As we sit here snugly in the donut hole of the apocalypse — with wildfires raging to the north and south — it’s easy to forget that the fate of western civilization hangs in the balance as we wait to see which way voters in the City of Santa Barbara’s Districts 1 and 2 tip or tilt. The way it looks now, it appears the vast majority might not get out of bed in the first place, preferring to sit this one out while lying down.
As of this Friday afternoon, only 18 percent had mailed in their ballots to city elections workers, who in turn dispatch them to points south — through who knows how many blazing infernos along the way — in the city of Norwalk. By any reckoning, that’s abysmally low. Anywhere from 30-40 percent is more broadly typical.
This gives the rest of you a couple days yet to figure out your vote and mail your ballots in. Turnout numbers for District 2 — the Mesa — are said to be notably higher than those in District 1 — the city’s Eastside. Maybe that’s because Mesa voters have five candidates from whom to choose, none of whom is an incumbent. That means it’s a wide-open question as to who replaces Randy Rowse, who for the past eight years has played the role of grumpy white male of aggressively indeterminate party affiliation to the hilt while injecting some semblance of business-guy common sense to council proceedings. Rowse, who is known to wield a savagely funny poison pen, is up to his eyeballs in the perfidious partisan pettifoggery that he complains has invaded the inner sanctum of the council chambers and is eagerly awaiting the day the screen door hits him on the ass on the way out.
