Summer is here, and with it comes a nice distraction from this headache of a presidential election: local elections.
In the coming weeks, we’ll hear election bid announcements right and left from hopeful city officials. In Lompoc and Santa Maria, we’re already seeing the start of it: Santa Maria City Councilwoman Terri Zuniga kicked off her re-election campaign on June 14, Lompoc Mayor Bob Lingl declared his bid for re-election on June 18, and Santa Maria Mayor Alice Patino said in an email to the Sun that she’ll be “making an important announcement” on the evening of June 24.
Lompoc’s the first city in North County to see an actual race—John Linn announced his mayoral bid earlier this month. So Lingl is hitting the ground running with his campaign, and we’ll see a Lingl-Linn face-off, just as we did in 2014.
“I think John is a viable candidate, but I’m not going to put down my guard,” Lingl told the Sun. “I’m going to campaign as hard this time as I did last time.”
Lingl’s top priorities: economic development, public safety, parks, and infrastructure.
Though Lompoc’s unemployment rate has nearly halved in the last two years, Lingl said there’s still a lot of work to do on the city’s economic health.
“Unfortunately, we still have the highest unemployment rate in the county of Santa Barbara,” he said. “My goal is to continue to work on bringing jobs into our community—not only bringing jobs into our community, but good-paying jobs into our community, continuing to bring down the unemployment rate and ensure our citizens have decent-paying jobs with benefits.”
To do this, Lingl said he’ll focus on attracting new businesses to the city.
At his campaign announcement, Linn accused Lingl of being a “no-growth candidate”—and Lingl’s doing his best to refute that claim.
“I have to make sure when he puts out these false statements, I’m ready to address these false statements,” Lingl said. “In my eight years on the City Council, I’ve only voted against two growth projects.”
And with that, the first mayoral race is on in North County. We’re staying tuned for more election action.
This article appears in Jun 23-30, 2016.