The two leading candidates to be Santa Barbara’s next mayor made their final arguments this week, offering sharp contrasts in tone, themes and rhetoric in dueling opinion columns published by local media outlets.

Two-term council members Kristen Sneddon and Eric Friedman came to City Hall together in 2018, but only one will remain there after the votes are counted when polls close at 8 p.m. on Tuesday. Having raised a collective $350,000, appeared at countless forums and sent dozens of mass mailers, the pair was still going door-to-door across the city’s neighborhoods on Monday, seeking to squeeze out a few more votes in what is expected to be a close finish.

Voters have been returning their ballots for weeks now, but for those who are late deciders, or who prefer to make an old-school Election Day trip to their polling place, the op-eds Sneddon and Friedman each published in recent days in the Independent, the News-Press and Noozhawk provide a clear summary of the case each is making as the long city campaign comes to an end.

“Santa Barbara is not for sale,” Sneddon began her piece, cast as a warning that the real estate and development interests that have backed her chief rival with tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions have an agenda that would destroy what makes the city singular and special.

Portraying herself as the only candidate who will stand up to these powerful interests, Sneddon wrote:

“Developers and powerful well-funded real estate interests want us to make it easier for them. The State of California wants to make it easier for them, too. But we still have a choice. We can take a stand as a community and protect what makes this place special, without sacrificing the generations who fought to preserve the unique place we call home.

“If we allow developers and outsized property interests to take control of our city, they are going to turn Santa Barbara into any generic overbuilt coastal city. No thank you.”

Friedman began his piece with a paean to public libraries, a theme familiar to anyone who has listened to his campaign speeches, which he employs as a metaphor to say that every economic, political and cultural interest has a shared communal stake in policies that work for everyone.

Casting himself as a unifier who can head off bitter conflicts like those that have brought on referendum campaigns over State Street and rent control, Friedman wrote:

No one group gets to decide Santa Barbara’s future. The people supporting my campaign reflect that, from longtime residents, small business owners and nonprofit leaders, to physicians, nurses, environmental leaders, and the men, women and veterans of our construction trades who are building the affordable housing our city needs.

They don’t all agree with me on every issue, and I wouldn’t want them to, but they share a belief that this city works best when every neighbor has an equal voice.

You can read their complete columns here and here.

All the news that fits. Newsmakers began its coverage of the 2026 city election 132 days ago, when we published our first interview with a candidate for city council.

By that time, we’d already seen that political insiders were quietly gearing up with early endorsements aimed at squelching competition and putting in place the strategy, organization and money to elect their favored candidates, while most voters had more pressing family and economic matters on their minds than plotting and scheming over an election months away.

Given the high stakes for the city’s future, we decided we’d act as their watchdog on the process.

In the intervening months, we’ve conducted long-form conversations with every candidate for mayor and council (with one exception, who turned down our interview request); co-sponsored and produced candidate debates; covered other forums; reported on the campaign finances of the hopefuls; published community voices with their own perspectives on the contests; reported on breaking news events; and, of course, discussed and analyzed the campaign each week with our local media colleagues on Newsmakers’ award-winning reporter roundtable program.

For folks still laboring over their ballots, here’s our comprehensive election guide.

One-on-One Interviews

Mayor

District 4

District 5

District 6

Newsmakers/SB Talks/TVSB/News-Press Debates.

To give voters the chance to see the candidates face-to-face, we worked with media partners to produce and record debates with the contenders in all four races.

Mayoral. Watch: Here’s the Full (Well-Produced) Video of the First Debate of the Santa Barbara Mayor’s Race. Sept. 9.

District 4. Watch: Genevieve Arrives - and 3 Other Takeaways from SB Council D4 Debate. Sept. 15.

District 4. Watch: Three Rivals Make Closing Arguments in SB’s District 4. Devon Abruptly Cancels Appearance on Show. Oct. 20.

District 5. Watch: Here’s TVSB’s Video Production of the “Newsmakers-SB Talks” D5 Debate. Sept. 22.

District 6. Watch: SB Council D6 Candidates Debate in a Race Shaped as Gabe vs. The Pack. Sept. 23.