Campaign 1-on-1: In Council Comeback Bid, Jason Dominguez Backs Election Reform, Knocks Rent Control, Critiques Budget Plan
A chippy maverick who was ousted from council after one term, the candidate says that fatherhood has mellowed him, and that his independent policy views are a good match for District 4 neighborhoods.
In 2019, City Council member Jason Dominguez lost an excruciatingly close race for re-election in Santa Barbara’s Eastside District 1, the target of a successful effort by the local Democratic Party to boot him out of office.
Now, Dominguez has mounted a comeback bid. Still a registered Democrat, he has moved to District 4, where he believes his independent streak will find support from its more moderate and higher-income voters, at a time when lefties dominate council politics.
“It’s a much different city council in 2026 than it was when I ran for re-election — I think people had a lot more confidence in the council six years ago,” Dominguez told Newsmakers. “When you look at polling (that asks) ‘Is the city going in the right direction?’ — it’s at an all-time low.
“And that’s part of the reason I want to run,” he added. “We’re going to lose four council members and the mayor. There’s going to be a very big transition.”
In a one-on-one interview, the latest in our series of conversations with candidates for SB City Council and Mayor, the 57-year-old Dominguez reflected on his eight-vote, 2019 re-election loss to Alejandra Gutierrez — the endorsed candidate of the Democrats, who dropped her four years later in favor of current District 1 incumbent Wendy Santamaria — and discussed changes in the local political landscape since 2015, when he won election as a member of the first council fully seated under the district elections system.
“There are the sharp elbows of a political party and its bosses, who want to have only their candidates on council,” Dominguez said. “So I understand it, but I think the way voters can push back … on that is to vote for people like me who didn’t get an endorsement from a political party — someone who’s independent-minded, independent-thinking,” he added.
“And people should … if they want a government that’s independent and not involved in culture wars or political battles, they should vote for people like me. If you want someone who’s going to dogmatically follow a party line, then don’t vote for me.”
District 4 includes the Riviera and the Upper East Side, among other neighborhoods. With 17 weeks to go before the Nov. 3 election, Dominguez currently faces three rivals who have filed paperwork to run: retired tech executive Monte Wilson; Democratic Party-endorsed Planning Commissioner Devon Wardlow; and Neighborhood Advisory Council member Genevieve Taft-Vasquez. (The latter two are scheduled for upcoming interviews; we spoke with Monte Wilson previously.)
Among other topics in our conversation, Dominguez offered a prescription to address concerns that the current local electoral system produces council members more focused on the narrow interests of district constituencies than on the overall interests of the entire city: ranked-choice voting.
Under a ranked-choice system, such as that used in San Francisco and other Bay Area communities, 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.
“Ranked-choice voting is basically just an instant runoff,” Dominguez said. “Ranked-choice voting would definitely be a priority” if he is elected, he added.
Dominguez on three other key issues:
Rent control. “I don’t think it’s worked in many places, and if you talk to (prominent UCSB economist) Peter Rupert and some of the local economists, they say that it doesn’t work, that it’s counterproductive. At this point I’d be pretty against rent stabilization … you also have to add in the fact that we’re a small city and we’re going to spend a couple million dollars administering the program. We don’t have the economy of scale … We’d be better off putting that money into direct subsidies or giving people vouchers.”
Budget. “It’s the old cliché: ‘Hey, there’s still checks in my checkbook — how could there be no money there?’ … I think we need to go to a position where departments really reexamine their budgets and come up with 10 percent savings, whether it’s eliminating a program that’s no longer working or reallocating staff … No more consultants … No more severance contracts when we sign department heads.”
State Street. "If I'm on council, I don't want to spend 80 percent of our time and thousands of hours and millions of dollars fighting over (vehicles allowed on State Street). But could you just have one week a month where it's open to cars? … Riding an e-bike in a crowded area doing a wheelie is a nuisance. It's a crime. It's reckless driving. Where there's a will, there's a way. If the council wants to enforce that law, they can. So I can lead that charge when I'm on council."
Check out our full interview with Jason Dominguez 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 Mayor and four City Council seats in the Nov. 3 election, Newsmakers is publishing one-on-one interviews with the candidates over the summer. Here is who else we’ve talked with to date:
Monte Wilson, candidate for District 4 council seat. June 23.