GOP spokesman: Here’s what we meant when we compared Bruce Jones to Supervisor Arnold
The Tribune’s latest editorial about the District 2 race reads like a Bruce Gibson campaign flyer and not like an unbiased examination of the candidates. I wholly disagree with the editorial team’s conjectures.
For full disclosure, I am a member of the Bruce Jones for District 2 supervisor team and want to correct the record. When the head of the Republican Party compared Dr. Bruce Jones to Supervisor Debbie Arnold, he was referring to Dr. Jones’ integrity, intelligence, consideration for the needs of the public and congeniality, traits he thought the comparison portrayed.
The Tribune then took the comparison to suggest Dr. Jones is a Trumper and an election denier. Both are untrue.
Continuing with the inaccurate conjectures, The Tribune Editorial Board determined that Dr. Jones is on the wrong side of climate action because he wants to keep the Diablo Canyon power plant open and has concerns with floating windmills off Morro Bay.
Dr. Jones wants to keep Diablo Canyon open because it produces energy without releasing carbon.
Other than Gibson, almost every Democratic official in California supports keeping Diablo open to ensure a reliable energy source.
For more than a decade, Gibson and the late Supervisor Adam Hill pushed a 10-year plan to stop homelessness with a focus on case management. Gibson and Hill repeatedly voted to provide the nonprofit organization managing the program and the local shelter, which Hill’s girlfriend and then wife worked for, tens of millions of dollars.
This was at a time when the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which provided the county homeless services funding, was promoting a housing-first program that had much greater results.
Also during this time, SLO County ranked second in the nation for percentage of homeless people who were unsheltered in suburban areas, demonstrating Hill’s and Gibson’s program did not work. SLO County now ranks third-highest in the nation, based on point-in-time counts; out of a total of 1,423 total homeless people counted in 2020, 82.4% were unsheltered, according to the 2020 Homeless Assessment Report to Congress.
As part of his campaign, Gibson has bragged about his success with homelessness. Dr. Jones pointed out the failures of the 10-year plan and The Tribune Editorial Board wrote that Gibson was listed as an alternate in the 10-year-plan and was not responsible for the issues, which we believe is inaccurate as Gibson promoted and voted to fund it for a decade.
The misinformation is the reason multiple Republicans refuse to interview with The Tribune, you twist everything around as is manifested in your editorial.
Erik Gorham is a member of the San Luis Obispo County Republican Party.
This story was originally published October 22, 2022 at 6:00 AM with the headline "GOP spokesman: Here’s what we meant when we compared Bruce Jones to Supervisor Arnold."