The Second 2010 Bond Election
In May of last year, the City of Richardson held a bond election. The four propositions passed, but with an “average” of 58% for and 42% against, the margin was less overwhelming than it usually is in the City.
A small group of people who organized the “No” vote smelled what they thought was blood in the water. They were convinced that a rising number of Richardson residents were concerned about the amount of debt that the City carried. As a result, they organized the Richardson Citizens Alliance (RCA), and set out to elect a slate of City Council candidates in May of this year.
The result? A disaster for the RCA as well as for the 5 RCA-endorsed candidates.
There will no doubt be many post mortems on this election, but RumorCheck would like to take a different view than most. In many ways, this election was a referendum on the 2010 bond election. This election was a chance for the RCA to show that the people of Richardson were ready to metaphorically renounce the “narrow” victory of the pro-bond campaign (if one can call 58%-42% “narrow”). The RCA believed that the more citizens understood the level of debt in the City, the more likely they would vote against those candidates who believed that our current financial strategy was working.
However, the election showed the exact opposite. The more the citizens learned about the RCA, they less they liked it. How else can you explain the fact that while the number of ballots cast in 2011 was 16% higher than in 2010, all but one RCA candidates got fewer actual votes than voted “no” in 2010? Let’s compare the numbers:
| Average number of “no” votes in 2010 bond election | 2,879 | Change from 2010 |
| Number of votes William Gordon received in 2011 | 2,214 | -23.1% |
| Number of votes John DeMattia received in 2011 | 2,477 | -14% |
| Number of votes Karl Voigtsberger received in 2011 | 1,927
| -33.1% |
| Number of votes Dennis Stewart received in 2011 | 2,940 | +2.1% |
| Number of votes Diana Clawson received in 2011 | 2,487 | -13.2% |
Note that this was not a case of a decline in the voter turnout; when you consider the total number of ballots cast, the number actually rose 16% (7,050 in 2010 and 8,196 in 2011).So how would you interpret this result? The first thing that comes to mind is that these five candidates were indeed "tainted" by their association with the RCA. RumorCheck appeared to call it exactly right when we predicted that the YouTube video accusing Councilman Amir Omar of lying was "[a] mean-spirited cheap shot that will blow up in the Alliance's face".
But there is a second way of looking at the results – that this election was a second vote on the 2010 bonds, and this time, the voters decided that the bonds were an even better idea than before. That is, people whom the proto-RCA had frightened into voting "no" on the bonds in 2010, came out and voted "yes" for the bonds by voting against the RCA-endorsed candidates. And more than 1,000 voters who didn't vote in the bond election at all, came out to say "If I had voted in the 2010 bond election, it would have been a 'yes' to the bonds!"
The City Council candidates who favored the bonds in 2010 defeated the anti-bond candidates on the average by more than 2 to 1. Anti-bond forces chortled in 2010 at the "narrow" victory of the bond propositions in 2010, but this vote we can now see as an aberration. The City Council vote in 2011 has made it clear that there is still a supermajority in Richardson that is pro-redevelopment, pro-neighborhood, pro-business, and pro-City.
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin
Richardson, Texas
