Dave Potter, who has held the 5th District seat on the Monterey County Board of Supervisors since 1996, woke up on Election Day and had coffee with his wife, Janine Chicourrat, at Carmel Valley Coffee Roasting Co. in downtown Carmel. After a walk on the beach, he and Janine went to the Sunset Center to cast their ballots. He ate a banana for breakfast then went to a Board of Supervisors meeting in Salinas, feeling “cautiously optimistic” that by the end of the day he’d still have his job.
Potter will have plenty more time for casual walks on the beach and coffee at his favorite cafe. Challenger Mary Adams finished 12.7 points ahead, dethroning the longtime incumbent.
“I’m feeling good. To be surrounded by so many friends and supporters is heartwarming,” Adams said at Wave Street Studios in Monterey, where she held her election party. Before running for office, Adams was CEO of United Way Monterey County for 14 years.
“People heard the message and responded to it,” she said while waving and smiling to supporters walking by on the heated patio. “They want transparency and they want a change.”
Once the darling of progressives and environmentalists in District 5—which covers Big Sur, Carmel, Carmel Valley, Monterey, Pacific Grove and the Highway 68 corridor—many former supporters soured on Potter for what some have called back-room deals and close ties to developers. Over the course of 20-years in office, some former allies became enemies.
“This was the ugliest race I’ve been a part of,” Potter said at his election party at Cypress Inn in Carmel, where he mingled with a few dozen supporters. “The race wasn’t about the issues, it was about personal attacks.”
The local democratic establishment was torn while considering which of the two Democrats to get behind in the District 5 race. In March, the Monterey County Democratic Central Committee rewrote their rules as the 25 voting members couldn’t come to a consensus on which candidate to endorse. In the end, they endorsed both.
As the first results came back, showing Potter trailing with 43 percent of the vote, and just 25 percent of the vote counted, Potter grimaced as someone wrote the numbers on a whiteboard to keep tally. But he quickly put on a smile and cracked some jokes with supporters, who were drinking wine and eating bruschetta, cheese and charcuterie.
“The thing that annoys me most is the disrespect for the people in my office,” Potter says of the campaign. “My staff has always worked very hard. It’s a complicated job and attacks do them a great disservice.”
With two-thirds of the vote yet to be counted, Potter held off conceding defeat, while at the same time in Monterey, Adams was reluctant to claim victory before all the ballots are counted.
“She is an incredibly positive person who has a great openness about her,” Guy Francis, a retired Pacific Grove resident, said of Adams at her election party. “I’ve grown tired of the status quo. She’ll bring a breath of life to this position.”
The morning after the election, Potter conceded defeat and wished Adams luck. “It will be pleasant not having to live my life under the public microscope anymore,” Potter said.