County seats: Seven candidates vie for the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors 3rd and 4th District positions

This year, three positions are up for grabs on the five-member Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors: the 1st, 3rd, 4th Districts. 

First District Supervisor Salud Carbajal is leaving to make a run at Congress, with term-limited California 37th District Assemblymember Das Williams and current Santa Barbara County Investment Officer Jennifer Christensen running to fill his shoes.

click to enlarge County seats: Seven candidates vie for the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors 3rd and 4th District positions
PHOTO BY DAVID MINSKY
CANDIDATES SOUND OFF: Candidates for the 1st, 3rd, and 4th Districts of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors debate at a forum in Solvang on April 28. From left to right, Eddie Ozeta, Jennifer Christensen, Das Williams, Brice Porter, moderators Matt Kettmann and Kelsey Brugger, Joan Hartmann, Bob Field, Jay Freeman, and Karen Jones.

For this article, the Sun interviewed the candidates running for the 3rd and 4th Districts. In the 4th District race—which covers Orcutt, Lompoc, the southern part of Santa Maria, and parts of the Los Alamos Valley—candidate Eddie Ozeta is running to unseat incumbent Peter Adam. 

In the 3rd District race, five candidates—Joan Hartmann, Bruce Porter, Karen Jones, Jay Freeman, and Bob Field—are running to replace incumbent Doreen Farr, who announced in 2015 that she wouldn’t be running for re-election after eight years of service. 

The 3rd District is the most geographically expansive and most politically diverse of all the county’s districts, encompassing communities such as Guadalupe, Isla Vista, Buellton, Santa Ynez, and Lake Cachuma. The winning candidate becomes the county point person for issues such as Chumash Casino expansion and community services for Isla Vista, and represents a huge swath of Santa Barbara County wine country.  

The 1st, 3rd, and 4th District candidates participated in a forum in Solvang on April 28. 

Here is a look at the candidates:

Peter Adam

Peter Adam is the current 4th District supervisor and the chairman of the Board of Supervisors. He’s the son of a Santa Maria Valley farmer and one of the namesake proprietors of Adams Brothers Farms. Adam was elected in 2012. 

Adam was unavailable for comment as of press time, and he’s been absent from most of the forums held recently, except for one held by the Santa Maria Times/League of Women Voters at the Betteravia Government Center in Santa Maria on April 6. 

At that forum, Adam touched upon many issues he’s been dealing with the for the last four years, such as migrant worker housing, veterans issues, creating jobs, energy, staffing issues with the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office, and the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians. 

At the forum, he said he supports oil, fiscal responsibility with county spending, and for the Sheriff’s Office to “live within its means.” 

Citing ongoing talks, Adam wouldn’t get into details on a question about how the county and Chumash would resolve their differences. At the forum, he said there was a “probability” that he’d be going back to continue negotiations with the tribe, which were suspended in March. 

“I want to continue to fight for the people who pay the taxes and make sure that the county is managed prudently and responsibly for the benefit of us and future generations, and I’d be honored to have your support,” Adam said in his opening statement at the forum.

Eddie Ozeta

A former U.S. Marine, Eddie Ozeta is the lone candidate running against 4th District Supervisor Adam. Following the Corps, he worked for former California Congressman Matthew Martinez and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He now works for the county as an eligibility worker. He identifies as a Republican. 

Ozeta, 45, said he’s running against Adam for what he described are inconsistencies with some of what Adam has said during his time as supervisor. 

“He hires and pays high salaries for his staff but complains about county staff being paid too high,” Ozeta said.

County employees aren’t getting paid enough compared to other counties, he said. However, he believes pay for county sheriff’s deputies ought to be reconsidered in the face of paying for a new jail facility and maintaining the one we already have. 

Ozeta said he makes a good candidate because he knows government not from the point of view of a politician, but from the perspective of one who understands how state and federal laws interact with the county.

Jay Freeman

At 34 years old, Jay Freeman is the youngest of the 3rd District candidates. He’s a businessman, a software developer, and a part-time faculty member at UCSB teaching programming languages. Freeman invented Cydia, the software commonly used to jailbreak iPhones, enabling them to run third party (non-Apple) software. 

Originally from the Chicago area, Freeman came to Santa Barbara County in 1999 to study computer science at UCSB’s College of Creative Studies. 

In the last two years, Freeman has forayed into politics by attending public meetings, meeting with various local groups, and trying to understand how all of the different parts of the district fit together.

He’s in favor of creating a community services district in Isla Vista, continuing dialogue with the Chumash tribe, and creating municipal advisory councils to report to and bring feedback to the supervisors from the different parts of the district. 

“We need to be listening to these people,” Freeman said. “The county should be proactively working with communities without us having to self-organize and figure out how to make that happen.”          

Joan Hartmann

Originally from Oconto, Wisc., Joan Hartmann moved to Southern California in the fifth grade. She earned a Ph.D. from Claremont University and law degree from Lewis and Clark Law School. 

She’s tackled environmental policy issues throughout her career, working as a consultant and senior policy and budget analyst for the U.S. Department of the Interior and assistant regional counsel for the Environmental Protection Agency in Philadelphia. 

Hartmann was appointed by Farr to sit on the county Planning Commission, serving from 2012-2016. She’s also received Farr’s endorsement for 3rd District supervisor. 

Living in Buellton, one of the things Hartmann takes issue with is the proliferation of wineries and tasting rooms. 

“Sometimes wine tasting rooms are proposed in areas that are residential,” Hartmann told the Sun. “What are the impacts this’ll have on an area like that and on the small country roads?” 

Hartmann said that she has a record of considering all sides to find common ground.

Karen Jones

Karen Jones is from Kern County and married to a Santa Barbara County native. She currently lives in Santa Ynez.  

A well-known member of the unincorporated Santa Ynez community, Jones, 57, calls herself community oriented and is known for throwing block parties every year. 

After learning that Bruce Porter was running for supervisor, Jones decided to enter the race. 

Jones said she is living in the shadow of the Chumash Casino and calls the new expansion “problematic,” citing the casino as the cause of the existing traffic jams and crime problems in Santa Ynez.  

She’s running her platform on two issues: responsible development, or “anti-irresponsible development,” as she calls it; and as an anti-Porter candidate, questioning Porter’s motives for his service on several boards, including the local Boy Scouts of America, among others. 

She’s libertarian-minded and dislikes big government and career politicians.

“As citizens, if we take an active role and keep an eye on them, keep sunlight on them, it keeps the corruption in check,” Jones said. “It doesn’t seem like good people run, and I think that’s why we see this political climate right now.” 

Bruce Porter

Bruce Porter, 61, is the president of the Santa Ynez Valley Union High School District, serving since 2008. He’s also a financial advisor for Edward Jones in Santa Ynez. 

Porter has a military background. He graduated from West Point in 1976 and served 25 years in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He served on teams dealing with the slew of burning oil wells across Iraq during Desert Storm in the early 1990s. 

He said his background as an Army engineer and his years of experience on the school board make him the right fit for 3rd District supervisor. 

As a supervisor, his three priorities would be public safety, infrastructure, and taking care of the mentally ill. Like other 3rd District candidates, he believes the STAR facility—the scrapped re-entry facility once a part of the North County Jail project—was a squandered opportunity by the existing Board of Supervisors. 

Porter told the Sun he’s not sure what Jones has against him. 

“I think we need to reprioritize the entire budget to make sure that we’re taking care of the core functions before we spend money on other things,” Porter said.

Bob Field

Bob Field, 71, is a retired Silicon Valley businessman, who worked for companies like Computer Software Systems and Ungermann-Bass. He’s been a Santa Barbara County resident for the last 18 years. 

Calling himself an “old-fashioned conservative,” Field said he understands land-use issues, job creation, and finances, among other topics the supervisors have to deal with. 

Why should people in the 3rd District vote for Field? Because he’s got the skill set to get the job done, Field said. 

“The first thing you do is conserve everything that’s wonderful about this county, and then, you build to make it better,” Jones said. “So this rural ag look, feel, lifestyle that some of us live in, we have to preserve that.” 

Staff Writer David Minsky can be reached at [email protected].

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