About eight in ten residents of Santa Barbara City Council’s downtown District 6 are renters.
In the four-way race for the open seat to represent the district, one candidate strongly supports a new city law to restrict rent increases; the three others oppose it.
You do the math.
In a debate recorded at the TVSB studio on Sept. 16, District 6 contenders Jason Carlton, Anabella Lehne and Alexander Stoeber each said they would vote against the soon-to-pass rent stabilization ordinance, offering slightly different arguments against it grounded in economic studies and theory, while council hopeful Gabe Escobedo dismissed their claims as ill-suited to the current housing market.
As a policy matter, the anti-rent control trio offered substantive evidence to support their stances; as a political matter, the Democratic Party-endorsed Escobedo was preaching straight to the demographic makeup of the district’s electorate.
“When folks talk about supply and demand, and simply in those terms, it’s far too simplistic,” he said at one point in the debate. “Our free market is designed by rules, and the question is: who do those rules benefit?”
Fending off attacks. The current shape of the District 6 race — with Escobedo as a solid front-runner and the other three contenders competing to emerge as his chief foil — was made clear in the portion of the debate reserved for candidates to pose questions to their opponents.
Both Stoeber and Lehne aimed questions in Escobedo’s direction.
A real estate agent who presented himself as a market-oriented “independent,” Stoeber asked the others, “Did you meet with Fire and Police (department unions)?” — an implicit but clear shot at Escobedo, who famously clashed with former chief Barney Melekian over left-wing efforts to institute George Floyd-era reforms, as well as an opportunity to highlight his own recent endorsement from the Police Officers Association.
Lehne was more direct, using Escobedo’s own words to frame a question about whether he was running to serve the community or his own ambitions — or would even serve a full four-year term if elected:
“Gabe, you’ve been very open about your political ambition — you ran for state Assembly, then school board, and now city council,” she said. “You’ve even said, ‘I’m ambitious and I want to be in the rooms where decisions are made.’
“Ambition isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but public office shouldn’t be about getting into the next room. It should be about the people you’re representing in the room you’re already in,” Lehne added. “When an elected official is thinking about the next office, voters have every right to ask whether decisions are being made for the community or with the next political opportunity in mind.”
It was the most dramatic moment in the debate, but Escobedo was clearly ready for the question, which he parried by vowing to serve four years before pivoting to portray his personal ambition as an asset for voters.
“Yes, I am ambitious. We should all be ambitious. We should be ambitious for our community,” he said.
“That ambition is not for me personally,” Escobedo added. “When you have someone with a background like mine that has had to overcome so many obstacles, I feel like you have a responsibility to go back and tear them down, so that the people behind us don’t have to suffer the same ways that we did. And that’s what this is about.
“So yes, I am going to serve the full four years,” he said, “and I’m going to do it damn well.”
You can watch the full one-hour-and-21-second debate via YouTube below, or by clicking this link.
