MONO COUNTY DISTRICT 5 SUPERVISOR RACE, PART 2

Ed. note: The Mono County District 5 Supervisor race is the only Mono County contested race in on the June 7 Primary Election ballot. The candidates are Lynda Salcido and Seth Guthrie. The Times interviewed both candidates separately over the phone. Part 1 of the interviews ran last week, in the May 5 issue of the Times. Part 2 is continued below.

SETH GUTHRIE: Guthrie, 49, moved to Mammoth eight years ago from San Diego after realizing the big city was getting too cramped for him. He is a certified mechanic and is has been the mechanic for the Rock and Bowl Bowling Alley for five years. He has been an outspoken opponent of most of the county’s Covid

has been an outspoken opponent of most of the county’s Covid mitigations over the past two years and also goes by the name, ‘Good Citizen.’

Q: If you become a supervisor and another disease hits us, a real disease, will you be an advocate for all forms of medical choices for your district, including vaccines? In other words, will you work to fund the use of vaccines if your constituents want them, as well as other treatments? A:

No, I have zero trust or faith in big pharmacy. Therefore, I would never stand behind a mandated vaccine.

Q: I am not talking about mandates, I am asking about whether you would give your citizens a choice of treatments by supporting the funding and the methodologies to get those vaccines out, along with all the other things you’ve been talking about. A:

I’m not going to support that.

Q: So, you would make a decision for your residents that you do not want them to have access to vaccines? A:

No, I am not going to support the funding to get vaccines. Because usually when you do that, there are other obligations that come with that funding, and I would want to know what those other obligations are. So, at this point, I couldn’t answer that question without knowing what other obligations come with agreeing to the funding for vaccines. You can have access to a vaccine all day long. Again, my stance is there has to be personal choice.

Q: But without government help, it is likely a new vaccine won’t even get to the county to be distributed. A:

I’ve been on those meetings. And what they deal with is layer after layer after trade layer of tradeoffs, right? If you get this, then if you don’t get that, then if you do this, you’re going to have to do that. If you give us a matching grant, then we’re going to give you this. If you take the money, you’re going to have to report to the federal government in order to get your $2.5 billion, and pretty soon, the only way you are going to get things is if they make sure everyone went to grammar school, or, they want to be sure everyone wears a mask, or, they will shut down your business. So, I’m really okay not taking it in the first place, because I do not want to impose restriction or mandates on a private citizen.

Q: Ok, so you would try to block the rest of the board from even having access to vaccines? A:

If somebody wanted to go to a clinic and get a vaccine, and that’s their personal choice, but I do not support taxpayer funded grants or taxpayer funded money toward the development of vaccines... at least not without a study of alternatives. I mean, like all the information on hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin; all of this has been proven to be a cure all for all phases of Covid-19 and it was all suppressed. People would have to be dying in the streets... that is what I would need to see. I would need to see such an elevated amount of death which we didn’t see with Covid-19. But, I am on board with some type of a public solution, not with a mandate on private citizens.

Q: Ok, let’s move on. If you were on the board of supervisors, what is the very first thing that you would change? A:

I would change any obligation we have to the state or to the Governor and the federal government in terms of any restrictions on private businesses. Due process; I want to assure that every citizen in this county is granted due process. You’ve got a public health department where they’re threatening to close your business, okay. They can’t do it without a court date. That’s what I want is guaranteed due process. You want to close my business? I have the right to due process before I stop feeding my family and become completely government dependent.

Q: What is the single biggest challenge facing Mono County? A:

I think that we’re not looking at primary water enough. I think that we need to become water sovereign in this county. Primary water is something that’s been around a long time, but we don’t hear about it in the mainstream news because it doesn’t fit their drought agenda. It’s an agenda that they have created that there is a drought, so that will force many people to move out of rural areas and into the cities and become more dependent on large governments and bureaucrats. We need to be more dependent on the natural resources around us, not government, and I don’t think we’re really putting up enough of a fight with the Los Angeles water district. I think we have enough capability up here, and enough ingenuity, that we can actually come up with water systems without having to go and constantly negotiate with the LA water district. The solution is already here in Mono County. It is called primary water. It’s a water table that exists that nobody talks about. We can tap into that, we can create private and public wells, we can create water filtration systems with are top notch technology today. My sources told me that primary water has been with been a part of the planet. It has always been with us. I just don’t have faith in our government narrative saying we’re in a drought. I don’t think there is global warming; I think it is a narrative they tell us.