To fulfill your duty, all you have to do is put down the Chateau Coufran for five minutes and vote.
Please take the Official Santa Barbara County mail-in ballot packages off the pile on your kitchen counter. Sit down with your family and fill them out. You can mail them now or drop them off at your polling place on Election Day Tuesday, November 3, 2026. Also, please remind your family, friends, and co-workers to do the same. Remember that the infamous Nazi War criminal Hermann Goering, when asked why the Nazi’s ended democracy, cryptically replied, “We found it unnecessary.” Don’t give the current state-wide and local majority enviro-socialist apparatchiks any excuses.
Depending on where you live and where your voting precinct is in relation to various election cycles, you may have votes for school board, city council, special districts, county supervisor, state senate, and other local offices. Everyone has votes for state Assembly, Governor, Lt. Governor, Secretary of State, Attorney General, State Controller, State Treasurer, Superintendent of Public Education, and U.S. House of Representatives.
Remember that the local elective offices are bench builders for higher office. Senator Bernie Sanders started out as Mayor of Burlington, Vermont. He won his first mayoral term by 22 votes. Former President Barack Obama was first elected to the Illinois State Senate. Former Vice President Kamala Harris was first elected as a San Francisco County District Attorney. Former President Jimmy Carter began his elective career on the Sumter County, Georgia, School Board. Former President Joe Biden was first elected to the New Castle, Delaware, School Board.
Your vote to weed out existing and future socialist leaders is extremely important.
Accordingly, evaluate all the candidates, both local and up-ballot, as well as the 14 ballot measures on the following policy criteria. Do they/did they support or oppose:
A Check List
1. Promotion of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) ideology and mandates
2. Relicensing the Diablo Power Plant for the next 20 years
3. The so called “Chumash” Marine Sanctuary
4. Coastal Commission plan to close the Oceano Dunes to off-road vehicle recreation and freestyle camping and other outrages
5. Your home insurance bill (Fire): The Legislature and Governor have done nothing and have allowed successive State Insurance Commissioners to drive market competition out of the state.
6. Relentless tax and fee increases at all levels
7. Mismanagement of State water: 80% goes to conservation/government programs and on out into the ocean.
8. Inflation of prices due to COVID pork programs, including the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Pork and Corruption Act) that injected trillions of dollars into the economy with no commensurate productivity increases and widespread state and local corruption
9. The ever-deepening penetration of the Alternate Minimum Income Tax (AMT)
10. The exemption in State Law that permits local and state officials to vote on their government employee labor contracts even when they have received huge campaign contributions from the very unions with which they are bargaining.
11. Gas and diesel vehicle elimination mandates
12. The Homeless Industrial Complex
13. Central Coast Community Energy (3CE): rates are now higher and green energy delivery is lower than PG&E and SCE.
14. Failure to plan for more homes – not stack-and-packs, but creative new self-contained developments
15. Road funds and tax proceeds shifted to bike lanes, city landscaping, busses, commuter trains, and transportation subsidies to stack-and-pack housing.
Some Broader Issues
1. Energy independence
2. Climate Alarmism
3. National Security
4. Government promotion of an economy of scarcity rather than abundance
5. Border Control
The Fundamentals
1. Promotion of the nuclear family and western culture
2. Civic virtue and patriotism
3. Rule of law
4. Regulatory efficiency
5. Limited government
6. Private Property
7. Capitalism
8. Personal and property safety – justice for victims or perpetrators
9. Liberty
Societies that maintain the fundamentals are overwhelmingly more successful than others. See the historical chart below. Those countries (the western offshoots) have developed the highest standards of living for the most people.
Our Constitution and its derivative state and local laws recognize that on a just basis, government should exist to insure freedom, safety of persons and property, legal stability, public order, and the general welfare in society. Its very distinctive character is that it comprehended that governments themselves have always been and always will be the greatest threat to those very purposes.
Vote for candidates who embrace this truth, and BY ALL MEANS, VOTE.
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Mike Brown is a retired 43 career city manager/county executive officer who served as Santa Barbara County CEO for 14 years (1996 –2010) and previously as City Manager in Berkeley and Tucson. He also held executive positions in Connecticut, including Chief Deputy Commissioner of the State Department of Housing and Deputy City Manager of Hartford. After retirement from the County, he served for 14 years as the Government Affairs Director for COLAB of San Luis Obispo County from which he retired in 2025.
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Ballots are out.
If you plan to vote early, start with California Current’s proposition guide and Statewide Candidate recommendations—written from the only point of view that actually pays the bill: the overworked, under-appreciated California taxpayer.
We don’t hand you a cheat sheet and walk away. Every recommendation is backed by clear-headed research. Click the link, read the case, then mark your ballot with your eyes open.
NO on 1. The Con Job
NO on 2. Supersizing California’s Slush Fund
NO on 3. The Forever Tax
NO on 4. Your Money, Their Campaigns
NO on 5. Recall Revenge
NO on 37. Robin Hood in Reverse
NO on 38. Pork Barrel Science
YES on 39. Trust, but Verify
NO on 40. Tax Billionaires Today, Tax Everybody Tomorrow
YES on 41. Sergey’s Silver Bullets
YES on 42. Sergey’s Silver Bullets
YES on 43. Stop Getting Steamrolled by Special Taxes
NO on 44. Bleeding Health Clinics Dry
YES on 45. Pondering Prop 45
Note: Props 41 and 42 share one article.
Governor: Steve Hilton
Lieutenant Governor: Gloria Romero
Secretary of State: Donald P. (Don) Wagner
Controller: Herb Morgan
Treasurer: Jennifer Hawks
Attorney General: Michael Gates
Insurance Commissioner: no good choice, no endorsement
State Superintendent of Public Instruction: Sonja Shaw
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Need a little help with the 20 judicial retention choices for the Second Appellate District (Los Angeles, Ventura, San Luis Obispo, and Santa Barbara Counties)? Click here.
