Mountain View awaits election outcomes Mountain View awaits election outcomes (October 29, 2004)

City council, school board among races in doubt

By Jon Wiener

Thousands of dollars raised and spent, months of door-to-door campaigning, and a forest's worth of ads and fliers will come to a head Tuesday night. And that's just in Mountain View.

City council candidates, scheduled to face off in the final candidate forum of the year last Wednesday at Sahara Village mobile home park, are now focused on knocking on doors and gearing up for victory parties.

Candidates said the hardest part of this year's campaign has been filling out questionnaires from special interest groups.

"The questionnaires this year have been excruciating," said Mayor Matt Pear, who ran in 2000. Another city council candidate, Laura Macias, estimated she has received about 20 of the questionnaires, several of which required research.

Pear offered praise to challenger Tom Means, who has refused to fill out the questionnaires and instead referred people to his Web site.

A Saturday forum hosted by the Monta Loma Neighborhood Association brought the controversial Mayfield housing project center stage in the campaign. Groups of residents opposed to rezoning the site for high-density housing have declared their opposition to candidates Macias, an environmental planning commissioner and Stephanie Schaaf, who has said the residents' concerns can be met with proper planning.

At their biweekly lunch meeting on Tuesday, members of the local Technology and Society Committee heard a presentation about the science of political polls. But no polls have been conducted during the city council race, one of few local elections in which the result remains in doubt.

The races for U.S. Congress and the California Legislature are essentially settled, given the majority of registered Democrats in local districts and the fund-raising advantages held by candidates Anna Eshoo, Elaine Alquist and Sally Lieber.

But there also remains a big question on the national stage: the presidential election.

If Monday's vote by eighth-graders at Graham Middle School's mock election is any indication, Kerry will win in a landslide.

As the days leading up to Nov. 2 wind down, Mountain View residents are doing what they can to influence each other, as well as those in swing states.

Former council candidate Rosiland Bivings was is shirts with catchy political messages, including one exhorting people to "86" Bush -- or remove him from office. And Tracy Devers hosted a Kerry party for 15 of her friends at her house.

Even street musician Ted Woods is wearing his allegiance on his sleeve, in the form of a button that read, "Beat Bush again."

Monta Loma neighborhood resident Scott Rafferty, himself a vocal opponent of the Mayfield project, is using the state to accept what is known as a federal back-up ballot, attempting to preserve the absolute right to a secret ballot.

E-mail Jon Wiener at jwiener@mv-voice.com

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