In the 2000 City Council election, Cameron Smyth finished first with approximately 5,500 votes and Bob Kellar finished second with approximately 4,850 votes out of a field of 11 candidates.  Current Councilmember Marsha McLean finished third about 650 votes behind Kellar, and Diane Trautman finished 650 votes behind McLean.

The week after the election I went to the City Clerk’s office to review the precinct results, thinking a regional City surge might account for the Smyth/Kellar victory.  (At that point the City Clerk did not provide absentee totals by precinct and I needed to pay one dollar a page to copy the results.  Now the City Clerk sends the results of both absentee and poll votes by precinct, and you get a nice soft copy for FREE just by asking nicely.)  Might Canyon County votes push Kellar past McLean or Valencia votes put Smyth on top?

Imagine my disappointment.  It turned out that Smyth and Kellar finished first or second in every single precinct EXCEPT one small one where McLean prevailed.  The entire City indeed elected the two council members.

What a change six years on.  In the 2008 election, let’s take the 30 precinct results by the numbers:
 

• Laurie Ender finished first in 13 precincts;
   
• Bob Kellar finished first in 10 precincts;
   
• Diane Trautman finished first in 4 precincts; and
   
• Bob Spierer finished first in 3 precincts.
   

The only clear conclusion from the precinct results:  Maria Gutzeit, a good friend, should not run for citywide office again anytime soon.  She finished DEAD LAST in every single precinct with the exception of her home precinct where she only managed to tie for third.

The rest of the candidates?  I took out colors and shaded in the various precincts won by the candidates, orange for Ender, yellow for Kellar, blue for Trautman and red for Spierer,  I thought I might come up with some misshapen beast I could name the Endermander and the Kellarmander.  It turns out that I instead drew two nations with defensible borders I will call Enderland and Kellarland.

One would find Enderland on a City map by drawing an imaginary line from Newhall Ranch Road across the Riverpark development to Whites Canyon Road.  Enderland also contains an interesting outpost in the Orchard Village Valencia tract near Newhall.  Kellarland includes an outpost near the hospital but absolute ownership of everything in Canyon Country other than Ender’s incursion in the Sky Blue.  It appears that Ender completely dominated nearly all areas served by the Saugus Union School District, the base of her PTA experience.

I then quantified the “orangeness” of Enderland and found it nearly purple.  In the precincts she won Laurie Ender garnerd over 55% of her total votes received, and defeated the next nearest candidate in the precincts by a combined total of over 750 votes.  (Nearly half this margin developed in the single precinct surrounding Helmers Elementary School, the absolute orangest part of Enderland.)

Bob Kellar painted Kellarland pretty yellow, but not with the deep orange of Enderland.  Kellar won the ten precincts with a combined total of approximately 250 votes over the nearest competitor, and obtained only about 30% of his total votes from Kellarland.

Spiererland and Trautmanland cannot exist on their own.  The blue and red precincts constituted a patchwork laying close to the hospital.  (It turns out despite Dave Gauny’s best efforts the hospital expansion truly constitutes a nimby issue.)  The margin of victory in those precincts constituted a rather anemic 32 and 81 votes respectively; hardly calling for the creation of an independent nation.

The lessons from this election?  A Canyon County candidate will probably win in Canyon Country and a North Valencia candidate will probably win in North Valencia and Saugus, making a major inroad into Canyon County at Sky Blue Mesa.  No natural affinity seems to exist for the older areas of Valencia and Newhall for any particular candidate.  Laurie Ender’s victory could prove instructive for those areas seeking annexation to the City.  A candidate with a definite connection to a new large area could definitely rally the areas around to achieve election to the City Council without possessing broad appeal across the entire City.  A second lesson:  With the expansion of the City, Nimby issues become actual Nimby issues since Laurie Ender only showed true weakness, finishing in less than second place, the closer one got to the hospital.

In the next and final postmortem we talk about where a candidate can find the votes in Santa Clarita, and how in the new paradigm, a candidate NOT tied in directly to the area of Santa Clarita served by the Saugus Union School District will probably not win an election.

Tim Myers                                                                                                                                                          Commentary

Tim Myers is Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Landscape Development, Inc.  He has been writing on a wide variety of local topics for more than 11 years. His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon.