Oil money spill. Campaign finance records show that Sable Offshore Corp. has funneled at least $100,000 into a campaign committee now directing a deceptive attack against Board of Supervisors candidate Ricardo Valencia, falsely insinuating he supports defunding the police.
The rogue oil company, which has enlisted the Trump administration in its defiance of state, local and legal prohibitions against its Santa Barbara County operations, is financing mass mailers and social media messages aimed at Fifth District voters via the North County Jobs & Opportunity PAC, an independent expenditure committee linked to industry interests.
In the high-stakes Fifth District race, the committee has targeted Valencia, a teacher and liberal member of the Santa Maria-Bonita school board, and supports the more conservative Santa Maria city council member, attorney Maribel Aguilera, a political independent. The two are running to replace the outgoing Steve Lavagnino, who represents Santa Maria, Guadalupe and nearby communities.
As a political matter, Sable has great interest in who the next supervisor will be.
Amid the tangle of litigation and administrative conflicts surrounding its restart of the onshore pipeline that ruptured and caused the 2015 Refugio spill, a crucial controversy centers on a county permit to operate the disputed line and other facilities. The Board of Supervisors has already voted against legal authorization of the permit for Sable, with outgoing Supervisor Lavagnino — usually considered friendly to the oil industry — voting no.
With his seat open, whoever wins will be a crucial vote on any of Sable’s future county approvals and disputes. Valencia has said he favors efforts to phase out the oil industry in favor of clean energy; Aguilera, who previously worked in the industry, disagrees.
As a candidate, Aguilera is legally prohibited from coordinating with independent expenditure committees. She has pushed back against efforts to portray her as a tool of the oil industry and previously returned Sable’s $1,000 direct contribution to her campaign: “I’ve never accepted and kept the oil money,” she said at a recent forum.
State of play. Supervisor races are nominally nonpartisan, but in a year when the local Democratic Party has targeted 40 contests around the county, hoping to draw political energy from a national midterm “blue wave,” Valencia’s campaign is its highest priority. A liberal majority now controls the five-member board, and Valencia’s election could give progressives a 4-to-1 supermajority on key issues, including policies affecting the oil industry.
Early vote returns overall show sluggish turnout to date, but Democrats so far are exceeding their 45 percent share of registration in the district by about nine percentage points: 54 percent of ballots turned in as of Wednesday evening are from Democratic voters, according to PDI, a political data firm that tracks elections.
In recent days, the Sable-backed independent expenditure committee has sent out a series of lurid mass mailers picturing Valencia standing in front of burning buildings and vehicles. “Say NO to defunding the police. Say No to Ricardo Valencia for Supervisor,” one headline reads.
The allegation is a major guilt-by-association stretch.
The charge is based on Valencia’s endorsement by Indivisible Santa Barbara, the anti-Trump group that has organized local “No Kings” rallies.
In the fine print of a mailer, the IE committee cites as the source of its allegation a 2020 statement (which the mailer mistakenly dates from 2023) by two leaders of Indivisible’s national organization. Their comments, which include the phrase “defund the police,” followed a Kentucky grand jury’s decision not to indict police officers in the killing of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman shot dead by police in a botched no-knock raid on her apartment.
How the money flows. North County Jobs & Opportunity PAC was formed in November 2025, state records show. Campaign finance records show Sable contributed $61,000 to the committee this Oct. 21, after making previous 2026 donations of $49,000.
The oil company also has contributed about $160,000 to the county Republican Party in the last six months, according to political finance data published by Transparency USA, as the party also donated thousands of dollars to the North County IE.
On Oct. 3, Noozhawk’s Daniel Green first reported the involvement in the race of the North County Jobs & Opportunity PAC, and disclosed the first $10,000 contribution Sable made to the committee. Green’s piece identified the committee’s principal officers as longtime aerospace executive Tony Guy, who is Supervisor *Bob Nelson’s appointee to the county Planning Commission; Santa Maria business leader Glen Morris; and attorney Chip Wullbrandt.
Lobbyist amnesia. In a recent interview with the News-Press, District 4 city council candidate Devon Wardlow was asked about an opponent’s allegation that she had been employed as a registered lobbyist. Wardlow categorically denied it.
“I never was a registered lobbyist,” she told the local news outlet.
Not so.
A federal disclosure report by the ride-share company Lyft, which employed Wardlow in Washington, D.C. for two years, identified her as a registered lobbyist for a period of 2018, in documents filed with the Clerk of the House of Representatives and the Secretary of the Senate. “Open Secrets,” an independent and nonpartisan website that publishes data on money in politics, also lists her as a “lobbyist.”
“I honestly, seriously, completely don’t remember this,” Wardlow told Newsmakers, when asked to reconcile her unequivocal media statement and the public record. “In my mind, I never was a registered lobbyist.”
Shortly after leaving Lyft, Wardlow returned to California, where she worked for six years as a public affairs executive for retail cannabis businesses, first for Coastal Dispensary and then for the statewide Embarc Cannabis Dispensaries. In February, she left the industry for her current job with a traffic safety company.
As a public affairs executive, Wardlow worked with local governments and community stakeholders to influence and craft ordinances regulating retail cannabis operations. There is no legal requirement in California for those who work to shape and sway legislation at the local level to register as lobbyists.
In the District 4 race, Wardlow’s rival Genevieve Taft-Vazquez has repeatedly asserted that her opponent is a “registered lobbyist,” which Wardlow has denied, as some of her supporters have accused Taft-Vazquez of character assassination.
In a telephone interview Thursday, Wardlow told us she planned to contact Lyft officials to ask why she was included on the lobbyist filing, saying, “I did not know that I was on that list.” At post time, she said she had not yet heard back from Lyft.
Who is Bill Essayli? As Trump’s Department of Justice presses its attack on California election officials and voters, virtually every news story on the matter includes quotes and spin from acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli.
An unknown to most Californians, Essayli and his sudden rise to power were chronicled this week in an excellent piece by the Guardian.
Some longtime California political observers, including this one, recall Essayli as a second-rate Republican backbencher in the Assembly prior to his Trump appointment last year.
In the Assembly, his colleagues included Gregg Hart, Santa Barbara’s Man in Sacramento, whom we asked for recollections of the man who now wields immense legal powers in the state.
Gregg emailed:
“During our time together in the Assembly, Bill Essayli was constantly grandstanding on the floor and on social media for an audience of one — Donald Trump. It was clear to me that he was auditioning for a position in the Trump administration rather than focusing on the serious responsibilities of public service.
In my judgment, Essayli lacks the temperament, qualifications, and independence required of a United States Attorney. United States Attorneys should be above partisan politics and dedicated to upholding the rule of law.
His tenure is another glaring example of how Donald Trump has politicized the Department of Justice, turning an institution entrusted with pursuing justice into an instrument for advancing his personal and political agenda.”
So now you know.
Image: Page taken from one of the mailers being sent by North County Jobs & Opportunity PAC; Excerpts from five-page document filed by Lyft in 2018 disclosing its lobbying team.
Correction. An early version of this post misidentified the Fourth District Supervisor. It is Bob Nelson, not Bob Smith. Newsmakers regrets the error.