In this era of partisan politics, there’s Randy Rowse, a low-key, mustachioed dad who never had any intention of getting into politics. He walked into City Hall on a chilly afternoon in December 2010 as a businessman and walked out in the evening as a member of the Santa Barbara City Council.
After nine years on the council, Rowse stepped down on Jan. 7, a victim of term limits, with his conscience and peace of mind intact. That’s no easy feat for most politicians.
“What would keep me awake at night might be a 65-year-old bladder, but it sure wasn’t because I had some pressure from some party or some union telling me to vote a certain way,” Rowse told Noozhawk.
At a time when the collective makeup of the City Council is getting younger, less experienced and increasingly more partisan, Rowse represented the old-school moderate who tried to cast votes based on his internal voice, not those who might help him politically down the road. While he often has been accused of being a conservative, Rowse has never registered as a Republican, and said he was a Democrat for most of his life until what he described as labor groups and the Democratic Party becoming one entity.
“Now that the party and the employee unions have become one, basically, all over California, but intensely here in town, it’s a tough influence, the strangest quid pro I think I have ever seen,” Rowse said. “I could take $10,000 from you as a head of a union and then be elected and turn around and negotiate your salary two weeks later. I’ve never understood why that works out.”
Rowse’s rise from restaurant owner to elected official involved some good luck and fortunate timing.
Das Williams won a seat in the California State Assembly, leaving a vacancy on the City Council. Forty-six people applied to fill the seat. The ensemble of applicants for the seat was an embarrassment of riches. Former Mayor Sheila Lodge, former City Councilman Brian Barnwell, then-Citizens Planning Association president Naomi Kovacs and mediator John Jostes were among the most formidable applicants.
The vote came down to Lodge and Rowse as finalists, and Councilman Grant House cast the final vote to break a 3-3 tie to select Rowse.
“There were some really good people,” Rowse said. “I wouldn’t have even chose me out of that field.”
Rowse had made a name for himself in political circles as a member of the downtown parking committee. He also owned the Paradise Cafe, across the street from City Hall and the Santa Barbara New-Press. His restaurant was the go-to lunch spot for decades for the nearby business and government crowd. In the evening, Santa Barbara residents such as Steve Martin and Jonathan Winters occasionally held court in the bar, telling jokes and conversing with the patrons. Rowse himself was often the life of the party, greeting guests and striking up chatter with the regulars.
Rowse bought the Paradise Cafe in 1983, and not unlike his journey on the City Council, stumbled into restaurant ownership a bit inadvertently. He and his original business partner were fraternity brothers at UCSB. They worked as bartenders and waiters at Chuck’s Steakhouse to pay their way through school. He bounced around through jobs after college, at Jasper’s Saloon in Goleta, as a retail manager in Bakersfield, and again at Chuck’s.
One night, he and his business partner, Kevin, were having some “mediocre Mexican food” at La Paloma Cafe, when they started talking to the cook.
“We were having a conversation with her, and the next thing we knew, the landlady leased the building to us and off we went,” Rowse said.
He fought to keep the neon sign, which he changed from La Paloma to Paradise Cafe.
With fewer restaurants and competition, and the fact that he had the only oak grill at the time, the Paradise Cafe was an instant hit.
“We became the nice, cool place,” Rowse said. “People called us the yuppie bar.”
As the business thrived, he got his eye more on City Hall. Rowse took a greater interest in the success of downtown and the retail area.
“I was always a career finger-wagger from across the street,” Rowse said.
Rowse was appointed on Dec. 14, 2010, and then was elected twice to the City Council. He said he enjoyed the public service aspect the most, especially when regular people would call in with a problem and he would fix it. He prided himself on casting votes on a case-by-case basis and avoiding political gamesmanship.
“I never had a three votes away kind of chess game going on,” Rowse said. “I always voted on the issue itself.”
City Councilwoman Meagan Harmon said Rowse was a mentor to her on the City Council.
“In this day and age, when we are all so dug in and things can feel so intractable, Randy is an amazing example of our ability to actually engage in new ideas and to have hard coversations, and to do so without losing sight of our own true North,” Harmon said. “Even in our most heated debates, Councilmember Rowse treats me, and most importantly my ideas, with fundamental respect. He listens, he engages, he asks questions.”
Rowse, particularly in his final couple of years on the council, found himself increasingly voting in the minority. He cast votes against the ban of plastic straws, and he opposed former Councilman Gregg Hart’s project labor agreement, which he called “the gates of hell.” The project labor agreement would require the city to hire unionized labor on construction projects worth $5 million or more.
“That, to me, represents doing things for you or your party,” Rowse said.
He opposed the council’s move to district elections, raising concerns that it would weaken the strength of the overall pool of candidates applying for the City Council. In fact, both Oscar Gutierrez and Harmon were automatically re-elected in November because they had no challenges from their district on the ballot.
He’s proud of his efforts to boost the ambassador program downtown, where volunteers in uniform help keep the peace downtown, and vote to halt mandator zoning information reports. Mostly, however, he took solace in his nonpartisan approach. Still, he’s worried about California, which he said has gone “off the rails.” The state’s housing mandates, he said, are untenable.
“You could build a million homes and not solve homelessness because you haven’t handled the addiction issue, you haven’t handled the disillusion of the family structure issues, and all those things, and nor are you equipped to as a government agency,” Rowse said.
Now that Rowse is off the council, he’s back on the market. He recently also sold his Paradise Cafe restaurant, but said he’s looking for work in community relations.
Government and politics aren’t necessarily off the table either, according to Rowse. If term limits didn’t exist, he said he would have run for office again. No matter what he does, he plans to approach his options with a sense of transparency.
“I did enjoy the work,” Rowse said. “I never looked back or forward or thought about whether a vote would help me later. I enjoyed being involved in the community. I did enjoy being responsible to individual people.”
— Noozhawk staff writer Joshua Molina can be reached at jmolina@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.