Jerry Roberts
By Jerry Roberts of Newsmakers
Amazing but true, Meagan Harmon has served on SB City Council for two-and-a-half years but – before Wednesday night — never before had been forced to grub for votes at a candidate forum.
Harmon, appointed by council in early 2019 to a vacant District 6 seat, did not draw an opponent in the city election later that year, when she was slated to be on the ballot. So in the current campaign, she is facing voters for the first time ever, albeit running as a veteran, instead of a rookie.
“I’m going to give myself an ‘A’,” she said during this week’s first District 6 forum, when asked to grade her own performance to date. “I’m proud of the work I’ve done.”
The event, sponsored by Newsmakers, SB Talks and TVSB, also marked the first campaign appearance for Nina Johnson, a longtime City Hall executive considered the incumbent’s chief rival, as well as for grassroots candidates Jason Carlton and Zak Pike, with all the contenders appearing via Zoom because: Covid.
The four candidates offered their views on a host of tough problems confronting the city and District 6’s downtown neighborhoods, from homelessness and housing to the State Street promenade and selection of a new City Administrator.
You can watch the debate via YouTube below or by clicking through this link; the audio version is here.
Six takeaways from the event:
Meagan brought the fastball
From the first question, Harmon burst forth with a high-energy, smart take performance that not only displayed her command of substance and nuance on complicated policies (discussing the future of Paseo Nuevo mall, she became the first candidate in political history to use the phrase “Reciprocal Easement Agreement” in a campaign talk) but also demonstrated the passionate style that has made her a rising star in local Democratic circles. She got a little too slick at several points, wielding piffle and politic-speak in trying to evade a straight answer about building height limits, for example, but when pressed, at least produced an unequivocal answer as to ruling out a run for higher office if she wins the five year council term at stake on Nov. 2: “Absolutely,” she said. Keep that one in the memory bank.
Nina: The personal is political
Johnson has worked behind-the-scenes for more than 20 years as a City Hall manager, most recently as assistant City Administrator, and her language in her first forum reflected that experience, as she addressed many issues by focusing on changing or improving the process of local government (i.e., “We need a different culture,” “data-driven approach,” “focus on outcomes”). Her best moments came when she spoke in personal terms about facing sexist discrimination that she said had held her back from promotion, citing it as one of the reasons she decided to run for office after decades as a staffer: “I’m taking a different path,” she said. “I don’t want to complain…I want to help resolve the problem for others.”
Small business owner vs insiders
Jason Carlton is a union electrician who runs his own small business, a a serious, down-to-earth guy who has mounted a long shot grassroots campaign because he believes City Hall is too insular and disconnected from the people it is supposed to serve. At one point, he pointed to the city raising permit fees by 25 percent during the pandemic, at a time when businesses like his already were struggling to hang on, as an example of ciity government cluelessness, but he missed a clear opportunity when he demurred on a question asking him to make the case for why Meagan should not be returned to office: “If we want to stay on the same path, we’ll pick insiders,” was as far as he would go.
The blue collar Santa Barbara guy. Born and raised in Santa Barbara, Zachary Pike has a day job as a soils analyst, running lab tests on samples for environmental reviews, but the pandemic cut into his preferred line of work as a musician and a DJ. Earnest and caring of the community where he grew up, Pike said one of his biggest assets is his “history as a local,” saying it’s “time for a change” as he decried the rise of “so much dissonance in the city,” which he stated he would help “take down a notch” by bringing fresh eyes and an open mind to civic ills. Discussing homelessness, his most notable idea was the suggestion to slap a moratorium on liquor licenses: “There’s so many places where you can get your hands on vices in District 6,” he said.
Is there a solution for homelessness?
In the first round of the forum, Zak didn’t hesitate when asked to identify the number one concern he hears from neighbors: “Homelessness – top of the list.” The substantive discussion of the issue that followed, however, featured few new ideas and was far more resigned than hopeful: Pike ventured that employers should pay higher wages, Johnson called for more “mental health outreach workers, and while Harmon claimed “we are moving forward with tangible programs” (e.g. paying for homeless campers to stay in a cheap hotel for four months) even she had to acknowledge that it “in many ways is an intractable problem.” It was left to Carlton to say the quiet part out loud: “I don’t think homeless is solvable.”
Room rater
It was a rough night for Newsmakers’ Department of Virtual Backdrops and Videoconferencing Aesthetics, as the team found little to like in the Zoom backgrounds used by the District 6 quartet. In the final Room Rater scores, based on a 1-10 scale, Meagan finished first, with a nothing-to-be-proud of 4 (“two heavy wood doors and plain white walls gave the impression she was locked in a wine cellar,” our judges said); Nina earned a 3 (“mercifully her head didn’t melt into the stock SB waterfront virtual backdrop, like Randy’s did in the mayoral forum”); Zak got a 2 (“maybe next time he’ll push the bookcase all the way behind him, instead of just giving us a six inch glimpse”) and Jason got the dreaded 1 (“the guy sounded pretty good — too bad he looked like he was speaking from a hostage video”).
District 6 is a tough district since it contains our worst local issues: the State Street mess and loss of a main retail sales tax generating district, and health and safety peril caused by the 101/Mission Creek vagrant camps – for which Harmon deserves and F, not an A. Judge her by her deeds; not her alleged high style. We need defined goals that get results, and at least some depth of understanding of one’s own district and how it fits into the larger issues for the city. Tell us why the fruits of the past few decades of chronic mismanagement ended up mainly in this one district. District 6 is full of renters and low voter turn out, which means it takes little to win this district, yet it represents the city’s biggest problems. Do take another look at Nina Johnson – length and depth of municipal management experience -she is in the best position to know what realistically can be done, not just making promisies what she would like to do. This should be a key vote determinant – well-honed pragmatism. Johnson is not insider status quo, just the opposite – she is pragmatic and knows the most efficient paths to get were we need to go. Johnson would be able to hit the ground running with no learning curve. This can immensely help this mainly inexperienced city council on a far more seasoned path to set achievable goals and get started meeting them; instead of just talking and talking and talking about them.
If Harmon thinks adding 50K to the city is a good idea ,vote her out. I’d like to know where they will live and what roads they will be using? Or I supposed everyone in this new SB will be riding bikes , no parking will be needed because no one will own a car. Suddenly SB will have a magical transit system that doesn’t take 45 minutes to go 7 miles. They will be living in 300 square foot apartments that cost 4K a month and hanging their bikes from the ceiling. SB will never be affordable again and that’s including the City owning or subsidizing 20% of the housing. Clean up your existing crap before you add 50K more people.
Did you actually watch this? Harmon did not say she is in favor of adding 50k people. She said the constitution (not to mention other current laws from state, etc.) means we cannot openly limit the number of people moving here. She specifically said she would prefer to see the population stay exactly where it is today. This kind of lazy and crude disinfo is so irredeemable. If you want to disagree with her, disagree with something she actually said. And she specifically said she wanted to focus on housing for people who are ALREADY HERE.
We’ll see whether Harmon is an effective politician or not. This is her first election, but, although a relatively new Santa Barbaran, she does have a history of getting what she wants. The one in the city government who IS an effective politician is Cathy Murillo. Politicians and lawyers, including New York-trained ones, are probably about equally liked and it will be interesting to see how that plays out in this election.
Anyone, like Harmon, who claims we must passively be victims to what “the state” in Sacramento dictates should not be in public office. The “state” is nothing more than the collective voices those we ourselves elect to Sacramento (the state) who in turn craft these ill-founded ideological dictates that they thrust upon us at the local level. We unfortunately have a long history of electing the exact same machine politics that have done this to us, which Harmon is now endorsing to continue This makes her a very unreliable choice. Not guts no glory. Just one more cog in the state’s dysfunctional political machine. To change this thing called ” the state”, voters must those who represent us in Sacramento. This means finally ending the streams of the (D) Hannah-Beth Jacksons, (D) Das Williams, (D) Monique Limons, (D)Michael Bennetts. And now the newly emerging machine politics wannabes like (D) Meaghan Harmon. These people are the ones who collectively become the “state”. Harmon inadvertently told us she has no intention to rock the boat, no matter how badly “the state” is serving our city. No wonder Jerry Roberts was wary about Harmon’s denial that she has no future political ambitions. We don’t need more party machine politicians in this town on the city council level who refuse to stand up to “the state”. Harmon just exposed she is not the one for this job.
The SB City Hall “spin” of smiles, self-congratulation, and a grade of “A” is disheartening and wishful thinking. If only it were true. Santa Barbara is in need of sweeping changes in attitude and process.
I believe that Nina Johnson has the attitude, ability, passion, and knowledge that Santa Barbara needs right now. I also appreciated Jason Carlton’s comments around unions and construction issues.
AllEars: It was pretty well known for anyone with an ear to local politics that Gregg Hart would be doing exactly what he did – run for city council once the dust of district elections settled and choosing an easy rotten-borough to win, then ditch this newly elected city council seat in order to move on to the better paid county supervisor seat, but not before dumping that reprehensible Pro-Union city contract demand on city taxpayers, just to curry favor with the unions for his next political run for county supervisor. We do have very closed system of party-politic musical chairs in this town, which voters keep supporting. (D) replaces (D) replaces (D) for what are officially non-partisan offices. For the record, Meaghan Harmon did have to stand for election within the first year of her appointment to city council, as required by law. But since no one chose to run against her, she did get a free pass and never had to face the voters or earn her right to hold this seat. This lack of prior campaigning now works against her now as she only demonstrates a sense of entitlement for this seat; not the necessary civic-minded energy needed in a first campaign foray to earn in an election. Her biggest error however was immediately seeking the position on the Calif Coastal Commission before she had done anything of any substance for the city, let along her own very troubled district. No fan of Das Williams but if anyone had earned the credentials to sit on the Coastal Commission it was Das if it had to be a flame-throwing environmental liberal. Harmon immediately jumping into that race for the Coastal Commissions seat may well be her political undoing. And I think it should be. Another old political truism: pigs get fed; hogs get slaughtered. Much like Das in his early days when he had to face defeat after over-reaching too; and became labeled as the young man in a hurry. Voters told him to slow down, And it was good lesson. Term limits sets up these internecine battlegrounds as the state senate seat openings require multiple political career jugglings, among this power hungry crew of younger and not not so young Democrats.
Noozhawk headline today pretty much says it all, and why playing party politics for our non-partisan offices has led to so much local dysfunction and on-going budget distress. If you vote (D) you do know are voting for giving up local decision making autonomy and handing over decision making to the political demands of this thing called “labor” (city employee unions and public construction industry unions):………. Noozhawk: “Santa Barbara County Democrats Gather for Annual Labor Day Picnic at Tucker’s Grove.
Speakers blast effort to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom, show support for City Council candidates and organized labor.”…….