By Melinda Burns /Santa Barbara News-Press

Three weeks before the primary election, the three candidates in the wide-open Fifth District Board of Supervisors race are approaching $400,000 collectively raised for their campaigns, with cannabis growers — and a prominent opponent of the industry — weighing in with cash.

Cory Bantilan, top aide to outgoing supervisor Steve Lavagnino, who co-sponsored the county’s pro-industry cannabis ordinance, has received nearly $36,000 — more than 40 percent of his total raised — from cannabis growers, including Micah Anderson of Willits, owner of the largest pot operation in Santa Barbara County.

A former executive director of the county Republican Party, Bantilan played a behind-the-scenes role as Lavagnino’s chief legislative and political adviser as the supervisor joined former Supervisor Das Williams in pushing through the ordinance in 2018.

Lavagnino has endorsed Bantilan in the current race, but in fundraising, the candidate trails his rivals — Maribel Aguilera, a Santa Maria attorney and City Council member, and Ricardo Valencia, a Santa Maria High School teacher and Santa Maria-Bonita School District board member.

Aguilera leads in fundraising with $173,000; Valencia is second, with $119,000; and Bantilan is third, with $83,000, according to campaign disclosure statements filed with the state Fair Political Practices Commission.

Aguilera’s campaign has significant support from other North County agricultural interests — nearly $40,000 to date, campaign filings show. Big donors include Central West Produce, Sunlife Farm, Royal Oak Ag Services; and Blair Pence, a Buellton-area vintner who is suing the owners of a nearby cannabis operation, alleging that the “noxious” smell of pot is hurting his wine-tasting business.

The organizations endorsing Aguilera include the Grower-Shipper Association of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, and the Santa Maria firefighter and police unions.

Valencia has been endorsed by the county Democratic Party, California Working Families Party, Indivisible, Planned Parenthood and Sierra Club, in addition to labor unions. His campaign is leaning heavily on contributions from small donors, including dozens of people who gave $250 or less.

As of April 18, the most recent filing date required for full campaign statements, the amount of cash each candidate had on hand — the key number that political professionals look to in fundraising efforts — was: $102,000 for Valencia, $61,000 for Bantilan and $56,000 for Aguilera.

Since April 18, the candidates have continued to report daily contributions, which are included in the fundraising totals in this article.

If no candidate wins a majority of votes on June 2, the top two finishers in the Fifth District race will advance to a runoff election in November.

The cannabis donors. As a political matter, one of the most most intriguing features of the campaign fundraising sweepstakes is the role being played by cannabis interests. The industry is in its eighth year as a legal business in this county, but the fight over how to regulate it remains contentious.

There is no commercial cannabis under cultivation in the Fifth District, which includes the City of Guadalupe, northern Santa Maria and Tanglewood, an unincorporated community west of the Santa Maria Airport.

But under the 2018 ordinance, the county opened the gates for cultivation of up to 1,417 acres of outdoor cannabis in the Sta. Rita Hills west of Buellton and the Santa Ynez, Lompoc and Cuyama valleys; and up to 134 acres in greenhouses — about 100 football fields’ worth — just outside the city limits of Carpinteria.

Lavagnino accepted tens of thousands of dollars in cannabis industry donations to help fund his 2018 and 2022 campaigns for re-election, the records show. He will retire this December after 16 years in office.

Bantilan did not respond to messages this week requesting comment on the cannabis donations to his own campaign.

The largest single cannabis donor to Bantilan’s campaign, with contributions totaling $7,800, is Kavaughan Bagbeh, project manager for Happy Brands LLC, a La Jolla “brand management” firm, records show. Bagbeh also is the project manager for Santa Barbara Westcoast Farms, a 50-acre outdoor cannabis operation at 1800 West Highway 246.

Westcoast, which is registered to Bagbeh and Carol Carpenter of La Jolla in state records, is the target of a lawsuit by Pence Vineyards & Winery and Quantum Wines, located just across the road from Westcoast at 1909 W. Highway 246.

Last week, Pence Vineyards & Winery donated $5,900 to Aguilera in the 5th District race, records show. Blair Pence is a board member of the Santa Barbara Coalition for Responsible Cannabis, a countywide group that advocates for stronger regulation of the industry.

Some of the cannabis donors to Bantilan’s campaign are affiliated with the largest permitted “grow” in the county — SCRSB LLC, with a zoning permit for up to 180 acres of outdoor cannabis in the Cuyama Valley, a vast agricultural region east of Santa Maria. Anderson, the owner, is Chief Executive Officer of LEEF Brands, Inc. of Willits, Calif., one of the state’s largest marijuana extraction and manufacturing companies.

Campaign filings show that Anderson donated $500 to Bantilan’s campaign; Kevin Wilson, Chief Financial Officer of LEEF Brands, donated $1,998; LEEF Holdings Inc. donated $2,500, and LEEF Brands donated $5,000, for a total of nearly $10,000 from the company and its officers.

Two years ago, Anderson urged county supervisors not to implement a square-footage tax on cannabis operations, saying it would put his extraction business at a disadvantage. The board ultimately voted not to change the cannabis cultivation tax, which remains set at four percent of gross receipts, or sales, as reported by the growers themselves.

Election filings show other cannabis donations for Bantilan as follows: $5,900 from Michael Palmer of Coastal Blooms Nursery, formerly Ever-Bloom, an 11-acre greenhouse operation in the Carpinteria Valley; $5,000 from the Pacific Dutch Group, Inc., owners of 14 acres of greenhouse cannabis in the Carpinteria Valley; $5,000 from Wil Crummer, CEO of Pro Farms, with 47 acres of outdoor cannabis in the Lompoc Valley, and $2,000 from Thomas Martin, CEO of Central Coast Agriculture, a 30-acre outdoor “grow” west of Buellton.

(Tadd McKenzie is co-president and CFO of the Pacific Dutch Group. Pro Farms is registered with the county as Heirloom Valley).

Lavagnino’s backing for pot. As for Lavagnino, according to a June 12, 2019 article in the Los Angeles Times, Carpinteria cannabis growers donated $12,000 to his campaign in the month leading up to the board vote on the cannabis ordinance in 2018. During his 2022 campaign, Lavagnino accepted more than $28,000 in donations from cannabis growers and related companies, records show.

On the county Board of Supervisors, Lavagnino has almost always been a reliable vote against tougher regulations for the industry, even as outraged residents filed more than 4,200 odor complaints with the county about the “skunky” smell of pot in their midst.

Lavagnino contends that cannabis tax revenue for the county, an average $9 million yearly, has been worth it. Still, he joined his colleagues on the board last year in requiring Carpinteria greenhouses to be equipped with clean-air technology to help get rid of the smell of pot.

Former supervisor Williams, co-architect of the cannabis ordinance with Lavagnino, was narrowly defeated in 2024: his fellow Carpinterians voted 2-1 against him.

Melinda Burns is an investigative reporter with more than 40 years of experience covering immigration, water, science and the environment. She was a senior writer at the News-Press during a 21-year career at the now-departed newspaper, ending in 2006. This piece was first published by the re-launched, online News-Press at newspress.com.

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