Inside UDJ by Editor K.C. Meadows

Wednesday night we finally got the results from the Nov. 7 election and the 12:30 a.m. results issued Nov. 7 basically held - as opposed to the results given out later that morning. Anyway, Tom Allman won the sheriff's race which I think is a surprise to a lot of people. That's not because Tom's not a good guy, he is, but I think Kevin Broin was seen to have the inside track. Tom's win says three things to me. Don't underestimate voters on the coast. Don't underestimate the pot smokers. And don't tear down your opponent in a close race. Broin had a deficit to work with right off the bat. He joined the race late and he was perceived as self-serving after saying he had no plans to run for office and then running for office. I think Broin clearly meant it when he said it, thinking his good friend Gary Hudson was safely in the race. But when Hudson dropped out and Broin jumped in, he was never really able to get past the impression a lot of people had that he had somehow gone back on a promise. Broin also started to get a bit mean toward the end of the campaign when he basically accused Allman of being the root of whatever problems were perceived - including dope growing - in the north county. As Acting Sheriff, Broin might have been better off taking a higher road. Beyond that, Allman is the better speaker. His approach is sincere, down to earth and folksy. And he had a knack for coming off as the underdog. Broin - although I consider him also a good guy - wasn't able to match Allman's charm and his all-business approach didn't carry with it enough personality. It will be interesting to see if Broin stays on at the Department. It's got to be hard to have to step aside for someone who you outranked and who you feel so strongly wasn't the best man for the job that you jumped int he race yourself rather than see him elected sheriff.
Gary Hudson is another question mark. He's back on duty, but will he stay?
As for the pot smokers, I know Allman doesn't want to be percieved as the "pot sherff" which is kind of how Tony Craver is remembered - he was the first sheriff in the county who really did turn a blind eye to mom and pop pot growers, medical or not (and he endorsed Allman). It will be interesting to see how Allman translates his desire to put Prop. 215 to one side and get deputies back to other law enforcement issues.

As for the DA's contest, it's really too bad we will never see the results of the Nov, 7 race between Meredith Lintott and her deceased opponent Norm Vroman. Wouldn't you just love to know? Lintott believes she won and it's got to be a real heartache for her to have to run again, now against who knows how many other Mendocino County attorneys which will include Keith Faulder for sure and may be Dep. DA Scott McMenomey, maybe primary loser Myron Sawicki (whose trashing of Lintott in the primary gives you an idea what kind of race he would run. I still say Sawicki is an unstable man who should not be elected to anything). A special election as order by the appellate court would likely be held the first Tuesday in March and I would expect candidates will have to sign up pretty quickly.
Today the supervisors are holding a special meeting to decide whether to appeal the court ruling on the DA's race. I think it's a no-brainer you don't. Lintott put herself at a bit of a disadvantage by joining the county's losing side of this court battle since the court decided Faulder was right. Now you have two attorneys running against one another and one of them just won a big case against the other.

I'll be back to talk about Phil Baldwin's win on the city council.

Posted by K.C. at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm getting more and more comments each day from people who still think there's something very wrong with the local election and that should greatly concern County Clerk Marsha Wharff. She blames us, the media, for creating the confusion, but at least I was glad to see that she told the supervisors Tuesday that she would take another look at whether she can reopen some polling places now that she has more handicapped accessible voting machines available for them. As for the count, she told me - from an assessor's conference out of town Wednesday - that it could well be after Thanksgiving before we have results and that it certainly would not be this week.

On another topic, I think the FBI, the DEA and whoever else was involved owes the family of the late Norm Vroman a big apology. Apparently, the "raid" they planned on his house, which they still won't officially confirm, was based on erroneous information from someone who doesn't know the difference between a gun and a silencer. Apparently you have to register silencers with a number just like each gun. So, Vroman's office had two of the assault weapons at issue, each fitted with a silencer, hence four separate registration numbers. So, seeing four numbers, the Feds assume there are four guns and start wondering where the other two guns are. They jump to the conclusion that they're at Vroman's house. I am told by a source I trust that the feds were called on it and essentially the answer was, "Oh." I also found out that there did indeed appear to be pot growing on Vroman's property and it was an illegal grow. Vroman had over 100 acres in the Hopland area and in one corner his family later found the evidence of a clandestine growing operation much like the ones agents find in the woods around here all the time. We're hoping to get someone to go on the record on all of this, but I'm not holding my breath.

After several weeks, we've decided to pull the community blog page for the time being. No one is using it. We will save it for times when there is likely to be lots of traffic, say, during winter weather events or another huge political issue.

Posted by K.C. at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mr Haley, all it takes for anyone to correct a misspelling is to simply call me. Your blog entry and your email both arrived at the same time so this is the first opportunity I've had to address it. Ukiah Sativa Morrison's letter weighed in at 40 column inches, much longer than any other daily newspaper in this area - or anywhere - is likely to publish. That we made a couple of spelling errors in a 1,000-word essay is regrettable but not intentional.
As for Ukiah Morrison's diatribe in a comment posted on the "Who is this guy" chapter of this blog, he is telling some real whoppers when he says that he ever heard me say the flooding in January was only good for profits. First of all, anyone who sits at Schats Thursday mornings or talks to me regularly knows that this newspaper's profits is not a topic on my lips. It's getting stories and finding out what's going on in town that I'm after. I am very proud of the coverage we had of the floods. Our reporters and photographers did a great job of reporting to the community the devastation no one was expecting over a holiday weekend. That's our job and one we take very seriously every day. What I HAVE said in the past and will say again, is that as much as people sometimes complain that they're tired of reading about crime and "bad" news, those are the newspapers that inevitably sell out.
Why Mr. Morrison has suddenly taken against us here I think has more to do with our disagreement about the value of large pot gardens in residential neighborhoods. He is an adamant supporter of unsuppressed marijuana growing and consumption and I appreciate his fervor, but I don't have to agree with him.

Posted by K.C. at 05:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This morning, after putting the Daily Journal to bed at 1 a.m., we came into the office to find that Marsha Wharff's office had reissued vote totals in the Ukiah City Council race showing FEWER total votes than she had posted at 12:30 a.m. this morning.
How do you come up with fewer votes?
At Marsha's office they don't know.
There's speculation that perhaps some votes got counted twice last night. That's not very comforting.
Also, Marsha and her crew went home this morning and, Marsha, like Scarlet O'Hara, declared she would think about it tomorrow.
I don't know how, when you have two important races hanging out there - city council and sheriff - that you go home.
Also, why don't they know how many uncounted ballots are still out there?
I got an email from a voter in the Village of Mendocino last night who complained that when we went to a local polling place to hand in his absentee ballot, he was told to simply throw into an open basket sitting on a nearby table. No lid, no procedure, just "OK, throw it over there."
Some people, when they went to a poll to hand in an absentee ballot were asked for ID before leaving it. Others were not. Why?
Somehow, I fell less confident about these elections with each successive experience with mail-in voting.

A banner appeared over State Street in Ukiah yesterday hosted by Ukiah Valley Association for Habilitation which had some kind of unreadable message on it and then, clearly readable, a message to read more about it in the Daily Journal. UVAH did not have our permission to put our name on their banner and if you're one of the people out there who thought it was some kind of message from us about mudslinging in the recent election (that's how weird the banner appears) it was not. We had nothing to do with it. We did agree to do a story with UVAH about some of the successes they've had with their employment programs for the handicapped and that story is scheduled next week.

Someone suggested to me that I Google Patrick Bateman and I did and found that it is the name of a character in a movie called American Psycho, who is, among other things, a stocks and bonds guy. That's when I decided that our blogger is perhaps riffing off of that for whatever personal reasons he has and banned him. He has returned with more of the same and I will continue to ban him because he is not blogging in the spirit of communication. I let him rant about me and this newspaper several times before coming to that conclusion and as many of you know I have no problem with people who disagree with me or the Daily Journal. I never put editor's replies on letters that simply criticize us or a story. I put notes on letters that challenge why we did something a certain way because I believe it helps clarifiy the things we do and the decisions we make every day and helps make us more transparent.

Posted by K.C. at 02:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)