, outrage and generally overblown passion relative to its actual effects, Measure D is that issue. It’s been especially discouraging see some practical, liberal minded people whom I generally agree get enticed by the notion of an easy trail without doing the hard thinking about what that would entail. I think was, at least partially, due to the tactics of the hard-core NO proponents. Those folks used a lot of the same type of language and daemonization of anyone who disagrees with them that we’ve seen in too many recent elections. I wonder if those folks will ever realize they’re driving people away who they should be bringing in.
Anyway, my own progression from Mild No to Strong NO was based on my own reading and critical thinking of the measure rather than the bombardment of links, posts, and memes I encountered.
The main thing that opened up my eyes and forced me to think hard on this was when I came across the changes in part 3.7.7 “Rail Planning Around the Hill” portion of the measure, Specifically, the removal of ‘Item c’, which directs the county to participate in Los Gatos to Santa Cruz rail study. Regardless of what one thinks of the usefulness of a Watsonville to Santa Cruz rail, it’s hard to deny that a Los Gatos to Santa Cruz line would be transformational. For some reason, Measure D removes the mere participation in a study of that possibility from our General Plan. After I read that section, and I took a closer look at the entire measure, I realized that this really is an anti-rail proposition more than it’s about a great trail.
The other thing that moved me from Mild NO to Strong NO is the realization that its just wrong. It’s wrong to throw away the hard work of the people who have worked so hard on the rail trail. It’s wrong to use the corridor purchased with money intended for rail for another purpose. It’s wrong to give up on a clean infrastructure project because it’s hard and takes a long time. It’s wrong to let the very people who are partially responsible for a project’s difficulties win by claiming the project is too difficult. It’s just plain wrong.
I could probably write pages and pages about Measure D, but I think most folks have already seen most of the arguments. I’ll just add that I think this is one of those issues where we need to take a more long-sighted view. Instead of worrying about whether the train will be built or is needed within the next 10 years, we need to think about what Santa Cruz county and California will look like 30 or 50 years in the future, even if we’re not around to see that future. Personally, I’d like future California to have less cars, less highways, and more rail.
Measure E— 6 Districts with a Mayor
• Strong NO
I’m of the opinion that the biggest problem with our democracy on the federal level is that we are the least representative of any western democracy. This was caused by the arbitrary capping of the House at 435 members. Most of the problems we’re seeing at the federal level are due to that small number of representatives. As bad as that is, though, it’s worse at the state and local level. Los Angeles county, which is bigger than most states, is run by 5 supervisors.
Anyway, I believe more representation is better than less representation. If measure E fails, there will be 7 districts. 7 districts is better than 6.
Almost as important is that, by amending the City Charter, as Measure E does, we’ll remove the incentive to pass a better amendment in the future. I would like to see the City Charter amended in such a way that an at-large mayor has powers & responsibilities beyond that of the other council people. More importantly, I’d like to see a formula for increasing the number of districts as our population increases. Measure E doesn’t do either of those things, so I’m a NO.
Measure F — Increase the Sales & Use Tax
• Mild NO
As a Tip O’Neill tax-and-spend liberal, I normally support tax increases such as this one. With inflation at a 40 years high, though, it is just a really bad time to increase sales taxes. It’s hard to believe our City Council is seriously proposing compounding inflationary price increases with a sales tax increase. Why do they want to make the effects of inflation worse, especially when that very inflation should already be increasing revenue to some extent?
Beyond that, over the years our councils seem to justify every crackdown against street performers, loitering, and various other behaviors as being bad for business and our ability to compete with Capitola. Those very same councils, however, seem to think increasing sales taxes (ie. prices) don’t have any affect on businesses ability to compete.
Also, I’d prefer it if this tax was earmarked towards specific items, rather than just going into the general fund. As part of the general fund, it will go towards the same priorities we always spend revenues on, and the things we really need will continue to be ignored. What I’d really like to see as part of any proposed tax increase are goals, metrics, and a report-card.
Lastly, I’ll add that I do not agree with the ‘Argument against Measure F’ claim that sales taxes are automatically regressive because people with different income levels pay the same tax on the same item. In fact, the determination of whether sales tax is regressive can only be made by comparing the amount of sales tax paid over the course of an entire year by people of different income levels. I haven’t seen any studies that have done this, but I suspect the result would be that, due to different purchasing habits, sales taxes are less regressive than some people claim. I’m still a NO, however.
3rd District Supervisor
• Amy Chen Mills
I think any one of these three candidates will be an improvement over Ryan Coonerty. That said, I’ve been disappointed in the performance of Justin Cummings on the City Council, and Shebreh Kalantari Johnson, well, her views on housing generally differ from mine. That leaves Mills, who, based on her website, seems to share my values.
One argument against Mills that I’ve heard is that a vote for her will remove votes from Cummings. Normally, I’d be receptive to that argument, but that’s not how this election works. If none of the candidates receive more than 50% of the votes, there will be a runoff in November. I’ll vote with Cummings at that point, but, for now, I’m with Mills.
Here are the links:
- Amy Chen Mills — https://www.amichenmills.com
- Justin Cummings — https://www.cummingsforsupervisor.com
- Shebreh Kalantari Johnson — https://www.shebreh.org
State Assembly 28th District
• Rob Rennie
I think Pellerin will ultimately win, but Rennie seems like a serious candidate, so I’ll choose him in the hopes of keeping the Republican off of the November ballot.
Candidate websites:
- Gail Pellerin — https://www.gailpellerinforassembly.com
- Rob Rennie — https://www.robrennie.com
- Joe Thompson — https://joeforassembly.org/
- Liz Lawler — Republican — https://lizlawler4ad28.com
Superintent of Public Instruction
• Marco Amaral
This should be a boring election, but, with the recent Republican attacks on our education system, it isn’t. Once again, I’ll vote for the second place Dem in the hopes of keeping the crazies of the November ballot. In this case, I really like Amaral anyway.
Candidate websites:
- Tony Thurmond — https://www.tonythurmond.com
- Marco Amaral — https://www.amaral4sup2022.com
- Joseph Campbell — Montesorri — https://www.josephguycampbellstatesuperintendent.org/
- Ainye Long — https://ainyelong.com
- Lance Christensen — Republican — https://lancechristensen.com/e
- Jim Gibson — Republican — https://www.electgibson.com/
- George Yang — Republican — https://yang2022.com/
Lt. Governor
• William Saake
Kounalakis will win in a landslide, so I’ll choose the other Democrat, whose positions I generally agree with.
Candidate websites:
- William Saake — https://skee4gov.com
- Elini Kounalakis — https://www.eleniforca.com
- Jeffrey Morgan — https://morgan4ca.com
Controller
• Ron Galperin
Yet another strategic vote for the #2 Dem.
Candidate websites:
- Ron Galperin — https://ronforcalifornia.com
- Malia Cohen — https://maliacohen.us
- Steve Glazer — https://www.senatorglazer.com
- Yvonne Yiu — https://www.yvonneyiu.com
Treasurer
• No vote
Fiona Ma has been irresonsible in this post. I actually think Andrew Do, the Republican, might be a good choice here, and I almost voted for him. He has his own scandals, though. As such, I just left this one blank.
Candidate websites:
- Fiona Ma — https://www.fionama.com
- Andrew Do — Republican — http://voteandrewdo.com
- Meghann Adams — https://adams4treasurer.com
- Jack Guerrero — Republican — https://www.jack4treasurer.com
Governor
• Gavin Newsom
He’s done a good job, and there are no serious Democrat or Green candidates.
Senator
• Alex Padilla (on both questions)
Again, there’s no other serious Democrat on the ballot. I do like Akinyemi Agbede, but he can’t come close to getting on the November ballot, so I’ll stick with Padilla,
Attorney General
• Ron Bonta
He’s the only Dem, and the Green party guy is too extreme for my liking.
Candidate websites:
- Rob Bonta — https://robbonta.com
- Dan Kapelovitz — https://kapelovitz.com
Conclusion
That’s all I got. I’ve left out a couple of obvious choices (Jimmy Panetta vs. no-one), but this ballot is really long, Measure D is a rabbit hole, and there were a lot of candidates.
