Examiner public policy blogger Bruce Balshone has an analysis of this week’s county elections that provides some interesting insight into what’s coming in November. Here are some highlights of a much-longer piece.

On the District 3 Supervisor race, a bunch of conservative voters will be without a first choice candidate in the November election.

Third place candidate and Sequoia Healthcare District Director Jack Hickey may have seen his numbers diminished by the candidacy of fourth-place finisher and San Carlos Councilmember Matt Grocott. While Grocott spent next to nothing on his campaign, he nearly ran the table on local newspaper endorsements – a bounty of free media. Grocott, like Hickey, ran on a conservative platform of reducing government spending and going after public employee union pensions and salaries. With two like minded candidates, the conservative vote may have split among the two.

Meanwhile, in the County Treasurer-Tax collector race, Dave Mandelkern still has shot of beating quasi-incumbent top-vote-getter Sandie Arnott:

Current Deputy Treasurer Sandie Arnott, who has worked for current Treasurer Lee Buffington for the last 20 years of Buffington’s 25 year tenure, was the top vote-getter with 38.4 percent. Arnott’s top placement has surprised some due to the baggage she carried into the election. [...]

Arnott was outspent and did not garner the kind of endorsements of at least two of her opponents. Despite all of the publicity surrounding the Lehman losses, limited campaign cash, and endorsements, Arnott topped the list on June 8. The likely explanation: a ballot designation that mirrored the title of the office in a down-ticket election about which most voters know little about.

Coming in behind Arnott was San Mateo County Community College District Trustee Dave Mandelkern who garnered 27.8 percent of the vote.

Mandelkern kicked in a good deal of his own money to advertise his candidacy and enjoyed the backing of organized labor and the county’s Democratic Party committee – the combination of which may have helped him outpace the third-place candidate Joe Galligan, a CPA and former Burlingame mayor and city councilmember by 1800 votes.

Galligan also has deep family roots on the Peninsula and garnered many of the higher profile endorsements from local elected officials and has received the two of the major local newspaper endorsements including the Daily Post and the Daily Journal, both of which give Galligan high praise. [...]

Despite the second place finish, expect to see political and media endorsements flow to Mandelkern for the runoff as the legacy of Lehman Brothers will continue to dictate the terms of this election.

This is based on a county press release

Jim Eggemeyer, acting Director of Planning and Building for San Mateo County, has been appointed to the position permanently by San Mateo County Manager David Boesch. Eggemeyer succeeds Lisa Grote, who left San Mateo County employment to take a position with the City of San Mateo.

No candidate in the District 3 Supervisor race received the necessary 50% + 1 votes required to win the election, so there will be a runoff between Don Horsley and April Vargas in November.

The race is now an uphill climb for Vargas. Horsley has a 14.4 percentage point lead on Vargas, and the other candidates in the race are closer politically to Horsley than to Vargas. At the same time, hotly contested races for Governor and Senator mean that the turnout will be larger and more diverse in the general election than in the primary.

The results were similar in the race for Treasurer-Tax Collector, with Deputy Treasurer-Tax Collector Sandie Arnott going into the general election with a strong lead over runner-up Dave Mandelkern.

UPDATE: All 29 precincts have reported.

Measure E, which will assess a $150 per year tax on parcels for the Cabrillo Unified School District, has been passed with 70.7% of the vote with all precincts reporting.

The measure needed a two-thirds majority to pass. This victory will end a five-time losing streak for CUSD parcel taxes. The most recent effort—Measure S in 2006—lost with only 61% of the vote.

The passage of Measure E will assure the jobs of dozens of district employees, including middle and high school counselors, and elementary school teachers hired to enable class size reductions.

The county elections office has sent a replacement ballot and instuctions to voters on the Midcoast who did not receive their mail-in ballots because they were misaddressed by the county.

All ballots, including replacement ballots, must be received by the county before the polls close at 8pm on Tuesday, June 8.

You can read the letter after the jump.

If you’re still undecided about how to vote on Measure E or even whether to vote at all, I encourage you to view these videos that were largely written, produced and directed by coastside students.  Along with teachers, councilors, librarians & support staff; coastside students will be the most severely impacted by the proposed cuts if Measure E does not succeed. 

Help protect coastside schools & students and vote Yes on Measure E on June 8th.  These videos are now live on YouTube…please share freely. 

Education: Measure E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQtyiryhMJo.

Yes on Measure E - Protect Small Class Sizes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k77jRbRKZOM

Yes on Measure E - Pink Slip Protest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqpznQKGEUE

Supervisor Rich Gordon’s office will host Coastside office hours on Thursday, May 27 from 10am until Noon at the Sheriff’s Substation in Moss Beach.

The San Mateo Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCo) is looking for a new alternate public member.

LAFCo was created by the State Legislature to make decisions on the boundaries and organization of the cities and special districts in San Mateo County.

Despite the boring-sounding mission, LAFCo plays an important role on the Coastside, where our special districts are often our only form of government and they’re sometime at war with one another.

LAFCo is an independent commission composed of two members of the Board of Supervisors chosen by the Board, two members of city councils chosen by the mayors of the 20 cities in the county, two members of special district boards chosen by the presiding officers of the special districts in the county and the public member appointed by the other six commissioners. Each category of membership has an alternate.

I don’t know about you, but my high school counselor was an idiot.

But I also know from personal experience that the counselors in Coastside schools do great work for the students they serve. I know this from the experience of our two children who attended HMBHS and Cunha. I also know it from the dozens of students who spoke poignantly to the Cabrillo Unified School District governing board, begging them to preserve the district’s counselors.

If Measure E fails, all counselors will be eliminated at Half Moon Bay High School and Cunha Intermediate School. Life will go on as usual, but unknown numbers of Coastside teens will suffer as a result. Their parents will lose a direct link to the school.

My daughter has a particularly awesome second grade teacher. That teacher and many others may be laid off next year, because if Measure E fails the district will eliminate class size reductions in elementary school.

A couple dozen of this year’s first graders and their parents will have no idea what they’re missing if she’s not here. They will continue to soldier on, but they will be in much more crowded classrooms.

My kids tell me that the high school library is a refuge and a welcome place for many students.  They credit one person with this: high school librarian Brian Gerber.  If Measure E fails, the high school librarian will be gone.

The district will cut maintenance, groundskeeping, athletics funding, and more. If Measure E fails, the district will have to cut $2.5 million from its budget.

The district has announced it has reached an agreement with the teachers’ union that could save hundreds of thousands of dollars. This could be used to mitigate some of these cuts, but this year’s budget uses half a million dollars in one-time stimulus funds for ongoing operations.  If Measure E fails, even more essential services will be cut in 2011. I don’t know how they’ll do it.

Don’t vote against Measure E—or fail to vote at all—because you don’t like the school board. You’ll get an opportunity to vote against the incumbent board members in November. Don’t take it out on the district’s students.

You can’t sit this one out. This is a tough election in which to propose a new tax.  Republicans have a couple of big primaries on the ballot and they’re going to be turning out in large numbers.

If you care about the future public education in the Coastside, please show up and vote yes on Measure E.

April Vargas offers the Coastside a rare opportunity to get a member of our community on the Board of Supervisors, and an even more unusual opportunity to vote for someone who embodies our community’s values.

For those of us in Montara, Moss Beach, and El Granada, the Board of Supervisors is our city council. Unfortunately—because supervisors are elected at-large and there are only five seats on the board—the interests of the Coastside are poorly represented, if at all, on the board.

If you live in Half Moon Bay, the quality of your life is greatly affected by the way the county manages planning, parks, public works, and other issues on the Midcoast. April would make Half Moon Bay a better place to live as well.

April Vargas supports district elections for the board, something you won’t hear from any of the current incumbents.

In the meantime, the issues of the Coastside are barely recognized by the current board. It would be refreshing to hear the needs of Coastside residents acknowledged by the Board of Supervisors.

April is a longtime community activist who played an important role in making the Devil’s Slide Tunnel a reality. She’s a major presence in our community, and she has been involved in county issues for more than a decade. I know that when I attend a Board of Supervisors, Coastal Commission, or community meeting, I’m more likely to see April there than anyone else. April has worked tirelessly to improve our local environment, and was an early advocate for Barack Obama’s candidacy for president.

April Vargas is an ideal candidate for the Board of Supervisors, and an ideal representative of the Coastside.