Inside the battle for SLO County’s political soul | Opinion

One of the enduring problems in American civic life is that good people can make public life worse while trying to make it better. Conviction hardens into tribe. Solidarity drifts into echo chambers.

I was reminded of this recently while reading the obituary of a remarkable woman from San Luis Obispo County. Her life paired real generosity and courage with the all-too-modern habit of slipping from community into tribalism.

She was a woman of empathy, conviction and courage, which often placed her in the thick of America’s moral quarrels.

Locally, she helped start a chapter of Braver Angels whose mission is “to bridge the partisan divide and strengthen our democratic republic”.

As a sequel, she founded the Lonely Liberals, a North County group that regularly reviled and demeaned local Republicans.

That is modern politics in a nutshell. We are all for bridges, provided traffic only runs one way. Bridge building in one room. Tribe building in another.

Very right. Very wrong. Entirely human.

We continue to practice political warfare

Polling shows how exhausted voters are with permanent political trench warfare: 65% of Americans believe politics has become more divisive in recent years, while a clear majority say elected officials should be more willing to compromise. Only 20% say they trust government — numbers that would alarm any serious steward of a republic.

San Luis Obispo County mirrors that mood. Local voter rolls show a politically split county. Approximately 38% Democrat, 35% Republican, leaving roughly one in four voters declining to join either major tribe.

Yet local politics often behaves as if we are reenacting Gettysburg with yard signs.

On the Democratic side, visible figures such as Tom Fulks and Supervisors Bruce Gibson and Jimmy Paulding are seen by supporters as champions of progressive values and by critics as willing participants in the escalation of toxic partisan hostility.

On the Republican side, MAGA-aligned leaders within the SLO County GOP lean into grievance politics imported from national cable studios. — a style at odds with the Central Coast’s historically pragmatic and collegiate ‘pioneer’ temperament.

Focusing on outcomes instead of outrage

There is, however, another current.

Leaders such as Supervisors Dawn Ortiz-Legg, John Peschong and Heather Moreno have helped model a politics that is more focused on outcomes than outrage.

A candidate fighting to replace the retiring Supervisor Gibson, Michael Erin Woody, is bold and principled enough to run as a political Independent.

Under the leadership of Jordan Cunningham — until 2022 our GOP state assemblymember— the SLO County Lincoln Club is promoting economic growth, civic engagement and cooperation rather than ideological theater.

These distinctions matter.

Because our future here will hopefully be shaped not by the local priesthood of outrage, but by the one group still displaying signs of adulthood. Centrist independent minded voters who want homes built, roads fixed, clean streets, schools working and fewer public performances of moral superiority.

It must also be said that our local media ecosystem has not always helped. The Tribune and New Times often frame issues through a progressive lens. CalCoast News and KPRL frequently serve red meat to an equally excitable right. When journalism becomes performance art, citizens retreat further into their corners.

The woman whose passing prompts this reflection reenforced something essential.

Community matters. Conviction matters. But so does restraint. Do we want to be right? Or do we want to make a difference?

You can fight for justice yet still behave in ways that make community impossible. You can open the door to dialogue, then furnish the house for agreement only.

If San Luis Obispo County continues treating politics like a demolition derby, let’s hope the independents quietly take the keys away from both sides. Our political leaders must show the discipline to resist turning politics into a team sport, where the goal is demonization rather than persuasion.

Two things can be true at once. We can be passionate about the causes we champion and still make a complete bloody mess of how we champion them.

A town is seldom ruined by bad intentions. More often, it is smothered by good ones.

Clive Pinder hosts “CeaseFire” on KVEC 920AM/96.5 FM and writes at clivepinder.substack.com. He believes the surest way we lose a community is to try and win every political argument.

This colum has been updated to correct the date that Jordan Cunningham left the state Assembly.

This story was originally published March 22, 2026 at 10:00 AM.