Running it as root by just using /home/bob/fauxmo.py in /opt/bootlocal doesn't work. Not even when changing the first line as you suggested. (I'm using PiCore 8.0, btw)
After a reboot:
root@box:~# ps aux | grep faux
1199 root grep faux
root@box:~# type python
python is /usr/local/bin/python
-rwxr-xr-x 1 bob nogroup 15.8K Nov 27 21:30 fauxmo.py
Yet, it works fine on the command line; either the way I had it (running as my other user) or running it as root with the first line different.
root@box:/home/bob# ./fauxmo.py &
root@box:/home/bob# ps aux | grep fauxmo.py
1253 root {fauxmo.py} /usr/local/bin/python -O ./fauxmo.py
1260 root grep fauxmo.py
Cron seems to be starting now, though. I don't know how or why, but maybe adding crond start
into bootlocal did it. At least that works, though.