Quick Take
Lookout politics columnist Mike Rotkin is tired of hearing people make excuses for the June 2022 defeat of Measure D. It’s the “issue that won’t die,” he says. But he insists the facts are clear: Santa Cruz County voters do not want to tear up the train tracks in the corridor owned by the Regional Transportation Commission. They want a permanent trail with a future train running next to it.
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This is a column about election denial and related electoral issues. No, it is not about our Denier- in-Chief Donald Trump, but about local issues in Santa Cruz County.
Let’s start with the June 2022 vote on the rail trail – the issue that will not die.
Virtually every letter-to-the-editor section of every local publication is full of letters arguing that the June 2022 vote doesn’t really mean what it appears to mean about the will and desire of the local citizens with respect to the future possibility of a zero-emission train running on the corridor through our county.
These letters keep coming, and often multiple letters from the same individuals. Counting letters to the editor that express a particular view is not a particularly good way to gauge public opinion on an issue.
The outcome of that June 2022 election was not close. Over 73% of the voters in that election, in all five supervisorial districts, voted down the Greenway proposal to tear up the existing railroad tracks and build a multilane pedestrian and bike path where the tracks currently lie, more or less down the middle of the corridor.
In addition, every demographic in the county voted against the Greenway proposal in about the same percentage. People of color and white people, men and women, older and younger people, wealthy and low-income individuals and people across the political spectrum all voted to reject the Greenway proposal to take out the tracks and build an interim trail where they are currently located.
One of the arguments being made against interpreting this vote as a public rejection of the Greenway plan is that there was a relatively low turnout in this election, so it really shouldn’t count. In America, elections are won or lost by those who bother to show up.
If the requirement for success or defeat of a ballot measure or a candidate depended on an absolute majority of all potential voters, there would not be many people in public office in this country.
The Greenway proponents chose the June 2022 election for their ballot measure. Nobody made them do that. They obviously believed a low-turnout, non-November midterm-year election was good timing to put their measure in front of the public. It is also ridiculous that some people are now arguing that the measure was badly drafted and unclear or misleading. Again, it was the Greenway proponents who wrote the ballot measure and it is laughable that they would now claim that confusion about the measure makes it meaningless.
In addition, it’s more than a little difficult to argue that Greenway didn’t have sufficient resources to explain their measure to the voting public. Greenway was extremely well funded for this campaign and there was no shortage of glossy mailers, doorstep pamphlets and other media in which Greenway shared arguments. This was an election with virtually no irregularities or voter challenges, so that can’t be cited as a reason, either.
So what we are left with is a dearth of any reasonable arguments why we should not take the crushing defeat of the Greenway Measure D on the June 2022 ballot as a decisive measure of the will of the voters in Santa Cruz County on the future of the rail trail.
All of the municipalities and county government, as well as all of our educational institutions, water, fire, recreational and other special districts, the Metropolitan Transit District, and the Regional Transportation District spend a great deal of money to find out what their voters, constituents and the general public want in the way of services and programs from them. They hold in-person and online virtual meetings and focus groups. They do surveys, they hold public hearings, accept individual emails and letters, organize public presentations on issues throughout the county and do pop-up surveys in public parks and at transit centers.
However, all of this information- and opinion-gathering effort pales in comparison to an official electoral vote on a matter when it comes to understanding what people want.
Voting is not perfect; we often have low turnouts for elections in which far fewer citizens participate than we would like, but there is no better way to gauge what our citizens want than an official election. Even if Donald Trump doesn’t think so, it is the bedrock of our democracy. To deny the outcome of decisive elections (and over 73% of the voters in any election is “decisive”) is the first step on the road to destroying our democracy.
Now I love irony as much as the next person, but it strains credulity to have so many of the individuals who are arguing that the June 2022 Measure D election doesn’t really mean what it appears to mean or perhaps that it doesn’t mean anything at all be the very same people who didactically lecture us all at public meetings and in their letters to the editor that we need to avoid emotional arguments and “stick to the facts.” Here’s a fact: The voters in the June 2022 election sent a clear and unmistakable message that they do not want to tear up the train tracks in the corridor owned by the Regional Transportation Commission. They do not want an interim trail that would require ripping up the tracks; they want a permanent or ultimate trail that can coexist with a train running next to it.
Achieving this goal will not be easy or inexpensive, but the public has the right to expect that their elected officials will make their best efforts to get them what they want. If, in the end, a train is not feasible, public officials in this county need to be able to say that it failed not because they stood in the way of giving the people what they so clearly want.