How special it is

When Butte County Clerk/ Recorder Candace Grubbs learned there would have to be a special runoff election in January to fill Doug LaMalfa’s now-empty state Senate seat, she told the Chico Enterprise-Record that the news made her “feel like punching somebody.”

Grubbs estimated the election, which will tie up her staff during the holidays and comes immediately on the heels of the Nov. 6 general election, will cost the county $400,000. Butte is one of 12 counties that make up the sprawling 4th Senate District. Each bears a financial burden for the election, depending on the number of registered voters. Butte has the most, 122,554, followed by Shasta County’s 100,256. Colusa County, which is only partially in the district, has the fewest, with 7,766 registered voters.

The irony is that LaMalfa insists he stepped down from his seat at the end of August to save the district’s taxpayers millions of dollars by avoiding a special election.

“I’ve thrown my hat over the fence and am taking nothing for granted in my campaign for Congress, but I do not feel it would be right to wait until the end of the year to resign from the Senate,” he told the conservative website Flash Report. “Resigning now gives the Governor the ability to consolidate elections, saving local counties and taxpayers at least $2 million.”

The final tally on the Senate race came on the day before Thanksgiving, as the 12 counties and their combined 873 precincts weighed in with the secretary of state. Right up to the end former Assemblyman Jim Nielsen, a Republican, had 50.7 percent of the votes cast on Election Day and those absentee ballots collected before Election Day. He needed 50 percent plus one vote to win outright and avoid a special election.

But, alas, it didn’t happen; Nielsen finished with 188,207 votes, or 49.8 percent, forcing a special election to be held Jan. 8 between him and the second-place finisher, Democrat Mickey Harrington, who picked up 104,572 votes, or 27.7 percent.

The remaining 85,297 votes cast were shared by four other candidates, two of whom had dropped out of the race, but not soon enough to have their names removed from the ballot, which apparently confused the voters.

In fact, 3rd District Republican Assemblyman Dan Logue, who said he dropped out on doctor’s orders, still gained 43,303 votes, enough to finish third. Had his name not been on the ballot, Nielsen undoubtedly would have gotten a winning majority.

Logue handily defeated first-time candidate Charles Rouse of Corning, a Democrat, to win reelection to his Assembly seat.

The other three candidates on the Senate ballot, Jann Reed (24,966), Dan Levine (9,882) and Benjamin Emery (7,146), were all listed as “No Party Preference.” Emery was the other dropout.

The race was obviously confusing, with Logue running for two seats at once and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association actually endorsing both Nielsen and Logue for the Senate seat.

The results were confusing as well. Reed wrote a letter to both this paper and the Chico Enterprise-Record congratulating Nielsen on his victory—before learning he hadn’t won. The letter was held up at her request and a new one appears in this paper. But her original letter, with its premature congratulation, was printed in the E-R on Nov. 26.

Things first got weird when incumbent LaMalfa announced on Friday, Aug. 31, that he was stepping down to concentrate on his run to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Wally Herger, who’d announced back in January that he was calling it quits. LaMalfa had gained a run for the seat by finishing first of seven candidates in the June 5 primary. But he waited three months to announce his immediate resignation.

On Monday, Nov. 26, Secretary of State Debra Bowen officially certified the Jan. 8 election based on a proclamation issued by Gov. Jerry Brown to fill the vacancy. The election is on, even if one of the candidates decides to withdraw his name from the ballot before Jan. 8.

Brown issued the special-election proclamation on Sept. 5, five days after LaMalfa quit. Soon after he’d gotten Herger’s blessing, LaMalfa anointed Nielsen as the best choice to replace him. Other candidates were caught off guard by LaMalfa’s Aug. 31 announcement, and some, including Logue, suggested he’d done it to help pave the way for Nielsen.

Harrington is a 73-year-old union representative who has never held office. The Magalia man has run for the Assembly three times in the past, losing to Rick Keene in 2006 with 39 percent of the vote, Logue in 2008 with 44.5 percent of the vote and then to Logue again in 2010 with 37 percent of the vote.

Nielsen is 68 and was first elected to the state Senate in 1978. He’s since held office in the Assembly as well. He’s been accused of not actually living in the district he represents and instead using a double-wide trailer he owns in the Tehama County community of Gerber to establish his residency.

Critics, including Don Bird, who last year was slapped with a three-year restraining order after a long stint of hounding Nielsen, have charged that the politician really lives in a gated community in Woodland. Neither Gov. Brown nor Tehama County District Attorney Gregg Cohen has chosen to look into that claim.