To hear Mike Stoker tell it, campaigning for elected office is really about one thing: “How it really should work is to have two candidates with two different perspectives who are willing to own those perspectives. We can both be nice people but it’s a question of what direction you want for California.”
Two candidates with two different perspectives. We only get two choices about the direction we want this state to go? What about the rest? The primary election should really be about narrowing down our choices for the general election—not having them narrowed down for us.
In the 37th District Assembly race, we now only have two choices where there were once five: You Northern Santa Barbara County folks either get to vote for former Santa Barbara County Supervisor Stoker or current Santa Barbara County Supervisor Gregg Hart. So markedly conservative or liberal with a progressive tendency. Boring!
Why did the other three—Gabe Escobedo, Bruce Wallach, and Jonathan Abboud—drop out? Maybe they couldn’t stick by their perspective on one of the state’s most pressing issues: homelessness. I doubt that. I bet it was money or pressure from our broken two-party system. Or both.
But back to homelessness. Stoker said the state needs to resolve homelessness, but he was short on a prospective direction or details. Other than saying that Gov. Gavin Newsom is leading this state in the “wrong direction,” he really doesn’t say much of anything about what the right direction actually is.
Don’t worry, though, he’s a nice person who will be announcing a five-point plan in the very near future to help build higher and newer state reservoirs. No word yet on what he’s going to do about the lack of rain or snowpack to fill the state’s existing reservoirs. But that’s just a minor hiccup.
Hart seems to believe that he can bring “practical solutions” to homelessness based on his experience with housing projects in both the city of Santa Barbara and the county. However, he isn’t specific about those solutions or what the state needs to do to address the issue in a way that will impact the district that he’s running in.
Don’t worry, though, he’s also a nice person who seems to understand that state policies impact local decision-making. It’s earth-shattering stuff, really. I can’t wait for the primary.
You know what else is nice?
Actually, it’s not nice. It wasn’t nice when the city of Santa Maria removed the ramps in the skatepark near Fletcher Park without clearly communicating their plan with the skateboarders who use said ramps. And a lot of people use that park. Many thought the ramps were just gone for good.
“Word had later gotten back to us saying the city wasn’t getting rid of the ramps, but planned to fix them and put them back. [That’s] all good, but it didn’t ease the frustration with nobody reaching out to us to find out what we want,” community advocate Dan Pankratz said.
Santa Maria Recreation Services Manager Dennis Smitherman admitted that the Recreation and Parks Department could have done a better job communicating with ramp users that those ramps were going to disappear temporarily. And it sounds like skateboarders might just get some input on how the city plans for skateboarding in the future.
Now, that is very nice.
The canary is never nice. Send comments to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Apr 21-28, 2022.
