Placer hopefuls face runoff

Jennifer Montgomery and incumbent Bruce Kranz will be in a runoff election Nov. 4 for the District 5 seat on the Placer County Board of Supervisors.

With all 71 precincts reporting Tuesday, Montgomery of Soda Springs garnered nearly 41 percent of the vote while Kranz of Colfax had about 37 percent.

A third candidate, Robert Houston of Meadow Vista, had 22 percent.

Since no candidate received more than 50 percent, the top two vote-getters face each other in the runoff.

Two other supervisors – Jim Holmes in District 3 and appointed incumbent Kirk Uhler in District 4 – ran unopposed and were elected to the board with vote totals of 98 percent each.

Montgomery, a Democrat, said she was "excited and pleased" to be heading for a runoff against Kranz, a four-year member of the board.

"I thought it was a very clear message from the voters that they don't want the old machine-style politics," she said. "They want a supervisor that will stand up to the big out-of-town developers."

Kranz said he knew he had a tough challenge for an outright victory Tuesday because Houston, a fellow Republican, was obviously going to cut into his votes.

"He took 22 percent off my base," Kranz said. "When you have two Republicans running and one Democrat, (a runoff) is to be expected."

Kranz said he hoped to get back the Republican voters who supported Houston.

However, Montgomery was optimistic that she'll capture the Houston votes in the runoff "because Bob and I ran on similar platforms."

Montgomery and Houston jumped into the race because of concerns over possible development along the Interstate 80 corridor in Placer County, and because Kranz has accepted large sums of campaign contributions from developers over the years.

Montgomery said Kranz presented himself as a pro-environment candidate in 2004 but that his votes on development issues seemed to indicate otherwise.

The challengers also criticized Kranz for not attending meetings held by municipal advisory councils within District 5, which includes Foresthill, Colfax and some areas in the Tahoe region.

They blamed Kranz for appointing a planning commissioner who was later removed by the supervisors over possible violations for the splitting of property lots that she owned.

Kranz said he'd been aware of concerns about the appointee but that he left her on the commission because the District Attorney's Office had taken no action against her after an investigation.

A former state parks supervisor, the incumbent pointed to his "pro-green" record, which included trying to implement measures to control catastrophic wildfires and the creation of a biomass plant.

Through May 22, Kranz had raised $228,558 since 2006 in preparation for another run at being elected.

Houston had raised $129,134 while Montgomery had taken in $90,994.

The bulk of Houston's money came from a $100,000 loan he made to himself. Montgomery said her campaign was a grass-roots effort.

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