Dubroff: When it comes to politics, the Central Coast may ride a Blue wave
The Central Coast will harvest a lot more clout in Congress if, as predicted, the House of Representatives flips from GOP to Democratic Party control on Nov. 3.
In the 19th District, newcomer Jacqui Irwin (D-Thousand Oaks), will bring new energy and experience in the state assembly, advocating advanced technology, higher education and entrepreneurship.
Perhaps more important, Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara) and Jimmy Panetta (D-Monterey), in the 24th and 26th districts, will move into senior committee or subcommittee assignments. They might even grab a chair or vice chair position or two.
The trio will represent a majority of voters in the Tri-Counties and the greater Central Coast through Santa Cruz. They represent the mainstream of the Democratic caucus and will, at times, find allies in both parties in areas like space, defense and agriculture.
On aerospace and defense, the trio will be strong advocates for expansion at Vandenberg Space Force Base, the specialized missions at Naval Base Ventura County and autonomous vehicle research and testing in Ventura and Monterey counties.
Panetta, Carbajal and Irwin will likely look for synergies between the facilities, including Camp Roberts, which straddles the San Luis Obispo-Monterey County line and has become a hot location for drone testing.
Major contractors in the region, including Teledyne Technologies, AeroVironment, RTX and a galaxy of smaller firms in SLO County through Santa Cruz, will have enhanced clout in navigating this administration’s sometimes murky defense procurement procedures.
In higher education, all three have stakes in the advancement of academic institutions.
Irwin has been a champion of both Cal Lutheran and CSU Channel Islands; she helped advance CI’s engineering programs. Carbajal is a UC Santa Barbara alum, and he advocated for a $20 million National Science Foundation grant to expand AI research at UCSB’s Mehrabian College of Engineering.
Panetta’s father, former U.S. Rep. and former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, helped create CSU Monterey Bay on the former Fort Ord site and the defense think tanks in Monterey will have a powerful ally if the power in the House shifts from red to blue.
The trio will be strong advocates for the environment and alternative energy. They will likely force the Trump Administration to explain its decision to restart offshore oil production in Santa Barbara County and the decision to buy back offshore wind leases in Morro Bay and elsewhere on the West Coast.
They will likely also question the administration’s stance on climate change and advocate for stronger protection from wildfires, high winds and flooding. Recent cuts to FEMA and foot-dragging on emergency declarations will also get much more scrutiny, particularly if there is another natural disaster on the Central Coast.
From my experience in observing them over the years, the Panetta-Carbajal-Irwin trio will likely disappoint the ultra-progressives in the Democratic House caucus. They believe in free enterprise and the value of the innovation culture that thrives on the Central Coast despite regulation-heavy local rules, especially when it comes to housing and commercial development.
They will be a key part of the group of moderates supporting Hakeem Jeffries, the presumptive speaker and will support an affordability agenda, particularly as it provides relief to the Central Coast’s acute housing crisis.
They will favor reasonable gun restrictions and women’s rights and will push back on the excesses of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
They will demand that the Department of Homeland Security account for incidents like the one recently in Santa Maria where a U.S. citizen with a disability was detained without a warrant and badly injured on his way home from high school.
They will work to ease particularly onerous restrictions on visas for agribusiness, technology and hospitality industry workers, a move that will have broad appeal to companies, universities and nonprofits.
The bottom line is that you will likely hear a lot more about the Central Coast’s congressional delegation in the House of Representatives that will be seated in January. And as a resident of the Central Coast, your voice will matter a little bit more, whether you voted for them — or not.
Henry Dubroff is the founder, owner and editor of the Pacific Coast Business Times. He can be reached at [email protected].
