MARY HAYASHI The historians will have to sort out which fall from grace was more precipitous. In terms of their personal life, it’s the sad tale of Nadia Lockyer, but politically it’s Mary Hayashi. In just one year’s time, Hayashi went from chair of the Assembly’s powerful business committee and likely state senator in 2014 to a candidate who couldn’t even finish SECOND to Richard Valle at the Alameda County Board of Supervisors! However, if you think the keys to her dreadful third place finish last Tuesday was solely because of her shoplifting conviction, I think you would be wrong. It was not the indiscretion that made her literally a pariah among local leaders; it was the catalyst for paying her back for years of abuse. Coincidentally, it was the same perception of Pete Stark among old Democratic hands, who while supporting him, also faulted him for his treatment of them. What’s next for Hayashi? Well, not much. Some believe she will emerge again in 2014 to battle Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski for the state senate. But, that inclination is based solely on her large remaining campaign war chest. She’s tainted and unpopular. In this situation, it might be better for her to shower others with campaign donations and look for one of those $150,000-per-year state boards and hope for better days.
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Stephen Cassidy
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STEPHEN CASSIDY Hubris can catch you with your pants down even if you’re as smart as San Leandro Mayor Stephen Cassidy thinks he is. The city’s moderate conservative mayor won in 2010 by demonizing city employees and tried to use the exact same recipe to pack the city council with three endorsed candidates. It didn’t work so well this time with all three possible going down to defeat. Not only did Cassidy endorse the candidates, but he also contributed to their campaigns, including two who were running against incumbents. A third, Hermy Almonte, seemed like he was reading familiar past speeches written by Cassidy, himself. Indeed, it was Cassidy’s biggest fuck you to his colleagues ever, but voters in San Leandro showed they are wise to Cassidy’s cancerous and cantankerous ways and beat the shit out of him on Election Day. The result was a clear referendum against Cassidy and doesn’t favor him for re-election in two years.
POLITICAL REPORTING See Carla Marinucci of the San Francisco Chronicle and realize if she is the best we have in political reporting, then we are, indeed, fucked.
LOCAL TAX INITIATIVES Not only did nearly every single local tax initiative stall at the ballot box, but their existence should have been questioned from the get-go. With the crucial Proposition 30 on the ballot and the Democratic Party’s thrust to get it approved taking resources away from local measures to fund transportation, zoos, community colleges and school parcel taxes, they never really had a chance. What a waste of money. It would be sad if an important initiative like Measure B1 is stymied because of the existence of these other municipalities also asking for tax dollars. The gambit was ill-advised and greedy at the same and they are lucky, at least, it did not get in the way of keeping Prop. 30 from passing.
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Anu Natarajan
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FREMONT’S ANA NATARAJAN My grandmother always says, “Somebody has to lose for someone to win,” but it didn’t have to be so for two once-up-and-coming women in local government. Campaigns are about correct political calculations and sometimes simply exercises in patience. For Fremont’s Councilwoman Anu Natarajan, the local establishment and Democratic Party encouraged her to wait, instead of running against their guy, fellow Councilman Bill Harrison. She didn’t listen and apparently Fremont voters did the same. She finished third to Harrison and Republican Steve Cho with just a quarter of the vote. However, she is very well liked in the East Bay and her set back may not be a mortal wound. In fact, her future may lie one day in Sacramento representing a large and dynamic demographic in Fremont’s South Asian population.
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Sara Lamnin
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HAYWARD’S SARA LAMNIN It’s not so for Hayward’s Sara Lamnin whose nascent political career is starting to resemble a former top baseball prospect who seemingly has all the tools to succeed, but simply cannot make the transition for Triple-A to the majors. After failing to grab a seat on the Hayward City Council in 2010, Lamnin again fizzled in last week’s school board race. How many times can she fail before her promising career in elected service is irreversibly diminished? Her decision to run for the seat this spring was curious when it appeared all three incumbents would run for re-election. When Armas and Heredia were bumped aside, it greatly brightened her chances, but sadly one of Hayward’s most dedicated and capable public servants is left to wonder about what went wrong.
ebcitizen.com 
Cassidy is a jackass. My street hasnt been paved in the last 20 years, but we can allocate raises for the chief of police, ass. city manager and pay 3 million to keep a county hospital open….get the fuck out!
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Thanks Tony Santos for your service to our city! These negative people must be fools. Cassidy is a jerk for giving tax payers $$$ to a hospital that can't make a profit. Will the hospital have to pay all this money back? Did voters approve giving this money to the hospital? How long till this hospital fails and taxpayers money is wasted?
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Santos ego knows no limits. Santos is on the minds of the voters like a bad hangover they still remember. Santos put the city on the hook for millions in legal fees and court settlements by his poor decisions. Santos couldn't keep a police chief. Santos hired the worst city manager in the city's history who lasted only two years. Santos had nothing to do with Kaiser coming to the city. You figure it out. Kaiser bought the land before he became mayor. Santos tried to stop Kaiser until the unions told him to shut up because Kaiser was using them build it. Tony “No jurisdiction” Santos said we had to lose our only ER. Anything Sutter said Santos agreed with.
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thanks for all the comments about me; i guess i am still on some voters minds and so i am thankful-i agree with those who noted cassidy did not support measure z and yet he is using that money to bail out a hospital for which the city has no jurisdic tion and how about carole rogers-she and her colleagues lost a $60 million dollar asset and for this Sutter is thankful-after February 2013, the district could be bankrupt-the court is to set damages against the distict in 2013-then where will the district be-any of you figure out why the distict (ETHD) wants to contribute only $250,000 this year and $500,000 toward hospital operations? because they may be in bankruptcy next year-and I gave all of you Kaiser-thank me for that at least–tony santos
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Hmmm, Mary Hayashi's 3 times per week PRWeb press releases seemed to have stopped all of a sudden
Doe this mean she no longer cares about
American Diabetes Month
Halloween Safety Tips
Celebrating Food Day
UN International Day of the Girl
National Adopt-A-Shelter-Dog Month
Red Cross Storm Relief
and similar important topics?
I mean, all those dozens and dozens of press releases weren't just for the election, were they?
Perhaps it was the cost. Starting at about $149 per release. I always wondered, who read them.
Obviously not voters in District 2a
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Going down Cassidy, To hell with his Lazy Fat Ass minions mostly jobless whores and bums!
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Go Cassidy! To hell with the union whores, who need to be put in their place!!
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Cassidy is a joke. In his state of the city address he says until the budget is fixed he can't see any pay raises for employees yet he gives the new CM a hefty raise. He gives $3 million to a hospital who's patients are 50% from Oakland. “Loans” $1.5 million to a school district that had to put a parcel tax measure on the ballot to balance it's budget. Now that that has failed, thank goodness, I expect sometime in the future he will let the school district off the hook and not have them pay it back. He takes credit for shit he did not have anything to do with and has been doing nothing but bashing employees and lying about the city's budget problems.
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Ol Norm…. yup milked the cow,kicked it around and now living in hog heaven!
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Are Cassidy and Galvan's wives related? (cousins?) Has Cassidy made this know when discussing Galvan's Links funding $$$ at city council meetings? Inquiring minds still want and need to know.
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And don't even get me started on ol' Norm, his brother in the county probation dept., who was ousted as union president years ago and then finally retired.
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306 good job informing 1044,(aka hendi, michael santos or tony himself)
sometimes signs as ts = toilet paper…and not sure if he is even worth that
santos your irrelevant … by the way nice picture of you with a clown wig on…suprise that the un-bias tavares doesn't post that one.
all the cops wanted to retire under santos, why you ask ? in the force he was known as Daddy Pension!! Retire Early and RICH
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Santos a do nothing has been
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Here! Here!
Tony Santos has always been interested in Tony Santos.
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10:44 – try to actually offer some facts to support your misstatements. Santos burned through millions in reserves. That's how he achieved a “balanced budget.” It was unsustainable. By a margin no one will ever come close to, Santos is the biggest deficit spender in San Leandro history (and will go down in history as the city's sorest loser too). Santos' pension reform proposals were a joke – would have saved the city money in 2030. Meanwhile, Santos continued to pick up the full pension costs of current employees. If you think the city had nothing to do with the fiber loop, then why didn't it start under Santos? You are badly misinformed.
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Been following the machine candidate Sara Lamnin at school board race. Sara it is time to rethink about politics. Next time be VERY familiar with the issues and not your bragging of endorsements.
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Mary Hayashi is no longer allowed at Neiman Marcus and she has to check in her bag in every store when she goes shopping. At Walmart they always check her receipts.
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“What’s next for Hayashi? She’s tainted and unpopular.”
Right from the beginning Mary Hayashi thought she could pull a fast one on the voters.
First she stopped talking, told police officers she wanted her lawyer.
From that point forward, she never spoke a word until she plead “no contest” in the courtroom on January 6th.
And that was the last spoken word on the subject from Mary until July 21st, 2012 when she gave Josh Richmond a interview, her first since the arrest.
So, what did Mary Hayashi do in those 8 months? She tried to dupe the voters.
Mary's foolish plan began hours after her arrest.
#1. She hires crisis PR specialist San Singer, known as “The Fixer” to represent her version of events.
Here is the idiotic response Hayashi/Singer put out Oct. 29th 2011, only days after her arrest.
“She was trying to do too many things at the same time. She had several cell phones, she went down to have a snack at the cafe there, she failed to go back and purchase the items, stepped outside the door, realized that something was wrong, but before she had the opportunity to go back and correct her own mistake, security was there,” said Singer.
“This was not an attempt at shoplifting,”
Problem is that the above version is not true. At complete odds with the police report and the store video. After concealing the stolen goods in the empty Neiman Marcus bag she-BROUGHT-with-her to the store, she exited the store, only taking time to pay for a few cheaper items as a cover. NO subsequent visit to the store Cafe. No cell phone calls. A fabricated story as the security video would indicate.
#2. Mary, only 7 days after arrest, hires David Binder Research to do polling and a survey to see how she can play this to the public.
She spent $14,100 on 11/1/11 for this.
#3. She strings out the legal process, never appearing, claiming innocence until the quietest day of the year, the first Friday afternoon following the New Years weekend.
But she BLUNDERS badly. With her attorney at her side, she then allows him to speak for her while she remains quiet.
It is then they stupidly proclaim that Mary Hayashi is suffering from a “brain tumor”, but that she is OK now and can stay in office.
They say the following regarding the brain tumor.
“there is NO other reason she would have taken the merchandise”
The press, TV, newpapers, blogs, the people, all erupt in laughter followed by outrage at such a story.
Perhaps realizing how poorly the “brain tumor” excuse has played, she and her team struggle to come up with a official statement, which they release 3 days later.
When you read that awful statement, you can just see a group of two or three people struggling over it all during the weekend.
They read it and re-read it, until they have lost all sight of how a normal person would read it on a first go.
That statement, which will later haunt her as it is repeatedly quoted, is laughable in its overly carefull wording.
If you have not read it for some time, you really must do so.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/77684777/Hayashi-I-offer-apologies-not-excuses
She has never retracted those statements including the numerous times she claims she never intended to steal.
Clearly ALL the facts prove otherwise and will always follow her until she finally admits to her full guilt.
California law INCLUDES “intent” as one of the elements of the crime she plead No Contest to. District Attorney Gascon reinterated that specific point when he said they had more than enough evidence to convict Mary.
But she kept shooting herself in the foot.
July 21st in the Oakland Tribune
“Hayashi said she had been distracted by a phone call when she left with the unpaid items. “Of course, I intended to pay for them,” she said.
The coverup is sometimes worse than the orginal crime.
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San Leandro Hospital is not being saved, Highland Hospital/San Leandro Campus is closer to the truth.
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Budget has always been balanced(state law) pension reform was done by lat council and mayor.
Fiber loop was done by a private citizen, council had nothing to do with it.
Cassidy campaigned against sales tax increase which balanced the budget. What has Cassidy done? Nothing really, he is basking in past achievements and taking credit for them.
Now lets look what Cassidy really did, chased the city managers top 3 assts to lateral or lesser jobs in other cities because they didnt want to work under him. City manager has also had to hold Cassisy back from doing illegal acts, taking time away from doing his job.
Hospital is in Eden Health district which includes Hayward< Castro Valley and San Leandro, Cassidy has said we will pay all the costs, doesn't seem smart for the city. Couple with that the fact that over 50% of the emergency room patients come from Oakland. oakland isnt going to pay they already have a free hospital.
This mayor has been a disaster and if San Leandro citizens haven't noticed(which I think they did last week) then we are in trouble
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Prola and Reed ran on a plaform that the status quo was A okay and celebrated the fiber optic loop project and eliminating the city budget deficit. Prola and Reed said they supported pension reform. The loop, balanced budget and pension reform are all issues Cassidy has led on. The results in San Leandro highlight the power of incumbency. Voters feel the city is moving in the right direction. Cassidy is helping save San Leandro Hospital and been a huge supporter of the public schools. All Cassidy has to do is copy the literature of Prola and Reed and he will be re-elected easily.
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Steve,you use the term Progressive many times in your articles. In political terms I have observed the use of the term by others to describe candidates who are very diverse in their political orientation and beliefs. It would be helpful for me as a regular reader of your articles if you could write one that defines what you mean when you say someone is Progressive. Thanks.
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Cassady lied to win his election. He lied about the city budget. He lied about putting the Marina development on the ballot. He lied about the sales tax measure.
The guy is borderline socially retarded as well. Cassidy should resign after endorsing the opponents of 2 incumbents. He will not be able to lead the city.
He should resign and take Mack Rose, Marga and himself to the Pritikin longevity center and go on a diet
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9:23
Cassidy's 50.57% to Santos' 49.43% is 1.14%. That means all 3 council candidates blew opponents endorsed by Cassidy out of the water. Cassidy endorsed Measure L to failure too. Voters are voting against Cassidy's endorsements.
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you meant incompetent mayor ever, is Cassidy!
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Steve Cassidy blew that ultra-liberal airhead Tony Santos out of the water two years ago. He'll do just fine and is destined for great things.
Finally San Leandro has someone competent in the mayor's seat!
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