After an intense and often ugly race, a sizable majority of West Marin voters on Tuesday helped home designer Steve Kinsey of Forest Knolls beat lawyer Dotty LeMieux of Bolinas for Fourth District supervisor.
And Measure B, a $120-per-parcel tax to benefit Shoreline School District, eked out the necessary two-thirds majority for passage.
However, Measure A, the proposed sales-tax increase to bail out county parks and Marin Agricultural Land Trust, fell far short of the two-thirds majority needed.
In presidential politics, 61 percent of West Marin voters chose to re-elect Bill Clinton. Otherwise, local voters favored Green Party candidate Ralph Nader (19 percent) over Republican Bob Dole (14 percent) and noisy Ross Perot (5 percent).
And as they typically do on social and race issues, West Marin voters bucked the state trend by dumping on successful Proposition 209, which ends affirmative action in government contracts and state universities. Only 30 percent of West Marin voters approved of it, and no coastal town did except, oddly, Marshall, where the vote was 40 to 37 in favor.
The main event, however, was the supervisor's race, and Kinsey will now be the first West Marin supervisor other than you-know-who since 1972.
Kinsey, 44, told The Light, "I feel a combination of reverence, awe, and a sense of wonder at the opportunity in front of me. West Marin has a lot of issues that are knocking on the door of the supervisors."
To his way of thinking, the nasty part is over. "I had to learn the game," said the first-time office seeker. "I had to raise $100,000. I had to take the kind of assaults that I never would have anticipated."
Central to LeMieux's campaign were claims that Kinsey would allow unchecked development, was coy about his contributions, and had lied in referring to himself at one time as an architect.
Kinsey outdueled LeMieux in every town in West Marin except for Inverness, where the candidates ran even (255 votes for LeMieux, 253 for Kinsey), and in LeMieux's hometown of Bolinas, where she clobbered him, 449 votes to 210.
However, LeMieux's success in Bolinas was outstripped by big Kinsey margins in the San Geronimo Valley, which he took 1,140 votes to 610. Kinsey also did very well in Tomales, Dillon Beach, Nicasio, Marshall, and the ranching valleys, and by lesser margins beat LeMieux in Stinson Beach and the precinct encompassing Point Reyes Station, Olema, and Inverness Park.
However, Kinsey outpolled his rival in western Novato, 1,146 votes to 671.
"This is a very good night for the people of Marin and the resources of Marin," said retiring Supervisor Gary Giacomini, who campaigned heavily for Kinsey following the March primary.
"With this election, I can leave in peace," he said. "He's going to be a magnificent supervisor."
A phone call to LeMieux Wednesday was not returned.
For some at the Kinsey party Tuesday night, election day turned bittersweet. Bob Berner, executive director of Marin Agricultural Land Trust and husband of Kinsey campaign manager Barbara Garfien, was stunned by the failure of Measure A.
"I expected confidently [percentage of support] in the sixties," Berner said. "I have no idea. I can't explain it."
It would also have paid for maintenance of existing city and county parks, and it would have financed purchase of more county open space.
"The needs that Measure A addressed are real," Berner said. "We'll have to think again how to meet those needs. We got [more than] 50 percent. In a candidate election, that's a landslide."
If it were up to West Marin, Measure A would have passed easily. Coastal voters favored it with 71.5 percent support. Lukewarm support in eastern Marin brought the percentage down to 57.6.
Faring better was Measure B, a $120 parcel tax for Shoreline School District to finance art, music, drama, bilingual and computer-literacy programs.
But the 63-percent support from voters in Valley Ford, Bodega, Bodega Bay, and Bloomfield has delayed the celebration a bit.
"It's not certain that it passed yet," Shoreline Trustee Jim Love said, referring to the delay while the county checks provisional ballots, typically those belonging to absentee voters who appear at the polls on election day "We're still hanging on a string here," he said. "[But] it would take an anomaly... to put us in trouble."
Another winner was tiny Measure K, which will allow residents of the Paradise Ranch Estates subdivision in Inverness Park to use tax money already collected to finance road improvements.
This was not a vote about new taxes. Rather, existing money needed allocating by vote, a requirement under 1978's Proposition 13.
Voters in Bolinas approved the tax 475 to 275, but the 64.2 percent majority fell a handful of votes shy of the needed two thirds.
"A lot of people don't want to pay any more parcel taxes," said Mesa Park Director Jack Siedman on Wednesday. "They're all taxed out." However, he said, "this is a good project. We'll keep working on it. We'll get it done."
Marin Municipal Water District customers, which include residents of San Geronimo Valley, blessed a proposal to impose a $75 annual fee on customers for 15 years to improve a deteriorating water-delivery system for fighting fires.
Valley voters weren't as thrilled about the idea as voters were in southern Marin. Districtwide Measure L got 62 percent support, compared to just 57 percent in the Valley.