Seaside Mayoral race heats up

SEASIDE, Calif. (KION)

In Seaside, elections have been among the most intense races along the peninsula.

There are two established candidates, the incumbent mayor Ian Olgesby, a city councilman, Jon Wizard, along with a man new to politics, Joseph Smith. 

Olgesby has managed to gather endorsements from several groups in Seaside like the Democratic Women of Monterey County, the Seaside Fire Association and the Seaside Latino Merchant Network.

He has also spent the most on this mayoral campaign, a big contribution coming out of his own pocket. Records show his wife contributed $15,000 to his campaign fund.

“I believe I’ve done the work over the last 18 months to move the city forward,” said Olgesby. “You can’t go around this city without seeing the street being repaired. Pot holes being filled. New construction at the auto mall, the Ascent project, across the street from the post office.”

His opponent, city councilman Jon Wizard doesn’t discredited the work that Olgesby has accomplished but feels that the city like the nation, he says, is at a pivotal point in deciding the direction they chose for Seaside during this pandemic. A critical time when municipalities are having to reduce their budgets. He credits himself for fostering a dialogue and getting more people to get involved in local government.  

“While a lot of people would say that a lot of my comments are divisive. I would push back on that and say that my comments are appropriate and that I’m fostering a debate that was otherwise unheard. There is an entire swath of the community that didn’t feel like they were represented at all at city hall,” said Wizard.

The Habitat for Humanity public relations manager announced his candidacy after several contentious budget meeting surrounding calls for police reform and “defunding police.” Wizard said he felt like the people of Seaside were ignored.

“When there are hungry kids and seniors and there’s such a great need in our community for relief programs, if one program – one service within the city eats up almost half the budget. That’s a good place to start looking,” said Wizard.

Out of the adopted reduced budget for this year of approximately $33,000.00 the funding for police accounts for $13.5 thousand. In the majority of cities, police accounts for the largest expenditure.

Still Wizard came under fire for proposing a motion to reduce their budget by one-million dollars. A petition, which will result pointless if Wizard is elected, began circulating around Seaside. Local church leaders organized the campaign and began gathering signatures.

Last to enlist himself into the race is disabled army veteran turned IT manager Joseph Smith. He has never ran for an elected position.

Smith says he would be fit for the job because of his ideas to generate money for Seaside.

“I’m absolutely in favor of looking at the budget to say ‘are the police overfunded?’ are there funds that we can move over into the general fund to basically help… absolutely… now if that means that we’re stealing from them and taking money from them and we’re having to downsize more than we already have, than no, that’s a non-starter for me,” said Smith.

Smith is also associated with the #Qanon moment, as seen his his twitter account. However, it has since been removed. The Qanon movement is a set of conspiracy theories that vilify Democrats and accused them of being child sex traffickers.

Smith tells KION he considers Qanon to be just that - conspiracies.