Campaign 1-on-1: In Bid for SB Council, Gabe Escobedo Backs Rent Control - No Cars, Vacancy Tax, E-Bike Reform for State St.
One-term school board member promises both change and continuity as he campaigns in downtown's District 6 to succeed Meagan Harmon at SB City Hall.
Gabe Escobedo, a 37-year-old rising star in local politics, is seeking the District 6 seat on Santa Barbara’s City Council, courting voters who are “ready for a change” — with a campaign bolstered by formidable establishment support.
An elected member of the Santa Barbara Unified School District’s board of education, Escobedo not only won the coveted early endorsement of the local Democratic Party, earning a spot on its influential slate card, but also the enthusiastic aid of Meagan Harmon, the termed-out incumbent in the district, who anointed him as her “ready to serve on Day One” successor.
“When I say the candidate for ‘change,’ part of that is a campaign slogan that lives on a website, but part of it is truth,” Escobedo said, when asked to reconcile his dual standing as a change agent and the chosen one of the status quo.
“If you look at Meagan’s time, she’s pushed for so much change and has gotten us to the point where there is real opportunity,” he told Newsmakers, in the latest in our series of conversations with candidates for Santa Barbara City Council.
“We have been in decision paralysis, it feels like, and that decision paralysis has led to a lack of action,” Escobedo added. “And I feel like right now we have a little bit of momentum and I want to contribute to pushing us forward and actually making some decisions.”
Bio back story. The son of a single mother who grew up poor in Ontario, Escobedo seized on education as the way out of a dead-end future, and credits academic mentors with encouraging and guiding him — to a B.A. from Cal State San Marcos, in San Diego County, and a master’s in kinesiology from St. Mary’s College, in Contra Costa County.
For the past 10 years, he has worked at UCSB, where he is associate director of programs for the Department of Recreation, while raising his profile and building a network in politics and policy circles. He served a term on the city Planning Commission, led the controversial Community Formation Commission effort aimed at police reform, and lost a bid for the Assembly seat won by Gregg Hart, before being elected to the school board in 2022.
“I am looking for ways to be involved. I’m ambitious and I want to be in the rooms where decisions are made. That is the truth,” he said. “And the one thing that I can also say is true is that I love Santa Barbara.
“And so when I think about ways that I want to contribute, I seek out these roles. And right now I think the way that best serves the community and best leverages my experience and my skills is on city council,” Escobedo added. “I think right now is the right time for me to run.”
The district. District 6, which he is running to represent, includes downtown and Oak Park, among other neighborhoods. It has the highest percentage of renters — about 84 percent, according to U.S. Census data — of any district, and the lowest percentage of homeownership. Besides Escobedo, real estate agent Alexander Stoeber also has pulled papers to run in the district.
“Most people that live here in Santa Barbara are making sacrifices to live here,” Escobedo said. “In my time in the policy conversations, there’s a lot of talk about preserving the character of Santa Barbara — usually through the lens of architecture and mountain views and coastal access and preserving open space.
“And I absolutely agree — all of those things contribute to making Santa Barbara special,” he added. “But for me, the thing that contributes most to the character of Santa Barbara is the people. And so it’s the people that live and work here that contribute to our community. And one of the primary goals for me is: how do we keep those people here, and how do we provide value to them?”
E-bike oopsie. Sporting a full-length white splint on his right arm, Escobedo in our conversation described a recent e-bike accident on State Street — “user error,” he explained — and also discussed his term on the school board, acknowledging frustration with the ongoing poor performance of SBUSD students on standardized tests while highlighting the district’s pivot to a new “science of reading” curriculum aimed at increasing literacy.
He described himself as an energetic advocate for more housing, setting an aspirational goal of “100 percent affordable housing” for new projects by developing publicly owned land and seeking new revenue streams for the city’s Affordable Housing Fund.
“There’s a lot of stuff that we could be doing to generate affordable housing that actually is affordable for the people that live and work here,” he said.
With 16 weeks to go before the election, Escobedo also outlined his policy stances on other key issues about which we’re questioning all the candidates:
Rent control. Escobedo identified himself as a strong supporter of the current council majority’s aggressive push for rent control: “I support it because … if we want to protect what makes Santa Barbara so special, it’s about keeping the people who contribute to our community here. And rent stabilization is not the silver bullet. It doesn’t solve the housing affordability crisis, but it’s one tool in our toolbox and one component of that ecosystem of policies that we need.”
State Street. Escobedo waved off pleas by downtown retail business owners to reopen State Street to cars, but acknowledged that the increasing surge of e-bike traffic is a problem requiring imaginative policy solutions. “I think it should stay closed permanently … now that we’ve made this decision, where we really need to act is by making the investment (in the master plan) … Some of the e-bikes are way too fast — some of them are motorcycles for all intents and purposes … Kristen Sneddon brought up an interesting idea, which I love … We should confiscate their e-bikes (from riders who break the law) and give them a regular bike … a more serious policy prescription is we really need some help at the state level to limit what class of bike a parent can purchase for their kids.”
Budget. Escobedo said he backs rebuilding depleted emergency reserve funds, would seek cost savings by not filling some vacant positions and by offering a “retirement incentive package” to older public employees — but also favors both a commercial vacancy tax and an increase in the Transient Occupancy Tax: “It would be irresponsible to just be flippant and say we’re going to cut all these programs, because really what you’re saying is you’re cutting people. I think one prudent thing to do is that anytime a position becomes vacant, ask yourself: is this a position that we need to fill? … The commercial vacancy tax would be for properties that have been long-term vacancies, and so for those folks there needs to be some sort of incentive — not a punishment, but an incentive — for them to rent those spaces to actual local businesses.”
Ranked choice. Escobedo said he leans toward changing the current district election system to a ranked-choice method, in which voters rank candidates in order of preference; 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: “I think ranked-choice voting is, in my opinion, probably the gold standard. I’d support that, but there are some outstanding questions (about cost) to answer.”
Check out our interview with Gabe Escobedo, the latest in our series with candidates for City Council and Mayor in the Nov. 3 election, 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 Genevieve Taft-Vasquez, Devon Wardlow, Ian Baucke, and Cevin Cathel, with more in the works. Here is who we’ve talked with to date:
Eric Friedman, candidate for Mayor, June 28.
Monte Wilson, candidate for District 4 council seat. June 23.