Randy Explains His Shock Decision Not to Seek Another Term as SB Mayor
In previously saying he'd run again, Mayor Rowse stated he still "still has the passion" for leading the city. Monday, he suddenly announced he's decided to call it quits.
Randy Rowse shook up the local political landscape on Monday, announcing that he will not seek re-election as Santa Barbara Mayor.
A few hours after releasing a written statement, the mayor answered questions about his startling decision in a Newsmakers TV interview, portraying it as motivated by purely personal reasons — while also acknowledging frustration with “an intractable majority” of liberal colleagues on City Council.
As a political matter, the sudden and surprising move by the incumbent mayor — who asserted several months that he would seek a second term and still had “passion” for the job — makes progressive council member Kristen Sneddon the front-runner for the mayor’s job, while also boosting the chances of fellow council representative Eric Friedman, a frequent ally of Rowse, whose politics tend to be more moderate.
“This is about me - this is about personal reasons,” Randy told Newsmakers. “It has nothing to do with any issue. It has nothing to do with any other person…It was a very personal decision. There’s a lot of things in life that I set aside for a while and it’s time to go do those now.”
The ‘intractable minority.’ The 71-year old Rowse, elected mayor in 2021 after previously serving nine years as a council member, has long made clear that while he relishes the governance duties of the job, he loathes campaigning and what it takes to get elected, an attitude he again displayed in our conversation.
“I’ve always said, if you run into somebody who says they like campaigning, then you want to maintain eye contact and back away slowly and hold onto your wallet because those people just ain’t right,” he said. “My decision has been noodling for a long time…and frankly, the idea of starting up a campaign, asking people for money, it’s a necessary evil, but I’m just ready to step aside.”
Increasingly, Rowse has been on the short end of 4-to-3 votes on key City Council issues, as a four-member liberal bloc, which solidified with the 2024 defeat of former council member Alejandra Gutierrez by tenants rights activist Wendy Santamaria, has prevailed on issues from budget to housing and, most significantly, rent control.
The liberals earlier passed a rent freeze, and now are crafting sweeping “rent stabilization” legislation; along the way, debate and discourse on the matter has grown more heated and less civil, as demonstrated at last week’s meeting on the issue, when Rowse was subjected to ad hominem attacks and F-bombs during public comment.
“No, no, it has nothing to do with that at all,” he replied when asked about the role of the rent debate on his decision.
“Although as a citizen, now I'll be free to throw the F-bombs,” he joked. “No, I think that, no, it really doesn't. It has nothing to do with it. These issues are going to remain.”
A moment later, however, he also took aim at “an intractable majority (on council) that have been deciding these issues.”
“Unfortunately, the majority is very, very thin. It’s a four-three majority. You saw a four-three budget last year, which has never happened. This big issue of rent control is four-three,” he added. “So I don’t particularly believe that good policy is decided with very narrow margins like that. If it’s a good policy, at least six or seven of us should probably think it’s a good policy and gets hammered out.”
At last week’s meeting, Rowse was the sole member of council who expressed support for an idea floated by the city’s consultant on the matter - that the question of rent control be put on the ballot and left to a citywide vote.
“People are upset about the idea of rent control,” he said. “They’re upset about not having a choice in the matter. And everybody I’ve talked to really thinks if we’re going to do this, we better put it on the ballot and see if we really want to do this.”
“So I think that when you have a very thin majority like we do right now doing very major policy things, it really is a whole city thing to be concerned about and vote on,” he added. “Rent control could really change the profile of the entire city. And so I think the only real way to decide this would be to go to the ballot box and let everybody decide on it.”
State of play. The final deadline to run for mayor — and for three open council seats being vacated by the termed-out Sneddon, Friedman and Meagan Harmon - is not until this summer, so time remains for other candidates to emerge. Former Santa Barbara Unified School Board President Wendy Sims Moten, for example, is among other contenders who may run.
As for now, however, Sneddon’s well-defined base of support among the local Democratic Party organization and mobilized tenants rights groups, along with an active fundraising operation, advance her standing in the race from chief challenger to front-runner, with Friedman left to try to consolidate the center-left/center-right portion of SB’s electorate that put Rowse in office five years ago.
Asked if he now would endorse Friedman in the mayor’s race, Rowse said he has not spoken to him about it yet; it’s a safe bet that he won’t be endorsing Sneddon.
“I haven’t really talked to Eric about his campaign or my campaign or anybody’s campaign,” the mayor said. “This decision was made by me and me alone without any other discussion. So at some point we’ll probably all sit down and talk about this and what the future is, but I have a ton of respect for Eric.”
Bottom line. It was in an earlier Newsmakers interview, in June of last year, when Rowse first stated his intention to seek a second term, saying, “I still have a real passion about the city, and I have a real passion about its future.”
Asked about those comments yesterday, he insisted, “I haven’t lost a passion for the city.
“I spent nine years as a council member and five years now as mayor, and I think it’s just time,” he said. “I’ve got other things I want to do in my life. However, there’s a lot of things I want to be involved in with the city.
“I think on some issues I may even be more influential on the outside than I may on the inside. So no, I intend to stay involved with the city,” he added. “I have absolutely as much passion for the city as ever.”