Incumbents Hold Seats On Water Board

Tera Prucha edges ahead of Shepherd, Webb in final count for Division 2 seat

Humboldt Sentinel
11/5/08
By Charles Douglas

EUREKA -- Despite a highly controversial vote against further consideration of district-wide fluoridization earlier this year, voters chose to stick with the incumbents in trustee seat races for the Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District.

In Division 3, which covers southern Eureka, Fields Landing and Humboldt Hill, incumbent Barbara Hecathorn garnered 3,434 votes or 59.32%, leaving challenger Bob Schultz with 2,330 or 40.25%. Hecathorn was widely perceived as the front-runner, with unified support of the Times-Standard and The Eureka Reporter.

Voters showed less enthusiasm in re-electing Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap of Democracy Unlimited to her Division 1 seat covering waterfront Eureka, giving her 2,509 votes or 61.87% of those cast. Local attorney Stephen Davies got 1,527 votes or 37.66%, with write-in votes grabbing 0.47%. Remarkably, 813 voters turned in blank ballots for this race, leaving voter turnout in the contest as the lowest of any in the entire county, indicating a great deal of voter dissatisfaction with the choices of either Sopoci-Belknap or Davies. While gaining the backing of The Eureka Reporter and the Humboldt Sentinel, Davies faced a stinging rebuke from the Times-Standard as well as widely-criticized coverage in the North Coast Journal, which the newsweekly later ran an apology and a series of corrections for.

Far more competitive was the race for Division 2 covering McKinleyville and northern Arcata, as the seat was left open by the abrupt resignation of biologist Randy Turner, who moved out of the area. Although she was well behind former McKinleyville Community Service District trustee Ben Shepherd on Election Day, the next morning saw environmental activist Tera Prucha pull ahead with 2,495 votes or 34.58% of the preliminary final results. Shepherd finished second with 2,158 votes or 29.91%, just ahead of former Humboldt State University vice president Edward "Buzz" Webb with 2,019 votes or 27.98%.

Rounding out the Division 2 field were anti-fluoride crusader Adrienne Floreen with 285 votes or 3.95%, Democrat activist Jake Pickering with 240 votes or 3.33%, and 19 write-in votes cast for non-existent write-in candidates. Lending to the diffusion of votes in this race was the inability of the local Democratic Party to chose between the three Democrats in the running. Democrats also failed to endorse their own, Davies, in his race against Green Party member Sopoci-Belknap in Division 1. Sopoci-Belknap will be the only elected Green in the entire county as of next month.

The new trustees will be sworn in at the regular Water Board meeting on Dec. 11 at 9:00 a.m. Current trustees Bruce Rupp of Myrtletown and Aldaron Laird of Arcata are mid-way through their four-year terms. Both ran with little or no opposition for their respective seats in 2006, while 2008 saw the most contested races in the history of the district.