June Gloom Elections in Santa Barbara

With 61 candidates for governor on the ballot — the most since the 2003 recall election when there were 135 — voters this June seemed to know more what they didn’t like than what they did. In Santa Barbara County, turnout thus far — some ballots still have yet to be counted — was just 26.8 percent. That’s down 13 points from four years ago, the last June primary with a governor’s race atop the ticket.

In Santa Barbara County, where being a billionaire isn’t held against you, reformed billionaire and climate change crusader Tom Steyer placed first with 28 percent of the votes cast, Republican Steve Hilton (Donald Trump’s pick) placed second with 25.5 percent, and Xavier Becerra — the personification of the Democratic status quo with 37 years in the electoral trenches — placed third.

Statewide, Steyer appears to be placing a distant third, but with half the state ballots still uncounted, it remains within the realm of mathematic possibility for him to close that gap. Still, it’s an uphill climb. Steyer has blamed the Big Money campaign — $78 million at last count — led by the likes of Chevron, the big utility companies, and large corporate interests to blow him out of the race. For the moment, Steve Hilton, the MAGA-red Republican candidate endorsed by Donald Trump, appears to be the top vote-getter for the top spot in the bluest state of the nation. (Even in Santa Barbara, Hilton placed a solid second.)

While Hilton’s standing no doubt offers momentary comfort and glee to Donald Trump — famous for his well-documented antipathy to California — Tuesday night’s results indicate that come November, Becerra’s victory is all but inevitable, so implacably wide is California’s gap in party registration.

Among Santa Barbara politicos, Assemblymember Gregg Hart, who won easily with 60 percent, was among the first three in the state legislature to endorse Steyer. In Sacramento, Hart is playing a lead role in the fight against Sable Offshore, and among anti-oil activists, Becerra is regarded with skepticism because of the donations he’s taken from oil companies.

On the flip side, Congressmember Salud Carbajal — running for his sixth term — was among the first to endorse Becerra, one of his key political mentors. Carbajal won with 54 percent of the vote, a decisive margin but still less than he normally wins by. Of the three challengers Carbajal faced, Republican Bob Smith — recently retired from the Navy and a centrist by inclination — was the most formidable he’s faced in years, taking 38 percent. On election night, Carbajal issued a statement reminding voters of his connection to Becerra. “California deserves a governor who will fight for the working people, and Xavier Becerra is the strong and most qualified leader who will do just that,” he said. “I am proud to have been one of Xavier’s initial endorsers.”

Closer to home, 2nd District Supervisor Laura Capps, who was expected to win big in her quest for a second term, wound up winning even bigger, posting a 76 percent victory over challenger Elijah Mack, a 21-year-old religion teacher. Despite the seeming mismatch, Capps maintained a pedal-to-the-metal pace. “I’m super fired up,” she declared at an election-night gathering of about 70 party faithful at downtown’s Public Market. “I approach this job with a sense of urgency every day. I know one speed and it’s fast. It’s just the way I’m wired, because I feel we’re on this planet a short time.” Capps suggested she may have won over some Republican votes with her support for the new fire dispatch system designed to reduce response times by assigning the closest engine to call for service regardless of engine jurisdiction.

In the wide-open race for the 5th Supervisorial District (Santa Maria and Guadalupe), Ricardo Valencia, a high-school teacher and Santa Maria school board member, seems to have secured a solid spot in first place with a combination of paid canvassers and an unequivocally progressive message attacking the aggressive police tactics of ICE agents and income inequality. He campaigned in favor of a minimum wage for agricultural workers, and phasing out the county’s onshore oil. Turnout in the 5th District is historically the lowest of all five, and the base to which Valencia appeals is among the hardest to mobilize.

Assuming the current ranking holds by the time all votes are counted, Valencia will be facing Maribel Aguilera, a Santa Maria City Councilmember, in November’s runoff election. Like Valencia, she is a child of immigrants and the first in her family to attend college. While Valencia — a registered Democrat — wears his left-leaning politics on his sleeve, Aguilera is harder to pin down. While she’s a declined-to-state party affiliation, the Republican Central Committee, big ag, and business PACs have thrown in solidly behind her.

Placing third, at least for the moment, is Cory Bantilan, who for the past 15 years worked as Supervisor Steve Lavagnino’s right-hand man, district manager, and political advisor. But even with this experience, Bantilan — who lost 27 pounds walking precincts — only just moved into the district in order to run; this got him tagged with the outsider label. On the campaign trail, Bantilan promised competence and candor.

Should present trends continue and Valencia and Aguilera make it into the November runoff, the race promises to be intense. Valencia genuinely threatens to rattle the status quo — both in the district and on the Board of Supervisors — and should enjoy focused financial support from South Coast progressives, Democrats, environmentalists, unions, and women’s organizations. Santa Maria’s growers and oil companies, their political action committees, and the Republican Party will no doubt respond accordingly.

Winning the big upset of the night was Melinda Greene, who beat her longtime boss Joe Holland for the office of County Clerk, Recorder and Assessor, a position that oversees all county elections. Due to a chronic medical condition, Holland has not been able to show up at work, maintaining telephonic contact with department employees. Greene is a skilled, longtime department leader, who exudes more snap, crackle, and pop than a box of Rice Krispies. She won with 59 percent, securing endorsement from all five county supervisors, labor unions, the Republican Central Committee, the Democratic Party, and pretty much any entity making endorsements.

The ballot item with the potential to most directly impact housing affordability — the City of Santa Barbara’s Measure A2026 — won overwhelmingly despite being impenetrably wonky. No one even bothered to wage a campaign on its behalf. Even so, it won with 66.7 percent for it. The measure emerged out City Hall’s urgent efforts to somehow reactivate the long-floundering Paseo Nuevo mall. To entice potential investors, the City Charter needed to be changed to allow the city to lease city-owned land to private developers for 99 years. Presently, the charter restricts the city from leasing land longed than 50 years, too short a period to interest the development and investment worlds.

Ironically, on Tuesday, as voters were casting their ballots, the City Council also ecstatically approved a partnership with the Yardi Company, for an adaptive reuse development plan for Paseo Nuevo. Yardi had made it clear that leasing land — for any duration — was an absolute deal killer. Even so, City Administrator Kelly McAdoo noted that City Hall owns 400 parcels of land on which housing might potentially be built. By making that land available on a leasehold basis, the city would presumably have enough skin in the game to require more than a token gesture when it comes to affordability.

The biggest nail-biter of the night is between Judge Thomas Adams — a 50-year veteran of the Santa Barbara bench — and Luis Esparza, a private attorney with a shoebox small practice. By the end of the night, Adams, who’d never had to run for office before, was ahead of Esparza — who promised to make the bench more reflective of the community at large — by only 572 votes.