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Nancy Skinner Wins Democratic Race for Loni Hancock’s Assembly Seat—and Hancock is Going to the State Senate
By Frank D. Russo
Nancy Skinner, a former Berkeley City Councilmember (pictured at right) who is a member of the East Bay Regional Parks District and who was endorsed by Asemblymember Loni Hancock to succeed her, has won the Democratic nomination in the heavily Democratic 14th Assembly District.
Hancock herself has won a hard fought battle over former Assemblymember Wilma Chan for the 9th Senate District seat being vacated by termed out President pro Tem of the Senate, Don Perata.
The two should work well together as Skinner coordinated Hancock’s successful 2002 bid for the Assembly and shares Hancock’s supports for single-payer health care (Skinner was endorsed by
State Senator Sheila Kuehl, the author of SB 840), protecting funds for public education, was an active supporter of Hancock’s 'Clean Money' campaign reform and has championed environmental causes in her terms in office. Well before global warming was a household word, she launched the movement of US Mayors and cities working to stop it. As a result of her efforts as a Berkeley City Councilmember, if you walk into a McDonald's today you won't see any Styrofoam. That's because she authored the first ban triggering McDonald's to pull Styrofoam from all of its US outlets. She was endorsed by the California Sierra Club as well as the California League of Conservation Voters.
With 58% of the precincts counted in the Alameda County portion of the district where she lives, Skinner has a commanding 46.5% of the vote and is beating her nearest rival Kriss Worthington, a Berkeley City Councimember, who has 23.2% of the vote. In Contra Costa County, where Richmond City Councilmember Tony Thurmond is based, Skinner is getting 52.6% of the vote to Thurmond’s 24.4%.
Combining these totals, Skinner has 51.8% of the vote in this 4 way Democratic primary race and her rivals have conceded the race to her.
With 69% of the precincts in Alameda County counted, Assemblymember Hancock has 55% of that vote and with 4 of the 40 Contra Costa precincts counted, she has over 70% of the vote there. Combined, this gives her a 56% to 44% lead over Chan, with 37,751 votes to Chan’s 29, 369 votes.
Given the heavy vote by mail vote, much of which has already been counted, the day of election votes that have not been counted are a smaller portion of the overall returns.
Hancock won despite an independent expenditure campaign mounted by tribal casino interests who sent out mailers under the name of “Education Leaders for High Standards Independent Expenditure Committee” attacking her record on education and distorted her effort. Hancock lead opposition in the legislature to no less than four proposed urban casinos in her district. Another conservative independent expenditure committee aligned with Ed Voice also mailed into her district against her.
Both of these legislators should be progressive leaders in their respective houses and provide support to the other. They will have no problems winning election in November.
Comments
It's heartening to see great progressive Democrats like Loni Hancock and Mark Leno elected to the State Senate, in spite of the dirty tricks of their opponents.
And I'm sure Nancy Skinner will make all of us here in the 14th AD proud. In particular, she has years of experience on environmental issues that are close to the hearts of East Bay voters.
Add Mark DeSaulnier and Joan Buchannan into the mix, and all and all, this has been a great set of primaries for East Bay Democrats.
Posted by: Robert Klein at June 4, 2008 12:37 PM
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