Mammoth Steps Up

June 7, 2006

Mammoth's voters revealed a refreshing streak of independence on Tuesday, declining to let the candidates or political action groups harsh their mellow.

Wendy Sugimura? Who knew?

Maybe it was because the other candidates had so many red, white and blue yard signs in front of vacant second-homeowners' houses that it actually got to be embarrassing. Yipes, already. And the TV commercials: Yow.

Even the dog over at the Pavlovs was spotted cringing toward the end of the campaign.

Sugimura went out of her way to avoid glad-handing; she told voters that there are few easy answers for complex questions; she was a straight shooter all the way and never bought into political clichés. "I was never interested in playing a political game," she said. "I tried to be true and honest, and I think that resonated with people."

There's a lesson in that for Skip Harvey and Kirk Stapp, who are up for re-election two years down the road.

Meanwhile, the Advocates For Mammoth, who during the long campaign failed to come up with a single issue that anyone could grasp, failed to unseat longtime incumbent John Eastman and could do nothing to slow down Neil McCarroll's train. Mostly the Advocates did what they do best: they got in the way, and there's something to be said for that, I suppose.

The Mammoth Locals For A Sustainable Future, mostly a Chamber of Commerce/Developer coalition, took a header in front of the voters. They lost incumbent Tony Barrett and one half of the tax hike, called "The Community Services Initiative." Had Barrett and both ends of the tax hike prevailed, the MLFSFs could have claimed an impact.

Instead, Sugimura trampled everyone, steering clear of being labeled or pigeonholed into the Advocates' camp or that of the MLFSFs.

As for the tax initiatives, supporters—and that means Barrett and the MLFSFs, mostly—tried to treat the bed tax (Measure T) and the sales tax (Measure S) as if they were part and parcel of the same thing. But the voters chose to think for themselves. They decided to trash the sales tax and soak the tourists a little bit more on the bed tax.

Go analyze that any which way, but at least it shows that the voters weren't in the mood to be pushed around, making it one more reason to stick around to see what happens next.

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