Forever candidate: Donald Hedrick has run for office in the city of SLO since 2006 

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San Luis Obispo artisan welder Donald Hedrick has lived an action-packed life. At 78, he's hardly pumping the brakes.

He served on the board of poverty-fighting nonprofit Grassroots II, donned the role of treasurer of the Economic Opportunity Commission, became a familiar face during City Council meetings, sculpted—and saved—a famed four-ton whale for a Morro Bay restaurant, and is gunning for the SLO mayoral seat for the eighth time since 2006.

Prior to that, a developer and the Planning Commission got under his skin.

"I've been in this particular block in the oldest commercial industrial zone in the town, and I was planning to defend it against the biggest developer in the Central Coast," Hedrick said. "He was taking that 10 acres in the middle of commercial zone, and he wanted to put a core of condominiums."

He said he's referring to SLO developer Hamish Marshall and alleged that the then Planning Commission chair cut his speaking time from five minutes to three when he approached the dais during the public comment period.

"He'd been ramrodding this project, but when it came time to vote on it, all the commissioners voted unanimously for accepting the project," Hedrick said. "So, the first time it came up, the chance, another year and a half or so, I ran for mayor for the first time."

Hedrick lost his debut race to Dave "The Pave" Romero but raked in 542 votes that comprised 3.7 percent of total votes.

The welder has called the city home since 1969 when he graduated from Cal Poly's industrial technology program and "fell in love with this town." Over the years, Hedrick's spoken up at City Council meetings about a host of issues.

In 2004, he asked City Council if the Planning Commission was going to receive public testimony on a project at 3592 Broad St., which is now the location of a cluster of businesses, including BlackHorse Espresso and Bakery.

In 2006, he complained to council members about a trench on Sacramento Street that was left "unplated" during the winter holiday weekend and about sewage leaking from recreational vehicles.

In 2014, Hedrick questioned whether municipal elections are actually nonpartisan, noting that the local Democratic Club made large donations in a past election.

In 2016, Hedrick objected to adding fluoride to drinking water, during the Water Enterprise Fund review.

"I think our town is being sold out by the people that are supposed to be representing us, but they seem to be more enamored with special interests than [with] the public," he told New Times.

While he confirmed he has no specific gripe with his current opponent, incumbent Mayor Erica Stewart, Hedrick envisions some changes he wants to bring to the city if he becomes mayor.

"I would like to promote solar panels on every road in town and have our town making more electricity in its homes than it uses, and each house would have a battery, and each neighborhood would have a larger battery in a shipping container," he said. "We would be the source of the electricity feeding into the grid."

He also thinks "we have government all backwards."

Hedrick wants local governments to not be "dominated" by state and federal powers.

"Big Government is a problem. We need to have local," he said. "Elections are bought, and I think we need to get away from elections being bought by big corporations and big wallets."

Hedrick's entry into the mayoral race as a near-perennial candidate eventually led to him calling himself a "modern day Don Quixote." He said he gained inspiration from a letter sent by a man named Irving Gumbatz in 2006 when he first ran for the post.

"It sounds like a New Jersey mob name," he said. "[The letter] said, 'Hello, Mr. Quixote. It appears your problem is you're stubborn. It's an awfully large windmill and you have such a short sword.'"

The letter even prompted him to create a drawing of a windmill, including him riding away on an electric scooter while promising to run for mayor.

Perhaps Hedrick's most memorable artistic contribution to SLO County is the giant whale that graced the exterior of the now-shuttered Whale's Tail restaurant in Morro Bay.

Built by Hedrick over five months from 1975 to 1976 as part of physical therapy following a motorcycle accident, the steel pipe and concrete sperm whale with a crab pot embedded in its head was allegedly "the most photographed thing in Morro Bay that wasn't the rock." That all changed in 2011.

"Morro Bay wouldn't renew [the] lease of the Whale's Tail restaurant. They wanted to widen the sidewalk one more foot, they forced the restaurant to move but they couldn't take the whale," he said.

Hedrick kept his finger on the pulse of his whale. The Friday before the Monday the whale was scheduled to be destroyed, he arrived on-site to help man the jackhammers. His gumption might have impressed the city, with officials informing him he could keep the whale if he took charge of removing and transporting it.

"The following day, they hired a crane, and they lifted the whale up off the ground, swung it around and put it on my forklift trailer," he said. "That's how I saved the whale."

The whale now rests on Highway 1 and Stimson Avenue near downtown Pismo Beach. But it's set to leap back onto Hedrick's forklift trailer this month.

"It's going to have a new life. I want to do some repairs to it ... and I want to remove some things I didn't really like about it, like the cooking pot on the head," he said. "I want to turn all that extra stuff back into a pure sculpture of a whale."

Artistically, Hedrick and his whale garnered widespread support, attracting the attention of a global community of explorers and their database called Atlas Obscura. Politically, he doesn't have any public endorsements for mayor.

Hedrick's campaign platform is a Facebook page, "Don For SLO Mayor 2024," where the latest post was published in November 2023. According to candidate filings, he hasn't turned in any documents listing monetary contributions and expenditures, nor has he submitted a candidate statement. Hedrick mentioned in his statement of economic interests that he doesn't use email.

The last time he ran for mayor in 2022, Hedrick received 288 votes—1.7 percent of the total share. He told New Times that his supporters are "legion."

The multitude of demons Jesus Christ exorcised from a possessed man and cast into a herd of pigs that rushed into the sea and drowned, according to the Gospel of Mark?

"Many, many good-spirited people," Hedrick said with a laugh. Δ

Reach Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal at [email protected].