It is time for discussion of the issues.

The primary obligation of candidates is to respect voters by offering an honest discussion of the issues. Instead, one of the 3rd District Supervisor candidates — Bruce Porter — is running a campaign of false personal attacks on his opponents.

The only good aspect of this bad behavior is that it discloses Porter’s realization: “I can’t win on the issues, so I will attack my opponents instead.”

Perhaps this is why he evades the issues:

• Protecting the rural/agricultural character of our county: I offer a 15-year record of public service on this issue, and he has done absolutely nothing. Instead, his campaign is financed by special interests, which threaten our quality of life.

• Creating better-paying jobs: As a former high-tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist, I helped create over 100,000 private sector jobs. As a 25-year federal government employee and 12 year small-town stockbroker, he has created none.

• Fiscal responsibility: I am an experienced fiscal conservative who will get our government to spend less on itself and return more to taxpayers in the form of effective services and quality infrastructure. He is a 25-year employee of the largest pork-barrel spending agency in the largest money-wasting government on the planet.

• Protecting our communities: I am a champion of communities determining their own character, as evidenced by my successfully chairing the Santa Ynez Valley Community Plan process. He lived in the Santa Ynez Valley the entire time and never showed up at a single meeting.

• Protecting our neighborhoods: I have actively supported the efforts to get short-term rentals out of our neighborhoods. In contrast, he is on the Executive Committee of an organization that actively resists efforts to control them, plus promotes unlimited commercial events (a.k.a. “parties for profit”) on every parcel in the county, including residential neighborhoods.

• Protecting the Gaviota Coast: I have a solid 15-year record, he has done nothing. In contrast, he is enthusiastically backed by former supervisor Brooks Firestone, who approved the Naples project in an illegal closed-door meeting, and by Supervisor Peter Adam, who has proposed growing mansions on the Gaviota Coast and harvesting the tax revenue.

• Resisting tribal government’s attempts to remove land from local taxation: For over 10 years I have been one of the most steady, visible, and effective opponents of the inappropriate fee-to-trust actions of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. As president of a local school board he has been a serial deal-maker with the tribal government and done nothing to oppose expansion. Only seeking votes does he now say something mushy, and he asks you to trust him while he promotes an idea that he plagiarized.

• Support of agriculture: I have made significant contributions to increasing opportunities for value-added agricultural processing, agricultural permit streamlining, and adoption of a buffer ordinance to protect agriculture from encroaching urban development. He has done nothing.

• The service you deserve: I know you deserve a full-time effort, he thinks part-time is good enough.

If Porter would start talking openly about the issues, voters would see that they are being offered a very clear choice:

If you want a real fiscal conservative with a record of protecting what is wonderful about Santa Barbara County and the ability to help it grow responsibly, then I am your candidate. If you want someone who is a pawn of special interests who would exploit what is wonderful about our county and damage it in the process, then he is your candidate.

Running for office is the natural next step in my 15 years of community service. I would be honored to serve you as 3rd District Supervisor.

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