Watch: Kristen Says She's Running for Mayor -- "We're Stuck and We Need Progress, Not Stagnation"

In an exclusive interview, city council member knocks incumbent for oppositional behavior, calls for public vote on Paseo Nuevo, and vows to work with landlords on new rent control regulations.

Jump-starting the 2026 political campaign, Santa Barbara City Council member Kristen Sneddon on Sunday promised “new leadership that will lead us to progress and not stagnation,” as she stated in an interview that she’s running for mayor.

The two-term representative of the city’s District 4 told Newsmakers that she filed papers on Friday to set up a mayoral campaign committee, ending months of insider speculation about her intentions.

After Mayor Randy Rowse previously confirmed his plan to campaign for re-election, the 53-year old Sneddon’s comments now set the stage for an intriguing generational challenge to the 71-year old incumbent, which is likely to be shaped by conflicts over rent control, the future of downtown, and how the city should grow to accommodate ever-growing demands for more housing - plus City Hall’s role in opposing Trumpism.

“I am optimistic about our future, but there’s an urgency,” Sneddon said. “I think we’re stuck, and I feel like we need leadership that will move us towards progress and not stagnation.”

“We have a lot of things that the community wants to see move forward, that council members want to see move forward,” she added. “And it’s really difficult when leadership is working against the collective and not working towards collaboration. We really need to be listening to the community and listening to each other and then acting and moving forward,” she said.

Why it matters. After the city’s adoption 10 years ago of a district elections system under threat of a California Voting Rights Act lawsuit, the mayor is the only City Hall official now elected citywide.

As a practical matter, the mayor is just one vote among seven council members; as a political matter, however, the mayor enjoys greater influence and authority than council colleagues, because she or he controls a bigger media platform, works with the city Administrator to set the council’s agenda, and chairs council meetings.

With 352 days left before next year’s Nov. 3 election, the deadline for registering to run is not for months, so there is plenty of time for other candidates to enter the mayor’s race. But an early view of a Rowse-Sneddon match-up crystallizes much of the current debate over the city’s most persistent and pressing public policy conflicts.

At a time when left-of-center candidates nationally have won recent mayoral races, most prominently in New York and Portland, the liberal Democrat Sneddon provides a sharp contrast to the nuts-and-bolts focus of Rowse, a registered independent.

Among the distinctions that emerged in our conversation:

Tenant-landlord relations. At City Hall, Sneddon has led the charge for a new ordinance imposing tighter “rent stabilization” controls on landlords, which council will soon vote on, and which Rowse adamantly opposes. “Over 60 percent of our city are renters, and we need to be listening to those members of our community as well,” Sneddon told us. “I don’t believe that any side (of the rent control debate) is villians…So I hope it’s not an issue of renters versus property owners…it doesn’t need to be pitting sides against each other.”

Paseo Nuevo. City Council is scheduled to vote next month on a controversial development agreement for a residential-retail revamp of the Paseo Nuevo mall, a plan the Planning Commission has sharply criticized on financial and design grounds. Sneddon said she thinks the proposal should be put to a vote of the people, a notion that Rowse opposed in a Newsmakers interview last week, saying it would cause a project-killing delay that would leave the city with nothing. “This is public land and it needs to pencil out for the people, not just pencil out for developers,” Sneddon said.

Downtown. Sneddon authored the 2021 legislation creating the State Street Advisory Committee, which was charged with producing a new master plan for downtown that is still in the works. In intervening years, Rowse has loudly and repeatedly called for the nine-block stretch of the downtown corridor, closed during Covid, to be re-opened to vehicular traffic, saying it would spur economic activity; Sneddon has joined the council majority that has resisted reopening, and she blames the mayor for opposing interim “pilot” programs, from “art and painting on the sidewalk” to new benches and tree-planting on individual blocks, as the much-delayed master plan moves forward. “It’s not okay to just say ‘no’ to everything without putting forward an alternate plan,” she said. “It has stagnated, nothing has moved forward as pilots…that we could really see and enjoy in the time being.”

Politics. When she was first ran for council in 2017, the local Democratic Party bashed Sneddon as an interloper for challenging their endorsed candidate. Since then, she has made her peace with the party, and now is the odds-on favorite to win its influential endorsement in the mayor’s race. Throughout his career, Rowse has vehemently opposed the overlay of partisan politics at City Hall, saying that the problems council faces are local and pragmatic, not appropriately addressed with ideology. “We have a great relationship at this point,” Sneddon said of the Democratic organization. “There’s been no time when the Democratic Party has come forward and said, ‘you must vote for this or that, or stand for this or that.’”

Trump. A geology professor at City College, Sneddon was largely apolitical until Donald Trump’s first election in 2017, when she joined a March for Science, and then was persuaded to help heighten opposition to his right-wing government by running for local office. Rowse throughout his career has said that council should stick to dealing with local problems, rolling his eyes at what he considers performative politics by colleagues who raise state and national concerns. Sneddon, however, said local elected officials should take high-profile stances against Trump, particularly given the Administration’s aggressive immigrant deportation campaign. “It’s come to our door,” Sneddon said. “It’s very much a reason why I feel added urgency, and the way that our community is under attack, is heartbreaking…(Along with) the loss of funding for programs that support our whole community…it needs to be front and center.”

Sneddon said that one reason she is announcing her candidacy early, is to embark on “a listening tour,” to hear from multiple community organizations and neighborhoods as she embarks on her first citywide race.

“I know it’s a long time out,” she said. “What I’m starting is a listening tour…I want to hear what are the important issues. If anybody in the community wants to have a community meeting, in your neighborhood, at your home, at your schools, wherever you want, I really want to hear, what are the issues, and how to get us out of the status quo and move us towards the future.”

Check out our full conversation with city council member, and newly minted mayoral candidate, Kristen Sneddon via YouTube below or by clicking through this link. Our podcast is available on Apple, Spotify, or on Soundcloud here. 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.