Loretta Redd’s excitement radiated.
Standing on a bench in the cool ocean air amid a sea of campaign signs, the political hopeful greeted 40 supporters and launched her 2005 run for Santa Barbara City Council.
“I wish you could feel my heart right now,” she told the crowd that May day at Shoreline Park.
Ms. Redd—who counted psychologist, U.S. Air Force officer, nonprofit executive, activist and novelist among her titles and accomplishments—died April 11 from liver cancer. She was 77.
Ms. Redd stood out as one of those rare figures who knew people everywhere she went, a quiet volunteer and a giving playmaker who fell only 1,598 votes short of South Coast political immortality.
Confidants and admirers plan to memorialize her at 5 p.m. Saturday in the Mural Room at the Santa Barbara County Courthouse.
“She lived a huge and beautiful life,” said Catherine Remak, her best friend.
‘A secret key to every tunnel’
A relative political unknown, Ms. Redd attended council meetings for two years, quietly taking notes, before entering the race at the urging of former Mayor Harriet Miller, one of her earliest connections in local politics.
Ms. Redd had served on the city Water Commission and Sign Committee. But now she competed with seven other candidates including incumbents Iya Falcone and Roger Horton in a high-profile race for three council seats.
“I am an independent voice for this city. I’m not an insider,” she told a reporter at the time.
Independently wealthy, the onetime bodybuilder had moved to the city five years prior. And although she initially contemplated running for mayor against the incumbent Marty Blum, her relative newcomer status dissuaded her.
Back then council members were chosen at large, not by district. Ms. Redd led early fundraising in the race, and she won a key endorsement from the persuasive Santa Barbara Women’s Political Committee.
Like other influential go-getters, Helene Schneider got to know the upstart politico through the committee.
“She must have had a secret key to every tunnel under the city,” said Schneider, who’d won a council seat in 2003 and later became mayor in 2010. “She was everywhere… every type of community event that you can imagine.”
As the race unfolded, Ms. Redd carved out a unique lane that reflected her sensibilities, combining fiscally conservative positions with socially liberal bonafides.
Could it take her all the way?
From the Deep South to the South Coast
Born and raised in Atlanta, Ms. Redd had graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Georgia State University before joining the Air Force in 1979, rising to the rank of captain.
Following her military service, she returned to Georgia, and she earned a doctorate from Georgia State in educational psychology.
In the early to mid 1990s in Atlanta, she was executive director of Project Open Hand, serving meals to people living with AIDS.
A move to the Bay Area followed, and Ms. Redd became executive director of the Horizons Foundation, at the time providing support services to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
Ms. Redd during that time also served as a board member for the Elton John AIDS Foundation and the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. She helped bring the quilt’s more than 40,000 panels to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., a 1996 event that drew 1.2 million people.
Like so many visitors to Santa Barbara, Ms. Redd became infatuated with the city and shortly afterward relocated.
‘How to say no loudly’
Ms. Redd at times during the council race found herself fending off criticism that she was out of touch, largely due to her opposition to a living wage ordinance. She said the money would be better spent on child care, alternative transportation or similar programs.
“Standing up and saying yes is always easy,” Ms. Redd said during the campaign. “Saying no sometimes is not.”
Along the way, her run suffered when several Democratic groups backed other candidates.
Ms. Redd did secure a coveted endorsement from the Santa Barbara Police Officers Association. The cops picked her over candidate Grant House, who received other endorsements she missed.
“Safety was a big issue for her,” recalled Mike McGrew, a longtime Santa Barbara Police detective and major crimes investigator who for years led the association.
Ms. Redd’s military background also factored heavily, McGrew said last week. “What stood out about her was her heart for the people who served. She really displayed a commitment to that.”
Perhaps the strongest affirmation came from Miller, who’d presided over the council from 1995 to 2001.
The former mayor days before the election wrote a letter to the editor of the Santa Barbara News-Press in support of Horton, Falcone and Ms. Redd, her three picks.
“My last and most important vote is for Loretta,” Miller wrote. “Loretta brings a wealth of experience in management, budget and finance that our city needs. She is smart and studies the issues for herself. She will be a strong advocate to preserve neighborhoods, and she knows how to say no loudly and clearly when appropriate.”
With the final vote tallied, Horton finished first with 20.05% of the vote. Falcone took second with 18.89%.
House claimed third with 16.74%, edging out Ms. Redd by 1,598 votes. She earned 14.29%.
‘Just totally giving and compassionate’
Ms. Redd had lost the council race. But along the way she gained a best friend in Remak, the popular morning host on K-LITE 101.7.
“She just walked into the radio station one day,” Remak said, recalling that Ms. Redd arrived unannounced to see if she could finagle a campaign interview.
Federal rules mandating equal air time for political candidates prevented such an off-the-cuff opportunity, Remak responded.
Still, the pair followed the encounter with lunch, which led to a round of golf.
Before long they’d developed a bond that Remak said felt like family.
“I would describe her as just totally giving and compassionate,” Remak said, adding Ms. Redd also grew close to Remak’s brother, her son and her husband, Santa Barbara County District Attorney John Savrnoch.
With her failed run for office behind her, Ms. Redd from 2006 to 2009 was executive director of the Central Coast Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association. She later served as interim executive director of Domestic Violence Solutions.
“Her leadership with us was really caring, really empowering,” said friend Arlene Stepputat, who worked under Ms. Redd at the association, where they met.
When it became clear that a novel idea Stepputat championed—training inmates to care for their fellow prisoners suffering dementia—might have a big positive impact, Ms. Redd greenlit a new program now replicated nationally.
“She without blinking an eye said yes,” Stepputat said. “That was Loretta’s leadership.”
Ms. Redd volunteered extensively for Planned Parenthood and the Visiting Nurse Association, now called VNA Health, in addition to volunteering as a board member and docent for the Santa Barbara Courthouse Legacy Foundation, and as a docent at Bellosguardo.
Another shot
Five years after her original candidacy, political office enticed Ms. Redd one more time.
She and 45 other hopefuls in 2010 applied to fill the remainder of the City Council term vacated by Das Williams, after he won election to the California State Assembly.
The vote didn’t swing her way. The remaining council members chose now-Mayor Randy Rowse over Ms. Redd and seven other finalists.
Yet for Ms. Redd, the ensuing years instead brought new opportunities.
In 2012, she published “Unjust by Coincidence,” a 318-page courtroom mystery set in San Francisco.
She married Napa Valley wine industry executive Vivien Gay in 2016. The New York Times announced their wedding, but the relationship was short lived.
In 2022 Ms. Redd published another novel, “Front Row Rebel,” 310 pages of historical fiction inspired by her grandfather, who managed the Fox Theatre in Atlanta during the transition from silent films to ‘talkies’, Remak said.
‘Strong Southern women’
Long before she’d written a book, Ms. Redd penned numerous letters to the editor. During the early 2000s, she frequently wrote op-ed columns for the News-Press Voices section.
A search of the resurrected news organization’s nascent digital archive, which is not yet public, revealed nearly three dozen such missives and articles, and there were possibly more. More recently, Ms. Redd contributed to Noozhawk.
Politics—national, state and, of course, local—regularly grabbed her attention.
She discussed housing, diversity and prescription drugs. Veterans, presidents, the homeless and the mentally ill. SpaceX rocket launches and e-bikes.
And she never shied from pointed words.
Her politics and her roots entwined on Sept. 11, 2002, in a News-Press column “Southern belles know all about war.” Ms. Redd criticized the Bush administration as it attempted to prepare the nation for Operation Iraqi Freedom.
“I count myself among strong Southern women who prefer the use of charm to that of confrontation, though we can toss up an impenetrable shield faster than swatting a mosquito,” she wrote.
“Call me a steel magnolia, but there’s nothing like threats to the lives of our children to take me to the streets. The president continues to say he hasn’t decided on whether to invade Iraq, but Southern women know when they’re being lied to.”
Ms. Redd sometimes simply had a little fun, like in 2002 when she wrote about hitting a hole-in-one at Santa Barbara Golf Club.
“I was lucky enough to send a little white ball onto the green and watch it disappear into hole 13. Though only 83 yards long, (I probably could have thrown it in), it was my first.”
Her last days: ‘grace and courage’
Later in her life, Ms. Redd came to believe that never serving on the council turned out for the best, Remak said.
“It freed her up to do all these other things that she could do for the community. She was okay with it.”
Ms. Redd’s illness progressed quickly after her February diagnosis.
The tumor was so large that doctors determined it was inoperable, Remak said.
Some of Ms. Redd’s last public actions included volunteering with the activist group Indivisible Santa Barbara.
Her work with the organization included assisting as a marshal, on a team of people in bright vests who guide protest marches, de-escalate heated moments and bridge the gap between the public and law enforcement.
Former Mayor Schneider last saw Ms. Redd wearing her marshal’s vest at a late January candlelight vigil and demonstration. It was a response to the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Veterans Affairs intensive care nurse Alex Pretti at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis.
“I just really found her to be a woman of integrity, even though on a lot of policy issues we were not necessarily aligned,” Schneider said. “We could disagree without being disagreeable.
“It’s such a lost art nowadays, and she practiced that throughout her life.”
By all accounts, Ms. Redd faced the full weight of her terminal condition head on.
Remak moved in with Ms. Redd during the last two months of her life, to help care for her day after day.
“There wasn’t anything that went unsaid,” Remak said. “Loretta faced her impending death the same way she faced life, with grace and courage.”
