MOST MARINITES thought that all the excitement on election day was about Barack Obama and Joe Biden's easy victory over Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.

They were wrong. Read the fine print. The election was really between 27-year-old Daniel Leroux and past Marin Republican Party chair Morgan Kelley. Those were the candidates fighting to be elected to the Electoral College from the North Bay-North Coast Second Congressional District

In their wisdom, the authors of the U.S. Constitution decreed that the nation's chief executive is selected by what some consider an obsolete institution: the Electoral College.

Few local residents were aware that Leroux was selected to represent voters in the North Bay-North Coast Second Congressional District. The San Rafael attorney had no discretion when he did his duty. California doesn't permit rogue electors, those troublesome members of the Electoral College who historically tried to up end elections by voting for someone other than the presidential candidate who carried their state.

Leroux cast his ballot for Obama and Biden on Dec. 17 during a 90-minute session in California's Assembly chamber. Leroux was an intern in Jared Huffman's congressional campaign. He was joined in Sacramento by Sausalito's Barbara Schraeger, a retired business consultant. She was appointed to one of the ceremonial spots in California's Electoral College by U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein.

Each congressional nominee from the party whose presidential candidate wins the Golden State gets to name one elector. That's why Huffman got to make the choice for the Second Congressional District. Ditto for each state's two senators or senatorial nominees of the victorious party.


Marin's Citizens for Sustainable Pension Plans have been saying that the assumed 7.5 percent rate of return on investments by public employee retirement systems is a mirage.

The "assumed rate of return" is the key figure upon which every calculation related to pensions is based.

Make the assumption too high and pensions will be grossly underfunded. This will eventually either lead to the plans' financial collapse or require a massive taxpayer-financed bailout.

Most Marin residents with private-sector 401(k) plans understand that a 5 percent to 6 percent return is more realistic. Any higher return implies incurring much greater risk. In the case of public retirement plans, risk means if something goes wrong, e.g., another Great Recession, taxpayers are on the hook.

While public pension plan administrators have resisted calls to reduce their rate-of-return assumption to more realistic rates, the bond market is now going over their heads. Moody's Investor Services, one of the three national credit rating agencies for bonds, will soon use a more realistic 5.5 percent assumed annual return on investments.

Moody's and the two other national credit raters will use their lower assumptions to rate the security of bonds issued by agencies participating in any public employee pension plan. That includes Marin's county government, its 11 cities and special purpose districts.

The cost of funding these retirement plans will soon go up when bond costs skyrocket, whether or not participating governments concur.


In the presidential race, Romney received only 22.9 percent of the Marin vote. His best tally was in tiny Belvedere. That's where the former Massachusetts governor earned 43.7 percent of voters' support. Even in that once solidly Republican town, President Barack Obama still won a majority.

The president's 74.1 percent of the countywide vote looks almost anemic when compared to his Fairfax support. In that progressive bastion, the Obama-Biden ticket achieved 84.9 percent compared to 9.4 percent for the GOP ticket.

In years past, Novato was a Republican stronghold. Not this time. In 2012, Obama-Biden received 68.1 percent of the vote in Novato to Romney-Ryan's 28 percent.
