At the end of Sunday’s two-and-a-half-hour candidate forum in Pleasanton, state Sen. Bob Wieckowski praised retiring Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty for his two-decades-plus service in District 1, but neglected to mention the outgoing supervisor’s endorsement of his campaign to replace him.
Moments later, Dublin Vice Mayor Melissa Hernandez touted Haggerty’s endorsement as her own, a valuable political bauble to be supported by the retiring incumbent. But lost in the confusion is the fact Haggerty is endorsing both.
Wieckowski received Haggerty’s support last summer, but the state senator curiously failed to trumpet the endorsement. Sometime last week, Wieckowski was notified that Haggerty would split the endorsement between him and Hernandez.
Having a valuable endorsement pulled is one of the worst things that can happen to a campaign. Losing a portion of the endorsement to a rival might be the next worst.
Wieckowski’s campaign, perhaps realizing the omission of Haggerty’s endorsement on Sunday afternoon, issued a press release Monday morning touting the supervisor’s support. Hernandez’s campaign also released a statement later in the day highlighting Haggerty’s endorsement.
There may have been confusion about Haggerty’s intentions over the past few weeks. The dual-endorsement appears to have been in the works for several weeks. An email from Hernandez’s campaign publicizing the big endorsement was erroneously sent to supporters two weeks ago.
With the Haggerty endorsement, Hernandez now has support from a majority of the five-person Alameda County Board of Supervisors. She received previous endorsements Supervisors Wilma Chan and Richard Valle. Last week, Supervisor Nate Miley told the East Bay Citizen that he would stay neutral in the race until after the March primary.
Since no candidate in the four-person March primary is likely to win a majority of the vote, the top two candidates will advance to the November general election. Fremont Councilmember Vinnie Bacon and Dublin Mayor David Haubert are also in the race.
ebcitizen.com 
There is now a commercial with Scott Haggerty giving full support to Melissa Hernandez. In any case Senator Weickowski and his staff that he relies on very heavily are not interested in helping his constituents. We sent over 600 letters about our issue and visited. They prepared a special form letter to respond just to us. In response to our very real and legitimate concerns, we were disparaged and humiliated, ignored and argued with. Just the opposite of Scott Haggerty who listens to the concerns of citizens and tries to help.
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