Posted by CITYELECTIONWATCHER, a resident of the Menlo Park: Central Menlo Park neighborhood, on Nov 11, 2006 at 10:48 pm

The very narrow view, that the 2002 election was won by Winkler, DuBoc and Jellins, because of the Santa Cruz fiasco, is certainly not nearly the whole story.

There was complete chaos among the "residentialist" group, which resulted in splitting the camps and thus the votes. There was almost no prior organization and in fact Toni Stein was recruited at the very last minute.

The Sand Hill Road expansion, which Mr. Schmidt engineered split the group. Schmidt then advanced the candidacy of Mr. Halleck, who was going to be his replacement. Mr. Halleck had more than running for council on his agenda, including being a poster child for the openly GAY movement. This might be an admirable stance in running for office in San Francisco, but certainly not here in much more conservative Menlo Park.

Then Eric Kinney ran on the anti bike tunnel theme. He was supported by his Father, Chuck. Chuck was the most popular member of the council, but he only worked for the candidacy of his son, leaving out to hang the other candidates. This hurt their chances greatly.

So the whole movement was split by the bike tunnel question, which literally threw the Linfield neighborhood into the arms of Winkler, DuBoc and Jellins.

This was a very temporary relationship, however, as evidenced by the 2004 election, when Fergusson and Judge Cohen were elected.

The scene in now back to a more normal status now, since the newly elected councilmen, Robinson and Cline are certainly going to listen to the citizen of the city, have an open government and not just pay patronage to realtors, and developers.