This January, for the first time in 21 years, Das Williams won’t be an elected official.

In this Part 1 episode of Santa Barbara Talks with Josh Molina, Williams, a controversial figure in recent years, talks about the early part of his career, from shaking up Santa Barbara City Hall to then getting elected to the California State Assembly.

Two decades ago, he was elected to the Santa Barbara City Council. He served seven years on the City Council, six years in the State Assembly, then eight on the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. In March of this year, he lost his re-election bid to Roy Lee, a Carpinteria City Councilman.

In this episode, Williams talks about how he got his start in politics, what led him to run for City Council, and his time in the Assembly.

He also shares some new details on his past, including how he worked for an internet startup company in the late 1990s, and that he was asked by Karen Bass, now the mayor of Los Angeles, to run for a U.S. Congressional seat in Ventura County while he was a member of the State Assembly.

Williams, a child of divorced parents, lived a scattered life growing up. He bounced around homes in Isla Vista, Paso Robles and Ojai. He had little supervision, he said.

“I was not the easiest kid to talk to because I moved so much,” Williams said. “I didn’t have a whole lot of friends.”

But in high school, he said, he always wanted to do the most to protect the environment.

“I was weirdly precocious, very annoying to my friends about why they should be adhering to strong environmental values when they are 15,” he said. “I was militant. I wanted to convince my friends to all get sufficient training to stop the illegal logging in the Amazon that was destroying indigenous communities in the rainforest, by force. That is what I wanted to do when I was 15.”

Check out Part 1 of this conversation with Williams by clicking on the YouTube link above and hear Williams and Molina talk about politics, ambition, ego, their own relationship, Isla Vista, grudges, getting along, mistakes and successes, among many other topics.

In Part 2 of the episode, Williams and Molina will talk about his supervisorial years, including cannabis, the media, controversies, his life and his future.

Joshua Molina is journalist who currently writes for Noozhawk and teaches journalism at Santa Barbara City College. He formerly covered politics and land use for the San Jose Mercury News. Santa Barbara Talks is an independently owned podcast where Molina looks to bring together voices from all perspectives to discuss and provide solutions to the challenges related to housing, education, transportation and other community issues. Subscribe to his podcast here and consider a contribution here.