Admittedly, I’m a recovering politician. I will always be “in recovery” from this terrible addiction. As the midterm election looms, I’m likely to fall off the wagon and into that dismal swamp.
Why fight it? Here in San Luis Obispo, voters get to choose a mayor and two council members in nominally nonpartisan contests. Usually there isn’t a lot of drama.
Now, however, things are upside-down. There are some weird undercurrents in our municipal election.
Take a look at the mayor’s “race,” where Erica Stewart has once again answered the call and seeks her third full term as our mayor. She has a lot going for her, but she’s hitting some headwinds—and the singular disadvantage of the mayor’s seat is that voters can throw you out every two years.
She had already served a few years on the council and was vice mayor when Heidi Harmon abruptly resigned in the middle of her term in 2021. It was almost exactly five years ago that Stewart’s council colleagues appointed her to fill out the rest of Harmon’s term.
Stewart faced the voters in 2022 and in 2024; each time she crushed her opponents: Three men tried to unseat her in 2022, but she won with 70 percent of the vote. In 2024, Erica did even better, getting 84 percent of the vote against her sole opponent, perennial candidate Don Hedrick. And this year, she’s running unopposed.
Why is our mayor unopposed now? Why indeed. She has clearly made at least one enemy over the last nine months: Together with all four fellow council members, she ran afoul of a once-influential group known as the “Residents for Quality Neighborhoods” (RQN). Their enmity was made manifest earlier this year, when it was revealed that in June 2025, Mayor Stewart had distributed a confidential draft grand jury report to her Cal Poly colleagues—a violation of regulations that protect the confidentiality of such reports. (It did not go unmentioned that Stewart also works at Cal Poly.) She apologized and took responsibility for her actions, explaining that her disclosure was unintentional.
A little context might be helpful: The grand jury was investigating persistent charges by RQN that the city had ignored their concerns about neighborhood quality. The final grand jury report was released to the public in late June 2025, a few days after the mayor’s ill-advised disclosure. As expected, the grand jury was highly critical of both the city and Cal Poly, castigating them for their continuing failure to mitigate the impacts of off-campus student housing.
This is not a new issue: During my eight years on the council (2008-2016) we heard constant complaints about the noise, disruptive behavior, poor maintenance, heavy traffic, and lack of sufficient parking in neighborhoods within commuting distance of Cal Poly—essentially the entire city. We were just starting to address these issues until, sadly, RQN effectively quit on us.
Recently, RQN once again picked up their marbles and went home: In April, RQN abruptly announced that the organization was abandoning its long-held seat on the Student Community Liaison Committee. Then in July, the city received a formal complaint alleging that Mayor Stewart had “violated … the duty not to disclose confidential information.” That letter requested a public hearing to censure Erica for serious misconduct.
The odd thing about that letter is that it was not signed by RQN: It was filed by an incumbent council member, one who’s not on the ballot now (she’s in the middle of a four-year term). I won’t name her here. She holds a long affinity with RQN and lived in “Ground Zero” (her term) until recently. I count her and all those on our City Council as trusted friends and allies; I’ve endorsed all three incumbents seeking reelection, including the mayor.
I ask every voter in San Luis Obispo to study the candidates and their stands on the issues carefully. You don’t have to vote for Stewart; feel free to write in Don Hedrick, Elon Musk, or yourself.
I’ll vote for the mayor, but there’s a problem with the two council seats that are also on our ballot: This year, we only get one vote among all three candidates, the incumbents and a challenger long associated with RQN.
I’ll be using my one vote to reelect one of the council members seeking reelection, Emily Francis or Michelle Shoresman. All three of these incumbents (including Stewart) have worked hard to represent this city. They have served with clarity of purpose and commendable civility, far improved from my own experience on the council.
I despise the circumstances that led the city to remove our right to choose how to fill both open seats in this election. My choice between Francis and Shoresman will be determined by a coin flip. ∆
John Ashbaugh was elected to the Council twice by the skin of his teeth. Send a response for publication to letters@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Oct 1-8, 2026.
Mayor Stuart, who holds a master’s degree in public administration/policy, deserved to referred to the Personell Board for illegally leaking a confidential Grand Jury report. To believe her weak defense of doing so as nothing more than a “good faith” mistake is to split in the faces of the professors that trained her while earning her graduate degree.
Her city manager and city attorney are both named defendants in a whistleblower lawsuit alleging “diverting revenue.” Not a single person on the City Council other than the one you refuse to name, had the temerity to refer the mayor to the personnel board. This Councilmember is the one we should all write in for mayor. She served once already, for this city’s reputation, she should do so again. The rest are all just crooks.
This author has no idea what has transpired between the city, Cal Poly, and RQN that has caused the actions claimed. Making judgments without any facts is typical of a biased person who doesn’t bother to talk to all the parties to get their side of what occurred. Shame on you Mr. Ashbaugh for not taking the time to get the facts straight.
I was shocked, shocked! by the revelation that Stewart had improperly shared the confidential Grand Jury report. As a former Grand Juror myself, I was amazed that anyone actually voluntarily read our often leaden and soporific prose. Committees rarely create engaging literature.
Turgid might be a better description, sir.
Mr. Ashbaugh, your characterization of RQN as an “enemy” motivated by “enmity” substitutes an accusation about motives for an examination of facts. RQN is a nonprofit organization that hears residents’ concerns and advocates on parking, noise, and other quality-of-life issues on their behalf. Corresponding with elected officials, requesting enforcement, and demanding accountability are legitimate civic functions. You offer no evidence that those efforts constitute a personal vendetta.
Your treatment of the mayor’s disclosure is particularly misplaced. The mayor shared the confidential grand jury report. RQN did not. As you acknowledge, RQN did not file the censure complaint either. The mayor subsequently said she would make the same decision again. Responsibility rests with the official who disclosed the report. How does scrutiny of her conduct establish “enmity” by an organization that neither caused the disclosure nor filed the complaint?
Your account of RQN’s withdrawal from the Student-Community Liaison Committee is similarly incomplete. RQN spent years attempting to make that forum responsive to neighborhood concerns. During that time, SLOPD Chief Scott, Christine Wallace, Courtney Kienow, and Michelle Crawford rewrote the MOU to eliminate neighborhood organizations’ authority to appoint representatives to two community seats. Institutional representatives retained their own selection processes, while neighborhood representatives became subject to the committee’s approval.
Residents repeatedly sought answers about the proliferation of illegal fraternity operations and enforcement failures. They were criticized for continuing to raise those issues. When the mayor suggested an ad hoc committee on neighborhood noise, Brett Cross developed and presented that proposal during an SCLC meeeting. City and Cal Poly representatives—including the mayor—rejected it. The SCLC chair also told committee members they could no longer question one another during meetings. Recordings are available; you could review them before disparaging the residents who participated.
Calling RQN’s eventual withdrawal “picking up their marbles” infantilizes residents while omitting the substantive reasons for their decision. A committee cannot credibly claim collaboration while restricting the dialogue necessary to achieve it.
You also conflate longstanding student-related complaints with the dramatic expansion of fraternity activity residents experienced after fall 2021. My parents lived in the neighborhood and had no issues, and my husband, our children, and I lived there beginning in 2009. We did not begin complaining until fall 2021, long after you left the council. Your experience in office does not establish what happened afterward.
Cal Poly’s first annual AB 524 report, published in October 2023, disclosed fraternity activities at approximately 50 neighborhood properties. The city began enforcement using those addresses. Cal Poly subsequently removed the addresses from its public reports.
Meanwhile, city and Cal Poly officials have discussed changes to zoning and permit standards to accommodate fraternity operations in residential neighborhoods. Residents are entitled to scrutinize those discussions, particularly after the Planning Commission revoked five fraternity permits following findings concerning detrimental neighborhood impacts and failures to comply with permit conditions. What evidence supports accommodating more of this activity when existing safeguards repeatedly proved insufficient?
The broader pattern should concern anyone who values public accountability: access to information and opportunities for questions were diminished, and those seeking answers are now characterized as enemies. That dynamic is corrosive to public trust wherever it occurs.
You acknowledge that the grand jury found continuing failures by the city and Cal Poly. Yet you devote more attention to disparaging residents’ advocates than to assessing whether those failures have been corrected. Your friendships with the incumbents are not evidence of effective governance.
RQN’s persistence reflects the persistence of the problems. Residents deserve answers, enforceable remedies, and an honest accounting of results. They do not owe elected officials acquiescence, and their refusal to provide it is not “enmity.”
John Ashbaugh claimed in his piece that RQN ‘effectively quit on’ the City Council during his tenure. That is absurd on its face. Citizen groups don’t vote on ordinances, hire code enforcement officers, or set municipal policy—the City Council does. RQN never quit showing up, never quit testifying, and never quit bringing these issues forward. Harry Truman had a sign on his desk that said ‘The buck stops here.’ For an eight-year council member to point fingers at a group of unpaid neighborhood volunteers and claim they ‘quit’ on City Hall is an astonishing deflection of basic civic responsibility.”