Candidates for 3rd District supervisor face off in last pre-primary debate

Challenger Kim Marra Stephenson came out swinging against incumbent Kelly Long in Tuesday night's debate for 3rd District Ventura County Supervisor, criticizing Long's record as supervisor and accusing her of taking credit for programs she voted against.

The debate was held at the Oxnard Union High School District headquarters and was the last one scheduled before the March 5 primary. There are three candidates — Long, Stephenson and Heather Schmidt — but only Long and Stephenson participated. Schmidt participated in a Zoom debate last week, but this time she was out of town due to a family medical emergency, said moderator David Maron of the League of Women Voters.

The 3rd District is one of five on the Ventura County Board of Supervisors. It includes the cities of Santa Paula and Fillmore and the surrounding Santa Clara River Valley; most of the city of Camarillo; the northern and eastern parts of the city of Oxnard; and the communities of El Rio and Nyeland Acres, north of Oxnard.

In 2020, Long and Stephenson were the two candidates the last time the seat was up for election. Long won that race with 56% of the vote.

With three candidates on the ballot, if no one gets more than 50% of the vote, the top two will advance to the general election in November. If one candidate tops 50% in the primary, she will win the seat outright.

Long is a Republican and Stephenson is a Democrat, though county offices are officially nonpartisan. On Tuesday night, Stephenson was the more aggressive of the two candidates, touting her endorsements from Democratic elected officials in Washington and Sacramento and calling Long's views out of step with the district on issues, including campaign finance limits and regulation of the oil industry.

"She consistently always does her job to vote in support of the oil industry, and they have compensated her well in donations to her campaigns," Stephenson said.

Stephenson said she would support continuing a ban on burning excess natural gas from oil fields, or "flaring," and wants oil and gas companies to have to pay more to ensure that funds are available to cap and clean up defunct wells.

"The oil industry is making so much money that they can give $1 million to campaigns in our county, corrupting our local politics with big corporate money from outside Ventura County," Stephenson said.

Long replied that the county has spent more than $3 million in litigation and other costs due to adversarial stances on oil and gas regulations. She said she would leave the flaring question up to county planners, who might approve flaring "mostly on an emergency basis." And she said she supports a healthy petroleum industry as part of a balanced portfolio of energy resources.

"I think it's important that we're investing in transitioning to renewable energy, but we're doing it in a responsible way," Long said. "I don't want to see working families harmed by high energy costs."

Throughout the debate, Long cited her record on the board and the success of many county programs over the past eight years. Stephenson pointed out that Long voted against establishing some of those programs, including the county's Farmworker Resource Program and Climate Action Plan.

"As your supervisor, I will not take credit for things I don't deserve," Stephenson said.

On the subject of campaign finance regulations, Stephenson said the Board of Supervisors should not have repealed the county's ordinance regulating donations and fundraising and dissolved the ethics commission that enforced those rules. Long was one of three supervisors who voted in favor of the repeal last year.

Under the previous rules, which were in place for 20 years, no single donor could give more than $750 per election to a candidate, and candidates could only raise money during the year leading up to an election. Without the local ordinance in place, donors can give up to $5,500 per election to county candidates, the same limit that applies to state offices. Candidates can also raise money at at any time.

"I'm not sure why the current board decided to dissolve the ethics committee and raise contribution limits," Stephenson said. "No one from the community asked for that. They did it in their own self-interest."

Long said she voted for repeal because the county's campaign finance ordinance "didn't keep up with the times, and it exposed Ventura County to lawsuits."

Other counties have also repealed their campaign finance regulations, she said. Aligning county policies with the state's allows suspected violations to go to the state Fair Political Practices Commission.

"The FPPC is better understood by the candidates and citizens, and they do a better job of oversight" than the county ethics commission did, Long said.

In 2022, the county secured $10.5 million in funding for a new community center in Nyeland Acres, an unincorporated area near Oxnard that has traditionally lacked public spaces and investment. Stephenson said progress on the center has been too slow.

"Nothing has been done," Stephenson said. "We need to get this project moving."

"I am pushing desperately to get that community center built," Long said. "We need it for public health, we need it for the Boys & Girls Club. ... It's not going as fast as we'd like but that's how government is."

The Camarillo Airport is in the 3rd District, and in recent years, complaints about jet noise have become more common. Stephenson criticized the supervisors' oversight of the airport and said the Camarillo airport could get even busier in a few years with the planned closure of the airport in Santa Monica.

Long said the Airport Advisory Board, which she serves on, is working on the issue, with ongoing noise studies of both the Camarillo and Oxnard airports, and she has also spoken with the U.S. Navy about reducing the impact of flights in and out of Naval Base Ventura County.

Tony Biasotti is an investigative and watchdog reporter for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at tbiasotti@vcstar.com. This story was made possible by a grant from the Ventura County Community Foundation's Fund to Support Local Journalism.

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: County supervisor candidates face off in last pre-primary debate