AUDIO:

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TOM WHEELER:

Welcome to the Econews Report. I'm your host this week, Tom Wheeler, executive director of EPIC, the Environmental Protection Information Center, and I'm joined by my friend and colleague Caroline Griffith, Executive director of the Northcoast Environmental Center. Hey, Caroline. Matt Simmons, staff attorney at EPIC. Hey, Matt. Colin Fiske, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities. Hey, Colin.

COLIN FISKE:

Hello.

WHEELER:

And we are also joined by the editor of the Lost Coast Outpost, our most esteemed local, local, newspaper ... what do you call yourself?

HANK SIMS:

A website?

WHEELER:

Is it a blog and you feel like blogs are still 2005?

CAROLINE GRIFFITH:

Media outlet.

SIMS:

Media outlet. That's good. People can people say blog as a term of disparagement, but I don't much care.

WHEELER:

I say media empire because because this radio show also appears on the Lost Coast media empire as well. You may be listening to this on. Thank you for hosting the Econews report. All right, so this is Hank Sims. I am really a radio professional everybody as you can tell.

All right, so we are talking about the election results. It is Wednesday the 16th. We will presumably get another ballot drop this Friday and find out more information about local races. So the, the information that you're hearing now may be outdated and so apologies, apologies, apologies. This is as best we understand at 10:07 on Wednesday morning. What local races Caroline were you really particularly watching this election?

GRIFFITH:

I think one of the biggest ones was for the clerk recorder and registrar of voters, which I think people are kind of shocked that that was like one of our hot ticket races this time around. And as an election nerd, I'm very interested in who's going to be administering our elections, but especially with the, all the election denialism happening and right now it looks like with the latest drop that Juan Pablo Cervantes is leading in that race over. Tiffany Hunt Nielsen and Juan Pablo has worked in the elections office for for years, is kind of a fixture there and as somebody, I worked on the campaign for rain choice voting in Eureka and having talked with juan a lot about that, it's exciting to have the prospect of somebody in our elections office who also just really, really loves elections and all the different ways to administer elections and really takes it seriously.

WHEELER:

Juan is a wonderful elections nerd, he really enjoys having increased voter turnout and geeking out on ways that he can make sure that we expand the ballot, so ... exciting times. One was also seen as the more progressive of the two candidates. Tiffany Hunt Nielsen comes from kind of a Humboldt Realtors, real estate background and drew a lot of support from the more conservative establishment of Humboldt County politics, although this is technically a nonpartisan race as I think just about everything in Humboldt County is a nonpartisan race. So one is in the lead. So, Hank, in your experience in kind of looking at the last couple of elections. I think that we are seeing changing voting patterns and changing universal vote by mail, which we now have in California has kind of shifted the election where it used to be, conservatives may have voted early, have gotten those ballots in by vote by mail and then you tend to see kind of a liberal bump for late breaking ballots. Do you have any predictions on on how remaining ballots might attend? Liberal or conservative?

SIMS:

Yeah, I mean, I think that we only have one data point to go by after after the pandemic or you know, there are, there are the 2000 elections to where those kind of where things were Still sort of influx. But now I think you're right that the pandemic and universal vote by mail has changed voting patterns somewhat. But what we've seen so far is that still these last counted votes tend to be more blue as they say, than than than the vote as a whole. So I think Juan Pablo Cervantes has about 53% of the vote right now. So I think he's in a pretty safe place when the of the remaining votes counted.

WHEELER:

So the, the chance for a conservative pickup of a seat here in Humboldt County is going to be within Eureka where john Fullerton currently has a small lead over liberal Mario Fernandez Caroline. Do you have any thoughts on on that race as somebody who lives in Eureka.

GRIFFITH:

Yeah. You know, it is this is this one is really interesting and I think that it will be Hank said, we don't have a lot of data points for how we really predict a lot of these. But I do know that as folks that I know we're out canvassing for different campaigns right before the election, the weekend before, there were a lot of people who hadn't voted yet. So there's still all of these ballots coming in. And if you look at the more the most recent report from the elections office, it's a pretty small number of ballots that have been counted in that race. I mean, the difference right now, Fullerton is ahead. I think just by a couple of dozen, but it really is just a, it's a pretty small percentage of actual voters there that have been counted yet. So it'll be interesting to see with this next report on, on friday, like you said, tom this might be outdated by the time folks are hearing it and could be a different situation because it's really hard to say. And this was a big one. I think, you know, this is the third time that john Fullerton has run for city council. I think someone can correct me here if I'm wrong, he's definitely run before and never won

WHEELER:

and he poured a lot of money into this campaign. It was a an aggressive campaign by Fullerton and I don't want to talk too much smack. but I think that Mario had other stuff going on his life and didn't run as strong of a campaign and I think that we're seeing the fruits of that kind of disparity, both in spending and gather the effort by, by the two sides. So it's going to be a bit of a nail biter Before this show, I did some math looking at previous turnout in this ward, it is a ward that typically votes pretty well. I think in the 2018 election we had something like 76% turnout of registered voters, which is high for elections here in Humboldt County So if we see a large turnout and if Mario starts to improve on his returns currently, he's only winning 51 49 in vote by mail ballots. If we assume that the majority of these ballots, laughter are vote by mail, he can, he can pull it out, but it's gonna, it's gonna be tight matt, I know that you are an arcade a resident, you spend way too much time going to things like the planning commission. And we had an open race in Arcata for two city council seats, one of which was, well, we had two incumbents on the ballot. We had Brett Watson and Meredith Matthews, how's it looking in Arcata? So MEREDITH

MATT SIMMONS:

Matthews, well, I guess she wasn't elected the first time she was appointed, so she won her first election for city council and Brett Watson lost his re election and is going to be replaced by Kimberly white planning Commissioner and member of kenya, which is really great because she brings representation to Valley West and her experience from the planning commission. And so I think for folks who have been watching Brett Watson's saga, well, I won't say but he won't be on the city council anymore.

WHEELER:

I mean, had he been elected, it would have been some really great fodder for the Lost Coast Outpost. Hank Do you wanna do you wanna give a brief rundown of Delilah, Goldy Goldstein and your, your reporting on this race?

SIMS:

Well, I just, I will just say that there were a great number of sort of sock puppet accounts that made a splash in in the world in the days leading up to the Arcata election and that one thing that they all had in common, they're young women who shared names of people currently associated with Arcade, a city hall and that they were all very much in support of Brett Watson, strangely, it is a little strange and a little sad maybe. But yeah, that all that, that's if that was a campaign that seems to have failed. I guess I can say

SIMMONS:

something else I can say about the Arcade a race is the controversial things going on in Arcata right now is the gateway area plan. This plan to zone areas around just north of boulevard and the creamery district and I think a lot of the opponents of the Gateway plan had vowed to make this election sort of a

WHEELER:

referendum on the Gateway

SIMMONS:

a referendum on the Gateway. And we just didn't see that at all. Right, MEREDITH Matthews has been strongly in favor of it and won her election handily. And the other candidates in the race who had come out vehemently against the Gateway plan, didn't do so well. And so I think it's a strong sign that there is support for that plan in the community

WHEELER:

Colin how does this affect the votes going forward for Gateway? If this is kind of one of the big things in your town also, Arcata, how are you anticipating this election might change or it will change the final disposition of the gateway plan?

FISKE:

That's an interesting question. I don't I'm not sure that we really know the votes on the gateway of the city council are such that two of the five council members have had to recuse themselves. So there's only three members who can vote on the Gateway and two of those seats were were up for elections. So I don't I don't think we necessarily know the answer to that, but it may not have changed the dynamics on the council in terms of the Gateway vote very much, but that remains to be seen. I also wanted to just highlight something that matt mentioned in passing, which is maybe someone can fact check me on this, but I think that Kimberly white is the first elected council member from the Valley West neighborhood in Arcata. And so that's kind of a historic change in Arcata,

WHEELER:

which is fantastic. I mean Valley West has, in my view kind of been the dumping ground for Arcata. It's the area where the chain stories were allowed allowed to be established and fast food places and whatnot. And so it's good to get more representation for that neighborhood on the council. One other race I want to highlight is humble community services district, which is kind of perhaps one that may not have been on many people's minds this election, but we had a a shake up there Caroline. Do you want to report on that race?

GRIFFITH:

Absolutely, yeah. And that's one that, you know, the community services district, a lot of people forget about them, but they actually do have a lot of control over land use issues. And so the humble community services district for a while has had very little turnover on its board of directors. There's been a lot of folks who have been on there for a long time, many connections with developers, land developers. One of those folks who's been on there for while is Alan banjo who I think that folks would recognize the name from his, his, his scandal on the planning commission. He's also Humboldt County planning commissioner, there's been some issues with his conduct, they're the things that he has said in regards to local tribes and also just the pretty blatant appearance of impropriety and working, working alongside those folks that they're supposed to be regulating as planning commissioners. So he is also in the humble community services district and appears that he has been unseated when somebody, a local resident julie Ryan who works for, she's a lot of folks who would know her as Julian really, she was a DJ on K H S you for a long time. I've been in the community a long time in the punk rock scene, working with food, not bombs and groups like that. She now works for food for people and has an environmental planning background and just as a, as a citizen who is a ratepayer in the humble community services district, decided to throw her hat in the ring and it looks like she is on board to take a seat in that race.

WHEELER:

Alright, so, no, I know of at least two former bunks or, or I'm not sure if they would call themselves former punks who are in elected office. We have, of course Mike Wilson who was in a number of bands, punk bands, once upon a time whose names I will never remember, sorry, mike and julie, so an exciting time for punks, I suppose. Well, you

GRIFFITH:

know, and I think that we kind of forget that that is also an era, right? These are folks from gen x who now, like the youth would see as being old people they like are the establishment. So it's, it's time for them to take that place.

WHEELER:

Old person Hank Sims. Do you want to comment on that?

SIMS:

I would say punk didn't die. It just took over the government. Right?

WHEELER:

Yeah. Right. All right. Let's expand our borders a little bit and talk about statewide stuff. I think all of the statewide races were pretty unsurprising the Democratic candidate won for all major statewide races. We don't see anything kind of interesting in other local races. Congressman Hoffman is cruising to reelection as is Senator McGuire as is assembly member would. So no surprises there. I think the ballot initiatives this year were interesting. Does anybody have a favorite ballot initiative that they want to talk about and Break down for us? If not, I'll get started on prop 30.

GRIFFITH:

My favorite as somebody who is capable of getting pregnant. I was pretty stoked to see Californians and unsurprisingly turned out to codify reproductive rights in the constitution.

WHEELER:

Yeah. And let's look at the national stage briefly, we had reproductive rights on the ballot in a number of states, either in protecting the right to an abortion or other ballot initiatives in more conservative states that were attempting to enshrine the right to life, so to speak of the unborn fetus within their laws and I think almost universally if I'm not mistaken, the, the pro choice crowd won the day even in more conservative states. So if we look back to the Kansas special election, that kind of shocked the world, shocked the country a couple months ago. That wasn't an aberration. The effects of roe v wade are still being felt in politics and I think largely saved the democrats in many races and gave them a platform to run on against their conservative rivals.

FISKE:

Although I will say tom and something that I think is interesting and I won't try to speculate on why this is that in a lot of those same areas that voted essentially pro choice voted for candidates who are anti choice. So maybe there's some insight there into the american electorate, but I'm not expert enough to see it.

WHEELER:

Sure. Econews We are talking about the election results and what they might mean for environmental issues here in Humboldt County and in our country. Alright, so other propositions prop 30 which would have asked the mega rich to fund things like E. V charging stations, electric vehicle charging stations, wildfire response in the state went down kind of surprisingly, this seems like a wonderful combination of facts for for success in California. Right, let's stick it to the rich, let's do cool stuff like fungi v chargers, but it lost and I think a large part of the reason that lost was that governor newsom our democratic governor came out against it with a very progressive frame for for for opposing taxes on the mega rich matt. Do you want to talk about that? I don't know,

SIMMONS:

I'm trying to redefine the word progressive in my head to have it matched what Newsom well

WHEELER:

it wasn't. But his talking point was that look this initiative got a ton of money by lift the car sharing service because under California law lift and Uber and other car sharing services need to have 100% E. V. S by 2030. So five years ahead of the rest of the state where we have, you know, a statewide mandate for all new car purchases to be electric by 2035. And these pressuring companies are nervous because there's frankly not the infrastructure there yet. And so they invested a lot of money to try to get infrastructure so that their business would not be negatively impacted. And Governor Newsom took the spin that this was large, wealthy capitalists blah that came to try to buy an initiative.

SIMMONS:

My read that might have worked better if the people on the other side weren't the large wealthy people who would have been getting tax to pay for all this, right? It was wasn't a tax on lift users, right? It was a tax on millionaires like like the absurdly wealthy to pay for this large, basically that was who lined up against it was large financial interests and Governor Newsom which I think reveals something about where his loyalties lie if he's willing to buck the rest of the Democratic Party to fight them on this. And longtime

WHEELER:

listeners of this show will know that I really dislike Governor Newsom and I think that he's a fraud and a fake environmentalist quote me on that Governor Newsom, I hope you run for president, I hope you lose badly Carolina.

GRIFFITH:

Well, I just think it's really interesting that, like, the whole, the lift lift funded this lift is bad thing worked this time around, when that was really the argument against, you know, in 2020 lyft and Uber funded ballot measure to codify gig workers and the gig economy, which was something that was, is, you know, has been argh, probably not good for workers and was very much opposed. And one of the big things that people there, the opposition to it was saying, oh, this is funded by these mega corporations, right? And so it's just interesting how that argument worked this time, but didn't work then, and I think it kind of shows that the big, the big operative force and this is also the ultra rich who are being taxed, though, I would say another, an added layer to this, that there was some, there was not agreement on the left about this, and there were definitely some unions too, I know, a lot of folks go to for endorsements for ballot measures, different unions who were opposed to this as well, and it seemed like their argument was really, yes, let's tax the ultra rich, but let's not

WHEELER:

just for

GRIFFITH:

right, right? Let's let's if we're gonna tax rich, let's make sure that we're distributing the benefits to more folks also comes back and we just keep every year we have some sort of like tax tax the rich initiative until it wins. I'll also

SIMMONS:

just say that despite California's liberal reputation, we actually have been very against taxes and a lot of our propositions over the years. I mean the howard Jarvis taxpayers association is pretty good at getting people to vote against taxes on people richer than them. I mean just two years ago we had the like partial repeal of prop 13 which would have taxed like commercial properties over I think it was like two or $3 million in value. And we got commercials about how this would hurt like small farmers and etcetera. And like as someone who's in favor of taxes and thinks that we should have taxes that pay for welfare and other things and TVs and all the good things. It's a little bit disappointing when the California electorate doesn't like them.

WHEELER:

I will also give my hot take that. I think that California's proposition system is entirely stupid. It is just a way for people who have a boatload of money to get something that that they like onto the ballot and then people who are not educated on the subject matter, get to like way in based on like the commercials that dominate in their area. It doesn't seem like this is like the way that good laws or good governance works to me. But but that's like an antidemocratic take, I guess so. Call me a fascist.

SIMMONS:

Yeah, it's that or every two years we keep fighting about a dialysis proposition like

WHEELER:

right, so dialysis went down, we also saw internet gambling on sports, go down. Other kind of common denominators between the propositions that lost. Where that voters saw that there was some sort of a rich funder who will who will be interested in in the outcome, putting this on the ballot and rejecting that Colin I'm not so

FISKE:

sure personally that that that Was the common denominator for prop 30 at least because I think when you look at the polling, it looked like it was very popular until newsom you know, came out against it and it dropped substantially. And I guess my interpretation is not so much that it was his message as it was the messenger. And and also to Caroline's point about some division among unions and other progressive blocks that although Newsom may be unpopular among some of us, he is quite popular with The Democratic base in California and and is viewed apparently as a credible messenger and these kind of issues. And so I think that that it may have been more who was saying it than what was being said about prop 30 and I guess I'll just comment as a former Florida resident lived in a state where the only way that anything progressive happened was through a citizen referendum ballot measures. I have a somewhat different take on that process. But I do see your point

WHEELER:

on the local

GRIFFITH:

level, on the, on the microcosmic level, the ballot initiatives are much more democratic than at the state level, I think, because that's where that's where the massive amounts of money get involved

WHEELER:

and actually back to the local level, I know nothing about things like Ferndale City Council or Fortuna City Council Hank do you have any reads on those races or or are they also inscrutable to you? They're they're

SIMS:

a little bit inscrutable to me. I'm ashamed to say that, you know, we don't have the as a news organization the time and resources to do absolutely everything that we'd like to do. But I was kind of taken since since since most of you, I think either way worker living in Arcata, I was kind of taken by the result of the or the earth flag proposition Arcata of all of all the towns in the world voted down an effort to put the Earth flag at the top of the flagpole. Why is that? I don't know, you you spend more time in Arcata than I do. Tell me.

WHEELER:

That was. That was a strange one. Well, we had the local chair of the Green Party come out in opposition. I I imagine that he was a vet and and and took offense at any flag flying higher than the US flag. So I I think this also speaks to to voters natural instincts on propositions which is to vote No, I I think that all things being equal, no votes just just will happen if you're confused or if you don't really have a strong belief, maybe that's what it's about. I I don't know. I I think that Eureka is going to quickly overtake Arcade as the most liberal jurisdiction in Humboldt County That's my prediction. So maybe this is just a foreshadowing what is to come in Arcata.

FISKE:

I'll offer my anecdotal take on that. Which is that a lot of the sort of stalwart progressives saw it as a non issue because it was symbolic and not, you know, not impactful and perhaps didn't vote on it or voted maybe even voted node just out of spite. And I also think that the opposition planted the seeds of doubt about the legality and you know, legal fights and those those can be very effective with propositions I think.

WHEELER:

But what a weird weird thing to be voting on. Again, I think propositions are kind of dumb, let's just have more things be decided by our legislatures and whatever. I'll stop with my hot take. We're getting near the end of the show and we haven't even touched the collapse of the red wave that everyone told us was coming. We saw the democrats significantly overperform expectations. It is looking like. Or maybe it is determined that we are going to, we the Democratic Party is going to hold control of the Senate and might even pick up a seat in the Senate. It is projected the democrats are going to lose the House, although only just narrowly. What does this mean for the state of the national conversation on environmental issues? Since this is an environmental podcast, purportedly Colin Yeah, go ahead.

FISKE:

I was just gonna say, presumably it means that nothing will happen in Congress for the next two years. Any action will be at the executive level.

SIMMONS:

This is related to that the people who actually make our laws aren't legislators anymore, their judges and with a 50 or 51 seat Senate majority, it will be considerably easier to get same judges put on the bench, who will rule better on environmental cases. And so for me as a lawyer, like I'm very happy that the Senate didn't flip to Republican, it might even pick up a seat because it just the idea of another two years of slow judges being appointed or no judges being appointed or a Supreme Court seat if it comes up right like the Senate is now become so incredibly important just because they appoint the people who actually make all of our decisions. So yeah,

WHEELER:

I I think this also means that the inflation reduction act and the massive investment that that act provided into renewable energy and other climate solutions is safe. That was one of the things that the republicans had campaigned on. You know, this is this is the new Obamacare elect us and we'll gut the I. R. A. And

SIMMONS:

there was no backlash.

WHEELER:

People are

SIMMONS:

happy that we spent tons of money on things. It's kind of nice

FISKE:

to that point since this is an environmental podcast talking about politics. I think it's it's interesting to me and I have I'm certainly no expert in this, but you know, looking at this sort of issue, polling at a national level, all of the pundits and talk was about inflation and and abortion rights, which certainly were top of mind for a lot of people. But number two, Number three. Number four issue for a lot of voters was climate and that was not something that sort of seemed to enter enter the mainstream political conversation, but maybe speaks to some of what you're you know, the lack of ability to get traction on being anti inflation reduction act

WHEELER:

Carolina Hank has folks who have young people in your lives any reflections about the importance of the youth vote in this election.

GRIFFITH:

I'm I'm not less interested in the results of the election and more interested in the cause, but I really am in the the reason why there was not the red wave. I think that that's super important and that there was such a large youth turnout and I think a big portion of that was because of these existential things like climate change and like reproductive rights. I was just reading an article in teen vogue. I'm sure all of you read teen vogue. They're actually like super duper smart and I think that and very political and I think that the the young folk who are reading it like get that. Yes, there are things that are broken in our system, but all also a way that we can work towards fixing it is by participating or at the very least if you're participating, you can you get a front row seat to the Brokenness and it can motivate you to do even more work. And so I think that that is hugely important. And I'm hopeful that the young people who did participate the for this first time and and elected a we now have a 25 year old, maybe like the 2nd 25 year old to sit in the House of Representatives and decades we now have young people doing it that they won't watch what's happening and see nothing happen and say, I'm not going to do it again next time.

WHEELER:

The kids are all right. As they say, they are all right, well let's leave on that cheerful note. Many thanks to all my guests today. We will I'm sure get something wrong because as we said at the beginning of the show, it is Wednesday November 16 as we are recording and more votes continue to be counted as we speak. So things may change and I hope we didn't get anything too too too wrong. If we did, I'm sure you'll hear about it on the next issue of the Econews. Well, ciao, thanks everyone. And speaking of which, join us again on this time and channel next week for more environmental news from the North Coast of California.