How would SLO County supervisor candidate work with the DA? Not well, he predicts
If elected, District 2 supervisor candidate Jim Dantona predicted he would have a rocky working relationship with San Luis Obispo County District Attorney Dan Dow.
During a candidate forum hosted by Preserve Cayucos LLC on Saturday, Dantona and Michael Erin Woody, answered around 40 questions during the course of two hours on issues affecting Cayucos residents and the county at large.
The two contenders had one minute each to respond to questions posed from a moderator and the audience. Vicki Tamoush, who helped organize the forum, said the event was not recorded, so The Tribune spoke with both candidates to recall and confirm what was said.
At one point, the candidates were asked: How do you envision your future working relationship with SLO County District Attorney Dan Dow?
Dantona, the first to answer, said he responded, “I don’t think that’s going to be a good working relationship,” going on to explain that Dow has been extremely partisan in the office and doubting they were going to see eye-to-eye on issues.
Dantona said there were chuckles and stirring in the audience during his response, while Woody remembered audible gasps and people shaking their heads.
Woody said it was a “surreal moment” because he assumed they would both respond in a “milquetoast, ‘sure, we can get along with anybody, etc.,’” he said.
He called it was a pivotal moment in the debate.
“I’m literally sitting there with this bewildered look on my face, thinking, ‘Jim, you’ve got to be kidding me,’ and as his minute went on, he kept doubling down on the fact that he was proud to say that he wasn’t going to have a working relationship with the district attorney,” Woody said.
Dantona told the Tribune he would have a working relationship with Dow, but he imagined it would be contentious due to their different viewpoints.
“It isn’t that I don’t want to work with Dan Dow,” he said, but “we’re not going to be aligned on the values piece.”
When it was Woody’s turn to answer the question, he recalled saying, “I could work with anybody, regardless of political affiliation or differences of opinion.”
“I thought it was a softball question,” he said, adding that local government needed leaders who could work well with others to solve complex regional issues.
Looking back on his response, Dantona wished he had reworded his answer to say that he would work with everybody, while also envisioning that his working relationship with Dow would be more strained.
“I’ll be honest, I was too flippant with my comments. Absolutely,” he told The Tribune.
Dan Borradori, who owns the garage where the forum was held, missed the contentious question while handling maintenance issues at the space but said the candidates and audience were extremely courteous throughout the event.
“I’ve never seen two candidates so respectful to the crowd,” he said. “I was so blown away. I was really impressed by the whole Cayucos community.”
