The lawyer defended this action saying “jurisdictions do this all the time”. These are the type things we figured would happen as this attorney firm is an activist firm for dems.
- Meanwhile, we believe the county attorneys are fixing to run up the bill and run out the clock on our lawsuit with frivolous motions.
Here is the background info on this subject matter:
The dems are continuing to play dirty pool with Santa Barbara County's so called politically Independent Redistricting Commission! At their last meeting, they are supposed to fill a vacancy on the commission. Their problem? Only three republicans were left in the applicant pool!
What to do? They illegally called for an "emergency meeting" within the regular meeting and a miracle occurred! A democrat that had previously withdrawn from the applicant pool miraculously reappeared to reapply and surprise, surprise. The raised from the dead applicant was subsequently appointed to fill the position! I wonder who made that happen?
To give you a little bit of background on this commission, it has been created to draw the political boundaries of the five county supervisorial districts which determine the constituencies of each voting district. As the saying goes, voters don’t pick their representatives, representatives pick their voters by way of redistricting.
This commission was supposed to be free of partisan politics. It has been anything but. Each week, three democratic party operatives show up and have their way with the commission. These include one of the largest dem donors in the region, Lee Heller. The local democratic party lawyer, Phil Seymour. And, a democratic party employee, Spencer Brandt.
Their first move? They managed to get one of the nation’s top democratic party election law firms appointed as the commissions attorney even though the firm’s initial bid was $100,000 over and above the next qualified bidder. Moreover, the head of this attorney firm, one Fred Woocher, was former county supervisor Doreen Farr’s attorney in an election lawsuit, which meant he should have been disqualified from serving the commission. Insult to injury? His co-counsel for Farr’s case was the aforementioned Phil Seymour! This is why COLAB was forced to sue the commission.
The republican party and independents? Nowhere to be found. Despite the fact that this is for all the marbles as the saying goes.
Some of the additional highlights thus far in this saga? Well, for starters, when the initial commissioners were picked by elections chief Joe Holland, county supervisors threw a fit because it was heavily loaded with white males. Subsequently, three people of color that were picked to serve on the commission resigned. And, get this. The commission replaced all three of these people of color with white people, meaning the commission is back where it started from. Moreover, one of the three republicans who had been left in the pool was a Latino and the former Mayor of Guadalupe. He was summarily rejected for all the wrong reasons.
Over the course of the next few weeks, the commission is going to launch a series of meetings by which they invite the public to submit their ideas for the political boundaries of each of the five supervisor’s districts. The genuine purpose of redistricting is to ensure that the political power of minorities is protected along with the political power of each community of interest, the latter of which is somewhat nebulous.
What to look for? Where does Isla Vista and UCSB land? Forever and a day, they have been placed in the third district, a north county district for all intents and purposes, for one reason and one reason only. To control the swing vote on the board between the south county progressives and north county moderates.
The dirty little secret? Second district supervisor Greg Hart doesn’t want IV in his district because even he is too moderate for IV voters! That is, placing IV in the third district serves to cancel the vote of the students in both the south and the north! A double win for progressives who are all too happy to play the students like a fiddle to stay in power.
Andy Caldwell
COLAB
