Mollie Culver, the brilliant if haunted campaign tactician and strategist who helped engineer the political trajectories of such Democratic Party luminaries as Jack O’Connell, Walter and Lois Capps, Salud Carbajal, Gregg Hart, Cathy Murillo, and a host of others, died late last month in San Luis Obispo at the age of 48. A memorial service will be held in her honor at Bohnett Park on the City of Santa Barbara’s Westside, near her stomping grounds by San Andres and Micheltorena streets, at 1 p.m. this coming Saturday, November 16.
Culver, born hardscrabble and afflicted with lupus, helped craft the county’s still-controversial cannabis ordinance after the voters statewide voted to decriminalize cannabis for recreational purposes. In that endeavor — voted on by the county supervisors during the height of the Thomas Fire — Culver proved so successful as to have generated a fierce and furious political backlash that continues to this day. County Supervisor Das Williams, just voted out of office, reaped this whirlwind in particular.
As a political operative, Culver played both checkers and chess and has been frequently described by clients as a genius when it came to moving the pieces around. By friends, she was described as fiercely loyal, but exceptionally private. In person, she would allude only elliptically to various challenges — many severe — but was not one to divulge many details.
Culver fit few of Santa Barbara’s tan and healthy stereotypes, smoking off by herself during election night festivities as she tracked late-arriving returns precinct by precinct. As a political consultant, she knew and enjoyed the media, but rarely — if ever — wanted to be quoted. She could often be found at The Tully, the Westside’s neighborhood bar and her home away from home.
She loved dogs, adopted a son, and was quietly religious.
As a political strategist, Culver was forced to take candidates as she found them, but for a brief spell, she became an ardent Bernie Sanders supporter, resonating personally with his left-wing message of economic populism. But according to political lore, Culver broke with the local Sanders camp when a friend of hers — perhaps more street than suite — was made to feel unwelcome.
She worked briefly as Gregg Hart’s chief of staff after Hart was elected county supervisor, but because of her role on behalf of cannabis, that association proved politically problematic.
She would move to San Luis Obispo, where she worked for several candidates and struggled with multiple health challenges.
