Nancy Skinner Wins Democratic Race for Loni Hancock’s Assembly Seat—and Hancock is Going to the State Senate

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Frank D. Russo

Nancy Skinner, a former Berkeley City Councilmember (pictured at right) who is a member of the East Bay Regional Parks District and who was endorsed by Asemblymember Loni Hancock to succeed her, has won the Democratic nomination in the heavily Democratic 14th Assembly District.

Hancock herself has won a hard fought battle over former Assemblymember Wilma Chan for the 9th Senate District seat being vacated by termed out President pro Tem of the Senate, Don Perata.

The two should work well together as Skinner coordinated Hancock’s successful 2002 bid for the Assembly and shares Hancock’s supports for single-payer health care (Skinner was endorsed by
State Senator Sheila Kuehl, the author of SB 840), protecting funds for public education, was an active supporter of Hancock’s 'Clean Money' campaign reform and has championed environmental causes in her terms in office. Well before global warming was a household word, she launched the movement of US Mayors and cities working to stop it. As a result of her efforts as a Berkeley City Councilmember, if you walk into a McDonald's today you won't see any Styrofoam. That's because she authored the first ban triggering McDonald's to pull Styrofoam from all of its US outlets. She was endorsed by the California Sierra Club as well as the California League of Conservation Voters.

With 58% of the precincts counted in the Alameda County portion of the district where she lives, Skinner has a commanding 46.5% of the vote and is beating her nearest rival Kriss Worthington, a Berkeley City Councimember, who has 23.2% of the vote. In Contra Costa County, where Richmond City Councilmember Tony Thurmond is based, Skinner is getting 52.6% of the vote to Thurmond’s 24.4%.

Combining these totals, Skinner has 51.8% of the vote in this 4 way Democratic primary race and her rivals have conceded the race to her.

With 69% of the precincts in Alameda County counted, Assemblymember Hancock has 55% of that vote and with 4 of the 40 Contra Costa precincts counted, she has over 70% of the vote there. Combined, this gives her a 56% to 44% lead over Chan, with 37,751 votes to Chan’s 29, 369 votes.