It’s time SLO County GOP faced the truth: They backed a weak candidate for supervisor | Opinion

Republicans challenging the 13-vote victory of District 2 Supervisor Bruce Gibson called an early halt to a recount. But that doesn’t mean they’ve acknowledged that their candidate, Dr. Bruce Jones, lost the election.

They probably never will.

They stubbornly cling to the fallacy that the election system is so susceptible to error — and even fraud — that there is no way to ensure accurate results.

It’s the kind of poor sportsmanship we’ve come to expect from radical conservatives who refuse to admit defeat. Instead of accepting the will of the voters, they shake their fists and claim they were robbed by a broken voting system.

Mind you, such concerns were never raised when conservatives were winning SLO County elections.

The GOP group behind the recount — the San Luis Obispo County Citizens Action Team — issued a statement Thursday listing everything wrong with the current system, from not requiring voters to show a photo ID to neglecting to clean up “bloated” voter rolls.

The group claims it isn’t criticizing the integrity or competency of election officials. Rather, a system “wide open for abuse” is to blame.

Nice try, but we aren’t buying the attempt at diplomacy — there have been too many complaints from the local GOP about the way the county staff has handled both the election and the recount.

County Clerk-Recorder Elaina Cano has been accused of “slow rolling” records requests, of overcharging for the recount and misinterpreting election law.

Lawsuits have been threatened, though that’s apparently still up in the air, at least according to statements made on talk radio.

“We’re not gonna sue if we don’t think we can overturn the race,” frequent GOP spokesman Erik Gorham said on the Dec. 28 Dave Congalton radio show. “You know, we’re not going to waste everybody’s time and money.”

That’s one of the most sensible things we’ve heard since this whole mess started.

Meanwhile, losing candidate Dr. Bruce Jones has been mostly silent, though he did thank his supporters in an op-ed published by Cal Coast News — which is probably the closest thing we’ll ever get to a concession speech.

“I want to thank all the people who contributed to my campaign with their time, money and effort,” he wrote. “I also want to thank the people in District 2 who voted for me and the people who tried to vote for me on Nov. 8 in person at their precincts but were disenfranchised from voting the way they wanted to vote.”

The “people who tried to vote for me”?

Let’s be a little more specific. According to Cano, two District 2 voters submitted vote-by-mail ballots without envelopes; the GOP has said that election workers erroneously told them that would be acceptable but as a result, their votes were not counted.

That’s unfortunate, but let’s get real. We are talking two votes. That would not have changed the final outcome.

Neither would the single vote that wasn’t counted because it bore two postmarks, and on initial inspection appeared to have missed the mailing deadline.

It’s understandable that Dr. Jones and his supporters would be disappointed; 13 votes is an extremely narrow loss.

And remember, this was a race Jones was supposed to win; thanks to gerrymandering, Democrats had lost their advantage in District 2.

But disappointment doesn’t excuse the attacks on county staff, particularly Elaina Cano, and the unrelenting efforts to undermine public confidence in our elections.

Nor does it excuse Jones’ continued efforts to malign his opponent.

We didn’t expect him to congratulate Bruce Gibson — though that would have been an appropriate gesture — but did he have to continue to fan the flames with his reference to “people who tried to vote for me”?

Apparently so. After all, the Jones campaign took the low road in the campaign by smearing Gibson at every turn.

But now it’s time to face reality: Dr. Jones was a weak candidate. He was a newcomer to the area, he lacked political experience and he made rookie mistakes throughout the campaign. The fact that he relied so heavily on negative messaging — rather than on his own credentials — only underscored his unsuitability for office.

The voters chose Bruce Gibson — and blaming the election system is is not going to change that.

Instead of pointing fingers at everyone else for its failures, maybe now the SLO County Republican Party will finally shift away from its strategy of trying to tear down democracy and instead return to constructive conservatism that seeks out qualified, reasonable candidates who build consensus and act with the best interest of all our citizens.

Otherwise, they can continue their slide into ineptitude and irrelevance.