Is SLO County’s new supervisor turning her back on her Democratic base?

Democrats do things for us. Republicans do things to us.

Local democracy is a proof point: One party wants to make it easier to vote, and abides by election results when its candidates lose. The other party wants to make it harder to vote, and insists the only way its candidates lose is because they’re cheated.

Claiming San Luis Obispo County’s vote counting machines are crooked and “made in China,” the local GOP is demanding County Clerk Tommy Gong conduct an audit of the certified 2020 local election results, dump its vote-tabulating system, require voter ID, scrap vote-by-mail, and eliminate other provisions required by state law.

One party abides democracy, the other cynically weakens it. There’s a stark difference between the two.

Dawn Ortiz-Legg, the recently appointed SLO County Third District supervisor, should understand this.

If she hopes to win voter approval in 2022 — no sure thing — Ortiz-Legg might consider studying up on the concept of “base,” a group of like-minded voters essential to electoral victory. Ortiz-Legg, who ran as a Democrat in a losing bid for state Assembly in 2016, was appointed by a Democratic governor to replace the late Adam Hill, a Democrat serving a heavily Democratic district.

Democrats are her base, in theory. Given that backdrop, it’s curious that two of Ortiz-Legg’s most important votes have aligned with the Trumpist majority on the board.

It’s almost as if she’s inviting a challenge from the left. It shouldn’t be presumed District 3 is a safe seat for Ortiz-Legg, or that all Dems will line up behind her to defend it.

On March 16, Ortiz-Legg sided with the Trump majority for an important nomination to the state Coastal Commission — a vacant seat representing San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.

By state statute, each of those county’s Board of Supervisors must send the governor the nomination of at least one county supervisor or city elected official from within those three counties. No one on the SLO County board wanted the job. Morro Bay Mayor John Headding was the only elected rep from SLO County interested.

The day prior to that vote, Santa Barbara City Councilmember Meagan Harmon — a real estate and land use attorney — contacted county supervisors, asking for their nomination as an elected city representative. She also spoke during public comment at the board meeting, introducing herself via voice mail.

Knowing nothing about Harmon, Supervisor Bruce Gibson declined, and put Headding forward for the nod, along with Santa Barbara County Supervisor Das Williams.

But Supervisors Lynn Compton, John Peschong and Debbie Arnold were having none of it, flatly refusing the request and picking Harmon as the sole nominee. With no comment from Ortiz-Legg, the motion passed 4-1.

One might wonder why the board snubbed a respected SLO County mayor in favor of an unknown, short-tenured Santa Barbara politician. Apparently, Harmon had pledged to support keeping Oceano Dunes open to off-highway vehicle use, while Headding votes regularly for dunes dust control measures on the Air Pollution Control District board. Ortiz-Legg’s acquiescence was notable. (Ironically, two days later, the Coastal Commission voted to ban OHV use on the dunes.)

That was the second time Ortiz-Legg sided with the conservative majority on an important, highly political decision.

One of her earliest votes as supervisor, on Jan. 5, had Ortiz-Legg siding with Compton, Arnold and Peschong in refusing to establish a citizens advisory committee to provide formal input on the crucial, once-a-decade redrawing of county supervisor district boundaries.

Ten years ago, without such a committee, the board adopted boundaries cementing a 1,300-vote advantage for Republicans in District 5 — which for decades had swung between liberal SLO Democrats and North County conservatives — locking in 10 years of Republican control of the board.

A decade later, the Trump majority is trying to lure Ortiz-Legg down the same path. After advocating an open, public approach to redistricting, Gibson was the odd-Dem out. He proposed the citizens committee, arguing for transparency and accountability, and was overruled 4-1.

Republicans make up about a third of registered voters in SLO County and are losing ground to Dems and independents. Yet they’re scheming to grab three-fifths or more of the board for another decade.

A plot brewing now in GQP circles aims to superglue Republican ownership of the competitive Fourth District in South County. Compton — who won the seat by 60 votes in 2018 — wants to unload Oceano (a Dem stronghold) into already-blue District 3, then expand District 4 into reddish south San Luis Obispo / Edna. Ortiz-Legg has yet to object.

Voting rights, voting access, gerrymandering, skullduggery, math — they’re the essence of red-state bully politics. Let’s not allow SLO County going the way of Georgia, Texas, Arizona and other vote-suppression strongholds.

Smart as she is, Ortiz-Legg must understand her decisions now will help determine the political fate of SLO County for another decade, and hers at the June 2022 primary.

She’d better her chances by better understanding her “base” before it better understands someone else. Does she align with the party that does things for us, or the party that does things to us?

The District 3 base already knows its preference.

Tribune Columnist Tom Fulks serves on the San Luis Obispo County Democratic Central Committee.