'They elected who?!'
It's usually foolish to try to predict local election results. Trying to interpret them afterward is often just as hard. I'd say that's even more true than usual this week, with plenty of winners and losers that defy explanation.
* In Pomona, which elected Xavier Alvarez over an incumbent for a Three Valleys water board seat two years ago, voters turned out Fred Lantz (husband of Paula) for John Mendoza, a well-meaning but shaky challenger.
* In Ontario, voters mixed and matched, choosing one incumbent, Sheila Mautz, and one challenger, Debra Porada. Finishing a distant fourth was incumbent Jason Anderson, for no discernible reason. Coming in third was Paul Vincent Avila.
* In the Ontario-Montclair School District, Avila booster Moe Mendoza was the top vote-getter. Avila, of all people, is on his way to building a board majority.
Many of you will have your own takes on races that didn't go the way you thought, or desired. A lot of people in Upland don't care for John Pomierski as mayor, but to my mind, Ray Musser never articulates a very good case for replacing him. So Pomierski's re-election wasn't much of a surprise.
Many in Pomona will be gnashing their teeth about having Elliott Rothman as mayor, and I wouldn't argue with them. However, I saw it coming, after Norma Torres told me last month that polling showed Rothman would walk away with the election. What remains puzzling is why a guy who evinces so little interest in showing up on time for council meetings, or paying attention during them, wants to be mayor. But that's a separate issue.
Blame for some of the wonkier decisions falls to an electorate, including a lot of first-time voters, who are uninformed on local issues. That's the only explanation that makes sense for Ontario City Council, for example.
Not that the Daily Bulletin's words should be gospel, far from it, but the percentage of voters who follow our news coverage and editorial stands (which are based on face-to-face interviews with the candidates) would seem to be rather low.
To consider yourself an informed voter because you relied on campaign mailers and the candidate statements in the voter guide is, frankly, sad. Perhaps we need to do a better job of covering campaigns and organizing the content on our website, but you can't help but think most people simply don't care to become informed, either before or after elections.
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A journalist for more than two decades, David Allen has been writing a column for the Daily Bulletin since 1997 and blogging since 2007.He lives in Claremont.
E-mail David here or read columns here.
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As for people being "informed" enough to vote, let me just say this. Ahem...
After voting in more elections than I will admit to, I have come to the following conclusion. Many people, far too many, base their opinions on mailers and commercials (yes, the same kinds of ads that sell toothpaste). I KNOW people who believe the skits on SNL as though it were news. I've seen people, old enough to know better, say they just had to vote for so and so because he's just so handsome.
Frankly I'd like to see them outlaw all the ads, mailers, commercials, etc., and just have the media report a candidate's history, voting record and whatnot. That way a person would have to actually pay attention in order to form an opinion. I would love to know how much was actually spent on all the ads, mailers, yard signs, conventions, polls and all the rest of that...um, garbage by all of the candidates. I can think of at least a couple of other things that be be done with all that money. Just my opinion.
[And thank you for sharing it, Dee. -- DA]
"Not that the Daily Bulletin's words should be gospel, far from it, but the percentage of voters who follow our news coverage and editorial stands (which are based on face-to-face interviews with the candidates) would seem to be rather low."
WHAT election coverage?!? Pomona faced a major turning point in the City's history, with half the Council and the Mayor up for election and half of those seats open. And the Daily Bulletin ran a grand total of, I think, SIX stories on the candidates over the last three months. The only stories that contained ANY substance were your piece on Councilmember expense reports and the story about Rothman's arrest.
Can you cite a single article where the Bulletin provided, in any level of detail, substantive contrast between the candidates that a reader could use when deciding how to vote?
Did the Bulletin ever note anything about Hunter's work for the schools over the years? Or Rothman's work to protect Pomona's only remaining strip club? Seems those both reflect on their visions for the City and would have been useful for readers to hear about.
And note that the Bulletin's website and search engine are such a mess that it's virtually impossible to even find those few six stories. Try clicking on "News" and "Pomona" and see whether you learn more about the City's future or about someone's cute dog. I even get to your columns by linking to your blog and clicking through from there, because I can't find them from the Bulletin's home page.
I am saddened by my City's choice of Mayor. We all know why Elliot wants to be Mayor, but no one will say it. But the Bulletin certainly did not help create a more informed electorate this time around.
[You raise excellent points. Candidly, I've had similar concerns about the usefulness of ALL our election coverage of recent years, whether it be the traditional one wrapup story on all the candidates, each given two or three paragraphs, or a story about an election forum, in which each candidate gets maybe two lines.
A "solution," as such, isn't so simple, however. We try to treat all candidates fairly and give them equal space, under the assumption that it's not for us to pick and choose who is "better" or "more credible" (voters often surprise us, after all) other than on the Opinion page.
It hurts when a city like Pomona fields so many candidates. Between mayor and the three council seats, there were 19 candidates, all of whom had to be interviewed. Meanwhile, we've got a dozen or more races or school bonds to cover, plenty of non-election stories to cover as well, and a shortage of newsprint and reporters.
As a journalist, I've come to learn that providing, or expecting, Ultimate Truth in election stories is an impossible dream -- candidates, and their supporters, often simply have different visions. But yes, we could have done better. -- DA]
Appreciate the response, and glad to hear about the shared concern.
I definitely understand about the lack of print space. But this is an online world now. 2008 saw every major national news organization start blogs where their political beat reporters ran items too short or lacking a "hook" for the print or TV segments. But they still ran the news for those interested enough to read them.
Time for the DB to catch up? How about city-specific news blogs, that could run all types of stories from Pomona (or Upland, or wherever)? Do Pomona residents really care that much about Rancho Cucamonga news? Or vice versa? See the SB Sun's "SB Sun Now" or similar efforts by the San Gabriel Valley Tribune for similar efforts within your own business family of papers.
Online is an opportunity -- one the DB is sadly wasting. With FC Blog down for the campaign, I had hoped DB would step up. I was disappointed.
[Actually, we do have city-specific news blogs for most of our cities: RC, Upland, Pomona, Claremont, Ontario and the Chino Valley. They're not being publicized very well (another opportunity wasted, perhaps), but they're there; check the blog tile on the DB home page or the blog roundups that run in the print edition (the RC Now one ran Sunday, for instance).
The fact remains, though, that we have a newspaper with space that needs to be filled daily, and scarcely enough people to fill it, and print is where probably 90 percent of our readers are looking. Hence, that's where most of our attention goes -- although any reader of our print edition is bludgeoned daily with encouragement to visit our website, and some content appears on the web first.
Hopefully by the next election we'll have a better idea how to integrate online and the print edition to present more in-depth coverage. This may be wishful thinking. -- DA]
Thanks for the tip about the City blogs -- who knew?!? And poor Pomona is neglected: the list of IVDB blogs only mentions Claremont and RC. I happened to notice one of the "recent posts" mentioned an "Upland Now" blog so I clicked on that, replaced "uplandnow" with "pomonanow" in the URL address bar, and there it was. Cool! But not exactly well-publicized . . .