Morro Bay resident Michael Erin Woody is ready to run for office again.
The one-time Fresno City Council member who unsuccessfully ran for the 24th Congressional District seat against U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara) announced his campaign to be the next San Luis Obispo County 2nd District supervisor.
Woody told New Times that people are frustrated with the status quo.
“We have a Board of Supervisors that is a local government entity that is supposed to be this nonpartisan group of people,” he said. “But what we have in this county Board of Supervisors is week after week, month after month, and year after year of partisanship. That has to stop.”
Woody, a licensed civil engineer, doesn’t align himself with any political party. He added that he left the Republican Party six years ago.
“After a few years of Donald Trump, I found that the GOP no longer represented my values or my ethics,” he said. “It’s very liberating to discuss each issue on individual merits without the weight of a political party ideology to worry about.”
He’s calling for campaign finance and governance reforms, proposing term limits of three four-year terms for supervisors.
Woody clarified that he isn’t championing term limits with sitting Supervisor Bruce Gibson—who’s represented the 2nd District for 19 years—in mind. Fresh voices and more people in the community need chances to be heard, according to him. Gibson decided not to run for reelection after five terms.
Woody also wants a complete ban on corporate and political action committee (PAC) donations, declaring that he won’t accept any campaign donations over $500 or funding from PACs.
“If you need to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to run your race, and have people tell you what to say and what to do, and how to market yourself, you really don’t belong in office,” he said.
The two arenas Woody is passionate about are battery energy storage plant safety and transparency in development projects like ocean wind farms.
If he wins the district seat, he’d advocate for a proposal to update the county code and zoning to ban battery storage facilities within 3 miles of schools, neighborhoods, parks, and coastlines.
Though projects larger than 200 megawatt-hours can override local zoning ordinances by applying to the state’s Opt-In Certification Program, Woody wants the county to control what it can directly regulate.
Then, there’s the proposed Morro Bay wind farm, which according to Woody is riddled with “bait and switch” tactics.
“It started out as 100 turbines that were 600 feet tall, covering about 70 square miles, and here we are 10 years later,” he said. “What it’s turned into is now we’re up to three lease agreements, with now upwards of 600 turbines, each 1,100 feet tall covering nearly 400 square miles.”
A Salinan Tribe of Monterey and SLO Counties tribal council member, Woody said he wants to highlight Native American issues at the county level. He is part of the long-running effort to procure federal recognition for the Salinan Tribe.
“If I were to be elected to a position like this, I could help bring more of a cultural awareness of the history of this area and what happened to the Salinan and the Chumash cultures out here,” he said.
Woody is poised to compete against Democrat and SLO Chamber of Commerce CEO Jim Dantona for the district seat next year. Δ
This article appears in 55 Fiction 2025.
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