Election: Marin voting results show some strong mandates alongside very tight races

There are still many ballots being tabulated by Marin election officials, making sure local voters’ choices are counted.

Understandably, for many across our county, the projected results of the race for the White House are disappointing, if not disheartening.

In elections, there are winners and losers. And the outcomes of our democratic form of elections reflects a variety of opinions, partisanship, lives’ challenges and visions.

Marin voters clearly supported Vice President Kamala Harris’ bid to be our next president. She won nearly 80% of Marin’s votes.

Yet that’s not the way voters across the U.S., for instance, in many Mississippi or Michigan counties saw things. Their votes count, too, and they helped propel Donald Trump’s narrow victory, returning him to the Oval Office.

A lot closer to home, there were results that were both close, many too close to call until last-minute ballots are counted, and landslides.

One example of a tight race is the contest for the Second District seat on the Marin County Board of Supervisors.

San Anselmo Councilmember Brian Colbert and former Kentfield School District Trustee Heather McPhail Sridharan have been engaged in a hard-fought campaign and their contest is one of Tuesday night’s closest.

Rep. Jared Huffman and Assemblymember Damon Connolly, both Democrats seeking reelection, won easy victories over their Republican challengers.

In other races, across Marin’s cities most incumbents who were seeking reelection defeated the challengers.

The possible exception is in Fairfax, where voters in the first rounds of counted ballots are knocking off two incumbents in the race for three council seats. Former mayors Frank Egger and Mike Ghiringhelli are leading the pack, riding voters’ opposition to the rent control law enacted by the council. Council veteran Barbara Coler, according to the latest counts, was holding on to third place and reelection.

Town voters were backing a referendum to overturn the law, enacted in response to calls that Fairfax needed rent control tougher than that imposed by the state.

While supporters complained about tenants being forced to move by rising rents and “corporate landlords,” backers of the referendums argued that the town’s law was unfairly restrictive to local landlords, creating a costly bureaucratic hurdle that could keep rents below their costs.

Critics of the local rent control laws successfully argued that the restrictions would discourage the construction of apartments, which are an important part of local affordable housing.

The same political debates played out in San Anselmo and Larkspur, where tougher rent control laws were rejected by similar roughly two-to-one margins.

They are stinging defeats for advocates of tougher local rent control laws. In Fairfax and San Anselmo, Tuesday’s results show that they were out of step with a majority of the constituents they are elected to represent.

On top of those results, Marin voters also rejected state Proposition 33, which would have rescinded the state’s rent control law while allowing local municipalities to pass their own.

Many local tax measures, for local schools and for municipalities, are headed toward passing.

One of the most hotly contested was the Novato City Council’s proposal, Measure M, to raise the local sales tax to 9.25% to fix the city’s longstanding budget problems and maintain local services.

Other Marin results of note included the local support for increasing penalties for drug and theft crimes. Early counts put local support at 61.9%.

The county’s voters also backed measures for another round of bonds for state and local parks, wildfire and environmental protection and water, energy and flood protection projects, but the latest count showed they are divided over reducing the “supermajority” vote needed to pass most local tax and bond measures to 55%. Initial counts show 51% want to keep the required threshold at two-thirds.

Many of Tuesday’s decisions are clear, but some are going to go down to the wire. County elections staff are still working to make sure every vote is counted and their tallies are right.