There’s drama in District 1.

Incumbent Alejandra Gutierrez is seeking another term on the Santa Barbara City Council but faces challenges from a political newcomer and a familiar face to local elections.

Wendy Santamaria, a labor organizer, and Cruzito Herrera Cruz, a certified tax preparer, are looking to win the District 1 seat, which includes the Eastside, Milpas Street, portions of downtown on the mountainside of State Street, and the Funk Zone. 

The issue of rent control and tenant rights have dominated the talk during the campaign. Gutierrez has much support from property owners and Santamaria from tenants. The two are opposites on many of the issues.

Santamaria has criticized Gutierrez on multiple fronts. Gutierrez consistently points to the fact that she grew up locally and has been invested in the community her entire life, drawing a contrast to Santamaria, who grew up in Southern California’s Inland Empire. 

Alejandra Gutierrez

Incumbent Gutierrez said she wants another term to finish what she started. She believes she has brought a new voice to City Hall and represented the Eastside in ways no council member has before her.

“I am a leader who isn’t afraid to take very important stances, even when they aren’t popular,” Gutierrez said at a recent candidates forum, “especially for a district like (mine) that doesn’t always have representation in our City Council meetings.”

She is against the proposed half-cent sales tax that the city supports on the November ballot. She opposes a rent stabilization or rent control ordinance to cap rent increases. She also wants the city to invest more into the Eastside, and specifically Milpas Street. She opposed parking increases earlier this year because she was concerned about how that would affect low-income residents. 

She has been a proponent of opening part of State Street back to vehicles, suggesting from Canon Perdido up at a recent council meeting.

Gutierrez was once the rising star of the Santa Barbara County Democratic Central Committee, whose activist board members rallied behind her to unseat then-incumbent Jason Dominguez. Gutierrez won by eight votes, a margin she attributes to her deep roots in the community.

She has since split from the Democratic Party and found support with some conservatives, largely because of her opposition to rent control in Santa Barbara. Her opponent, Santamaria, is strongly pushing a 2% cap on rent increases annually, and Gutierrez has adamantly opposed such a measure.

Her opposition to a rent cap has upset tenants and tenant advocates, and there’s an organized effort, both publicly and behind the scenes, to oust her from office. The tension is so bad that Gutierrez last month issued a press release saying she has been the victim of massive sign theft.

“We welcome and celebrate democracy, debate and conversations among neighbors about the issues that concern us all,” Gutierrez said. “We believe in and wholeheartedly embrace fair elections. Our campaign does not tolerate this behavior at any time. I hope all who support other candidates do so without vandalizing the homes and businesses who have chosen to support our re-election campaign. Let the best candidate win.”

Gutierrez also is facing criticism for missing dozens of City Council meetings. Her opponents have provided the media with a list of 70 meetings that she either missed or was late to during her first term on the City Council. Gutierrez has flat-out said she was dealing with a serious and private medical problem during that time and that is why she missed so many meetings.

Gutierrez said she doesn’t mind that her support has shifted in the first term.

“For locals who have been born and raised here, I have said it over and over, most of the time locals feel part of our neighborhoods, but not part of the larger community,” Gutierrez said.

Born and raised in Santa Barbara, Gutierrez didn’t try for an interview with the Democratic Party, but she did get the endorsement of the Democratic Women of Santa Barbara County. Santa Barbara Mayor Randy Rowse also is supporting her. 

“When you have a party that at one time supported a Democrat, a young Latina Democrat from the district that wasn’t polished to be a politician and now they are against her,” Gutierrez said. “No, we need to vote for leaders who are going to vote for the needs of the people and not political agendas.”

Gutierrez seems to relish the challenge. Her website quotes the late rapper Nipsey Hussle:

“The game will test you
never fold
stay ten toes down
it’s not on you,
it’s in you,
and what’s in you
they can never take away!”

At a recent candidates forum, Gutierrez explained why she believes she should be re-elected.

“I have experience,” Gutierrez said. “I was born here. I have skin in the game. My roots are here in this city. I want to finish what I started. I believe the city is in a very critical position.”

She said the housing crisis has divided the city.

“It is important to bring the community together,” she said, “and I have been doing that for the past two decades.”

Gutierrez worked for the Santa Barbara Unified School District mentoring high school students until she left that job a year ago. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she worked with developer Ed St. George and set up after-school pods for students at the community center on the Eastside.

Like Santamaria, Gutierrez is a UCSB graduate. She wants to do more for youth, including creating a Youth & Family Resource Center to provide after-school programs. 

Wendy Santamaria

Santamaria is a labor organizer for UCSB, a former organizer with CAUSE, the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy, and a tenant rights advocate. She moved from the Inland Empire to south Santa Barbara County eight years ago to attend UCSB and has lived in Santa Barbara for four years.

“I have had to move housing units every one to two years due to rent increases, but I’ve been here since 2016,” Santamaria said.

She is a strong advocate for a rent cap of 2%. She has deep ties to the Santa Barbara Tenants Union, CAUSE and Santa Barbara’s new generation of young, community activists. She has been endorsed by the Santa Barbara County Democratic Party. 

Gutierrez frequently talks on the campaign trail about how she grew up in Santa Barbara, to contrast her with Santamaria, saying she is solely focused on rent stabilization and lacks range as a candidate.

Santamaria told Noozhawk that she is a much more well-rounded candidate than that. 

She said she wants to cut red tape for small businesses to get permits, protect the businesses in the Funk Zone and invest in the Milpas corridor.

“As a working-class Latina, I’ve spent years organizing along with countless other working families in our community to address the housing crisis, the need for additional support for local businesses, and the need to invest more resources in our beloved Eastside,” Santamaria said.

She is no stranger to City Hall. She has showed up over the years at council meetings to advocate on behalf of tenants and housing issues. As a former employee of CAUSE, she carved out a reputation as a strong advocate for working families and affordable housing. 

“The No. 1 difference that there would be, would be that I would show up,” Santamaria said at a recent candidates forum. “I would be with community. I would be present at the important meetings to appoint our city administrator. I would be there for all the budget discussions.”

Santamaria in interviews and at candidate forums has attempted to portray Gutierrez as absent. She campaigned for Gutierrez five years ago.

“While many of us worked incredibly hard to get our current council member elected, we’ve been deeply disappointed in her refusal to meet with the community, the consistent absences and her resistance to accountability from the voters who elected her,” Santamaria said. “I have decided to run for City Council because my neighbors and I deserve a representative that is present, responsive, willing to meet people where they’re at and not shy away from accountability from the community.”

Santamaria said she wants to address the housing crisis through a rent cap, but also by creating a rental registry to keep track of rent increases and the habitability status of units.

Santamaria also supports the proposed sales tax, a vacancy tax on houses left idle and project labor agreements. If elected, she said she wants to work with the Public Works Department to update the city’s storm drainage infrastructure, re-enforce creeks to avoid overflow into neighborhoods, and partner with the Community Environmental Council and other environmental leaders to establish neighborhood microgrids of clean energy, to create affordable, clean, locally sourced energy.

She has been endorsed by the Santa Barbara City Firefighters Association, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund and Service Employees International Union Local 620.

Cruzito Herrera Cruz

Cruz did not respond to Noozhawk’s request for an interview or to questions sent through email. This is the seventh time he has run for the City Council in the past couple of decades.

Cruz is also a lifelong Santa Barbara resident. He works as a certified tax preparer.

“I have saved many taxpayers in my district thousands and thousands of dollars because I do good service,” Cruz said at a recent League of Women Voters forum. 

Cruz said he wants to help renters. 

“We have to have current tenant protections because the current tenant protections we have don’t go far enough to protect the renters,” Cruz said. “This would improve the homelessness crisis by preventing evictions of low-income, extremely low-income individuals in the community.”

The election is Nov. 5.

Noozhawk will report on Districts 2 and 3 Wednesday and Thursday of this week.