An upcoming election for a vacant seat on the Alameda County Board Of Supervisors will attract more than the usual amount of attention.   The seat is being vacated by a woman who had to give up her seat after a highly publicized sex scandal, and the assemblywoman who is on the list of candidates for the seat has a shoplifting conviction to her credit.

Hayward Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi is currently on probation on charges of shoplifting.  She's in the running for the Alameda County Board of Supervisors seat. 

Hayashi had been charged with grand theft back in October 2011.  She walked out of the Neiman Marcus store in San Francisco, carrying a leather skirt, and some other pieces of clothing without having paid for these.  The total value of the clothes was about $2,400.  Hayashi pleaded no contest to the charges in January of this year.  She then entered a plea deal, and under the terms of the agreement, the charges were dropped to a misdemeanor.

She was sentenced to 3 years of probation, and fined.  She's also required to stay away from the San Francisco Neiman Marcus store.  As part of her defense, she insisted that she suffered from a brain tumor, which caused her errant behavior on the day of the shoplifting incident.  However, she later dumped that defense.

The shoplifting conviction and the defense that came after played out heavily in the media, and not surprisingly, her bid for the Alameda County Board of Supervisors seat has garnered a lot of attention.

Hayashi doesn't believe that her conviction will have any effect on her electoral prospects, and believes that voters are too smart to allow the conviction to color their opinion of her as a candidate.  That remains to be seen, however.  Typically, theft, shoplifting and other similar convictions are a deterrent for a person running for public office or applying for certain jobs.