Ricardo Valencia for 5th District County Supervisor

With Election Day arriving, the contest to succeed term-limited Supervisor Steve Lavagnino in Santa Barbara County's 5th District has become a flashpoint in the long-running fight over offshore oil along the Central Coast. A recent letter to the editor published by the Santa Barbara Independent, written by Katie Davis of Santa Barbara County, frames the choice between Ricardo Valencia and Maribel Aguilera as a referendum on oil industry influence in local government — and urges Santa Maria voters to back Valencia.

The letter's central claim is stark: that Sable Offshore, the company seeking to restart the former ExxonMobil offshore platforms and pipeline off the Gaviota coast, is pouring money into the race to defeat Valencia and elect Aguilera.

What the Letter Alleges

Davis writes that Sable has donated $60,000 to the Republican Party, alongside additional contributions to political action committees, spending that she says has funded tactics including AI-generated attack ads against Valencia.

She also points to Sable's regulatory record. According to the letter, the company has faced criminal investigations by the Santa Barbara County District Attorney and the California Attorney General, and was fined by the California Coastal Commission for unpermitted pipeline excavations — work aimed at restarting a pipeline that ruptured and caused a massive oil spill in 2015, when the line was under ExxonMobil's ownership as part of the Plains All American pipeline system.

Notably, Davis cites Lavagnino himself — described in the letter as "a reliable supporter of the oil industry" — as having voted against transferring permits from Exxon to Sable, quoting his warning about the company's "pattern of noncompliance and either ignorance of our rules or just blatant disregard." That a sitting supervisor generally sympathetic to oil interests opposed the permit transfer underscores how unusual Sable's standing with county regulators has become, if the characterization holds.

The letter further alleges that after donations to the Trump administration, Sable secured federal permission to restart offshore production and reactivate the corrosion-prone pipeline by invoking a wartime law, and that the company is seeking to seize public and private land for pipeline work.

The Backdrop: The 2015 Refugio Spill

For Santa Barbara residents, the shadow over this race is familiar. The May 2015 Refugio oil spill, when a corroded pipeline ruptured near Refugio State Beach and dumped more than 100,000 gallons of crude onto the Gaviota coast and into the Pacific, remains one of the region's defining environmental disasters. It shuttered ExxonMobil's offshore platforms, which have sat idle since.

Sable Offshore acquired those platforms and the pipeline with the express goal of restarting them — a plan that has drawn sustained opposition from environmental groups, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors, and state regulators. The company's unpermitted pipeline work and subsequent enforcement actions have kept the controversy in local headlines, and now, according to Davis's letter, that controversy has spilled directly into a supervisorial campaign.

Why the 5th District Matters

The 5th District, anchored by Santa Maria and the Santa Ynez Valley, has long been the county's more conservative-leaning seat, and it holds a pivotal position on a five-member Board of Supervisors that decides land-use permits, coastal policy, and budget priorities. Whether the next supervisor is sympathetic or hostile to restarting offshore oil production could shape county policy on Sable's pipeline and platform restart for years to come.

That dynamic explains why outside money — particularly from an industry stake with so much riding on county and regulatory decisions — has become the defining issue in the campaign's final stretch. Davis's closing line makes the stakes explicit: "Let's prove that Santa Barbara County cannot be bought off by the oil industry."

It is worth noting for readers that Davis's piece is an opinion letter, not news reporting, and its claims about campaign spending and Sable's conduct reflect the author's characterization. Voters can review campaign finance disclosures through the Santa Barbara County Elections Office and the California Secretary of State's Cal-Access database to verify contributor and expenditure records for themselves.

What Comes Next

The outcome rests with 5th District voters, whose ballots — cast by mail or at vote centers — will determine whether Valencia or Aguilera succeeds Lavagnino. Regardless of who wins, the next supervisor will inherit a full docket on the Sable question: county permit disputes, ongoing state enforcement, litigation, and community pressure over the fate of the Gaviota coast.

Whoever takes the seat in January will join a board that has repeatedly clashed with Sable, and the balance on oil policy could shift with a single new vote. For a county whose identity is bound up with its coastline — from the 1969 platform blowout that helped launch the modern environmental movement to the 2015 spill — the question of whether oil money can sway a local election is not abstract. It is the latest chapter in a fight Santa Barbara has been waging for more than half a century.

Polls close Tuesday. The Santa Barbara Independent and 805.life will have results as they come in.