Matt Maguire's Election Picks for 2018

[wisewomn]

For those of you who may be scratching your heads and wanting a second opinion, here is long-time, unabashed Lefty Matt Maguire's list of picks for this election. (He is based in Petaluma.) FWIW. If you want to communicate with him, you can e him at [email protected]. Don't be shy if you have questions or comments. He enjoys this stuff.

Matt Maguire’s November 6th, 2018 Election Picks

OK, good citizens, the Absentee Ballots are out and it’s time to do your duty! In the interest of public service and good government, here are my voting recommendations for the November 6th, 2018 election. Please understand that some are made with more enthusiasm than others. This is mostly Petalumacentric, but obviously extends beyond that. Feel free to share it with your friends and families anywhere in the state. See notes at the bottom for more discussion.

Federal Offices: US Senate Kevin De Leon US House,
Representative, 2nd Dist.: Jared Huffman

State Offices: CA Governor: Gavin Newsom
Lt. Governor: Eleni Kounalakis
Attorney General: Xavier Becerra
Secretary of State: Alex Padilla
State Controller: Betty Yee
State Treasurer: Fiona Ma
Insurance Commissioner: Ricardo Lara Member,
St. Board of Equalization: Malia Cohen
State Assembly, 10th Dist.: Dan Monte

Judicial (Yes/no for next term)*:
Supreme Court Assoc. Justice Carol Corrigan
Vote YES on all the judges.
Supreme Court Assoc. Justice Leondra Kruger
Presiding Justice, Court of Appeal, 1st Appellate Dist.,
Div. 1- James Humes Associate Justice, Court of Appeal, 1st Appellate Dist.,
Div. 1- Sandra Margulies Associate Justice, Court of Appeal, 1st Appellate Dist.,
Div. 2- James Richman Associate Justice, Court of Appeal, 1st Appellate Dist.,
Div. 2- Marla Miller Presiding Justice, Court of Appeal, 1st Appellate Dist.,
Div. 3- Peter Siggins Associate Justice, Court of Appeal, 1st Appellate Dist.,
Div. 4- Alison Tucher Associate Justice, Court of Appeal, 1st Appellate Dist.,
Div. 4- Jon Streeter Presiding Justice, Court of Appeal, 1st Appellate Dist.,
Div. 5- Barbara Jones

State Measures: 1 – $4B housing and veteran home loan bonds YES
2 – Allows use of millionaire’s tax money to be used to prevent homelessness YES
3 – $8.8B bonds for water related infrastructure and environmental projects YES*
4 – $1.5B bonds for children’s hospitals NO*
5 – Revises rules for homeowners to transfer property tax assessment NO
6 – Repeals gas tax and vehicle fee increases and requires public vote on future taxes NO
7 – Lets legislature adopt permanent Daylight Savings Time if Congress OK’s YES
8 – Requires dialysis clinics to issue refunds for revenue above a certain amount YES
10 – Repeals Costa-Hawkins; gives local government option to pass rent control laws YES*
11 – Lets ambulance companies require workers to remain on-call during paid breaks NO
12 – Bans sale of meat from animals confined in spaces below specific sizes YES

Schools: Superintendent of Public Instruction: Tony Thurmond

Local races: Petaluma Mayor & City Council (three seats plus Mayor’s seat up for grabs)*:
Mayor: Teresa Barrett
Council: D’Lynda Fischer Kevin McDonnell Dr. Dennis Pocekay
Petaluma Joint Union High School District (Three seats): Mady Cloud Joanna Paun Caitlin Quinn

Petaluma Health Care District (Two seats open) Joe Stern Christa Barnett Chelemedos

Local Measures: M – County Parks Bond YES

There you are. Go forth and multiply (these votes)! If you have any questions as to why I made these choices or want to discuss them, feel free to contact me.

Thanks for doing your part for the betterment of our town, our county, our country and our world.

- Matt

*Notes:

The judges: There is not much data available on the judges, unless one happens to do something so controversial that it hits the mainstream press (or you know one personally, which I don’t). And none of these judges did that in the past years. These “retention” votes come up every four years for Supreme Court and Appellate Court judges. The intention is to keep these seats as non-political as possible, and in the absence of anything negative, a Yes vote is warranted.

Prop. 3: The Sierra Club opposes this because it includes money for dams and does nothing to fix unsustainable farming practices of agribiz in SoCal and the Central Valley, but it also includes money for positive environmental uses.

Prop. 4: 72% of this public money would go to private hospitals. Non-profit hospitals, yes, but why should the public finance private hospitals? It shouldn’t.

Prop. 10: The most important measure on the ballot. It repeals the Costa-Hawkins act, one of the worst pieces of housing legislation in California history. It will protect tens of thousands of tenants, and help fight evictions (and homelessness). That’s why the real-estate industry is going to spend tens of millions of dollars to defeat it. Prop. 10 doesn’t impose any form of rent control, anywhere. It simply removes the state ban on effective controls, and allows cities to make their own decisions about how to regulate housing.

Costa-Hawkins was passed in 1995 to stop cities like Berkeley, Santa Monica, and West Hollywood from extending rent controls to vacant apartments. Since the early 1980s, those cities had laws that set rents based on the landlord getting a “reasonable rate of return,” not the maximum possible profit. A Berkeley landlord sued, the case went all the way to the Supreme Court, and the vacancy-control law was upheld. Immediately, the landlords went to the state Legislature to try to ban rent control that works; they failed over and over again, as then-State Senate President David Roberti (who represented West Hollywood) refused to allow the measure to come to the floor for a vote. When Roberti was forced out by term limits, the measure passed. Prop. 10 would overturn it, and return the state rules to what they were from the birth of California until 1995: Rent control should be a local issue.

Because Costa-Hawkins requires all rent controls to cover only existing tenants, when a unit is vacated, the landlord can raise the rent to whatever the market will bear, giving landlords a major incentive to evict, buy out, or otherwise get rid of long-term tenants who are paying below market rent. That’s the source of thousands of dubious, even illegal evictions (and the cause of significant homelessness). The existing law also exempts from rent control all single-family homes and condos and anything built after 1979. Landlords argue that repealing Costa-Hawkins will slow the development of new housing and cause existing buildings to fall into disrepair. But we have 15 years of actual data that shows vacancy control worked, in three California cities, between 1980 and 1995. None of the horrors that landlords predicted came true.

Instead, tenants had more stability (and more disposable income to spend in the local economy). New housing construction today has nothing to do with rent-control laws. Investors want a quick return on development; they set initial rents and condo prices at a level that will give them that return, then build and flip. The days when small builders put up three-unit apartments with the intent of owning and renting them for many years to come are long over. Prop. 10 won’t have any impact on new housing – but it will keep tenants in existing housing from becoming homeless, will discourage evictions, and will provide housing stability in cities that choose to use this tool. Again: Cities that don’t want vacancy control don’t have to enact it.

Petaluma City Council: If you assume that it’s likely that incumbent Dave King will get re-elected, you may want to consider voting for just your top two favorite council candidates rather than for three. Choosing only two out of the three seats available gives those two a very slightly statistically weighted advantage, improving their chances in the overall race because there are fewer overall votes to split, making each vote proportionately stronger. On the other hand, you may want to exercise your full voting rights and choose the ones you really want. Tough call, but I know you’ll do the right thing as you see it.

[pdfender]

Vote NO on justice Carol Corrigan. She voted against marriage equality!!!!

For those of you who may be scratching your heads and wanting a second opinion, here is long-time, unabashed Lefty Matt Maguire's list of picks for this election. ...

Judicial (Yes/no for next term)*:
Supreme Court Assoc. Justice Carol Corrigan
Vote YES on all the judges.
...

[HeartFeathers]

NO!!! Do NOT vote yes for all. Vote NO on Corrigan, Margulies, Richman, and Siggins!

[Barry]

NO!!! Do NOT vote yes for all. Vote NO on Corrigan, Margulies, Richman, and Siggins!

There are reasons to vote against Corrigan here.

Why are you advocating against Margulies, Richman, and Siggins?? Got links?

[wisewomn]

Yes,, HeartFeathers, please elaborate on this. Inquiring minds want to know.

NO!!! Do NOT vote yes for all. Vote NO on Corrigan, Margulies, Richman, and Siggins!