Is Third Time a Charm for the 3rd District?

Even if you don’t live in the 3rd District of Santa Barbara County, there’s no shortage of reasons why you should care about the battle for supervisor on the upcoming June ballot.

As the county’s biggest and most diverse district, the 3rd boasts the most miles of pristine coastline; features a mix of mining, oil drilling, and farming; contains significant swaths of both open space and urban density; and is home to the cities of Guadalupe, Solvang, Buellton, and parts of Goleta and Lompoc, as well as UCSB, Isla Vista, Vandenberg Air Force Base, the Chumash reservation, and much of the Los Padres National Forest. And at a time when the economy still hurts, when oil and gas prospectors eye offshore and inland opportunities to drill, when developers lick their chops at the beautiful Gaviota Coast, the 3rd District supervisor continues to be the swing vote between the two traditionally conservative North County supervisors and the two reliably liberal South County supervisors. Altogether, the 3rd District is a microcosm of the entire region, representing both the challenges Santa Barbara County faces and the competing strategies on how to solve them.

In other words: As the 3rd goes, so goes the county.