Girl put your records on

As I tweeted last night, after the first few ballots rolled in, there wasn’t a lot of movement in the election results locally.   In the School Board, Trish Spencer, Barbara Kahn, and Niel Tam took early leads and held on to them for the remainder of the night:

Same with the City Council, Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft and Tony Daysog took early leads and held on tight with Stewart Chen holding on to third, since it appears that Rob Bonta managed to hold on to  slim lead of Abel Guillen, Stewart Chen will be up for re-election in two years completing out Rob Bonta’s term:

The incumbents held on to their leads in the Hospital Board, and the Stewart Chen move to the City Council will open up another seat on the Hospital Board, but in this case the sitting Board Members will appoint, the third place finisher does not automatically win a seat.

Generally I would write something along the lines of blah blah blah, we all have to live together after this election blah blah blah, but here’s what I’m going to write about.

Pointing out an elected official’s record and holding them accountable is not bullying.  It’s not a smear campaign.  It’s not damaging their reputation.   It’s just not.   In the national election, we scoffed when a presidential candidate claimed they would not let their campaign be influenced by fact-checkers, but somehow in Alameda when it came to a certain candidate “fact-checking” ended up being labeled unfair.

A lot of people — not just me — received some level of heat for reminding people of Trish Spencer’s voting record on certain issues and all of the sudden, she’s being “bullied” or a “smear campaign” is being waged on her.   That’s completely bullshit.   She’s not a volunteer sitting in a classroom making art projects.   She’s an elected official that creates policy that will affect every single student within the Alameda Unified School District.

Perhaps to some people Trish Spencer’s record doesn’t matter.   But as with the other candidates and elected officials, their record is fair game if they are running for office.   Just like neither Niel Tam or Ron Mooney backed away from the critiques that they voted for the compensation package for the Superintendent or that they voted to lease out the new administrative offices, Trish Spencer doesn’t get to back away from her record on certain issues, nor does she get a free pass to claim that she supported issues that she didn’t support when the actual issue came before the School Board.

There was this great Daily Show interview with Martha Radditz where Jon Stewart asks of Martha Radditz:

Where does the pressure come from on journalists to not be journalists anymore…?  That idea that, has the pressure on journalists to not show an opinion in any way ruin their ability to call out facts or lies.

And that currently exists in this town as well.   Our elected officials — and I guess candidates — have gotten so used to not being challenged by “media” whatever you want to call “media” in Alameda that when they say “XYZ” that if folks do challenge that “XYZ” happened all of the sudden people are being unfair.

The notion that pulling out video or minutes and saying “wait a sec, that’s not what that person said three years ago about that issue” somehow doesn’t have a place in a local election is ridiculous.  If a person runs on their record, then they are accountable for everything in their record, not just the selective parts that make them look good.   And in the end, even though these are volunteer positions and thankless ones at that, these are people who are crafting policy for our local government entities, if we don’t hold them accountable, who will?   There is a difference between talking about someone’s record and being critical about that record and “bullying.”   We should be able to differentiate between the two.

Tomorrow: Election post-mortem, but for now:  Thank you America for electing Barack Obama for another four more years.