John Buttny, political consigliere, policy advisor, and fourth-floor strategist for two 3rd District supervisors — Bill Wallace and Gail Marshall — died this past week after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease.
A pivotal player in South Coast environmental circles for nearly 30 years, Buttny combined street smarts with tactical pragmatism, combining the two with swagger, a twinkle of the eye, and a willingness to go for the jugular — on occasion. For most of his public life, Buttny managed to be both high-profile and behind-the-scenes, fighting growth and development in the Goleta Valley, slumlords in Isla Vista, and oil companies wherever he could find them. He was part of an aggressive slow-growth, no-growth machine that would emerge out of Isla Vista in the late 1970s, specializing in high-impact, door-to-door get-out-the-vote campaigns that relied on Isla Vista’s bounty of younger, left-leaning voters.
He played a role in the successful effort to take over the Goleta Water District Board of Directors with slow-growth candidates in the late 1970s to limit development. Once in office, they declared a water moratorium on new development.