SLO County partisan politics in a non-partisan race

May 21, 2026

Erik Gorham

By ERIK GORHAM

San Luis Obispo County’s District 2 supervisor race is officially nonpartisan. But a closer look at Democratic candidate Jim Dantona’s record, public statements, and associations raises serious questions about whether he is prepared to serve all constituents in the district regardless of their political affiliation.

In early February, the San Luis Obispo County Cattlemen’s Association Political Action Committee voted to formally withdraw its endorsement of Dantona after members reviewed a video he posted on his own campaign Facebook page on February 3. The $2,500 donation the PAC had made to his campaign in October was not properly approved by the full committee as required, and was instead authorized by only two members.

After the donation became public, multiple cattlemen researched Dantona and found the video. In it, Dantona questioned whether Sheriff Ian Parkinson violated the law by coordinating with ICE, and criticized the sheriff’s office for releasing footage of protesters inside the county jail lobby.

The footage followed a December 14 incident in which anti-ICE protesters berated federal agents and obstructed the arrest of an inmate. According to CalCoastNews, the sheriff’s office stated the video was shared to remind the public that interfering with law enforcement is unacceptable and unlawful.

Dantona’s video asked: “Why did they use the ICE video to post on the sheriff’s social media account rather than the sheriff’s camera lobby system. Was the goal to intimidate protesters? To shame them?”

The Cattlemen’s PAC chair confirmed to me that the withdrawal was directly tied to Dantona’s criticism of Sheriff Parkinson, specifically his stance on ICE, not immigration broadly. The PAC is now neutral in the race.

That position on local law enforcement surfaced again at a candidate forum hosted by Preserve Cayucos LLC on Saturday. Dantona and his opponent Michael Erin Woody answered around 40 questions over two hours on issues affecting Cayucos residents and the county at large.

At one point the candidates were asked how they envisioned their future working relationship with SLO County District Attorney Dan Dow.

Dantona, the first to respond, told the audience “I don’t think that’s going to be a good working relationship,” going on to say that Dow has been extremely partisan in office and that he doubted they were going to see eye to eye. He kept doubling down throughout his minute, making clear he was not going to have a working relationship with the district attorney.

Woody sat there with a bewildered look on his face. “I’m literally sitting there thinking, ‘Jim, you’ve got to be kidding me,'” he told the Tribune.

When it was his turn, Woody responded simply: “I could work with anybody, regardless of political affiliation or differences of opinion.” He called it a softball question and said local government needed leaders who could work well with others to solve complex regional issues. Woody recalled audible gasps and people shaking their heads in the audience. Dantona remembered chuckles and stirring.

When the Tribune followed up after the forum, Dantona walked back his remarks. “I’ll be honest, I was too flippant with my comments. Absolutely,” he said, adding that he would work with Dow but expected the relationship to be contentious.

For a candidate seeking a nonpartisan office, the damage was already done in that room. And the walkback raises its own question: if he knew it was too flippant, why did he keep doubling down?

Dantona’s refusal to work with the Republican District Attorney is not an isolated incident. It reflects a pattern of partisan behavior in a race the law designates as nonpartisan.

Dantona recently sent a campaign mailer painting Woody as a “true Republican” based on a 2018 interview Woody gave when he was registered as a Republican. Woody changed his party affiliation to no party preference in 2019, seven years ago. Woody called the mailer a slanderous hit piece. In a nonpartisan race, it is hard to argue with that description.

Throughout the Cayucos forum, Dantona repeatedly promoted his political connections. Those connections are exclusively Democratic: retiring Supervisor Bruce Gibson, Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg, Congressman Salud Carbajal, Congressman Jimmy Panetta, Assemblymember Dawn Addis, and the SLO County Democratic Party itself.

Worth noting is that with the exception of Gibson and Addis, virtually all of his political support comes from elected officials who represent areas outside District 2 and who have been among the most vocal advocates for offshore wind energy and the industrialization of the very coastline Dantona now says he wants to protect.

His one crossover endorsement, from the SLO County Cattlemen’s Association PAC, was formally withdrawn over his own public statements attacking Sheriff Parkinson. CalCoastNews also reported that committee members discussed the ethics of Dantona going to work for Supervisor Bruce Gibson as a part-time legislative aide while simultaneously campaigning for Gibson’s own seat.

Dantona campaigns as a champion of the Central Coast environment and a fighter against big oil. His own financial disclosures and organizational affiliations tell a more complicated story.

His statement of economic interest lists investments in Mach Natural Resources, an oil and gas company that openly argues against green energy initiatives and states that hydrocarbon use is vital to modern life.

CalCoastNews reported that for more than four years Dantona held senior leadership positions in the Tri-County Chamber Alliance, an organization that as recently as 2025 actively opposed climate and environmental legislation in Sacramento, including bills that would regulate oil and gas development and establish climate accountability measures. And as CEO of the SLO Chamber of Commerce, he was one of the loudest voices pushing for offshore wind energy and battery storage development along a coastline whose communities have made their opposition to industrialization abundantly clear.

The circumstances of his candidacy raise one more question worth asking. Supervisor Gibson, whose seat Dantona is seeking, hired him as a taxpayer-funded part-time legislative aide while he was actively campaigning for that same seat, a decision that drew immediate criticism.

Before coming to the Central Coast, Dantona built his career as a political operative in Los Angeles, where he served as chief of staff to City Council President Nury Martinez. Martinez resigned in disgrace in 2022 after a recording surfaced of her making racist remarks about a Black child during a private council redistricting meeting.

At the Cayucos forum, Woody put it simply: “I could work with anybody, regardless of political affiliation or differences of opinion.”

That is not a high bar. It is the baseline. And by his own words and his own record, Jim Dantona has not cleared it. District 2 voters have until June 2 to decide if that matters.