Our Picks for Congress, State Assembly, and the City of Goleta & Lompoc Mayoral Race

Over the next few weeks, the Santa Barbara Independent will be rolling out our endorsements for the November 2022 election. Check our daily website at Independent.com for continuing information on other candidate races, city measures, and state propositions. As always, the Independent only endorses in races that we have researched carefully. In this, our first installment, we are focusing on Congress, State Assembly, and the City of Goleta and Lompoc mayoral race. Thank you for considering our suggestions.

After serving three terms in Congress, Salud Carbajal is now feeling relaxed in Washington, D.C., to officially betray a sense of humor, as he did with his recent “Better Call Salud,” commercials — a riff on the successful TV show Better Call Saul.

Carbajal was sworn into office the same time Donald Trump took his oath of office, and the two could not differ more dramatically on matters of both style and substance. One a former immigrant kid, the other an immigrant basher. Carbajal cut his teeth working for former District 1 Supervisor Naomi Schwartz, for whom constituent services trumped ideological purity. Carbajal, a lifelong Democrat of the more transactional variety, has always been most comfortable in the so-called middle, forever talking about reaching across the aisle. Now that Joe Biden is in the White House, Carbajal’s task has been less Sisyphean and there is, on occasion, an actual aisle to reach across. How long that stays the case hinges entirely on what happens in our increasing unhinged midterm elections this November. 

Carbajal carved out one major victory this legislative session when the Senate included his “Red Flag” — or Extreme Risk Protection Order Act — language into an omnibus gun control bill adopted by the Senate and signed into law by Biden. Red Flag laws are designed to take guns out of the hands of people whose mental health records or histories of domestic violence indicate a heightened risk of gun violence. The law doesn’t mandate anything, but instead provides incentives to the 31 states without such measures to help defray the costs of implantation. 

When Governor Gavin Newsom announced this summer — with little advance warning — that he did not want to close Diablo Canyon in 2024, this could have interfered with what Carbajal envisions as his legacy project, the installation of a massive wind energy farm off the coast of Morro Bay. Carbajal made his unhappiness known while never actually opposing the governor. Behind the scenes, he helped limit the extension of Diablo Canyon from 10 years to five. 

Yes, Salud Carbajal is a “career politician,” as his opponent Dr. Brad Allen likes to assert, but Carbajal’s been an effective and accessible one. After three terms, Carbajal is coming into his own in Washington, and depending on the mid-term results, he could ascend to leadership positions of great importance to the district. To throw Carbajal overboard now would constitute an act of collective insanity. 

While Dr. Allen — a heart surgeon — makes interesting points about the shortcomings of health care reform, he belongs to a political party that notoriously refused to articulate any reform package of its own. When it came time to put up or shut up, the totality of the Republican Party was absent without leave. We recommend a vote to reelect Carbajal.

Gregg Hart, the pragmatic progressive — or progressive pragmatist — who helped keep the county Board of Supervisors centered these past four years, is now running for State Assembly against perennial Republican candidate Mike Stoker. Barring demonic possession or divine intervention, Hart will win handily. 

Even when more conservative-leaning North County voters are factored into the mix, it’s unfathomable that Santa Barbara County could elect anyone to the statehouse whose claim to fame is having led the “Lock ’er up” chant against Hillary Clinton at the 2016 Republican convention that gave birth to the presidency of Donald Trump. Stoker is a more complex creature than that moment suggests and not nearly as bad. But actions have consequences. 

And even if Hart is, in fact, the career politician Stoker has accused him of being, Hart has proved uncommonly effective in office, even elevating the role. With a big, beaming grin — sometimes cheesy, but always winning — Hart understands the mechanics of how government works like few others. He’s not a chest thumper. But he gets stuff done. 

More than that, the chemistry between him and the four other supervisors — north and south alike — was exceptionally productive. Watching the county supervisors at this fractured and fractious time in American history has been a tonic. Politicians with clearly different beliefs showed they could work together as a democratically elected body effectively functioning to serve the county And Hart was at the center of making that happen. 

Hart also distinguished himself by his service during the height of the COVID pandemic, hosting weekly half-hour press briefings involving public health and medical experts from Cottage Hospital. As such, Hart had to surf an unenviable wave. On one side were people demanding stronger enforcement. On the other, there were those who accused the county of oppressive overreach. For Hart, there was no safe middle ground. Through it all, Hart kept grinning. He never sought to play the role of inspirational unifier, but these briefings offered the media a rare opportunity to ask questions of those who were often too harried to otherwise respond, and get that information out to the public. Sadly, when Hart’s term as board chair expired, these sessions stopped.  

As supervisor, Hart — who cut his teeth as an aid for former State Assemblymember Jack O’Connell — also worked effectively on criminal justice reform and mental health care issues. He pushed and prodded the Sheriff, the DA, and County Probation to keep people facing criminal charges who did not pose a threat to their communities out of jail and into diversion programs. Hart was hardly alone in this endeavor, but his approach, demeanor, and resolve helped embolden those who might otherwise have shied away from the fray and helped create a broader coalition in favor of reform. 

We have not always seen eye-to-eye with Hart on everything. We always questioned his aversion to the imposition of affordability requirements on new housing units and found his belief in the free market solutions misplaced and unjustified by the facts. Even more so, we wondered, what was the urgency with which he pursued a Project Labor Agreement ordinance at the county? And why was he so impatient about the legitimate questions county officials were asking about the additional construction costs such an agreement might trigger?

We certainly doubted Hart’s wisdom in voting to hire the cannabis industry’s chief lobbyist as his administrative assistant upon first taking office. Given the inflammatory nature of the issue at the time, we thought the selection — born of personal loyalty — seemed a gratuitous provocation. 

Also, once Hart adopts his talking points, his skilled discipline can become rigid. We certainly saw that when Hart was all but running SBCAG. His response to the City of Santa Barbara concerns that the freeway-widening project would cause disruptions that had not been adequately mitigated, was abrupt, even dismissive.

But whatever our reservations about such details, there’s no doubt Hart will do an infinitely better job representing the district’s interests in Sacramento than his brash and amiable opponent, Mike Stoker, will. 

When Stoker served on the board of supervisors, his chief accomplishment was the consolidation of several high-profile and politically charged county departments that had no business ever being consolidated. The grand jury would later denounce the endeavor as political flimflammery designed to reward politically supportive law-and-order department heads while punishing those who worked well with what had been the board’s slow-growth majority. None of these consolidations — touted at the time for their cost-saving potentials — stayed joined at the hip for long; they were functionally unworkable. Putting the sheriff and the fire department together under one unified command roof, for example, sounded good only on paper and in Stoker’s political payback fantasy. 

Our biggest concern with Hart’s all-but-inevitable victory this November is which of his fellow supervisors will step up and embrace the exhaustingly complex challenges inherent in expanding mental health choices and treatment in Santa Barbara. Who will have the patience, stamina, and attention to mind-numbing detail required to be effective when it comes to criminal justice reform? 

But Hart has long harbored serious ambitions about running for state office. This is clearly his time now. We’re confident Hart will quickly find his footing in Sacramento, work well with the party leadership — which controls a super majority of both houses — and advocate effectively on behalf of the interests of his constituents. We can ask no more.

Rome, famously, was not built in a day. The City of Goleta has been at it for 20 years now, after years of languishing in the hands of Santa Barbara county government. Back then, such jokes as “What’s the difference between Goleta and a bowl of yogurt? Yogurt has culture” were plentiful. This joke, by the way, was told by a former county supervisor who actually represented part of the Goleta Valley.

Since 2002, when Goleta voted to incorporate as a city, its government has effectively built a panoply of services residents would reasonably expect from any competent municipal entity. But more importantly, it has begun to offer the Goodland’s 55,000 residents an existential center of gravity where grievances can be heard and some semblance of collective self-determination can take place. 

This year’s ballot offers two highly competitive races between qualified candidates all richly steeped in government experience. With three Latinx candidates who are fluent in Spanish, it’s also the most diverse group Goleta has ever seen, thanks in great part to the city switching to district elections. 

Also on the ballot are two measures, one of which, Measure B, is the most critical decision Goleta voters will have to decide this year. The other is a no-brainer on the subject of flavored tobacco vapes.

Of course, every origin story has a snake in the grass. In Goleta, it’s the much-reviled Revenue Neutrality Deal that voters effectively ratified back when they voted for cityhood. It actually mandated the County of Santa Barbara to eat up an outsized slice of Goleta city’s sales tax revenues. Right now, Goleta charges a sales tax of 7.75 percent. Of that, the county — and other special districts — collect the 7 percent, and Goleta gets the remaining .75. Measure B must pass if the City of Goleta is going to keep roads paved, build new bike paths, expand homeless services, and critically, build a much-needed new fire station on the west end of town.

This race is a classic matchup between a candidate from the old school and one from the new era. Incumbent Roger Aceves, a 16-year city councilman, a former Santa Barbara city cop, and the first Spanish-speaking Latino to hold elected office in Goleta, is running against the first Latina — Luz Reyes-Martín, a young mom who served eight years on the Goleta Union School Board.

Nominally, both are Democrats, though Aceves — whose family dates back to the founding of Santa Barbara — sometimes casts himself as the curmudgeonly voice of more conservative opposition. Both are dedicated to the communities they serve. Both are formidable. 

Ultimately, we concluded, Reyes-Martín brings more of what’s needed in the years ahead for the City of Goleta. A child of Mexican immigrants, she grew up in Downey, attended Stanford and USC, and earned two master’s degrees — one in land-use planning and public administration. She and her husband have lived in Goleta where they are raising their young children, for 10 years. During that time, Reyes-Martín spent three years with the City of Goleta working with emergency services and the parks, another six as communications director for City College, and now works in a leadership role at Planned Parenthood. 

Within the local Democratic Party, she’s long been regarded as a rising star. No surprise. She has an open, friendly manner and speaks her mind but strives for cooperation. On the school board, she radiated an ease and civility during stressful public events. Politically, she’s both book-smart and street-smart, a genuine policy wonk with a shrewd sense of opportunity and of strategy: a pragmatic progressive.

Reyes-Martín opted to sit out Measure B, the proposed sales tax increase, deferring to the will of the voters rather than staking out any position. We wish she had been bolder. But Aceves — always refreshingly candid — was the only councilmember to vote against the sales tax, and he actually wrote the ballot argument against it. If Goleta residents had to make do with less, he argued, so too should local government. We don’t agree.

Incumbent James Kyriaco can honestly say he has moved the needle to expand child care opportunities in Goleta. Long before other politicians “discovered” that the lack of affordable quality childcare posed a palpable danger to mothers, children, families, and workplaces across America, James Kyriaco had been beating that drum ever since he was first elected four years ago . It was an effective political move, but so what?

It is a desperately needed service and one that only he seems laser-focused on. 

Perhaps one of the wonkiest of elected officials on the South Coast, Kyriaco went über-granular, pushing obscure zoning ordinances that rewarded developers by including childcare facilities in their projects. He pushed legislation to relieve day care providers of some of the onerous development costs and mitigation fees that can price them — or their families — out of the market. 

When elected officials actually try to do what they say they’re going to do, and then deliver the goods, you endorse them. How could we not? 

Kyriaco qualifies as a progressive middle-of-the-roader. He grew up in Santa Barbara and cut his teeth working on the political campaigns of such elected officials as Brian Barnwell, Roger Horton and Susan Rose, also progressive middle-of-the-roaders. On the council, he’s been an ardent advocate for the one percent sales tax increase; as proponents point out, that’s a 50-cent surcharge on a $50 dinner. 

Running against Kyriaco is Sam Ramirez, whom Kyriaco appointed to the Goleta Planning Commission a year and a half ago. Both Kyriaco and Ramirez are card-carrying Democrats. Kyriaco snagged the endorsement of the local party.

Having served eight years on the city council of his hometown, Delano, Ramirez clearly has political chops. But even with his time with SEIU Local 620 — and working at Santa Barbara City Hall for the City Clerk — his depth of Goleta experience doesn’t match that of Kyriaco’s. 

Ramirez opposes the proposed sales tax increase, saying Goleta has not exhausted all efforts to negotiate a new deal with the county. We don’t buy it. Goleta has, in fact, worked hard to strike a better deal. Given the overwhelming need for massively expensive infrastructure and capital improvement projects, now is the time to act, not some day over the rainbow. 

If approved, Measure B won’t take effect until 2024. Exempt from the new tax will be gas, prescription medications, grocery food, and rent. Without the $42 million worth of road maintenance work, road quality will continue to deteriorate to the point it will cost $78 million 10 years from now. 

Goleta’s sales tax rate is currently the lowest among Santa Barbara cities. It’s one percent lower than Santa Barbara’s and Santa Maria’s. Given the large influx of out-of-town shoppers who visit Goleta’s Calle Real Shopping Center — home to Costco and Home Depot — it’s estimated that 44 percent of the higher taxes will be paid from non-city residents. 

Four of the five Goleta City councilmembers are supporting Measure B. The one-cent bump in the city’s sales tax will allow the city to totally bypass the Revenue Sharing Deal with the county. The council has put together a wish list for the funds, should Measure B prevail. The biggest chunk — $3.3 million a year — would go to road maintenance, with $1.9 million going to childcare and affordable housing, $600,000 to homeless programs, and $800,000 to creek restoration and watershed. Without Measure B funds, it will be a cold day in hell before the community center gets the rehab it desperately needs.

If Measure C is approved, Goleta would effectively ban the sale of flavored tobacco products in retail outlets. Those who sell vape products would be liable for administrative penalties up to $250. This measure mirrors a statewide ballot initiative — Prop. 31 — that seeks to do the same thing, though not quite as strictly. Despite protests by the tobacco industry that minors are already legally prohibited from buying such products, evidence abounds that flavored tobacco products provide an inviting pathway to tobacco addiction. Tobacco manufacturers intentionally target minors with candy-flavored products. Anything that makes it more difficult to get tobacco products in anyone’s hands — and lungs — is a step in the right direction.

For those with a taste for self-destructive right-wing anarchism, the mayoral candidacy of Lompoc’s Jim Mosby will come as a welcome breath of fresh air. For everyone else, Mosby’s bull-in-a-china-shop, poke-the-bear style of government — all anti-taxes, anti-regulation, and let-the-free-market-run-amok — is not an exercise in nostalgia to be indulged in. While incumbent Jenelle Osborne — a Texas transplant who runs a professional organizing and event planning business — is not nearly so colorful or confrontational, she has brought a degree of competence and collegiality to City Hall, seeking consensus out when possible. 

Since Mosby — a former city councilmember — lost to Osborne in his last mayoral bid four years ago, Lompoc has been able to creep back from the precipice of financial ruin on which it was so precariously perched. When Mosby served on the council, he held uncommon sway. During those years, new taxes were violently rebuffed even if it meant losing one-third of the sworn officers serving on Lompoc’s police department. Ironically, the Mosby regime was all about defunding the police — if from a right-wing perspective — long before any Minneapolis cops put their knees on George Floyd’s neck. 

Mosby’s idea of urban revitalization was to allow an unlimited number of cannabis dispensaries to open and then charge them absolutely no taxes for the privilege. The theory was to allow the cannabis industry to secure a toehold without government interference and then flourish. Currently, there are 14 dispensaries, more than the number of 7-Elevens. But in practice, this large number has helped to drive down the price of cannabis below the threshold required for economic survival. Residents of Lompoc had to overcome the passionate opposition of Mosby and his confederates on the council to finally get a cannabis tax on the ballot, where it passed overwhelmingly. 

Ron Fink, a moderate Republican and longtime Lompoc columnist, has written critically of Mosby’s approach. In response, Mosby had designed a custom-made bumper stinker featuring a pile of cow manure accompanied by the headline, “Fink Happens.” In the post-Mosby world, however, Lompoc is finding its way. New businesses are opening up and new industries being courted. A new wind is blowing through town. 

Please cast your vote for Jenelle Osborne. And lest you forget, “Mosby Happens.”

Correction: This story was updated on September 22, 2022, to clarify that Jenelle Osborne runs a professional organizing and event planning business, not an accounting firm as reported in an earlier version of her endorsement.

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