I'm still way behind in email, but a belated update about the election. As
y'all may remember, I was appointed Washtenaw County Commissioner earlier
this year, and stood for a full term at the recent election.  The British
term "stood" seems more appropriate than "ran", since I was unopposed and
did not put on a campaign.

I won, in other words, 7,763 to nothing.  ("Nothing demands a recount,"
said one of my friends.)  Strange to say, of the 22 candidates running for
15 county commission seats, I was the #1 vote getter.  However, that was
really because I was running unopposed in a district composed mostly of
upper-middle-class homeowners with high propensity to vote.

The presidential election was a rout here.  Gore carried every precinct in
Ann Arbor, even in the (strongly Republican) 2nd Ward.  It was reported
that Gore's 69.2% is the highest Democratic presidential vote ever
recorded in Ann Arbor -- I'm going to check on that.  He did astonishingly
well in the rest of the county, too, winning the township (suburban and
rural) areas, including some precincts which I'm pretty sure went for Dole
in '96.  And Gore took Michigan (supposedly "too close to call") by over
200,000 votes.

Now we have to figure out who will be the chair of the county board for
the coming year.  We had one announced candidate, but she dropped out.
We have met several times without getting any closer to making a decision.

On the histo presto front, the County is the relevant level of government
for protection of historic resources outside of municipalities which have
their own historic preservation ordinances.  Most recently, we designated
the Esek Pray House, a brick five-bay Greek Revival/Federal farmhouse in
Superior Township.

I believe the owners of the Pray house are interested in the new state tax
credit for rehabilitation of historic structures.  If this catches on, we
may get to do a lot of designations.

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Lawrence Kestenbaum, [log in to unmask]
The Political Graveyard, http://politicalgraveyard.com
Washtenaw County Commissioner, 4th District