ICYMI: Salud Carbajal calls Lompoc “the armpit” of Santa Barbara County
In an incredibly revealing display of disdain, Salud Carbajal insulted everyone not rich enough to live in his preferred part of Santa Barbara County by calling Lompoc “the armpit” of the area. If Carbajal would venture out of his favorite gated communities, he would know that during his tenure as a County Supervisor, the income-inequality-gap in the Santa Maria-Santa Barbara region has climbed to the sixth worst in the nation.
The very people and cities Carbajal is mocking are the ones he has failed as Supervisor.
NRCC Comment: “Salud Carbajal owes the people of Lompoc and all the other areas in Santa Barbara County he has failed an apology. Carbajal should apologize not just for failing to improve the county, but also for his disdain for the very people and cities hurt by his failed policies.” – NRCC Spokesman Zach Hunter
Guest Opinion: For the love of armpits
By Andy Caldwell
September 11, 2016
News Press
http://www.newspress.com/Top/Article/article.jsp?Section=EDITORIALS&ID=567618063986458671
Salud Carbajal, county supervisor and candidate for Congress, likes to rib people, but sometimes his ribbing rubs people the wrong way. Such was the case when Mr. Carbajal walked into a meeting of local elected representatives and asked a staff person about her recent move to Lompoc. He asked her how she liked living in the armpit of the county. Of course, describing a community as an armpit is the ultimate insult, meaning that place is a most miserable or undesirable area. The comment was wrong on so many levels, I don’t quite know where to begin, considering the fact that I was raised in Lompoc.
Like countless other people, the staff member had moved because she could no longer afford to live in the South County. She joins tens of thousands of others now forced to commute long distances due to the jobs/housing imbalance and the related high cost of housing. To say that Mr. Carbajal’s comments were elitist, rude and insensitive would be an understatement.
One thing I want to say about armpits is that it is one of the best places to accurately take one’s temperature. In other words, taking the temperature of a community like Lompoc serves to inform us of our overall health as a society; accordingly, the community should be of concern to our elected officials, rather than an object of disdain and disrespect.
Lompoc is the third-largest city in our county and one of the largest in this congressional district. If Mr. Carbajal truly considers Lompoc a miserable and undesirable place to live, it begs the question: What is he willing to do to improve the quality of life for the residents of the city? Moreover, what does he think of Santa Maria and Guadalupe, two other impoverished North County communities? For that matter, what does he think of the poorer neighborhoods in Santa Barbara?
You can read the full piece here.