Former HMB Review editor David Gorn applies for open City Council seat

David Gorn, former editor of the Half Moon Bay Review, has applied to be appointed to the seat vacated by HMB City Council member Sid McCausland. Gorn has lived in Half Moon Bay nine years.  He left the Review just about a year ago, in March 2004.  He’s currently working as a producer for KQED-FM, and has produced many features for them about the Coastside. When I was in Phoenix last week, I heard his story about giant squid on the local NPR affiliate.

He joins Naomi Patridge, 44-year resident, City Council member from 1985 to 2001, and former four-term HMB Mayor, as the second applicant for the job. The Review spent a lot of time on Patridge in a front-page story last week’s paper.

In his application, Gorn lists what he sees as the big ongoing issues for the City Council: "adding those lanes to Highway 92, building a new police station, a new library, adding parkland, building trails, getting the middle school and the Boys and Girls Club built in our lifetime." Gorn positions himself as someone who can "bridge the gap between the two political factions on the Coastside".

Patridge’s much shorter statement focused on her remarkable experience and concluded: "I was and still am committed to the residents of the city. While on the council I always listened to residents and did what I thought was best for the city. There should always be respect between the council and residents despite their differences."

Backstory (inside baseball, mostly opinion and unsourced): If, like me, you’re a newcomer to the Coastside, you’re probably shrugging and asking yourself, "What’s this really about?  There’s clearly more to this than meets the eye, but I’m not sure I should even care." Gorn is well-regarded by supporters of the current slowish-growth City Council majority, as well as by those who don’t identify with either that group or with the faction who used to run the city (the "Old Guard").  Many of them miss Gorn’s more even-handed influence at the Review, which seems more wildly partisan every week.  Patridge is regarded as the candidate of the Old Guard. Patridge’s opposition to buying the 22 acres for a park coincided with a switch to more negative coverage of the park by the city’s newspaper of record.  Both Gorn’s and Patridge’s statements, as well as the Review’s coverage, take on a whole new perspective if analyzed in this context.