Jerry Roberts
By Jerry Roberts of Newsmakers
Jumpstarting the 2021 campaign, Planning Commissioner Deborah Schwartz said Wednesday that she is a candidate for mayor of Santa Barbara.
“It’s time for a course correction,” Schwartz said in an interview with Newsmakers, in her first public comments confirming recent buzz among City Hall insiders that she will mount a challenge to Mayor Cathy Murillo’s re-election bid.
Calling it “a really difficult decision,” Schwartz said she made her decision only recently, after being urged to run by “community members from all walks of life, expressing not only concern and frustration, but also even anger, which really jolted me.”
“You’re the first one to officially hear it in the media,” Schwartz told us, adding that she is assembling a campaign team and will make a formal announcement in the near future.
As a political matter, Schwartz’s public comments represent a calculation that making her intentions clear early, nearly a year before the Nov. 2, 2021 election, will establish and position her as chief challenger to Murillo as she seeks community endorsements and campaign contributions before potential rivals enter the fray. Among others, former Mayor Hal Conklin and James Joyce III, longtime aide to former state Senator Hannah Beth Jackson, are rumored to be mulling entry into the race.
An 11-year veteran of the Planning Commission, a traditional portal of entry for mayoral and council candidacies, Schwartz is a land use consultant, UCSB graduate and scion of a prominent Santa Barbara family steeped in community politics and governance, most notably through the service of her mother, the late Naomi Schwartz, on the Board of Supervisors.
Without attacking Murillo by name in the interview, Schwartz nonetheless offered a stinging, two-track critique of her leadership: as a substantive matter, she spotlighted the absence of clear and cogent long-term plans by City Hall for economic development, affordable housing and homelessness; as a matter of political style, she called out a perceived lack of “civility…collegiality and mutual respect” among and between City Council members, which she cast as a failure of the mayor.
She also criticized a lack of urgency by both city staff and the council in changing the entrenched “organizational culture” of the Community Development Department, to which she pointed as a major obstacle in moving forward on housing and economic development.
Key quotes:
On collaborative leadership. “It has to start with the mayor…It’s critical for the mayor to forge rekationships with…the other council members, to build consensus and mutual respect in order to come together on policies to move the city forward…We don’t see that type of collegiality and cohesion and working together as a team. We have to come together to do the public’s work. We don’t see that out of the current mayor’s seat.”
On strategic management. “We don’t have a short term or a long term economic development plan. We don’t have a strategic homeless plan…We’re simply on a reactive basis…Without these strategic plans, we’re kind of afloat — it’s management by reaction and that’s not good for any of us. Both the residents and the business community are really calling for more and for a course correction.”
On reforming the Community Development Department. “It’s not happening fast enough…There’ isn’t a sense of obligation to listen to the public and then to be responsive…We should be outward facing, not inward facing, and that means the public is the customer. Sometimes we forget that, we turn in on ourselves and are too focused on what’s going on inside City Hall as opposed to looking out.”
On being urged to run. “I heard from community members from all walks of life expressing not only concern and frustration but also even anger which really jolted me…We’re really at a point where people are saying, ‘can we do better, must we do better?” I firmly believe that we need a course correction in leadership.”
If you’re reading on the blog you can watch our entire interview with Deborah Schwartz via YouTube below. If you’re a subscriber to our newsletter (thank you!) watch by clicking through this link. And the podcast version is here.
It’s good to see at least one sensible alternative to the bizarre wannabe machine politics going on at City Hall currently. I don’t really have many criticisms of Mayor Murillo for the simple reason there isn’t much to criticize. She has repeatedly claimed that her role as mayor is to be a figurehead, not a decision maker. Well if that’s the case, we at least need a better figurehead and spokesperson with more of a skill set to help local businesses that are struggling. I’ve met Mayor Murillo multiple times and she has the best intentions. Best wishes to her in the future but SB needs someone else.
The mayor needs to go. Chilling has it partially right – if she sees herself as a figurehead, well, that explains the dearth of leadership. But even as a mere figurehead, she’s pretty AWOL at that gig, especially in all our disasters, and the absolute inward collapse of downtown, exploding homelessness, you name it. Schwartz would be better than what we’ve got. However, James Joyce would be the very best we could get, as he’s got serious chops, public experience, and the ability to bring multiple parties together, something neither Murillo (too divisive) or Schwartz (too establishment) can do.
Cathy Murillo may be often divisive, burnt out, perhaps, by the difficulties of this last Covid-year, but her attitudes don’t hold a candle to Schwartz’s arrogance and rudeness. As a “land use consultant” she should not even be on the city’s planning commission (re-appointed by Murillo and several others three years ago and probably figuring she won’t make it for a fourth term next fall), but that’s the PC is these days, with Higgins (land use consultant/planner), Reed (developer), Bonderson (planner/developer) making a majority for anything that’s dense and inappropriate for historic Santa Barbara.
Completely agree about James Joyce and his legislative experience and working together approach; I’ve never met him or heard him speak and look forward to doing so: please, please, please, Mr. Joyce, run for mayor!
I thought we were going to switch the council elections to even years to save money and increase votership? Was I wrong? Otherwise we are left with 500 votes electing council members.
If Murillo wants to be a figurehead, let’s strap her to front of a boat for the rest of her term.
Murillo has to go! Agreed, she was absent during the roughest and darkest of days here in SB and that was early on, and nothing has changed. I don’t know if this is the right person to replace her but I hope that we have some good options next election. Lots of things need to change!
So Schwartz’s developer friends projects aren’t going fast enough?? Is it because her pal Ed St George who seems to feel entitled to break all the rules and build build build…..wants MORE entitlement? I suggest Jerry, and other journalists, do some digging. Also, perhaps talk to those who have served on or staffed the Planning Commission over the time she’s been on to find out just how collaborative she has been. It’s one thing to launch generalized, unattributed attacks against an incumbent….quite another to actually address specific policy issues…..
Oh I am going to get so burned for saying this, but since I moved here in the late 1990’s, we have had basically the same middle-aged, liberal, short-haired (WHY must we all cut our hair off at a certain age?) utterly ineffectual woman for mayor. Can we try something different now? Pretty please?
You’ve piqued my interest! What would you have had him do (post losing) that would make him “not a fraud”? Cathy is the elected mayor…so commending her for “doing the work” is…well…it’s a bit humorous to commend someone for doing their job (and I’d add doing it rather poorly!) while calling someone else a fraud for not doing the job that they weren’t hired for.
Exactly, we got what we wanted. Seems to really chap your hide, though. Who is Angel Martinez and why have I never heard from him since the election?
Angel, is that you?
Sure! Look how that trump thing worked out! Oh, wait. He was a failure at business, too.
Because that pretty much pinpoints the voting demographic here in SB, except for the Edhat pages. We know that it is very difficult to address the problems that people are complaining about here, but a woman mayor makes that situation a little easier to tolerate.
Wrong on so many levels.
We don’t need another politician- how about a kick butt biz man for a change!
A few years ago we had the chance to elect as Mayor a proven corporate leader with a lot of success in running a large organization, Angel Martinez. Even though Murillo’s comparative abilities and persona were well known before the election, we elected her over Martinez anyway.
So we got what we asked for.
Oops, We had a kick butt business man – Angel Martinez – run against Murillo in the last election but we elected Murillo anyway.