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Santa Barbara Mayor Randy Rowse says he views the cost overruns and long delays in the troubled Library Plaza project as "the poster child" for the city's Project Labor Agreement with construction unions. The project, scheduled for completion last fall at a cost of $9.3 million, now is not expected to be finished until July at the earliest, with a price tag approaching $11 million, a fiasco which the mayor ascribes largely to the PLA. That agreement, passed by City Council in 2018 and also known as a Community Workforce Agreement, requires the city to hire only union contractors for major public works projects. The result for the library project, Rowse said, was that only two contractors, both from out of town, bid on the complex job, which has been beset by problems from ground-breaking two years ago. In a special "Ask the Mayor" episode of Newsmakers TV, Rowse expressed hope that the debacle might be enough to convince some of his colleagues to join his opposition to the agreement, and revisit it at a time when the city has several upcoming major building projects, including a new police station. That seems like a long shot, however, in a year when three council members will be looking for support for re-election bids from the Democratic Party, which pushed the PLA onto the city and county government agendas. In his appearance, an hour before he was scheduled to deliver a "State of the City" address at an annual South Coast Chamber of Commerce event, Rowse also discussed other key issues that now confront City Hall, stating that: The city faces a "three or four percent" projected deficit for the fiscal year that begins July 1, indicating it will be manageable with cost controls, despite recent declines in local sales and transient occupancy tax revenues; The council vote this week imposing a 20-visit-a-year cap, and other new regulations, on the cruise ship industry, was the latest example of the lefty social engineering affliction of the council's majority, with only the mayor opposing the new measure; The State Street "promenade," the lamentable result of council clinging for five years to the pandemic-era closure to traffic of nine blocks of SB's downtown corridor, is a failed policy that continues to damage business activity; The ongoing, behind-the-scenes negotiations over a major new housing project at the Paseo Nuevo mall have been complicated by inflation and ongoing uncertainty about interest rates, and should not be made even more complex by a priori council efforts to make starry-eyed demands about affordable housing before there is even an actual deal; He will not be endorsing in any of this year's City Council races, as incumbents Alejandra Gutierrez, Mike Jordan, and Oscar Gutierrez seek re-election, not because he opposes any of them but because of a personal desire to avoid unforeseen political entanglements. Plus: Don't miss Josh pressing Randy to reveal the double-secret identity of his favorite colleague. All this and more, right here, right now on Newsmakers TV. JR Check out "Ask the Mayor" via YouTube below, or by clicking through this link. The podcast version is here. TVSB, Channel 17, airs the show M-F at 8 p.m. and at 9 a.m. on weekends. KCSB, 91.9 FM, broadcasts the program at 5:30 p.m. on Monday. CARTOON OF THE WEEK Cartoon by Jack Ziegler for The New Yorker. PODCASTS OF THE WEEK On with Kara Swisher. Swisher interviews historian Timothy Ryback about his new book, "Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power," a meticulously detailed look at the political and cultural events and atmosphere of the final six months before Adolf Hitler dissolved the Weimar government in March 1933. Trigger warning: Do not listen right before bedtime. The Bulwark Podcast. Tim Miller interviews triple smart political analyst Ron Brownstein about the fundamental political realignment that Trumpism has brought to America politics, why Michigan is the most crucial state for Joe Biden to win in November, and the possible impacts of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s candidacy on the election. Political junkie must-listen. The LRB Podcast. Thomas Jones interviews British scholar and writer Mary Wellesley about her London Review of Books essay on "Mother Tongue," a new book about the linguistics of women's sexuality, work and lives, a fascinating and fun conversation between two brilliant Brits that examines how words shape cultural ideas about gender.

By Melinda Burns In the March 5 election, First District county Supervisor Das Williams lost every precinct in the City of Carpinteria to his challenger, City Council member Roy Lee, garnering only 33 percent of the vote in the town they both call home. In 2020, by contrast, Williamswon every precinct, and 56 percent of the vote in the city of Carpinterita, when he defeated Laura Capps, then-president of the Santa Barbara Unified School District board, in his successful bid for a second term. The city’s 2-to-1 flip for Lee last month gave the new supervisor-elect a decisive boost of 3,497 votes toward his narrow win district-wide, final election results show. Lee won the district by only 565 votes, garnering 12,745, or 51 percent of the total, to Williams’ 12,180, or 49 percent. Besides Carpinteria, the First District includes the eastern portion of Santa Barbara; and unincorporated Summerland, Montecito and Cuyama and Carpinteria valleys. As an architect of the county’s 2018 cannabis ordinance; Williams paved the way for the conversion of 33 flower greenhouse operations on unincorporated land, ringing the urban boundary of Carpinteria with cannabis. To date, 170 acres of pot — about 129 football fields’ worth — have been approved for zoning permits just beyond the city limits. Of these, 116 acres are under cultivation, all in greenhouses with open roof vents that release the “skunky” smell of pot into the outside air. “It’s like a black eye,” Lee said during a recent interview at the Uncle Chen Restaurant on Casitas Pass Road, where he is a chef and co-owner. “Carpinteria is known for our strong community values, our hospitality, our beaches, our mountains, our avocados and lemons. "Now it’s ‘the land of weed,’ and we’re known for the highest density of cannabis ‘grows’ in the state, if not the county," he added. "How did that happen? It happened so fast, we were blindsided. Nobody from the council ever supported this.” Many Carpinteria Valley residents view what’s been dubbed the “cannabis industrial complex” as a menace to their health and quality of life. Since mid-2018, records show, they have filed 3,687 odor complaints with the county, including 71 this year. The stench of pot, they say, has caused them to suffer headaches, sore throats and respiratory problems. Williams, however, claimed in a recent interview that cannabis didn’t have much to do with his defeat at the polls. Issue No. 1, he said, was Lee’s popularity; No. 2 was his own support for affordable housing. “Cannabis didn’t come up a whole lot,” going door-to-door during the campaign, Williams said. “People who were incensed about it were incensed about it, but that was not the dominant dynamic by any stretch of the imagination, though it contributed to who gave money to Roy," he added. "There are vastly more people in Carpinteria who are worried about how housing shapes our little town than are concerned about cannabis.” A political earthquake. But Concerned Carpinterians, a loosely knit group with an email list of 350 people; and the Santa Barbara Coalition for Responsible Cannabis, a countywide group of 200 people, have been seeking stronger odor control for the cannabis industry since 2018. So has the Carpinteria council with Lee on board, and many residents of The Polo Condos, Padaro Lane, La Mirada Drive, Sandy Cove, Shepard Mesa, Cate School and other neighborhoods. “We didn’t think that Roy could win, but the groundswell from Carpinteria was the engine for it all,” said Ann Louise Bardach, a national journalist and a backer of Concerned Carpinterians. “Das can say what he wants to say, but the cannabis movement set the momentum," Bardach said. "Everybody knows this. It was a political earthquake, a political miracle and hope against hope; and I give all of us a lot of credit. We made a lot of noise for six years.” Williams said he’s tried and will keep trying to clear the air. “I wish I was able to effect change more rapidly on cannabis,” he said. “I was always trying to do the right thing, even if it was more unpopular, but I think I should have been more inclusive in the deliberation of how to get to the right thing.” As for his lackluster showing in town, Williams said, “Roy’s popularity in Carpinteria really helped him. I get that. He’s lived here longer than me. There were a lot of people who were potentially normally Das voters but still supported Roy because of those relationships. Lots of people who liked both of us had a hard time choosing. Walking doors, I still got a lot of positivity.” Williams said his support for building more rental housing in Carpinteria for working people hurt him at the polls, too. “People want young people to be able to live there, but they’re afraid of losing some of the charm,” he said, asserting that he has always sought to tell his constituents what they need to hear, not what they want to hear. “I really think there are some things that need to be discussed truthfully. We have an inconsistency between the things we want and how we get there.” Williams also blamed low turnout for his defeat, noting that it was only 47 percent, district-wide, on March 5, compared to 65 percent in 2020. According to a statement from Williams’ office, this year’s turnout in Carpinteria was down by 15 points, and “preliminary data shows that the drop-off appears even larger among under-45-year-old voters, Democrats and Hispanic/Latino voters.” “There’s many authors of any campaign victory, but the biggest issue is turnout,” Williams said. “I hope people walk away from this knowing that it shows clearly how important it is to vote in a local election.” A boatload of yard signs. Lee, a Taiwanese immigrant who has been a council member for six years, will take office as supervisor next January. He was such a long shot to beat Williams, a politician with 20 years of experience in local and state government, that some Carpinterians figured they were playing the lottery when they cast their votes for him on March 5. Yard signs were the first indication that Lee might pull it off, said Wade Cowper, Lee’s campaign manager and a longtime communications consultant for the Coalition for Responsible Cannabis. “It was pretty apparent, early on, that we were going to be running up the score in Carpinteria rather than changing minds,” he said. “You could tell, driving around Carpinteria, that we had a boatload of yard signs — like, ten to one for Lee is an understatement, by far.” Back in 2018, residents such as Bardach were hiring exterminators to look for skunks under their homes — until it dawned on them where the stench was coming from. Outraged cannabis critics began packing into board hearing rooms and flooding the board with letters. Furious about a cluster of cannabis “grows” around the high school, they asked the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles to investigate (to there has been no public response). In the 2020 elections, they backed Capps for supervisor, but she failed to unseat Williams. The coalition has spent more than $1 million appealing cannabis projects (and losing); signing an odor control pact with growers (it fell through); suing the county (and losing); and filing two lawsuits against Carpinteria Valley growers (one was settled and one is pending). From the dais, Williams sometimes upbraided his Carpinteria critics. He told them he was “enormously jaded” by their actions. He said they had “gotten angrier the more we tried to accommodate them.” He lectured them on “the moral bankruptcy of NIMBYism.” “We voted for Roy because he will be a better listener,” said Anna Carrillo, a retired teacher who keeps close tabs on cannabis permits as a coalition member and a board member of Concerned Carpinterians. No going back. Most growers in the valley have installed piping systems that set up a curtain of mist around the greenhouses to neutralize the smell of pot after it escapes outside. But the “skunky” smell persists in a number of hot spots around the valley, from the foothills to the beach, and the “laundromat” smell of the mist can be just as bad, residents say. A key part of Lee’s campaign in Carpinteria was his support for the installation of state-of-the art filters, called carbon “scrubbers,” in every valley greenhouse; and a complete phase-out of the misting systems. A scrubber developed for the valley by the Envinity Group, a Dutch air purification firm, was shown 15 months ago to eliminate 84 percent of the smell of pot before it escapes from the greenhouse roof vents and into the outside air. The owners of Ever-Bloom, 11 acres of cannabis greenhouses at 4701 Foothill Road, installed 110 Envinity scrubbers in 2022 for about $2.2 million to settle a coalition lawsuit. But Williams has long opposed any requirements for scrubbers across-the-board, insisting he can get faster results by persuading growers to do the right thing. Santa Barbara County is second only to Humboldt County for the number of active state licenses for cannabis cultivation — 710 compared to 1,207. And Santa Barbara County has approved 1,966 acres for cultivation to date — 170 acres in Carpinteria Valley greenhouses and 1,797 acres in outdoor grows, chiefly in the North County. The outdoor grows are capped at 1,575 acres. So, no one is talking about turning back the clock on the industry here. “The horse is out of the barn,” said Jill Stassinos, a teacher, a Concerned Carpinterians board member and an appellant on several cannabis projects. She said she went door-to-door for Lee, phoned eligible voters on his behalf and donated to his campaign. “There’s no way they could go back, but they could remedy the ordinance they put in place,” Stassinos said. “We all felt Roy was a long shot and were so thrilled he won. It was like a beacon of hope. Roy unified people.” “The solution is there.” In 2020, the Santa Barbara County Grand Jury concluded that the supervisors, led by Williams and Supervisor Steve Lavignino, “simply opened the floodgates” to the industry, with “some supervisors aggressively pushing their own agendas.” Williams stands by the cannabis ordinance, however, calling it “very strong in terms of accountability and standards on growers.” He notes that it is more expensive for growers to comply with standards here than elsewhere in the state. For example, greenhouse operators in this county must submit “odor abatement plans” as part of their permit applications. “Mandatory odor control is a totally new thing, and Carpinteria is the only place that got it,” Williams said. Even without Williams’ vote, the board could tighten odor control regulations before Lee takes office next Jan. 1. Late last year, Supervisor Bob Nelson, who represents the 4th District in Orcutt, Los Alamos, Vandenberg Village, Mission Hills and eastern portions of Santa Maria, requested a board hearing on the matter, saying a “shift to best available control technology” was needed. That hearing is now scheduled for April 23. County officials will present information on the findings of Geosyntec Consultants, an engineering firm that has been inspecting misting systems at cannabis operations in the valley; and county planners, who have been using Nasal Rangers, an odor detection technology, to survey hot spots throughout the valley. Supervisor Laura Capps, who was elected in the 2nd District in 2022, representing the eastern Goleta Valley, Isla Vista, UC Santa Barbara and portions of Goleta and Santa Barbara, says Carpinteria Valley growers who are creating an odor problem should be required to install scrubbers. “I believe the Coastal Commission will be a motivated partner in fixing our ordinance,” she said this month. “I’m looking forward to a new chapter … one that is less divisive and more conducive to how we can all live together.” Supervisor Joan Hartmann, who was re-elected on March 5 in the 3rd District, representing the Santa Ynez Valley, Lompoc, western Goleta and the Gaviota Coast, has said she supports banning any detectable odor beyond the property lines at both Carpinteria Valley greenhouses and outdoor North County operations. Currently, the county requires growers only to "prevent odors from being experienced within residential zones," which leaves out parks, schools, roads and farms and has been difficult to enforce. But at $22,000 each and a recommended density of 10 per acre, Envinity scrubbers are expensive. To date, only five of 20 active greenhouse operations in the Carpinteria Valley are fully equipped with them, county records show. Another six are slated to install them this year. That leaves no requirement for scrubbers in two-thirds of the 170 acres of greenhouse cannabis approved by the county so far. “We thought the board would immediately institute them, but they just kind of shrugged,” said Lionel Neff, a retired attorney, coalition director and a donor to Lee’s campaign. “The solution is there. It’s accessible, and yet the county doesn’t support it yet.” Meanwhile, Ever-Bloom is in the final stages of testing an odor sensor developed by Envinity for permanent use inside valley greenhouses Such a technology, providing detailed, time-based data, would be a breakthrough: it could help county inspectors identify which cannabis operations are responsible for the smell of pot in surrounding neighborhoods — a goal that so far has largely eluded them. The sensor is expected to be on the market this summer. “That’s the kind of thing I want to see,” Williams said. “That’s very exciting.” “Hard for Roy.” Besides scrubbers in every greenhouse, Lee’s supporters would like the board to require stricter zoning permits called “conditional use permits” for all new cannabis operations in the valley. For years, the city, Concerned Carpinterians and the coalition tried but failed to persuade the board to require these permits, which they believed could have limited the size, concentration and proximity of the greenhouse “grows.” Under a conditional use permit, which automatically requires a county Planning Commission hearing, a project must be “compatible with” and “not detrimental to” the surrounding neighborhood. In addition, Lee’s supporters want the board to ban detectable odors beyond greenhouse property lines; enforce odor regulations; install cannabis sensors around the high school; stop renewing the annual business licenses of growers whose greenhouses are a focus of odor complaints; reduce the overall acreage in valley cannabis through attrition or other means; and implement a complaint system that puts the burden on growers, not residents, to monitor the smell of pot. “Those demands are going to be really hard for Roy to execute,” according to Williams. Williams believes it would be a “bad idea” to require scrubbers in all greenhouse operations because better technologies could emerge in the future: “No serious environmental law is drafted tying yourself to a status quo technology, even if it’s cutting edge," he said. Besides, he says, any amendment to the cannabis ordinance to require scrubbers would have to be approved by the state Coastal Commission, a process that could take two years. At his request, Williams said, Graham Farrar, owner of the Glass House Farms at 5601 Casitas Pass Road, three acres of greenhouses that have been a frequent target of odor complaints, has recently installed the first of 12 Envinity scrubbers. Also, Williams said, he spoke to Tadd McKenzie, co-president of the Pacific Dutch Group, regardingInternational, a five-acre cannabis greenhouse operation at 4532 Foothill Road near Carpinteria High School. International has installed four Envinity scrubbers and converted to all-nursery marijuana plants. Nursery plants do not give off the odor of mature plants. Concerned Carpinterians says it was the group’s appeal to the county Planning Commission that resulted in a requirement for scrubbers at this operation. Finally, Williams said, Autumn Shelton and Hans Brand of Autumn Brands, six acres of cannabis at 3615 Foothill — another address that has triggered odor complaints — “will be one of the next ones” to install scrubbers, “and that’s because I asked them to.” “Some of them agreeing to change now is better than waiting years for all of them to change,” Williams said of valley growers. “I think there is going to be a lot of improvement this year, while I’m still in office. Anything that Roy initiates is going to take years.” Last fall, however, tired of waiting, the coalition sued Case and Alex Van Wingerden — whom Williams said he had persuaded to install scrubbers at Ceres Farms, a nine-acre cannabis greenhouse operation at 6030 Casitas Pass Road. The lawsuit alleges that the Van Wingerdens’ operations at both Ceres and the Valley Crest Farm, an additional nine acres of cannabis at 5980 Casitas Pass, are creating an “ever-present noxious odor” in the neighborhood. The lawsuit has been on pause this spring while the Van Wingerdens conduct a test of a scrubber called CleanLeaf. These scrubbers cost about $4,500 each. “We’re not going to stand in the way of experimenting, but it’s our belief they will have to purchase Envinity scrubbers,” Neff said. Members of the Van Wingerden family have been among dozens of industry sources who have donated nearly $150,000 to Williams' various campaigns for supervisor. One of the plaintiffs in the coalition’s lawsuit against them is Chonnie Bliss Jacobson, who lives on Casitas Pass Road. Campaign statements show that four members of the Bliss family, not including Chonnie, donated $22,000 to Lee’s campaign on Feb. 23, 10 days before the vote. “Mistakes were made.” Lee took office as a Carpinteria city councilman in early 2018, just as Williams was drafting the cannabis ordinance behind closed doors, consulting with growers and industry lobbyists. Carpinteria residents were not paying much attention; the community was reeling from the shock of the catastrophic debris flow of Jan. 9 that year. The city council, though, was already expressing its “deep concern,” firing off letters urging the board not to rush things, with Highway 101 buried in mud and Carpinterians unable to get to the board hearings. “Virtually no revisions to the cannabis regulations … have been made to address the issues raised by the city,” a Jan. 29, 2018 letter from the city said. In fact, since late 2017, Lee said, the council has sent 24 letters to the board, trying to rein in the burgeoning industry at its doorstep. The council urged the board, without success, to require conditional use permits for cannabis; create 1,000-foot buffers between cannabis greenhouses and homes and schools; require separation zones between greenhouse operations; cap the size of individual grows; set a standard so that odors “may not be detectable at the property line”; and share tax revenues with the city to address the increase in greenhouse traffic. “We got minimal to no response at all,” Lee said. “I feel like they just threw the letters in the trash," he added. "It’s frustrating, because a lot of neighborhoods were affected so gravely. We spent a lot of our staff time working on those letters. That took a lot of energy and money, and nothing ever came of it. "The county disregarded our experience," he said. In its most recent letter, dated Nov. 13, the city reminded the board that, “dating back to at least 2017, the City has advocated for the most stringent odor control regulations possible …” The letter “strongly urges” the board to designate carbon scrubbers as the “sole best available control technology” for “nuisance cannabis odors.” Lee said that his son, a student at Carpinteria High School, located just outside the city boundary near five cannabis operations, used to come home smelling like pot. Lee said he hears that students still sometimes get an overpowering whiff of the stuff when they open their classroom doors. “The school is what really bothered me,” he said. “How can kids concentrate in the classroom? Imagine if it were next to San Marcos High School [in Goleta] or Santa Barbara High School. People would be incredibly angry. Yet it’s next to Carpinteria High. It feels like we get treated so unfairly … “Many mistakes were made, and I won’t let that happen. That’s not how you run a business, that’s not how government is done. It has to be transparent," Lee said. "It has to be transparent. Now we’ve got loss of trust in our government. I will take this negative and turn it positive. I want to serve the people’s needs and wants. I’ll try to do it from my heart.” Williams said that, taken together, what the city and the citizens’ groups were asking for was “legislating cannabis out of existence, and I think that would be a real mistake … I think the black market has far worse effects on society than marijuana grown by your neighbor at a greenhouse that pays a good wage to local people.” During a campaign forum at Girls Inc. on Feb. 20, when Lee brought up the city’s multiple letters to the board, Williams responded:  “We have to treat each other like neighbors. If there is something we need to talk about, we need to have discussions. "I don’t think sending a strongly worded letter to the county is the way to solve a problem," he added. "It's to have a conversation together about something.” Melinda Burns is an investigative journalist with 40 years of experience covering immigration, water, science and the environment. As a community service, she offers her reports to multiple publications in Santa Barbara County, at the same time, for free. Images: Roy Lee and his wife, Tina, at their Uncle Chen restaurant (Carl Perry photo); Map shows county-approved zoning permits for 33 cannabis greenhouse operations around the city of Carpinteria, as red and orange dots. Ten operations are awaiting county business licenses (Santa Barbara County Planning & Development).

There's a growing phenomenon at Santa Barbara City Hall, wherein highly-influential executives suddenly disappear without a trace. For years, highly-influential, highly-paid suits hold forth, issue decrees and quell the local populace, and then one day...they're gone. Such was the case with the authoritative, long-serving city budget director Bob Samario, followed by magisterial City Attorney Ariel Calonne, not to mention the abrupt resignation of City Administrator Paul Casey, who at least offered an enigmatic, if circular, brief explanation: "Sometimes it's just time." Now come the peculiar cases of city Library Director Jessica Cadiente and her top deputy, Molly Wetta, who simply stopped showing up for work last month, without a word of explanation from their betters at City Hall except that they'd been "placed on leave." On this week's edition of Newsmakers TV, Josh Molina reprises his recent reporting in digging into the Case of the Missing Bibliophiles, which now appears to be related to the loud caviling and chronic kvetching they'd understandably set forth about the endlessly delayed, hideously expensive and enormously loud Library Plaza project. Callie Fausey returns to discuss her latest scoop, the revelation that the U.S. Department of Education has opened an investigation of UCSB, following several shameful on-campus episodes in of anti-Semitic targeting of the Associated Students president, daughter of Russian-Jewish immigrants, who had the temerity to speak out on behalf of Israel amid the vehement conflicts surrounding the war in Gaza, triggered by Oct., 7 Hamas terrorist attack. The journo duo and the genial host also examine the cart-before-the-horse decision by the Parks and Recreation Commission to authorize the removal of 49 trees from De La Guerra Plaza for the plaza renovation project -- before the plaza renovation project has been approved; the latest from the grinding labor negotiations at the Santa Barbara Unified School District; grim findings from a study of how the pandemic affected the mental health of teens; and Das's revenge in the battle over parking near the Hot Springs Trail. Plus: Callie's pelagic field trip to witness the start of the revitalization of the kelp forest. All this and more, right here, right now on Newsmakers TV. JR Check out our latest edition via YouTube below or by clicking through this link. The podcast version is here. TVSB, Channel 17, airs the show every weeknight at 8 p.m. and at 9 a.m. on weekends. KCSB, 91.9 FM, broadcasts the program at 5:30 p.m. on Monday.

The good news -- for Democrats and others predisposed to favor small “d” democracy over autocratic authoritarianism -- is that President Joe Biden this week took a slight lead over Former Guy Donald Trump, in at least one poll of a head-to-head matchup. The bad news: the 2024 election won’t be a head-to-head matchup. ** At least three high-profile third-party candidates are aiming for ballot access in key electoral states, shifting the political calculus, slightly but meaningfully, in Trump’s favor, according to the latest Quinnipiac University Poll, considered among the ranks of reputable national polls. Seven months before the Nov. 5 election, the survey, like virtually every national poll, shows the race within the margin of statistical error; and like virtually every other poll, it shows Trump overtaking Biden when Green Party candidate Jill Stein, left-wing progressive Cornel West, and anti-vax independent Robert F. Kennedy are factored in: Head-to-head percentages: Biden 48 Trump 45 Biden-Trump percentages, with Third Party candidates: Trump 39 Biden. 38 Kennedy 13 Stein 4 West. 3 So there's that. Barabak explains. Influential political columnist Mark Z. Barabak of the Los Angeles Times returned to Newsmakers this week, to help cut through the permutations, expectations, and confrontations of the numbers, in a conversation about the state of play of what may be the most consequential presidential election since 1860, Not a fan of horserace polls, Barabak did identify one key factor to watch for in the endless deluge of media surveys of the race: the attitudes and leanings of what political professionals call “double haters” – voters who can’t stand either Biden or Trump -- and whether they a) break strongly for the Democratic grandpa or the Republican grifter; c) support one of the impracticable third way candidacies; or c) sit out the election on the couch. These pox-on-both-their-house citizens were important in Biden’s defeat of Trump four years ago, when he won them by 15 percent. Such voters represented only about 3 percent of the 2020 electorate, while multiple surveys this time out show that about one in five voters is a “double hater,” a finding which aligns with the sharp decline in popular regard for Biden, who now ranks as the most unpopular president seeking re-election in recent history. The 2024 "double hater" portion of the electorate closely resembles that of 2016, when many voters disliked both Trump and Hillary Clinton. That year, they broke late and overwhelmingly for Trump, as reported in a Politico analysis of the phenomenon: "Back then, Trump won a bigger share of the double haters than Hilary Clinton, outperforming her by about 17 percentage points amongst the group that made up 18 percent of the electorate. Biden turned the tables in 2020 and won the group by 15 percentage points (granted, they only made up about 3 percent of the electorate then, according to exit polling), and he continues to have a 45 percent to 33 percent advantage. This year, however, a third-party candidate seems to be a far more popular option — at least for now." Born on third base. Although Kennedy is the third-party possibility who currently polls strongest, he faces a big challenge in navigating the byzantine byways of gaining ballot access, a chore that is both complex and expensive - one big reason why he announced this week that his running mate is Nicole Shanahan, a wealthy Silicon Valley philanthropist and political donor once married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Much of Kennedy's current standing is, of course, based on his iconic Democratic Party family name, which on the natural hurts Biden; however, as voters get to know more about his anti-tax and conspiratorial views, he could end up pulling voters from Trump. The reason, according to Barabak: the "horseshoe" dynamic, by which the views of extremists from the left and the right tend to move ever closer to each other, obscuring traditional ideological differences in a meeting of whack job minds. As for Stein, whose previous campaigns have received support from Russian intelligence and media outlets, she won only 1 percent of the national vote in 2016, but the support she captured in the three the battleground states that decided the election – Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania – was greater than the tiny differences between Trump and Clinton; Democrats fear she could have a similar determinative effect in 2024. Because the Green Party has a guaranteed ballot line in many states, Stein faces fewer obstacles to access than West, a Harvard professor who has formed a new party, called Justice for All, which has qualified only in a handful of states. Bottom line. As a practical matter, Barabak emphasizes, the outcome of presidential balloting is a foregone conclusion in more than 40 states, at a time when the nation is entrenched in an increasingly toxic and hostile divide between Red and Blue states. So once again, the result will be determined in the three aforementioned Midwestern states, along with Arizona. Georgia and Nevada. One other political matters, the LAT's ace columnist: Deconstructed the just-completed primary voting in California’s U.S. Senate race for the seat long held by the late Dianne Feinstein. Explained how Rep. Adam Schiff, whose victory in November is all-but-certain, represents a political shift in California, in which geography now matters far less than a candidate’s personal brand on cable and social media. Analyzed the dubious Senate candidacy of Republican nominee Steve Garvey, noted womanizer and former Dodgers first baseman, who seems to be running for the exercise. Discussed the sore loser behavior of Rep, Katie Porter, who got stomped by Schiff and immediately complained the election was “rigged” against her. Reprised his reporting on the key Senate race in Arizona, where election denier Kari Lake is locked in a struggle with normie Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallegos for the seat being given up by centrist Kristen Sinema. Offered a tongue-in-cheek, three-dimensional chess scenario in which Trump selects as a vice-presidential running mate someone who is even more objectionable to Democrats than him, if you can imagine that, as a form of impeachment insurance. All this, right here, right now, on Newsmakers TV. JR You can listen to a podcast of our conversation with Mark via this link and watch the YouTube version below or by clicking through this link. TVSB, Channel 17, airs the show every weeknight at 8 p.m. and at 9 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday. KCSB, 91.9 FM, broadcasts the program on Monday at 5:30 p.m. ** (Update 4-1-24: After this post was sent out to newsletter subscribers, a highly-informed reader noted that we had overstated the reliability of the Quinnipiac Poll. Two paragraphs referring to the poll generally, and to its specific findings about the presidential race, have been revised to be more accurate).

The day after Roy Lee triumphed in Santa Barbara's most extraordinary political victory of the century, he went out of his mind with celebration. "The next day I just went to work," Lee recalled last week. "I tried to live a normal life," the new First District Supervisor-elect added. "I still have a family to raise, a business to run, so I just kept on my normal schedule." Woo hoo. Lock up the kids, Tina. Watch out for Roy swinging on the chandelier Lee's placid reaction to his historic ouster of the deeply entrenched Das Williams, an upset that no one saw coming, bespeaks the self-possession of his personality and the core of his values. It also suggests level-headed perspective, and a blue collar work ethic, both of which he'll have the chance to bring to work at the Board of Supervisors once he's sworn in early next year. Tears and smiles. In the first expansive interview since his unlikely election win, Lee answered questions on March 21, from the genial host of Newsmakers TV, and from Josh Molina, founder of the "Santa Barbara Talks" podcast. Roy said he is trying to take in stride the election tremor that has shaken Santa Barbara's political landscape: "I'm trying to focus on what's important, taking my kids to water polo, focusing on the business and just trying to keep every day normal as possible, and serving in my capacity as a (Carpinteria city) council member, too." On a personal note, Lee teared up while describing the moments after he told his parents, who brought him to the U.S. from Taiwan when he was six, the news of his achievement, and also described the gladness he felt from the reaction of his wife, Tina, "my biggest supporter." "It means a lot to me to see her smile," Roy said. As a practical matter, adjusting to the full-time demands of being a supervisor will require Lee to make major changes in his lifestyle and schedule. Decisions loom about how to manage Uncle Chen, the family restaurant that, in various incarnations, has served as the economic, communal and cultural center of Lee's life. "My priority will be my county supervisor role," he said, about the move into a $112,452 taxpayer-financed, public-facing job with a staff, a stretch from the part-time duties and demands he's faced as a Carpinteria City Council member. "I will hire somebody to replace me, two to three people here at the restaurant, so I can give my 100 percent as a supervisor," Lee said "Maybe four," he added with a smile. "We're still figuring it out." What is to be done? As a political matter, Lee provided broad outlines of his pending views on policy issues, from climate change, constituent service and planned personnel moves to campaign punditry, commuter rail's potential and the "perfect storm" of political factors that got him elected. On three critical issues: Housing. Lee said the current requirement that 20 percent of units produced by developers should be "affordable," instead of market rate, is too weak, and far too low a marker, to address in a serious way a shortage of workforce housing, aspirationally suggesting that negotiations on splits should start at "50-50, or even 60 percent affordable, 40 percent market rate." "We cannot build our way out of this housing crisis by making most of it market rate," he said. Lee looks favorably at the "Our Neighborhood Voices"statewide campaign to repeal and relax large portions of the one-size-fits-all mandated housing legislation that the governor and legislature shoved down the throats of every local government in California, without regard for local control. "Right now the state has a gun to our head... 'If you don't do this, we're going to pull this trigger,' which is not how government working (with) each other should work. So maybe it's time we push back." He described as "basically a developer's party," last week's big county meeting to preview conceptual plans for vast swaths of to-be-rezoned land in the Goleta Valley. "A lot of developers come in and say they want to help. They want to help. To me, that's a sales pitch. They want to make money...Anybody tell you otherwise, they're lying to you. I think a key here is to work with the Housing Authority." Cannabis. Lee acknowledged that citizen animosity towards Williams, much of it earned through the human suffering and lasting environmental, economic and land use planning impacts of his log-headed cannabis ordinance, the sleazy way it was crafted. plus Das's belligerent attitude, words and actions in response to critics. "Carbon scrubbers," Roy answered immediately, when asked what in the ordinance needs changing "Carbon scrubbers do work. As a supervisor, I'll push for that to be part of the ordinance, to make sure that every farm has that ability to put in carbon scrubbers and get rid of the majority of the smell." "The smell has to go first," Lee insisted, adding that the county also should look to "decreasing licenses. I think there's an overabundance of growers in our county...Cap, no increases." Ethics. In response to questions, Lee agreed that the absence of a serious and substantive code of ethics for the Board of Supervisors and other county officials is troubling, as is the practice of board members meeting privately with lobbyists, advocates or influencers without disclosing the conversations to the public. "Everything that we say should be public,..whatever I say to whoever, should be made public. I have nothing to hide. Besides closed sessions with legal counsel, everything that we say, in emails, through our mouths, should be known by whoever wants to look at it." "Ethics is incredibly important...as politicians, all we have is our integrity. Without that, we have nothing. So yes, ethics is very important, that we should pursue that." At one point in our interview, Lee disclosed for the first time publicly that Das called him, following the last big dump of vote totals cemented Roy's victory, to acknowledge his defeat, with a very Das-like non-concession concession. "He said along the lines of, 'Oftentimes it's people who call me to concede, but today I'm calling you,' so that's what he said in those lines." But enough about me, what do you think of my wonderfulness? JR Watch our interview with Roy Lee via YouTube below or by clicking through this link. The podcast version is here. TVSB, Channel 17, presents Newsmakers TV every weeknight at 8 p.m. Monday through Friday, and at 9 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday. KCSB, 91.9 FM, airs our program at 5:30 p.m. Monday. Image: Roy Lee celebrates election night, March 5, at Uncle Chen, with campaign manager Wade Cowper (L). Josh Molina photo for Noozhawk.

"Victory has a thousand fathers," President John F. Kennedy famously remarked, "but defeat is an orphan." Rarely has JFK's wise epigram applied so aptly as in the case of Roy Lee's triumph over soon-to-be former Supervisor Das Williams, a thoroughly unforeseen toppling that ranks as Santa Barbara's most shocking political upset since...maybe forever. On this week's episode of Newsmakers TV, Gwyn Lurie, Josh Molina, Nick Welsh, and Ryan P. Cruz pitch in, to look ahead to what Lee's politics and policy portfolio may look like on the Board of Supervisors - while also looking back in search of the "fathers" of Das's ignominious defeat. The panel finds no shortage of causes for the epic fail -- from blind partisanship and catastrophic underestimation of a worthy opponent, to a long trail of disrespectful behavior, abusive public remarks, double-dealing and lies left by the outgoing incumbent, over the course of a 21-year elected office career that apparently made him feel invincible but instead left him oh-so-vulnerable to being blindsided. In the end, the gang's collective analysis of Das's epic loss boils down to this: the hubris of the Democratic Party and the superciliousness of its candidate. Self-delusion costs no more. Nothing could depart more from that judgment, however, than an inter-party review of the election, circulating this week among the most party hearty Dem loyalists, its most true-blue believers, and the most active of its' activists. This after-action report speaks volumes about the self-delusion, self-regard, and self-propagandizing that cost Das his seat. The e-blasted analysis, penned by Charles Clouse, president of the insider Democratic Service Club, yielded not a whiff of self-reflection, let alone self-criticism, about the county committee's campaign organization and execution, and certainly none of The Great Man himself. "For better or worse Das has become tagged, somewhat disparagingly, as a product of the Santa Barbara 'Democratic machine,'" the memo reads. "Snarky journalists have used that vague term so freely, for so long, that readers rarely think about what it means." Well. About the party's role in the upset loss of the century, Clouse writes: "I can assure you, the same strategies, commitment, and volunteer energy went into Das's race," as did into the smashing victory of Third District incumbent Joan Hartmann. "Still our volunteers can be proud of their work this time around as much as we are when every race goes our way - not an uncommon outcome! We stuck together and the machine is ready to go again." As for the incumbent who embodied (and padded the county payroll with) the party apparatus: "Das himself worked every bit as hard, answered as many hard questions (hah! -ed.), and articulated his vision for the county as clearly as he ever has in winning multiple Santa Barbara City Council races, State Assembly races, and twice before in the 1st District." Speaking of snarky journalists, the memo adds, "Newspapers make endorsements, but have little active follow-up. This time, though, calling Das 'arrogant' and suggesting he's "more interested in being right than effective" was sufficient for the (SB Independent's) editorial board to peel off a portion of voters who may be bothered by the odor of cannabis plants and yet not want to consider how difficult it might be to tap the potential for generating county revenues from a previously demonized but now perfectly legal substance." Please diagram this sentence. To summarize then: 1. Das and the Democratic Party campaign operation did everything exactly right. 2. Those snarky journalists, allowed to write "so freely" (damn you First Amendment!) peddled a fantasy about Dems having a chokehold on local, non-partisan offices. 3. Voters were too stupid to think about, and see through, what the snarky journalists wrote. 4. The Indy concocted the claim that Das is arrogant and disparaging of those who disagree with him -- another fantasy! 5. Voters are ingrates who keep whining about the stench of pot but never once consider how hard Das worked to drum up new tax revenues...that maybe fell a teeny bit short. An orphan defeat, indeed. The county's rezoning charade. For the first time in over 400 editions of Newsmakers TV that we've produced on Zoom since the early days of the pandemic, technology failed us. Loyal viewers, at least those still awake around the 21:00 minute mark of Friday's program, will note that it ends rather...abruptly, with the invisible genial host shouting into the void. Apologies to all those who wanted to hear the latest about State Street, the Public Market and the Miramar, which we'd teed up before getting kicked off our own show by an app. We promise to return to those topics next week. Before the world went black, the gang did have a spirited discussion of the dog and pony show which county planning suits put together on behalf of developers this week, the latest chapter in the endless saga of building thousands of units of new housing while pretending they care one whit what the community thinks about any of this. Spoiler alert: Why didn't Lisa Plowman release the secret letter from the state? All this and more, right here, right now, on Newsmakers TV. JR Check out the latest episode on YouTube below or by clicking through this link. The podcast version is here. TVSB, Channel 17, airs the program every weeknight at 8 p.m. and on weekends at 9 a.m. KCSB, 91.9 FM, broadcasts the show at 5:30 p.m. on Monday. Image: A pat on the back (137Words.com)

Roy Lee this week nailed down Santa Barbara County's most stunning political victory in decades, ousting entrenched Supervisor Das Williams, who with his handlers, was left to blame everything and everyone but himself. With only a few provisional ballots left to process, the tally in the county's First District stood: Lee. 12,670 50.95 percent Williams 12,116 48.72 percent The improbable upset by Carpinteria City Council member Lee over the seemingly ineradicable Williams - his first loss since the earliest days of his peripatetic local career, and only his second ever - shocked the local political establishment and pierced the cloak of invincibility of the county Democratic Party organization. The Willy Loman of Santa Barbara politics, Williams conceded the race, more or less, soon after the latest vote count was posted on Wednesday, in a passive-voice statement ("my re-election has fallen short" -- mistakes were made!), that lacked the courtesy of even a word of congratulations or a wish of good luck to Roy. Team Das had plenty of excuses, though: It was the campaign manager's fault! Low turnout! Trump voters! People who promised canvassers they'd vote for him and didn't show! And the most risible of all - "vicious and false...negative campaigning" -- this from a guy who defamed coastal advocate Susan Jordan with a photoshopped mailer during a 2010 state legislative race and, four years ago, stood by while Republican allies smeared Laura Capps on his behalf. Sheesh. Nick Welsh and Josh Molina join the genial host on this week's episode of Newsmakers TV, for some post-game analysis of Lee's surprise triumph and Das's defeat in the First, along with a final look at Joan Hartmann's landslide win against two opponents in the Third District. And Callie Fausey joins the gang with all the latest on those big jobs cuts approved in the Santa Barbara Unified School District, where the administration and the teacher's union still have not reached agreement, and also details a troubling story out of the Carpinteria Unified district, where the superintendent and the head of the teachers' union are locked in a legal cage match over his suitability to work in a classroom. More: affordable housing advocates weigh in on the mega-project being negotiated for Paseo Nuevo; the SB city council has yet more thoughts on restaurant parklets; and ice plant is under serious attack at East Beach -- to the possible detriment of allergy sufferers. Plus: A fond farewell to City Hall scrapper Bob Hansen. All this and more, right here, right now on Newsmakers TV. Check out the latest episode via YouTube below, or by clicking through this link. The podcast version is here. TVSB, Channel 17, airs the show every weeknight at 8 p.m. and at 9 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday. KCSB, 91.9 FM, broadcasts the program at 5:30 p.m. on Monday.

The presidential race that voters didn’t want, a match-up between the antediluvian Democrat and the Republican autocrat, has begun. Last week, former President Donald Trump effectively clinched the Republican nomination for the third straight time, as incumbent Joe Biden delivered a campaign stemwinder as his third State of the Union address. This confluence of events delivered a harsh dose of reality to voters hooked on hopium, or still in denial, that the nation would not really have to face Biden–Trump: The Sequel. Amid voter anxiety about Biden’s age of 81, or the 91 criminal charges against Trump — along with real-life concerns, from abortion rights, climate change, and sky-high grocery prices to crime, immigration, and sky-high grocery prices — the 2024 election also poses a more fundamental and urgent, if seemingly less practical, question: What form of government will we have in 2025? Joe Biden is a traditional politician whose policy ideas, while sometimes controversial, range between the 40-yard lines of mainstream American governance; Donald Trump, however, openly, routinely, and unapologetically challenges basic values of 18th-century liberal (small “d”) democracy on which the nation was founded: the rule of law, pluralism, and the separation of powers, for starters. “The heart of Trump’s agenda is not to address particular policy challenges or advance public policy goals; it is to aggrandize the executive branch’s powers and use them for retribution,” the nonprofit organization United to Protect Democracy wrote in a recently released study of Trump’s stated promises and policy plans, titled “The Authoritarian Playbook for 2025.” Amid Trump’s frequent, autocratic public statements — e.g., per the Constitution, “I have the right to do whatever I want as president” — allies in his MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement have populated and established Washington think tanks and legal circles that already have prepared detailed policy plans, assembled lists of potential administration employees pre-tested for loyalty, and set forth judicial arguments for use in a second Trump term; these rest on vastly expanding powers of the President, via a concept known as the “unitary executive.” C Chief among these sets of proposals is Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, a 887-page doorstop produced by the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project,” as part of a “unified effort to be ready for the next conservative administration to govern at 12:00 noon, Jan. 20, 2025,” when the next president will be inaugurated. For “The Authoritarian Playbook 2025,” the pro-democracy group assembled former government officials, scholars, lawyers, activists, and others of both major political parties to factually analyze these promises and plans, and to identify specific levers of power a Trump administration could wield to implement the vision of government espoused by him and his allies. They also assessed the strength of legal, political, and normative guardrails that might challenge his political project. The report identified six areas of concern: Pardons to license lawbreaking Investigations against critics and rivals Regulatory retaliation Federal law enforcement overreach Domestic deployment of the military Refusal to leave office Trump has made no secret of his admiration for autocrats and dictators around the world, from Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping to North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. In his first term, he repeatedly sought to exert their brand of singular executive power, from the judicially rejected “Muslim ban” in his first days in office in 2017 to the insurrectionist mob he rallied to stop congressional certification of the 2020 election. To a second term, Trump would bring far more knowledge of how the federal government works. It is unlikely he would appoint to his staff or Cabinet the kind of institutional “grownups” who frustrated some of his more antidemocratic initiatives, in favor of MAGA loyalists who would pledge to do his bidding. As Kash Patel, a first-term Trump national security official, phrased it in a discussion on the War Room podcast of Steve Bannon, former Trump White House chief strategist: “The one thing we learned in the Trump Administration, the first go-around, is we got to put in all America patriots, top to bottom, and we got them for law enforcement, we got them for intel collection, we got them for offensive operations, we got them for (Defense Department), CIA, everywhere… “Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig elections — we’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.” Two hundred and thirty days before the November 5 election, media polls show that Trump leads Biden, both in the national popular vote and in most of the handful of key states that will determine the Electoral College outcome. Here are four instructive takeaways from “The Authoritarian Playbook for 2025.” Henchmen pardons. The president’s constitutional power to extend clemency to those convicted of breaking the law, by issuing pardons and prison sentence commutations, is nearly absolute. The power may be abused by letting off political allies for conduct that benefits the president — as Trump did with Roger Stone and Paul Manafort after they refused to cooperate with Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s Investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. It can also be abused to enable or excuse violence by supporters — as Trump has vowed to do for many of more than 1,200 convicted January 6 rioters. In the same way, a president can promise clemency in advance for breaking a law that benefits the chief executive — as he told his Customs and Border Protection Commissioner he would do if he was charged for implementing a legally questionable Trump policy. He can also do so to protect himself from legal consequences — as Trump has vowed to do in criminal cases against him, if elected a second time. There are few government guardrails against such clemency actions, sometimes termed “henchmen pardons.” The buffers are primarily norms of ethical behavior, not legal requirements. Trump in his first term overrode or ignored most of these guardrails — such as political or congressional pressure, advice from White House lawyers, and his oath to “faithfully execute” the law — and could be expected to be more aggressive in doing so in a second term. The most formal process to prevent abuse of the pardon power rests with the Office of Pardon Attorney, an officer within the Department of Justice who oversees applications and guidelines. The “Authoritarian Handbook” study reported that of the 238 clemency orders Trump granted during four years in office, only 25 — 11 percent — were recommended by the Office of Pardon Attorney. Politically motivated investigations. In his first term, Trump famously asked, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” when Jeff Sessions, his first Attorney General, enraged him by recusing himself from the investigation into Russian election interference instead of shutting it down. Invoking the late Cohn, who in New York represented the mob and Trump as a New York developer, among other clients, speaks volumes about Trump’s view of the Department of Justice. In a second term, Trump publicly has vowed to prosecute and jail political enemies and individuals who have criticized him, from Joe Biden to his own former White House Chief of Staff, second Attorney General, and Joint Chiefs of Staff chair. Doing so would end the traditional independence and impartiality of the Justice Department, and MAGA attorneys already have prepared justifications for doing so. Presidential administrations of both parties for decades have generated documents known as “contact memos” to establish policies and procedures limiting communications between the White House and the Justice Department to a small number of senior officials, to ensure the propriety of such dealings. The Heritage Foundation, as part of its “Project 2025,” has proposed a second Trump Administration “reexamine” — i.e., end — the use of “contact memos.” MAGA attorneys meanwhile publicly make the case against Justice Department independence. One of the more prominent is Jeffrey Clark, whom Trump sought to appoint Acting Attorney General in the final days of his term, because Clark promised to take official action in furtherance of the president’s false claims about widespread 2020 voter fraud. The appointment was stopped only by the threat of mass resignations by career DOJ attorneys. Clark — who, along with Trump, has been indicted for his actions — now is viewed in Washington as a possible second-term Attorney General. He has been high-profile in calling for elimination of restraints on a president personally directing prosecutions or investigations. “The U.S. Justice Department is not independent,” read the headline of a widely discussed article he wrote for Center for Renewing America, a MAGA-allied think tank, in which he termed the norm a “canard” and the use of contact memos unnecessary “rigamarole.” “We shouldn’t doubt that (Trump) will follow through on his pledge to appoint DOJ and White House lawyers who will have no qualms about, and thus will not inhibit from, carrying out his vision of personal absolute control over the government’s law enforcement powers,” the democracy group report said. “And at the same time, he’ll shut down any inquiry into wrongdoing by him or his allies. This is a recipe for rampant authoritarianism directed from the Oval Office.” Ending civil service. A president controls about 4,000 political appointments in a federal government workforce of about 2.9 million employees. Trump has vowed to change that in a second term, with an attack on the civil service system, which was created to end patronage and the “spoils system” of filling government jobs with political loyalists, beginning with the Pendleton Act of 1883. In multiple public statements, he has promised to “totally obliterate the deep state,” by issuing an executive order, titled “Creating a Schedule F in the Excepted Service,” to circumvent certain regulations and clear the way to fire tens — perhaps hundreds — of thousands of merit-based professional employees and replace them with Trump loyalists. Allies and advisers already are screening candidates “more on political philosophy than on experience, education, or other credentials,” the report notes. Domestic deployment of the military. Since the Declaration of Independence, there has been deep opposition to deploying the military on U.S. soil. Trump, however, already has suggested he would do so in a second term, using loopholes in constraints on his authority as Commander in Chief, which include the congressional War Powers Resolution of 1973, and the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, proscribing the military from engaging in domestic law enforcement. The most consequential of these is the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to order military members to take part in domestic law enforcement under certain, very limited conditions, and which Trump avidly sought to do during the George Floyd protests. “Using the military was one of the President’s fixations that had to be batted down on a regular basis,” former Attorney General Bill Barr wrote in his memoir. “For a time, almost on a weekly basis, he would give me ultimatums — he said he was ready to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy the military (to American cities) in twenty-four hours unless I came forward with an alternative plan.” Barr enabled many of Trump’s worst impulses in the first term but was successful in blocking his use of the Insurrection Act; it is unlikely a second term Attorney General would do the same. “Politicizing institutions like the military,” the democracy study concludes, “is a hallmark authoritarian tactic intended to silence dissenters, target vulnerable communities and coerce fealty to the autocratic leader.” Jerry Roberts This piece also was published this week by the Santa Barbara Independent. Image: Donald Trump addresses a rally (CNN).

Roy Lee clung to a 510 vote lead over Das Williams in the too-close-to-call First District Board of Supervisors race on Friday, as Santa Barbara County elections chief Joe Holland said state laws that make it increasingly easy to vote have put his office "in uncharted territory." "People are changing their behaviors for voting, which is all okay," Holland told Newsmakers shortly after election workers posted a new tranche of votes for contests and ballot measures in Tuesday's election. "I'm not complaining by any means - we want more people to vote." The latest tally from the First District boosted turnout there to almost 37 percent, compared to less than 30 percent in Third and Fourth Districts, which also had elections for board seats: Roy Lee. 10,017 51.16 percent Das Williams 9,507 48.55 percent As the world awaited final word on the Black Swan race of the year, Gwyn Lurie Josh Molina and Dale Francisco joined the genial host on this week's edition of Newsmakers TV to go behind the scenes, and practice some plenteous punditry, not only about the First District contest, but also about the results in the Third District, where SupervisorJoan Hartmann surprised the cognoscenti by winning six of every 10 votes in a newly drawn district that was mistakenly expected to have created some ideological challenges for the liberal incumbent, The gang goes full Mt. Olympus with some lofty thoughts about the failure of the Democratic Party to use persuasion as a political strategy that would expand their coalition, the future, if any, of the Republican Party in Santa Barbara and throughout California, and the flops and favorable outcomes in the campaign for the U.S. Senate and Gavin Newsom's effort to squeeze another $6.5 billion out of taxpayers for his latest Big Idea social engineering schemes for homelessness and housing, aka Proposition 1. Plus: an elegy for the lost art of the gracious political concession. Holland redux. Joe Holland, whose formal title is Santa Barbara County Clerk, Recorder, Assessor and Registrar of Voters (breathe) portrayed the apparently slow count of some 41,000 ballots uncounted on Election Night as continued growing pains in coping with the all-mail ballot systems the state cranked up during the pandemic, in part to encourage more participation. "We don't know yet how the trends are going to go," he said, adding that there were dramatic differences between the uncertain pace and volume of ballots submitted under still-new rules, and the methods in place even five years ago when, he said, planning for elections "used to be like a wedding." Holland said that "turnout was more than I thought" and that elections officials were surprised not only by "tons of ballots dropped off Election Day," but also by the "huge number of ballots" voters placed in mailboxes on Tuesday alone, which officially was still "Election Day" -- even though ballots were sent to voters 29 days earlier and could be submitted at any time. "I was totally surprised to see how many came in in the mail," Holland said, noting that ballots postmarked by Tuesday were still arriving in his office on Friday; any ballots with a proper postmark that arrive through next Tuesday are to be counted. "We're in uncharted territory," he said. With political anxiety over the Das-Roy contest ratcheting up, Holland said the next ballot count will be reported on Thursday (March 14), which he hopes will be the final tranche. "I know it's frustrating and I'm sympathetic about people wanting to know who won," in the First District, he said. "People need to be patient. People are just going to have to wait." JR Check out the new edition of Newsmakers TV via YouTube below, or by clicking through this link. The podcast version is here. TVSB, Channel 17, broadcasts the show every weeknight at 8 p.m. and at 9 a.m. on weekends. KCSB, 91.9 FM, airs the program at 5:30 p.m. on Monday. Images: High Anxiety (depositphotos.com); Joe Holland (Santa Barbara County).

President Joe Biden's State of the Union address on Thursday night at times resembled a campaign or convention speech, but Rep. Salud Carbajal asserted that it effectively set forth key differences with Donald Trump, while demonstrating that the incumbent remains up to the job. "I think people wanted to see him be very present, very able, very strong, and he did that," Santa Barbara's Democratic congressman told Newsmakers, moments after the speech ended. "He was strong, he was bold, he was clear, and he set forward a course reminding the American people of the contrast between taking our country forward and being inclusive, or resorting to the alternative which is chaos, belittling people, chaos, at best," Carbajal said in a remote interview from Capitol Hill. In a week when former president Trump clinched the Republican nomination, and new polling showed Biden trailing him nationally and in key battleground states, the president's annual address to Congress represented the unofficial tipoff of the general election campaign. Biden himself clearly believed that to be true, as he criticized Trump via the phrase "my predecessor" at least a dozen times, without once mentioning him by name, on the economy, foreign policy and national security. If not unprecedented, it was a highly unusual device for a State of the Union, a ceremonial event more commonly used to deliver a message of unity. However, a large majority of Americans now express concerns that the 81-year old Biden is too old, too frail or too mentally diminished for the presidency, and Carbajal portrayed last night's speech as solid push back on that view. Biden spoke -- often loudly -- for over an hour, mixing in ad libs and verbal sparring with several GOP congress members who heckled him from the floor. "He showed us that experience matters," Salud told us. "He said there’s another guy his age that’s also running that continues to espouse messages that show that he wants to take us back as a country to darker days, instead of moving us forward. I thought he did an extraordinary job." In addition to giving Biden what is all but certain to be the largest television and online audience he will have before Election Day, the State of the Union also is an important social event on the congressional calendar for Senators and House members, many of whom who invite honored or politically beneficial guests; position themselves to greet the President (or taunt him, in the case of a few rudeniks from the opposition party) as he walks up the aisle to the dais, and compete for aisle seats, the better to be seen by voters back home. Now in his fourth term, Carbajal scored a trifecta on those political challenges last night. At 4 p.m., he set down a folder with his name on it on an aisle seat, in a bid to reserve the premium spot. Somewhat to his surprise, it was still there when he came back a few hours later, having survived sweeps both from the Secret Service and janitorial staff. Thus, he managed to score some serious face time on national broadcasts when Biden stopped briefly to shake hands and exchange a few words with him: "He was being heckled by some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and I just told him, 'keep your head up,' looking forward to hearing your speech,'" Salud told us. As far as honored guests, Carbajal earned massive domestic props by escorting his wife, Gina, who had never before attended a State of the Union, to the event. "I can never deny my number one constituent," he said. JR Check out our post-State of the Union conversation with Rep. Salud Carbajal via YouTube below, or by clicking through this link. The podcast version is here. TVSB, Channel 17, broadcasts the show every weeknight at 8 p.m. and at 9 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday. KCSB, 91.9 FM, airs the program at 5:30 p.m. on Monday. "

Newsmakers’ editorial operation is based in Santa Barbara County’s First District, so our interest in the campaign for its seat on the Board of Supervisors' is both professional and personal. A longtime independent, No Party Preference registered voter, this columnist has reported, written and commented on TV about the contest -- but still has a citizen's duty to cast a ballot in next Tuesday’s election. In furtherance of full disclosure, a spoiler alert: Here’s one more vote for Roy Lee. The case for Roy. This decision is based on the shape of the race that has emerged between challenger Lee and incumbent Supervisor Das Williams: Change vs More of the Same. The criteria of choice behind the pick boils down to eight words: Roy's in public service for the right reasons. A community-minded small business owner and conscientious member of the Carpinteria City Council, Roy Lee embodies the non-partisan values and unpretentious virtue of a true, local government public servant -- not a political hack. As an elected official, he has demonstrated two skills increasingly rare in the political realm: he listens more than he talks, and he speaks with, not at, the people he represents. Lee has a record of commonsense and open-minded pragmatism on council. He has displayed a willingness to dive in and work hard on unglamorous, but crucial, problems which affect the day-to-day lives of local residents, from his thoughtful advocacy about the importance of school safety officers to fixing the holes in the roads. Personally modest and politically moderate, Lee has a blue-collar work ethic and, as a supervisor, would model fiscal prudence and a pro-business perspective, two qualities often in short supply among the social engineering schemes, unintended consequences and ill-advised programs for spending other people's money that prevail among current board denizens. He'd keep a keen eye on taxpayer revenue, in the belief that homeowners, privileged to pay the bulk of the freight for the county's $1.5 billion budget, deserve a seat at the table too. Perhaps most importantly, Lee would represent a clear-the-air renewal of the corrosive local political landscape – personified by the political careerism, cynical maneuvering and overweening self-regard of his opponent. The case against Das. Newsmakers has followed the actions and witnessed the conduct of Das Williams since his first race for SB City Council in 2003. Long ago, we tired of his job hopping, campaign money grubbing, truth shading, special interest catering and demonizing of anyone who dares disagree with him - as well as his complacent entitlement, performative, unearned displays of moral superiority, and vaingloriousness – all in service to his personal ambition. After a mediocre six-year stint in the state Assembly, Das’s political project upon returning to local government was to infuse it with Sacramento-style practices, shaped by hardline partisanship, pay-to-play policy making, and pure, old-fangled patronage, an agenda that obliterated any trace of a dividing line between his personal aspirations and the public trust awarded by voters. It's no accident that longtime sponsors and backers of his multiple candidacies, who have worked with him, up close and personal -- from the Women's Political Committee, Democratic Women and the Santa Barbara Independent, to former District Attorney Joyce Dudley, former Fire Chief Pat McElroy and ex-Police Chief Barney Melekian, for starters - have withdrawn their support in this race, with some publicly endorsing Lee. Das is Exhibit A for what happens to a community that loses daily, beat reporting journalism. Since 2006, when the city’s historic morning paper began its meltdown, virtually his entire career has unfolded in the shadows, without rigorous day-to-day news coverage that might have made him more accountable – and spared us the disastrous cannabis ordinance whose stench, atmospheric and ethical, will stand as his singular legacy. In dealing with Santa Barbara's tiny press corps these days, Das at times seems downright Trumpian: with an apparently bottomless need for attention and approval, he thrusts himself, in the manner of Zelig, into the center of every staged media event on the South Coast (Question: What is the most dangerous place in the world to stand? Answer: Between Das and a TV camera), while cravenly avoiding platforms where he would confront truth-to-power interrogation. To give Williams his due: he has skills and a talent for organizing and executing political campaigns. The problems arise after he claims victory. Here are three critical reasons for casting a vote for Roy Lee. Real world experience vs. political careerism. Roy's immigrant history is a true American success story. Arriving with his parents in the U.S. from Taiwan at the age of six, he spent much of his teenage era washing dishes and waiting tables in the Chinese restaurant that was the family business, working after school to help support the household while grinding to obtain an education at SBCC and UCSB. He finally became the business owner himself in 1994, taking over Uncle Chen, which he operates in Carpinteria, alongside his wife and their three children. With the restaurant established as a local institution, he turned to community service, seeking and winning a seat on the Carp council in 2018, to which he was re-elected four years later. Das, the grandson of immigrants, typically offers a well-rehearsed origin story at campaign events that portrays him as a precociously righteous little boy, morally superior to other, ordinary kids in his early grade school grasp of the world’s inequities and injustices. “I was immediately one of those kids that you see at school that's a little weird, okay?” he said at a recent campaign forum. “I had an innate sense that the world was not the way it should be…It filled me with a real rage for justice, that things ought to be different.” (Here we feel compelled to note that Williams' frequent use of the phrase “rage for justice” to define himself, echoes the title of a fine biography of legendary San Francisco congressman Phil Burton, written by my late colleague John Jacobs. It was published, to widespread attention in the Bay Area, by the University of California Press at Berkeley, in 1995, squarely in the middle of Das’ 1993-96 term at UC Berkeley, when he earned a BA in Political Science; Coincidence? You be the judge). In contrast to Roy, Das has spent his entire adult life as a political striver. Morphing from aide and campaign operative for former state legislator Hannah Beth Jackson, he landed at the public trough with his election to council in 2003, whereupon he almost instantly sought to move up the ladder, running for office three times in the first four years of his career, settling down to mount a mere nine campaigns altogether in two decades as a political careerist. “I basically would not be able to do this job if my wife wasn’t basically heavily subsidizing this effort,” he whinged last year, as he voted to raise his own salary. Independence vs. partisanship. Although a registered Democrat, Roy comports himself as a non-partisan elected official, in fealty to Article 2 Section 6(a) of the California Constitution: "All judicial, school, county, and city offices...shall be nonpartisan.” Das, by contrast, is the closest thing Santa Barbara has to a party boss, and his county office effectively is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the local Democratic organization. In yet another ploy well-known to those familiar with Sacramento politics, Williams stashes loyal operatives and apparatchiks on the public payroll, where they’re well-paid while positioned to toggle back and forth between campaign duties and “public service.” Political scientists call this “patronage.” It is defined as “the practice of giving individuals or groups political offices, money, material goods, and power in return for political support during an election. “ The chief of staff for Supervisor Williams, who was pulling down more than $190,000 in annual salary and benefits the last time we checked, conveniently also labors as the Chair of the Santa Barbara County Democratic Party. She recently sent out an e-blast, soliciting volunteers to “be part of the 'Machine.'" "We are not successful unless we are all successful together, which is why we need you to keep the 'Machine' running and ensure electoral success in March for our whole team of endorsed candidates..." she wrote. Amazing but true – the Dem Party did not extend Democrat Roy Lee even the courtesy of an invitation to interview before awarding their influential endorsement to Das. Further down the political food chain at the county, one of Das's administrative assistants, a former longtime Dem Party paid operative, now collects $142,000 in taxpayer-financed salary and benefits, according to a public information officer. He recently “went on leave” to manage Das’s re-election campaign, before jumping back on the public payroll last week, he told us. Of course these folks are quick to protest and proclaim that they only do political chores on “our own time" – as if there was a magic switch or bright red line to keep policy and politics separate, a downright laughable assertion that only serves to insult the intelligence of voters. Integrity vs. pay to play. One of Roy’s key weaknesses as a candidate is his distaste for asking people for campaign donations. Das is a master at it. Lee views public service as the responsibility to seek out, understand and respond to the real-life needs of real-life constituents, no matter if they back him or not. Williams has a considerably more transactional approach. Like almost every professional Democratic officeholder in California, he’s in thrall to public employee unions, which have poured tens of thousands of dollars into his various and sundry campaigns, earning them loyalty over financial demands on the public treasury. He also raked in loot from construction and crafts unions, which benefitted from his help pushing through a sweetheart arrangement known as a Project Labor Agreement, which requires union hall hiring on public works projects (no surprise, it was Das's chief of staff who made the formal presentation of the plan to the board). He led the charge to snatch the county's lucrative ambulance contract from a private company and award it to local firefighters who’ve backed him – until a Superior Court judge enjoined the move, and California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a brief citing the supervisors' "sidestep" of state restrictions in the process. Even small-bore appointments to volunteer citizen boards get caught up in the swirl of money. Largely at the behest of construction magnate and appointed Montecito Planning Commissioner Ron Pulice, who's donated at least $13,950 to Williams, he unceremoniously kicked Susan Keller, a longtime and original member, off the commission, for annoying male colleagues by asking too many questions. This variety of raw, Sacto-style, transactional politics crested with his legacy achievement – the county’s dreadful cannabis ordinance. On October 24, 2016, nearly three months before he took office as a supervisor, Williams accepted $10,000 in campaign contributions from three men who before long would hold dozens of cannabis licenses, big winners in Santa Barbara County’s marijuana bonanza. No one among the public or the press knew it at the time, but these were just the first of dozens of pot industry political contributions Williams would take in the years that followed. Campaign finance reports show that he has taken a total approaching $150,000 - about one-fifth of all the money he's raised in three races for Supervisor - from industry interests. After his 2017 swearing in, Williams swiftly latched onto the task of crafting the new cannabis law. In partnership with Supervisor Steve Lavagnino, and aided by former “cannabis czar” Dennis "Revolving Door" Bozanich (who later left county government for work as a pot lobbyist) they formed an “ad hoc committee” that freed them from pesky open meeting requirements of the state’s Brown Act, while permitting plenty of space for secret deliberations with lobbyists and industry growers. In 2020, the county Grand Jury published an historic, in-depth report that detailed the influence peddling and sleaze surrounding the ad hoc committee, and the origin and implementation of the pot ordinance. The document is worth revisiting for a speed read before casting a vote in the First District election. Some crucial excerpts: “The action taken by the Santa Barbara Board of Supervisors to certify the development of a robust cannabis industry as the primary objective of the cannabis ordinances has altered the quality of life in Santa Barbara County, perhaps forever." “Instead of a balanced approach carefully evaluating how the cannabis industry would be compatible, both as to amount of acreage and location, the Board simply opened the floodgates.” “The Board of Supervisors granted nearly unfettered access to cannabis grower and industry lobbyists that was undisclosed to the public…” “Documents obtained by the Jury, that had not been previously disclosed to the public, show voluminous emails from cannabis lobbyists and cannabis growers…it was unnerving to the Jury to see both the tone and timing of these emails.” “The tone of these emails appeared at times as if to direct specific actions to the Board members and gave the perception of a command instead of recommend. Understanding that no such authority exists with the lobbyists, the Jury felt that limits on such direct conversations should have been established by the Board members receiving these emails.” “The timing of these emails was also concerning to the Jury. The documents reviewed show many being sent the day before a Board meeting, with some confirming the discussions had that day at a meeting with a Board member.” It is also valuable to revisit the groundbreaking investigative reporting on the debacle by Joe Mozingo of the Los Angeles Times, if only to recall some of Das’s chummy and obedient exchanges with lobbyist and grower pals, with several of whom he planned social outings. From Mozingo's report: “When the Planning Department…recommended a measure that the marijuiana farmers should bear all the costs of appeals to their permits filed by neighbors, the cultivators emailed Williams that it was unfair and urged him to reject it, “'Don’t worry, I’ll fix it with a 50-50 recovery model. Don’t tell anyone though,' he wrote to (one grower). “'On it,' he wrote to (Graham) Farrar, the president of the Carp Growers “We will cost split if I get my way.' 'Thanks Das,” Farrar replied." And so on. A few days ago, at a campaign forum in Carpinteria, Williams portrayed himself as an aggressive advocate for residents whose health and quality of life have been damaged by the consequences of his cannabis ordinance, employing spin, half-truths, fibs and whoppers to distance himself from his handiwork. Sort of like an arsonist who shows up at the fire and volunteers to help put it out. Bottom line. Sad but true, veteran local prognosticators forecast that Roy will fall short in his valiant bid to oust Das. Some political factors are at play: Lee got in the race late, struggled with fundraising and was outspent by about 3-to-1. His candidate skills definitely need work. Roy may not prevail in the election, but no matter what, Das is the loser. He has ceded whatever moral authority once attached to his office, and though he may win the battle on Election Day, he already has lost the war: his political brand is devastated, if not destroyed. All that aside, it’s clear that the public interest would be best served if voters selected Roy Lee for the Board of Supervisors: He's in it for the right reasons. Jerry Roberts

With most of the drama drained from next week's election, the city Planning Commission rushed in this week to fulfill Santa Barbara's bottomless need for performative politics. After a marathon hearing that featured the most political palaver since Donald Trump last opened his pie hole, commissioners awarded a split-decision go-ahead to a 250-room Funk Zone hotel project, for which the city first authorized the right to develop in (checks notes)...1983. Josh Molina and Ryan P. Cruz return to Newsmakers TV to amplify their reporting on the PC's head-shaking deliberations, marked by a brutish tone fueled in large part by commissioner Devon Wardlow, whose avid political ambition is transparent, and by its four-hour length, well-aided by the historic fulminations of erstwhile City Council member Brian Barnwell, who's clearly delighted to be back in the game.. Lily Dallow joins the panel to pull back the curtain on Election Night preparations over at KEYT, as the gang concurs that the few remaining questions in Tuesday's local balloting are whether: Incumbent Joan Hartmann wins 50-percent-plus-one of the vote for the Third District seat on the Board of Supervisors, to avoid a November runoff; Lompoc Mayor Jennelle Osborne, an independent No Party Preference candidate, ekes out Frank Troise, the fractured Republican Party's entry, for second place. Das Williams meets, or fails to match, expectations in a probable victory over Roy Lee which are set at 60-to-40 percent or better of the First District vote, considering the incumbent Supervisor outspent the Carpinteria City Council member by a 2 ½-to-1 ratio. And what would a local news week be without City Council members piling into the City Hall clown car to meddle yet again with the details and dimensions of the State Street Alleged Promenade, even as downtown commerce keeps circling the drain. Plus: Locals mark the second anniversary of Vladimir Putin's barbaric invasion of Ukraine; another outbreak of anti-Semitism at UCSB; and how many cruise ships is too many for Santa Barbara? All this and more, right here, right now on Newsmakers TV. JR Check out the new show on YouTube below or by clicking through this link. Check back for the podcast version. TVSB, Channel 17, broadcasts the show every weeknight at 8 p.m. and on Saturday and Sunday at 9 a.m. KCSB, 91.9 FM, airs the program at 5:30 p.m. on Monday.