Simmons Rejected by 70% of Voters

Weygandt re-elected by wide margin

Sacramento Bee
Published 12:01 am PDT Wednesday, June 7, 2006

Placer County Supervisor Robert Weygandt clinched an overwhelming victory Tuesday over challenger Jerry Simmons.
With all precincts reporting in supervisorial District 2, Weygandt received 70 percent of the votes to win a fourth term on the board. He attributed the large victory margin to voters' recognition of his work on the board and the tenor of Simmons' campaign.

"It was partly his negativism and part of it was the money he received from developer Angelo K. Tsakopoulos, and I think both of those played into it," Weygandt said.


Simmons, president of the board of trustees of the Sierra Joint Community College District, raised $416,790 for his campaign, the most money ever raised for a Placer County supervisors' race.
Weygandt said he is looking forward to another four years.

"It was an election unlike any I've ever seen in Placer County, and I hope that we don't see one like this again," he said.

Simmons said that despite his loss, he has no hard feelings toward Weygandt.

"I called Robert Weygandt to congratulate him on his victory," he said. "It was a hard-fought campaign, but I pledged to support him 100 percent during his next four years in office.

"The election's over, and it's time that the Republican Party come together and be unified behind the candidate that the voters re-elected."

In the race for supervisorial District 1, no one received a majority of the vote. The two leading vote-getters Tuesday -- Roseville City Councilman F.C. "Rocky" Rockholm and Placer County Water Agency director Pauline Roccucci -- will face each other in a runoff in November.

With all precincts reporting, Rockholm received 45 percent of the vote, Roccucci received 40 percent and Roseville City School District trustee Rene Aguilera received 15 percent, knocking him out of the race.

In both races for supervisor, the hot issues involved growth and included how candidates would approach land-use decisions and policies, traffic problems and water availability in the burgeoning county.

The race between Weygandt and Simmons turned out to be the more contentious of the two, with campaign contributions and finger-pointing taking the forefront.

The race seemed fairly benign until January, when Simmons, 32, began raising large amounts of money for his campaign.

As of Tuesday, Simmons had raised record-breaking amounts of contributions for his campaign, which included a $100,000 late contribution from Angelo K. Tsakopoulos and more than $100,000 from Tsakopoulos' friends and business associates.

Weygandt's fundraising began last year, and he had amassed a sizable war chest in the weeks prior to the election. Weygandt, 54, had raised $394,980 as of Tuesday, with $79,000 having come from the United Auburn Indian Community, operator of Thunder Valley Casino.

The competition also was heightened by an unexpected endorsement of Simmons by the Placer County Republican Central Committee and cable television ads and mailers by Kyriakos Tsakopoulos, Angelo's son, criticizing Weygandt.

The central committee in March voted 18-4 in favor of endorsing Simmons, the committee's secretary -- the first time the local GOP hasn't endorsed an incumbent supervisor.

In May, Kyriakos Tsakopoulos, president of KT Development Corp., mailed letters and appeared in ads opposing Weygandt and criticizing him for not supporting a 2005 advisory ballot measure that asked voters to endorse his proposal to donate land in western Placer County for a private, four-year university and community project.

Weygandt has maintained that he supports a private university, but considers the site proposed by Tsakopoulos for the project "imperfect."

While the race for District 1 on the board wasn't as brutal, it had its moments of tension.

Roccucci, 58, accused Rockholm of being misleading by stating in campaign mailers that he is a two-term Roseville mayor and has served on the council for eight years.

Rockholm, 61, said he was the highest vote-getter in the last Roseville council election, is slated to be mayor again in November and will have served eight years if he finished his current term.