I grew up in a nest full of siblings, and that probably tells you all you need to know to understand what I’m going to say next.
When you aren’t the only baby bird in the nest, there is a lot of shoving and elbowing, and plenty of name-calling. But let some other bird come around and pick on any of those siblings, well, let’s just say, that someone will be flying back to the nest having been pecked a few times from a united fowl front.
Now that I’m grown I consider my nest northern Santa Barbara County. Yes, those of us that call this place home may peck at each other from time to time. However, I don’t appreciate having someone from South County coming in and putting down one of my North County siblings.
I’m specifically talking about congressional candidate Salud Carbajal’s overheard comment calling Lompoc the armpit of the county.
This is wrong on so many levels … let me count the ways.
First, Lompoc made wine in industrial areas cool way before Santa Barbara ever considered embracing the Funk Zone.
Second, Lompoc has the Santa Rita Hills wine appellation. Boom! If you know anything about wine, you know that I could probably leave the building on that note, but wait there’s more.
Third, there are just some really outstanding people in Lompoc.
And probably most importantly, it should just be common sense that if you are running for office, you should be adept at minding your p’s and q’s.
I get it, it was said in jest. But timing is everything. During the middle of a campaign is not the time to playfully disparage a community from which you want votes.
Seriously, has Carbajal never ingested political news? Never seen a politician say something controversial when he thought the mic was off? Has he never seen a politician send a personal text that was intercepted by a hacker?
What Carbajal did was take a misstep. It’s a whole other thing to invite media scrutiny by loudly daring the media not to scrutinize you.
Enter Santa Maria City Council candidate Will Smith. Smith sent out an email to the media first explaining that he was considering dropping out of the League of Women Voters candidate forum because he doesn’t support the agenda of the Santa Maria Times. What?
Then he sent another email asking media not to mention the time he was the subject of an attempted recall of his position on the school board, because no one has mentioned that his opponent, current mayor Alice Patino, was once also the subject of an attempted recall. That event took place in 2003 when a group calling themselves Recall our City Council pushed for recall of the entire City Council. At the time Patino was a city councilwoman. The group demanded the recall because of the council’s decision to move forward with adding fluoride to the water, as well as for the the firing of then-Police Chief John Sterling.
Of course, fair’s fair, and Smith has a good point: calling him controversial and rehashing his political highlights without also bringing up the storied political past of other candidates is at best lopsided reporting, and at worst, lazy reporting. But asking media to stop dredging up the past by dredging up the past is like a gold-lined, glittered-filled invitation to do just that.
The Canary likes to stay out of the Sun. She’s peeking through the blinds at you from canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 22-29, 2016.
