‘Vile attack dog’ shreds SLO County’s 3 conservative supervisors

A little while back, San Luis Obispo County’s Fourth District supervisor, Lynn Compton, called me a “vile attack dog” on the Dave Congalton radio show, sounding a lot like most folks do when they don’t care for factual reporting about themselves.

Compton’s snit reminded me of a typical public figure’s reaction to “The Shredder,” the snarky, anonymous column in SLO’s weekly New Times, and the younger sibling of the Santa Barbara Independent’s “Angry Poodle.”

The Shredder and Poodle were originally conceived as harmlessly amusing “attack dogs” — there to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable with truth, parody and sardonic wit, as we say in the newspaper business.

I was the original Shredder in the early 1990s. New Times founder Steve Moss, who died in 2005, and I sat one day over lunch at Pete’s Southside Café and sketched out the column on a paper napkin. Steve was looking for SLO County’s Poodle: gritty, edgy, something to make people laugh, cry, seethe. The Independent’s Poodle did that, skewering high-placed poohbahs and elected nincompoops for saying and doing dumb, self-important, self-serving stuff.

Since I was already under contract as a weekly columnist for New Times, Steve asked me to pen the Shredder until he could find someone else to do it.

Against my personal and former-daily-newspaper-reporter instincts, I agreed to do it anonymously because Steve asked, and because it was a “temporary” gig — on condition the content must be true, verifiable and not mean spirited.

The next morning, Steve christened it “The Shredder.” That was the name of my cat, the protagonist in a running column, “Tough Cats of Pismo,” that I’d done for some time for the Five Cities Times-Press-Recorder.

“Everybody’ll think it’s me,” I protested. “No, they won’t,” Steve said authoritatively. About two years later, after I told him I was fried, he started writing the column himself — and did a far better than me.

Here, please allow me to stick with Compton’s dog imagery for the rest of this story — unvarnished journalism, inspired by Steve Moss, about the GOP majority on the board and their tinfoil-hatted sycophants. It’ll be fun.

At the May 4 board meeting, Compton and fellow Republican majority supervisors Debbie Arnold and John Peschong performed like best-in-show lap dogs, alert to the whistles of anti-vaxxers and vote suppressors. Off leash, they’re like a grown litter of bichon frises that got loose and went hubcap and cat chasing. After prevaricating for a while about non-existent “vaccine passports” in SLO County, their ears perked at the sound of The Big Lie, sitting obediently for hours of testimony from imposters claiming to live in San “Louie” Obispo and “the S-L-O County.” These and other tells clearly pointed to an orchestrated, outside-influenced dog-and-pony show — the local manifestation of a national campaign to discredit the legitimacy of American electoral democracy in prep for an ill-gotten return of their exiled master.

Board Chair Compton allowed this circus for hours, pushing supervisors late into the night before the pack got to the real business of chewing on voting access in SLO County the way Pitbull pups gnaw on a purloined leather pump. Compton and Arnold refused to voice any confidence in our election process or local election workers.

Instead, they voted with Peschong to reject modernized vote centers, sticking instead with the old polling place model, and to have a future discussion about amending the county’s legislative platform with far-fetched demands: voter ID, elimination of same-day voter registration, modified postmark requirements for mail-in ballots. All classic GQP vote suppression tactics. Cynically, this “Q” majority would have us believe they hold sway over such things. They don’t, due to state law.

Facts from County Clerk Tommy Gong didn’t matter. The truth that there’s no voter fraud here was ignored. That there’s no reason to challenge local election systems “integrity” was dismissed. This was a ruthless, truthless power grab. With this charade, the Q majority proved it’ll do just about anything to protect Compton’s seat in 2022, presaging a serious gerrymandering gambit.

Don’t be surprised if they try to shift Oceano – a Democratic stronghold – from Compton’s District 4 into D3, then push D4 up Highway 227 into a dense residential corridor in more politically conservative south SLO.

Add to that their refusal to adopt reasonable campaign contribution limits and they’ve got a real shot at maintaining minoritarian GQP rule over a two-thirds Democrat-Independent majority county. One might wonder if it’s nobler to be a “vile attack dog,” or run with a pack of fluffy bichon frises, loosed to attack the vote and trash our democracy in pursuit of maintaining power.

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

This story was originally published May 20, 2021 at 6:00 AM.