Campaign 1-on-1. Corporate Consultant Genevieve Taft-Vazquez: "I'd Bring a Different Perspective" to SB City Council
District 4 contender says her experience in private sector diversity and sustainability issues qualifies her to "navigate complex institutions" through compromise and consensus building,
Santa Barbara native Genevieve Taft-Vazquez, a dark horse in the crowded District 4 City Council race, blends corporate-world experience with born-and-raised social values as he promises to “bring a different lens” to City Hall.
A political rookie in a wide-open, four-candidate field that includes several city government veterans, the 49-year-old business consultant considers her outsider status an asset, campaigning to bring “balance” to a City Council dominated by Democratic Party-endorsed partisans.
Genevieve’s parents came to Santa Barbara in the 1970s, her teacher father in pursuit of an Olympic dream via decathlon training with a famed UCSB coach. After local school at Laguna, Santa Barbara Middle School and SB High School, she graduated from Yale and received graduate degrees from Penn and Johns Hopkins, then pursued a career with non-government organizations and multinationals, including Coca-Cola and Gap, focused on corporate social responsibility and environmental, social and governance (ESG) programs. She moved back home with her husband and three kids, now teenagers, six years ago.
“I think spending so much time in the private sector is a real value-add,” Taft-Vazquez said of her candidacy. “It brings a different perspective, a different lens. There will be other council members who have a strictly city administrative background, and that’s great. I think it’s also important to have balance on the City Council.”
“I realize I’m not part of the establishment,” she told Newsmakers. “But I think that, as an involved community member, that’s also an asset.”
Politics and policy. District 4 includes the Riviera and the Upper East Side, among other neighborhoods. Just over 100 days before the Nov. 3 election, Taft-Vazquez currently faces three rivals who have filed paperwork to run: former city council member Jason Dominguez and retired tech executive Monte Wilson (whose Newsmakers interviews are here and here respectively) and city Planning Commissioner Devon Wardlow (whom we’ll be speaking with in the next few days).
Along with longtime friends and kids’ schools connections, Taft-Vazquez also brings to the campaign a network of supporters arising from her volunteer work as an at-large member of the Neighborhood Advisory Council.
In our conversation, she pitched a two-track campaign message: a set of district-specific issues like wildfire abatement, emergency evacuation routes and local traffic safety improvements, along with a broader, less defined push on citywide matters — “building a thriving local economy and the supply of housing so that my kids and other kids, that next generation, have good jobs and can afford to live here.”
Taft-Vazquez portrays herself as a middle-of-the-road pragmatist who is less attached to ideological positions and more focused on compromise and consensus on the city’s most contentious issues.
“We need to have more action and less talk,” she said. “What I don’t think is happening is action. And whether that’s decision paralysis, or just not really being willing to take steps or actions, I think now is the time. There is a lot of momentum building. I think Santa Barbara’s poised to have some really exciting new investment.”
Here is Taft-Vazquez’s take on some key issues, about which we’re questioning all the candidates in our ongoing series.
Rent control. Taft-Vazquez said she assumes rent control is a done deal. Stipulating that a stabilization ordinance will have been adopted by the time she joins the council, if she wins, she said the ordinance should include a five-year sunset. “The reality is this ordinance is going to get approved before the next city council anyway, so how do we make it actually work for people? … The supply of housing is probably the most important piece we could address on this issue, so I don’t look at rent control or rent stabilization as some sort of silver bullet. That said, I do believe in protecting the people who are here and building for the people who want to be here, or the next generation…. I’d want that ordinance to be something that is clear and somewhat simple to administer, and I’d also want to make sure that this is something that can be reviewed on a regular basis, to make sure that it’s actually doing what it’s set out to do.”
Budget. Taft-Vazquez said she opposes any new taxes and would seek financial savings by “reconfiguring” jobs when vacancies occur, in an effort to hold down City Hall head count. “If you’re asking for more taxes — no, I don’t think there should be more taxes… Having dealt with budgets from small nonprofits to multi-billion-dollar companies, I would bring that same perspective around balancing the budget and making sure that we’re replenishing those reserves… The general fund is largely around city staff, and I don’t think anybody wants to be cutting jobs… I think there probably are opportunities to reconfigure jobs when vacancies open up or people retire, so that it’s not a one-for-one — think about different ways to use technology, or whatever it may be, to reconfigure some of those.”
State Street. Taft-Vazquez said she is frequently on and around State Street for multiple reasons and thinks the nine-block promenade should remain car-free. “I will say that I am a heavy user of State Street. What I also think is that we’ve studied this to death, and we definitely need to move forward. So generally I’d say we need to adopt the master plan, get that going… But yes, closed to cars… And the real thing here, I think, is stop with this stop-start, whatever. Let’s actually invest in making it happen and making it a place where people want to come back to, and they feel safe, and it’s clean.”
Ranked choice voting. Taft-Vazquez acknowledged that she has not studied the issue of whether the city should adopt ranked choice voting. In such a system, voters rank candidates in order of preference, and if no candidate wins a majority of first-choice votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their votes are redistributed to those voters’ next choice, repeating until one candidate has a majority. However, she said she would be willing to vote on council to put a ballot measure before voters: “It would be up to the people to decide.”
Check out our full conversation with Genevieve Taft-Vazquez via YouTube below or by clicking this link. Our podcast is available on Apple, Spotify, or on SoundCloud. TVSB, Channel 17, airs the show every weeknight at 5 p.m. and at 9 a.m. on weekends. KCSB, 91.9 FM, broadcasts the program at 5:30 p.m. on weekends.
Newsmakers’ Candidate Conversations. To offer Santa Barbara voters early introductions to contenders for four City Council seats, including Mayor, in the Nov. 3 election, Newsmakers is publishing one-on-one interviews with the candidates over the summer. Upcoming interviews include candidates Devon Wardlow, Ian Baucke, Cevin Cathel, Alexander Stoeber, James Zurlinden and Kristen Sneddon, with more in the works. Here is who we’ve talked with to date: