Bruce Porter recently announced he would once again be running for the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors 3rd District seat against Joan Hartmann, who won 53 percent of the district’s votes in a November 2016 runoff election against Porter.
“There’s a pretty significant amount of people who are unhappy with how things are going on in the county,” Porter said.
Though Porter was a registered Republican last time he ran, he said he didn’t run as part of the party or seek its support. He’s now not affiliated with either party and is registered as “no party preference.” He hasn’t sought the Republican Party’s support for this race.
Porter said that in 2016, he did well in much of the district but lost the race at the southernmost edge of District 3 in Isla Vista and the UC Santa Barbara campus.
“There’s sort of an entrenched political establishment that I didn’t know how to penetrate, and I got thumped pretty hard,” he said.
Porter said he’s hoping to get separation from the party and from national politics—he wants to make the race as much about local issues as he can.
Like cannabis. He’s for that industry but said that there are far too many permits in the pipeline.
“I think the county leadership has totally bungled the rollout of cannabis cultivation in Santa Barbara County,” Porter said. “And now everybody is confused, and they’ve zigzagged in their decisions.”
Porter is a graduate of West Point and served for 25 years in the Army Corps of Engineers. After his retirement in 2001, he and his family moved to the Santa Ynez Valley. The 65-year-old wants to put his engineering experience into the service of the district.
“What I offer is my work and training as an engineer where I kind of look at things scientifically based on the numbers and based on the facts,” he said. “Not ideology.”
One of those fact-based arguments, he said, is oil in Santa Barbara County. He called the opposition’s “blind hatred” toward oil “devastating” to communities like Gaviota. He said it’s time to have thoughtful debate about the industry and how it can benefit certain communities.
His geographic area of strength last time, he said, was outside of the county’s southern territories like Isla Vista.
One of those towns is Guadalupe, where Hartmann said she has bumped up her campaign effort. With a full term under her belt, she said she won’t come out with the same strategy as last time either.
“We’ve run against each other before; now I’m the incumbent and I have a record that I’m proud of,” Hartmann said. “I know the areas of my district well, and I’ve been deeply engaged in those communities.”
Her campaign in Guadalupe has been, partly, about expanding the ease of access to the city, Hartmann said.
Both candidates said they have thought about politics at the national level and what, if any, impact that could have locally. With rhetoric at the national level dominating cable news and newspaper headlines, Hartmann thinks there’ll be an increased interest in the local race, which she said could help her at the polls.
Porter is interested in keeping the local issues the focus of the conversation, not what Democrats are talking about in presidential campaigns or how they’ll do against the president.
“It’s going to be about who goes against Trump and all the emotions that go along with that.” Porter said “My task is to keep voters focused on what the issues are.”
—William D’Urso
This article appears in Sep 26 – Oct 3, 2019.