Low voter turnout the real culprit

There is quite a bit of debate going on in Costa Mesa (and

probably parts of Newport Beach) about last week’s City Council

election results. A leading theory about how Mayor Linda Dixon lost

to newcomer Allan Mansoor holds that Dixon and Planning Commission

Chairwoman Katrina Foley split votes. (The theory was mentioned in

this column last week.)

Mansoor got elected with 7,498, not too far ahead of Dixon’s

6,996. Foley trailed at 5,613. The thinking is that, obviously,

without Foley in the race, Dixon would have received a bulk of that

vote, raising her to a winning total.

It is a pat, easy theory, one that lays blame at the feet of the

two women in the race. There is a tinge of misogyny in the idea that

voters will not punch the ballot for two women, a perspective that

ought to be examined as the discussion about how and why continues.

The theory doesn’t seem to hold up when the numbers are

scrutinized. Those numbers, when compared to the election two years

ago, are stark and surprising and suggest that forces that played out

in 2000 were active again last Tuesday.

Those forces are the position Mansoor had on the ballot and the

practice of some of his supporters to “bullet vote.”

Turning back to 2000, there were 11 candidates running for three

seats. Chris Steel was the top vote-getter, with 10,664, followed by

Libby Cowan (then an incumbent) with 10,276 and finally Karen

Robinson with 9,224 (scant votes ahead of then-incumbent Heather

Somers, who trailed with 9,192).

Steel, like Mansoor, was at the top of the ballot and had the

support of Westside activists who voted solely for Steel (“bullet

voting”). The number of candidates, coupled with Steel’s choice

ballot position and the name recognition he’d earned through all his

earlier runs, dovetailed for his victory.

This year, with just five people running for two seats, it did not

appear heading into the election that Mansoor could count on the same

combination of forces. With the Westside bullet voters amounting to

somewhere between 700 and 1,000 persons, according to different

estimates, their numbers would have had less of an effect on the

outcome. Mansoor could not count on the “blind” top of the ballot

votes to make as much of a difference, either.

But check these two numbers: 34,187 and 108,076. Those are the

total votes for City Council candidates in 2002 and 2000,

respectively. Not accounting for “bullet voters,” they mean that

about 17,000 people voted this year, compared to 32,000 in 2000.

Low voter turnout, it turns out, evened the playing field.

It seems doubtful that, had 30,000 or so voters gone to the polls

last week, Mansoor’s numbers -- bumped up 800 bullet voters, perhaps

-- would still have topped Dixon’s (the difference between them, as

it was, was just 502, well within this bullet-voting margin).

There is also this trend to consider. While Republicans did not

sweep through California the way they did the rest of the nation, the

general consensus among political pundits is that Republicans went to

the polls in far greater, and more enthusiastic, numbers than did

Democrats. Given that both Dixon and Foley are Democrats and Mansoor

appeared on many Republican slate mailers, it’s reasonable to assume

that those missing voters would have backed one of the two women.

(As an explanatory digression, yes, council races are nonpartisan.

But the policies Foley and Dixon were pressing, including strategic

plans and emphasis on the arts, vs. Mansoor’s policies would play to

Democrats rather than Republicans.)

So, the real story of this year’s election might be who did not

vote.

Regardless, probably the only sure result of this election is that

the leading vote-getter, Gary Monahan, had close to a mandate of

support by drawing 31% of the vote, even though his 10,597 were fewer

than Steel’s votes in 2000.

The principle of the matter

As a quick bit of self-promotion, on Saturday -- through what can

only be a matter of no one else being available -- I’ll be talking at

Gil Ferguson’s Principles over Politics monthly breakfast.

I’ll be playing the part of an expert on Newport-Mesa politics.

Feel free to sleep in, if you want. I am looking forward to it,

though.

* S.J. CAHN is the managing editor. He can be reached at (949)

574-4233 or by e-mail at steven.cahn@latimes.com.