In a city where political endorsements can be a one-way ticket to getting elected, Genevieve Taft-Vazquez is choosing the road less traveled.
A former sustainability director at Coca-Cola, the Lower Riviera mom-of-three is vying for a competitive seat with a grassroots campaign to represent the district she grew up in for Santa Barbara City Council.
“I was born and raised in this district,” Taft-Vazquez said. “I’m very tied to this district. It is not some place I’m dipping in and leaving.”
In District 4, an area that encompasses the Santa Barbara Mission, San Roque and the Riviera—mostly single-family homeowners—Taft-Vasquez is trying to pull off the ultimate upset: beat the Santa Barbara County Democratic Party- and the Santa Barbara Independent-endorsed candidate by crafting a campaign as an everyday folksy Santa Barbara resident who is selected by the people, not the Party.
She faces the perceived frontrunner Devon Wardlow, a Santa Barbara Planning Commissioner, who has racked up a wealth of endorsements from organizations. Also in the race is Monte Wilson, a retired Oracle tech executive, and Jason Dominguez, a former Santa Barbara City Councilman in District 1— a seat he was ousted from.
It’s a fierce and intense battle for attention from organizations, the media, and ultimately—voters.
On the issues, Taft-Vazquez opposes the city’s rent stabilization ordinance, supports State Street’s closure to cars until the Master Plan is built out, and wants more housing downtown.
Taft-Vazquez was born and raised in the Lower Riviera neighborhood of Santa Barbara. She grew up on Farella Road with three siblings in a house her parents bought for $32,000, just blocks away from where she lives now.
Her mother was an oil painter and her father was a middle school teacher who came to Santa Barbara with dreams of joining an Olympic decathlon track team.
She graduated from Yale University and began a career in corporate sustainability and ethics upon graduating, which took her from The Gap in San Francisco to Coca-Cola in Washington, D.C. She also worked for a nonprofit labor organization in Bolivia, where she met her now-husband, Carlos. Although she grew up in Santa Barbara, Taft-Vazquez was gone for 24 years, and moved back to Santa Barbara in 2019. They have three children together.
Currently a member of the city’s neighborhood advisory council, Taft-Vazquez said she is running for city council to act on issues that will impact her children and the next generation of Santa Barbara residents.
“I’m raising three kids here and I want them to have the opportunity to come back and live here and be proud of Santa Barbara,” Taft-Vazquez said.
As a political outsider, Taft-Vazquez portrays herself as a coalition-builder focused on compromise and being proactive rather than hardcore ideology, informed by her experience as a District 4 native and corporate professional.
She said she wants a pedestrian-friendly and arts-filled State Street, affordable housing downtown, greater youth outreach and strong wildfire preparation.
From her political flyers to endorsements, the former Coca-Cola executive is running a campaign that portrays herself as the local District 4 neighbor ready to make change.
Her launch party boasted wine and art from District 4 residents and was held at Art & Soul, an art gallery also owned by a fellow district-four resident. Even Taft-Vazquez’s “get-out-the-vote” postcards were designed by Olivia Joffrey, a District 4 artist.
As a political matter, Taft-Vazquez said she is more focused on garnering support from residents in her district, even though she previously sought endorsements from highly influential groups like the Santa Barbara County Democratic Party, Democratic Women of Santa Barbara County and the Santa Barbara Women’s Political Committee, and did not get them.
“I love the grassroots,” Taft-Vazquez said. “I’m embracing that.”
Taft-Vazquez faces her toughest competition from Wardlow, the head of public policy at an out-of-state AI traffic camera company and a planning commissioner for the city. Wardlow has racked up an impressive slate of endorsements, including from the Democratic party-affiliated groups once sought by Taft-Vazquez.
However, Taft-Vazquez did not seem to be phased by her opponent’s hard backing from those groups.
“What I have noticed is that certain forces want to really push an agenda, and they will use one person to push that agenda, not necessarily paying attention to all of the things that they have done or that they represent,” Taft-Vazquez said.
She blasted the broader endorsement process for being responsible for the dysfunction she sees on city council and said that political endorsements are not the best standard for assessing a quality candidate.
Taft-Vazquez doubled-down on her plea to voters to do their research on candidates instead of blindly going with the party’s pick.
“Voters deserve to know all of the candidates and what their background is,” Taft-Vazquez said. “I don’t like this idea of shifting careers right before an election because that wasn’t a good look.”
When asked who she was referring to, Taft-Vazquez took a not-so-subtle dig at Wardlow.
“I am referring to another candidate who switched jobs, I think in April, from cannabis into an AI camera,” Taft-Vazquez said.
Though Taft-Vazquez has not served in local government, she sees that as an asset. She said the new city council will likely consist of a majority who’ve had local government experience and that a different perspective is needed.
But she also assured that working with government agencies and building coalitions is not foreign to her. At a recent District 4 debate, Taft-Vazquez said she’s the one who brought Pepsi and Coca-Cola to the same table, and would bring the same collaborative spirit to city council.
As a solution to the city’s affordable housing crisis, Taft-Vazquez said she supports building more housing downtown, especially what she refers to as the “missing middle” options like duplexes and triplexes.
She said she does not support the city’s rent stabilization ordinance to cap rent at 60% CPI because it would negatively impact the many district four residents who depend on collecting rent on their properties as a source of income.
“When they’re looking at this ordinance, they’re thinking, ‘oh my gosh, I’m going to sell my property or I’m going to leave it vacant,’” Taft-Vazquez said.
Instead, she said she’d support a rental escrow, protections around evictions and living conditions, and locking in a two-year rental rate. She said the city should focus on building the 2,000 units zoned downtown, look for vacant properties where more housing can be built, and consider private funding for a local housing trust fund.
She criticized a recent proposal to build an eight-story apartment behind the Mission for being an eyesore and in the middle of a critical wildfire evacuation route, and said she supports no building in high-fire zones. Other wildfire preparedness measures she backed include putting a paramedic on firetrucks and using AI technology to help residents fire-proof their homes.
Taft-Vazquez is also a self-proclaimed lover of the arts, and thinks more arts programming can be the solution to revitalizing State Street.
“I think we are our best selves when we’re together, gathered, and usually it’s around some sort of fun arts programming,” Taft-Vazquez said. She said the success of programming like summer movies at the Santa Barbara County Courthouse, pianos on State Street and the Masq(p)arade can bring economic vitality downtown.
“The more you can just physically draw people there, the more you’re going to have this virtual cycle of economic development,” Taft-Vazquez said.
She supports the city’s plan to transform State Street into a pedestrian friendly downtown corridor, outlined in the State Street Master Plan, and criticized the city for stalling on the issue for six years.
Currently raising three young adults in Santa Barbara, Taft-Vazquez said she wants youth to be more involved in decisions that will ultimately impact them, pointing to e-bike safety as an example.
She said her son, Carlos, inspired her to run for city council. Carlos served as the student board member for the Santa Barbara Unified School district last school year.
“He would come home from these school board meetings and sometimes it’d be like 11:00 at night, but he was super energized by the whole process,” Taft-Vazquez said.
She’s recently spotlighted student activists like Ethan Maday on her social media page and hopes to get more youth like him energized to participate in politics.
“I really want to focus on the youth vote because one, it’s for them,” Taft-Vazquez said. “They do have a voice. They should feel like they are empowered.”
