Phew! The campaigning is over. That’s what most candidates say
about the arrival of election day this year.
Phew! The campaigning is over.
That’s what most candidates say about the arrival of election day this year.
“I’m anxious to get this done and over with,” Mayor Al Pinheiro said.
“I just want it to be over,” agreed Bob Dillon, a former councilmen running for one of three seats in this year’s council election along with Planning Commissioners Tim Day and Cat Tucker, former Councilman Bob Dillon, lawyer Perry Woodward and incumbents Roland Velasco and Russ Valiquette. Councilman Craig Gartman is challenging Pinheiro for the mayor’s seat.
“We’re all at the point now where you think to yourself, ‘Why do I do this?’ ” Dillon said while laughing.
The candidates agree that after months of heated rhetoric and complaints of prickly, disingenuous campaigning, it is time for voters to decide.
Each one has made it clear where they stand on everything from land development to sidewalks, city salaries to open government, and nearly 23 percent of the electorate has already voted by mail, according to Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters spokesman Matt Moreles.
But Moreles said more than 11,000 of Gilroy’s 15,223 registered voters have not cast their ballots, either by mail or in person.
Tucker recognized this and said she spent the entire weekend calling voters and canvassing precincts.
“I called just about as many registered voters as I could find to speak to them personally,” Tucker said Monday, adding that she would spend the night calling more until it was time for bed.
“I know that I’ve given it my best effort, so I’m relaxed in that sense,” Tucker said. “Now we just have to see what voters say.”
Dillon was more interested in what voters would see, though.
He spent the weekend recovering from an indeterminate insect bite on his left eye lid that left him with a reddened, swollen eye socket “the size of a tennis ball,” he said. So while he rested, a plane flew over the city for a couple hours Sunday, trailing behind it a banner that read, “Bob Dillon for City Council.”
Today Dillon said he’ll just count on his prayers (for his campaign and his eye), and tonight he said he will monitor the election results with his significant other.
“I got myself a nice $40 bottle of single-malt scotch and I intend to have a few little nips and watch our computer for updates,” Dillon said. (Tucker said she prefers champagne.)
With or without spirits, Gartman will be watching the results downtown at Happy Dog Pizza.
“I’m relaxed. It’s in the voters’ hands,” Gartman said Monday after spending the weekend walking around neighborhoods. He sent the last of his mailers out last Thursday and said there’s nothing left to do besides cheer and kiss his wife if he wins.
One person who is not running in the campaign but has been as vocal as the candidates at points is local conservative activist Mark Zappa.
He put up eight yellow-and-black signs along the city’s main traffic areas last weekend that tell voters to vote no on Measure A, a communication users’ tax that would immediately lower taxes on phones and cable TV, but leave open the possibility of taxing everything from satellite TV to cell phone usage.
“It’s a scientific fact that most people don’t see signs when they drive: They blend in to the other noise in society,” Zappa said. “So it’s no accident that I picked last few days to put signs up and used the two most visible colors to get peoples’ attention.”
But the only thing Day paid attention to this weekend was his lawn, and the only thing close to an 11th-hour ad blitz for him was one last mailer he sent out last week. Day added that he has abstained from Sunday campaigning from the get-go because he reserves it for rest and reflection as a Mormon.
“The die has been cast,” Day said. “I’m a little relaxed because I feel like the work is done, and it’s out of my hands now.”
If he wins, Day said he will kiss his wife, but no matter what happens, he and his wife are going out of town this weekend, “and we’re not telling anybody where we’re going,” he said.
One place Day has told people he will be is the Portuguese Hall on Old Gilroy Street downtown, where Pinheiro will be holding his post-election party.
“We had a good time four years ago,” Pinheiro said.
If he has another good time this year, Pinheiro said he will thank everyone for their support, just like he will do if he loses. Voters received Pinheiro’s last mailer Friday and Saturday, he said, and he also spent his weekend strolling streets.
So did Woodward, who spent Monday working, not campaigning, like most of his opponents.
“I’m done. I’m a little nervous, but I’m confident that voters will do right thing,” Woodward said. “In the last three or four days my anxiety level has naturally gone up a little. It started feeling real about last Thursday.”
“It’s like watching a football game, and it’s after the two-minute warning,” Woodward said, “but I have no idea what the score is.”
Woodward spent the rest of his weekend cleaning up his house for a party tonight. He also began crafting a sunshine policy that would make the inner-workings of Gilroy more transparent to residents by going above and beyond the state’s open government law known as the Brown Act.
“The first thing I intend to do once I’m sworn in is to start championing the sunshine policy,” Woodward said.
Whether he can work on that policy, though, depends on voters.
