Sonoma County residents have a largely positive view of the local agriculture industry and have been skeptical about the origins of a controversial measure to ban large animal farms in Sonoma County, a Democratic Press/Northern California Public Media The “virtual exit poll” for the November 5th election has been found.

Of the approximately 2,500 who responded survey questions on Measure J, 49% said they had a “very positive view” of local livestock farmers and 32% said they had a “somewhat positive view.”

That compares to nearly 27 percent who said they had a “somewhat negative view” of animal rights groups in Sonoma County and 20 percent who said they had a “very negative view.” Almost 24% said they had “neither a positive nor a negative view” of animal rights activists.

The controversial measure dominated local political discourse leading up to Election Day. The latest election results released this week showed the measure failing with 85% of the opposition vote. This is almost exactly like the results of the exit poll, in which 83% of participants said they voted against Measure J.

If it had passed, the measure would have made Sonoma the first county in the United States to ban large animal farms.

“A really easy one”

As the dust settled in the days after the election, Santa Rosa resident Ellen Bowen felt discouraged. The candidates he voted for were losing. The state initiatives he opposed were embraced by the majority.

The exception was Measure J.

“It was a really easy one. And probably the only thing on the ballot that I understood,” Bowen said in one of several follow-up interviews The Press Democrat conducted with survey respondents.

Bowen, 73, grew up in what is now Silicon Valley, and her parents stayed in the family home there for decades. Over time, she said, she’s watched the area’s apple and plum orchards be paved over for development.

“Over my lifetime I’ve seen how much the character of the area has changed,” Bowen said. “It’s unrecognizable now. And we’ve seen many of the same changes in Sonoma County. I don’t want this to become another Silicon Valley. If we don’t protect our agriculture, I think that’s the way things will go.”

The measure proposed closing down large animal farms with thresholds varying depending on the type of animal raised. Farms with more than 700 mature cows, 82,000 laying hens, 125,000 broiler chickens (those raised for meat) or 30,000 ducks would have been deemed non-compliant and given three years to reduce their herds or flocks .

PD and KRCB conducted the online poll between Oct. 31 and Nov. 7 in partnership with Sonoma State University political science students led by longtime public opinion pollster Professor Richard Hertz.

The non-scientific poll drew 2,915 respondents, most of them Press Democrat readers and KRCB listeners in the North Bay. Of the 2,915, about 2,500 said they live in Sonoma County.

Anxiety about the measure’s potential impact on local farms and any subsequent effects on the cost of locally sourced food was a common concern among those who said they voted no. Buying local agricultural products was “very important” to 67% of survey participants, and 27% said it was “somewhat important”.

“I think it was going to have a very bad effect on some very good people in those businesses and I think it was too onerous. It was too much, too radical, too fast,” said Healdsburg resident Traci Harris, 65.

Harris, who described herself as a “half-vegetarian” who eats chicken, turkey and fish, said he cares about animals, but was skeptical that the measure, as written, would have improved conditions for animals. Voting no, she said, was an easy decision to make.

Nearly 58 percent of those polled said they thought a ban on large livestock farms in Sonoma County would be bad for small farms, while nearly 31 percent were unsure and nearly 12 percent said it would be good for farms small.

This was among the contested points throughout the Measure J campaign, a debate that left many questions unanswered. These included the likely economic impact of the initiative, what could happen to farmland if a larger facility were to go out of business, and even the number of sites that would be affected by the proposed ordinance.

Estimates of the latter varied between 11 and 21 farms, but voters were never presented with a definitive list.

Skepticism about the measure’s origins and the motives of its supporters has further compounded the obstacles facing the campaign. About 70 percent of those polled said they thought the measure came primarily from outside Sonoma County, and only 7 percent said they thought it originated locally.