The local Democratic Party forgot about what’s important

I’ve lived on the Central Coast since 2005. Long enough to watch housing prices double, then double again. Long enough to watch the San Luis Obispo County Democratic Party mistake loudness for leadership.

I am a former Democrat, now a no party preference. I say that without apology and without the breathless qualifier that has become customary in these fractured years—the kind of qualifier that signals to the listener: I’m one of the good ones, don’t worry.

But I do not recognize the SLO County Democratic Party as an organization that currently lives up to its promise.

On June 6, the party held a town hall. Chair Tom Fulks opened with a statement of purpose: “We want to eradicate [Make America Great Again] from every corner of our democracy.”

Eradicate.

National polling puts Donald Trump’s approval between 35 and 38 percent. His disapproval is robust—58 to 63 percent—driven by independent voters peeling away over economic anxiety and foreign policy unease. The political conditions for Democrats are favorable.

And yet. Thirty-five percent of the country does not get eradicated. It is not a pest. It is a bloc of human beings—many of them paying more for groceries than three years ago, watching rural hospitals close, watching their kids move away because they can’t afford to stay. MAGA emerged from the specific, palpable failure of both parties to speak credibly to people who felt the system had stopped working for them.

Calling for the eradication of that disillusionment doesn’t address it. It hardens it. It tells the persuadable voter who voted for Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016 that there is no door back.

This is the language of a party that has given up on persuasion.

The abstract became concrete in the 2nd District supervisor race.

Michael Erin Woody voted for Barack Obama. Then voted for Donald Trump in 2016. By 2019, he said publicly he had become completely disillusioned with Trump’s leadership and left the Republican Party entirely. He now calls Trump’s use of ICE “nothing short of scary.”

That is a story of a person changing his mind. In a healthier political environment, that story would be celebrated as proof that the democratic process works, that minds can move.

Instead, his opponent Jim Dantona’s campaign distributed flyers painting Woody as a “secret MAGA Republican.” Rather than treating Woody’s political evolution as the kind of momentum worth encouraging, the party either sanctioned or failed to distance itself from an attack that told every former Trump voter watching: Don’t bother. We will never let you be anything other than what you were at your worst.

Democrats should be cheering every defection from MAGA ideology. Instead, some corners of this party treat defection with suspicion, as though the ideologically impure can never fully atone.

Democrats should be cheering every defection from MAGA ideology. Instead, some corners of this party treat defection with suspicion, as though the ideologically impure can never fully atone.

The 4th District supervisor race gave us the most disheartening example of what happens when Democrats decide a key voter issue is more useful as a weapon than as a policy challenge.

Incumbent Jimmy Paulding chose to frame affordable housing not as an urgent community need, but as a developer scheme with opponent Adam Verdin as their instrument. The specific accusations Paulding leveled were not merely aggressive politics. They were false.

He publicly accused Verdin of violating campaign finance ordinances by accepting $11,800 from a developer, alleging that it exceeded the $5,900 legal limit. He filed formal complaints with the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) and the local district attorney. The FPPC dismissed the complaint within 48 hours. Verdin had accepted one donation for the primary, one for the general. That’s how the law works.

Paulding’s mailers identified Verdin as a “project manager” for the developer behind the Dana Reserve housing project. The San Luis Obispo Tribune called this a “lie of omission.” Verdin had worked for the company 15 years earlier—primarily as a private pilot. The Dana Reserve project didn’t exist when he worked there.

As of June 13, Paulding appears to have won re-election. I note that without satisfaction.

Because what his campaign accomplished with the tacit endorsement of the party apparatus was to take the most pressing quality-of-life issue in San Luis Obispo County and poison it. To make affordable housing synonymous in voters’ minds with corruption. The families who cannot afford to stay in this county deserved a campaign season in which leadership competed to address their situation. Instead, they got a demolition derby.

A SLO County Democratic Party that could actually serve this community would spend as much energy on housing policy as on national protest. It would welcome former Trump voters rather than weaponize their histories. It would understand that the most effective local opposition to MAGA ideology is not a slogan on a mailer—it is a county where people can afford to live.

Eradication is not a democratic value. Persuasion is.

This county deserves better. The question is whether its Democratic leadership wants to hear that or whether it would rather keep fighting a war it has mistaken for the whole of politics. ∆

Aaron Ochs writes to New Times from Morro Bay. Send a response for publication to letters@newtimesslo.com.

This article appears in Winning Images 2026.