As firefighters battled the Alisal fire in southern Santa Barbara County, dry vegetation and blustery wind (up to 70 miles per hour) enabled it to spread rapidly, growing 8,000 acres in 24 hours. At least that much land had burned by 3 p.m. on Oct. 12 along both sides of Highway 101, which was closed due to the blaze.
The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors passed a last-minute emergency proclamation during its meeting on Oct. 12 to help with fire response. The good news is that firefighters made a stand in the middle of the night to save the county’s multi-million-dollar recycling plant at the Tajiguas Landfill, but 100s of structures—homes, resorts, campgrounds, and more—are still threatened by the fire.
As the county grappled with a natural disaster emergency, its neighbor to the north grappled with whether to steal Santa Barbara County Elections Divisions Manager Elaina Cano and crown her its next clerk-recorder. Breaking news: That’s happening.
And in her live, on-the-spot, mildly uncomfortable to watch, “transparent” interview with the SLO County Board of Supervisors, Cano spilled the tea about some recall election night shenanigans in Santa Barbara County.
Turns out that a group of extremely fired up Gov. Gavin Newsom haters actually met some county elections ballot box drivers at 8 p.m. on the night of Sept. 14 (election night), heckled and harassed them, and then followed them back to the elections office. Followed them! This little group of 10 to 12 individuals then congregated in front of the office and were being unruly enough that the sheriff’s deputy on duty called for a little bit of backup.
What are we? Arizona?
Cano, who heard the call, joined the response to the “very, very angry, very much demanding to come into our building” folks. She told them that she would take them in to watch the vote tabulation process if they could just. Calm. Down. That took about an hour.
I’m not sure what they thought was happening. She didn’t elaborate on that. But I wonder if failed recall candidate Larry Elder’s visit to Santa Barbara helped spur the crazies to do something about their crazy. As an aside during his Sept. 8 rally, he mentioned voter fraud—like, you know, if he lost, then obviously the election was rigged. Although, he’s very quiet these days.
Or maybe it was failed congressional candidate and perennial big mouth Andy Caldwell’s dangerous Facebook musings, throwing voter fraud around like it’s some sort of academic theory about how he possibly could have lost to Salud Carbajal in 2020.
Cano graciously spent three hours of arguably the busiest night of her year with these people, guiding them from room to room, pointing out each and every process, all the while listening to their comments “disagreeing with everything I had to say.”
Even though it was right in front of these people. Right in front of their own eyes. And still, what? Conspiracy! It has to be!
“That’s not what I planned to do on election night,” she said during her interview.
No kidding. However, I’m sure in the future, our elections officials should absolutely expect way more of that. The election process should be fun next year.
The canary is conspiracy-tired. Send comments to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Oct 14-21, 2021.