SLO County GOP trashed a fellow Republican. Now they need his help to win in November

Well, this could get interesting.

Despite their recent losses in the primary, SLO County Republicans could hang on to their majority on the Board of Supervisors, but only if Dr. Bruce Jones can defeat veteran District 2 Supervisor Bruce Gibson in November.

This should be the Republicans’ race to lose.

In a highly controversial redistricting, Gibson’s district was gerrymandered to give conservatives the edge — a decision that’s the subject of a lawsuit making its way through court.

Still, in the primary, Gibson managed to finish in front with 48% of the vote. His three conservative challengers trailed close behind one another with 19%, 17% and 16%.

But now that two candidates have been knocked out of the race, that makes the math more challenging for Gibson.

Here’s how it looks: If everyone who voted for a conservative in the primary lines up behind Dr. Jones in November — and if turnout remains roughly the same — the Republican should win.

But those are two big uncertainties.

How will moderates vote?

In the June vote, turnout was around 50% in District 2 and should go higher in November when there will be more at stake — including city and school board races.

That means there will be an unknown number of undecided voters casting ballots in the runoff.

Also, there’s no guarantee that Jones, a far-right conservative who was endorsed by the SLO County Republican Party, will be able to woo the more moderate conservatives he’ll need to win.

He has received the endorsement of John Whitworth, who finished fourth in the race.

But he may not have the support of the third-place finisher, Geoff Auslen, whose reputation was thoroughly trashed by the local GOP — part of an overall strategy to slime every candidate with unfounded accusations of corruption.

Whether Auslen and his supporters are willing to forgive and forget has yet to be seen.

He told The Tribune Editorial Board that he won’t endorse Gibson, but he hasn’t decided whether he’ll back Jones.

“I haven’t given it much thought yet,” Auslen said. “I may sit this one out.”

After the number the local Republican establishment did on him, that’s not a surprise.

‘Weak Democrat’

In a February radio interview, local Republican Central Committee member Erik Gorham accused Auslen of voting as a “weak Democrat” and revealed that Auslen lost the GOP endorsement to Jones by a vote of 24-1.

“I equate him (Auslen) more to an Adam Hill,” Gorham told radio host Dave Congalton.

Hill is a former county supervisor who died by suicide and was later found to have taken bribes from a cannabis grower. Local Republican leaders have been pointing to that as proof of rampant corruption in San Luis Obispo County.

They’ve attempted to discredit political opponents by “connecting” them to Hill — even if that meant attacking one of their own.

Witness the early attempt to taint Auslen because he accepted a $5,000 campaign donation from PG&E executive Tom Jones, who was one of Hill’s close friends.

That was it — the “damning” link that made Auslen unfit for office.

More attacks—

Not only did the party attack Auslen’s ethics, but they also went after his livelihood — an engine repair and rental business in Atascadero.

Jones’ website prominently displayed a letter to the editor published in New Times that’s highly critical of Auslen’s business practices — it describes him as “one of the rudest business owners in Atascadero.”

We have no personal knowledge of whether the negative comments about Auslen’s business have merit, though we suspect every business, at one time or another, gets some bad reviews.

For Jones to seize on that attack letter in such a way further confirms his willingness to do whatever it takes to get elected so that he can advance the radical right agenda.

And here’s the kicker: He didn’t remove the letter until just this week — after this editorial first appeared online — and replaced it with a message acknowledging his supporters and thanking his opponents for a “challenging contest.”

That reflects either carelessness or contempt — in any case, it’s not a good look for a candidate who can’t afford to alienate potential supporters.

This is the kind of arrogant attitude that is not serving the local Republican Party well as it tries to make its case to voters to back its chosen candidates.

In fact, only one of the party’s picks in five contested county races — Mike Frye, who ran for a Superior Court judgeship — ended up winning outright.

Two GOP-backed candidates, Stacy Korsgaden, who ran for District 3 supervisor, and James Baugh, a candidate for county clerk-recorder, were pummeled by huge margins.

A third candidate, incumbent District 4 Supervisor Lynn Compton, lost her seat by more than 600 votes even after she and her two fellow conservatives on the board blithely approved a new district map that was transparently manipulated in her favor.

That swing was more than a tenfold erosion in support from her 60-vote margin of victory four years go.

Now the party is clinging to its one last hope, that it can parlay Gibson’s lack of a primary majority into a win for Jones in November.

Otherwise, all of its self-serving map-drawing will be for naught.

It will be up to SLO County’s moderate conservatives — and yes, they are out there — to push back against the extreme MAGA wing of the local Republican Party and complete what should be a reckoning for the overreach of the last year.

Another accusation of ‘stolen’ election

There is no doubt, their hyper-partisanship tactics have done great harm to our county.

In refusing to tolerate differences of opinion, they’ve turned neighbors against neighbors and friends against friends.

And they haven’t stopped.

In an opinion piece on the Cal Coast News website, Cynthia Muir, a member of Republican Central Committee, expressed amazement that “relatively unknown” Clerk-Recorder Elaina Cano would capture such a large percentage of the vote.

“When the person running the election is also a candidate who is counting the votes, it’s a classic case of the fox guarding the hen house,” Muir wrote. “We must demand a hand count of the clerk-recorder’s race, and, if the numbers don’t match the reported results, the whole county should be hand-counted.”

For the record, Cano recused herself from the counting process, but apparently even that’s not enough to avoid baseless accusations by idealogues unable to accept a loss.

The good news is, June’s election results show the majority of San Luis Obispo County voters aren’t buying the lies and conspiracy theories that have infected politics across the country.

At its peril, the San Luis Obispo County Republican Party leadership should reconsider its tactics and change course — or expect another rebuke in November.

This editorial has been updated to reflect the new content on Bruce Jones’ campaign website.

This story was originally published July 7, 2022 at 6:00 AM.