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Health & Fitness

Election Result: Support Tea Party - Don't bother running

While I can appreciate Richard Hall’s weak attempts to make things look bright for his CATO/Tea Party charged cabal of anti-housing groups, his Fox styled pandering to the less informed easily confused members is weak when exposed for it many logic flaws.

First, Hall turns on the spin cycle to get people to believe that Randy Warren’s last place finish in the San Rafael City Council race was “Good”, instead it demonstrated the weakness of the anti housing block. But let’s look a little deeper than Hall was willing to go.


Warren was not even close to third place finisher, Brockbank, a logical politician who understands the planning process. Brockbank was just 231 votes behind 2nd place finisher, Bushy-Lang (who would not have been so fast to remove the Civic Center PDA designation). Colin, getting the First Place slot in the race, is solidly behind affordable and low income housing.


My take away from the San Rafael race, Randy Warren got mostly Republican votes, those that easily bought into all the Hall Agenda 21 myths and all the JBS, Koch baggage that went along with it. That was Warren’s target audience, and he at least got their vote. As far as I’m concerned Warren and Hall can have the Tea Party support, they are the extremists in our political dialogue.

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But lets look at Hall’s take on the Corte Madera Town race, this becomes really revealing, but not in a way Hall would like.


Condon, Furst and Lappert have retained their seats based on the current tally of votes. These are the same people who brought us the Wincup development, a high density market rate project. Hall states, “David Kunhardt, promoted density in Corte Madera” first Kunhardt didn’t promote density in Corte Madera and his loss by only 146 votes surely doesn’t support Halls maniacal prognoses, but this is the type of thinking we’ve grown to expect from Mr. Hall’s mind.

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Let’s recap the San Rafael and Corte Madera races:


San Rafael:

Maribeth Bushy-Lang     3683     24.80%

Randy Warren                2574     17.33%


Warren lost by a whopping 1109 votes, down 7 points. Showing a measly 17% of San Rafael voters in favor of his extremist positions. Looking closer we see that a full 82.44% of the voters supported those who support PDAs and affordable/workforce housing.


Corte Madera:

Michael Lappert        953     22.89%

David W. Kunhardt   807     19.39%


On the other hand Kunhardt only lost by 146 votes or 3 points, and that was against an incumbent who supported WinCup. Sorta destroys Hall’s reasoning.


Hall would also like you to believe that there were “slow growth” and “fast growth” candidates. That is nonsense, no candidate statements had anything to do with fast growth or slow growth. That is yet another invention from Richard Hall’s twisted thinking patterns. Marin, by its very nature, is a slow growth county, always was, always will be.


But that is Richard…. lets move on to Hall’s crown jewel of elections, the Marinwood Community Service District.


This is what Hall says about that race:

“Tuesday's election results echoed Marinites resounding opposition to high density housing. Fast growth candidates suffered losses:” I’ve already proved that premise wrong.


“Meanwhile slow growth candidates suffered major, sometimes surprising, wins:

- Justin Kai, a complete unknown before, won the race in Marinwood CSD”


Let’s refresh the mission of the Marinwood Community Service District:

“Marinwood Community Services District is an agency of local government providing fire protection and emergency response services, street lighting, recreation programs and facilities, and parks and open space to the unincorporated community of Marinwood.”


Whoops, Justin Kai’s new position has no authority over any type of housing. Maybe someone should tell Hall.


In summation I think this election does finally represent the turning point. Candidates supporting good planning significantly increase their chances in elections. Those who won seats who may not have been firmly in the “good planning” camp can now see the damage they might do in future elections if they don't support their constituents and oppose Tea Party and CATO huckster agitators


The NIMBY housing lobby certainly exists, but it had nowhere near the numbers at the polls to make a difference. Results in San Rafael, Novato, Corte Madera, San Anselmo and Fairfax demonstrate this.
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