A little more than a year ago, Santa Barbara City Councilman Eric Friedman suffered a heart attack.
He was paddling at sea near the Santa Barbara Yacht Club when his heart gave out. His team members on the Santa Barbara Outrigger Canoe Club paddled him back to the beach. A couple of his friends and a retired firefighter from Los Angeles who was walking by performed CPR and revived him before an ambulance crew arrived.
Friedman doesn’t remember any of it. But the experience changed him, and how he approaches his life, family, work—and public service.
“Every day is now a bonus day,” Friedman said.
That second chance at life he helped fuel his bid for mayor on the Santa Barbara City Council.
Friedman, a longtime Democrat who worked for Salud Carbajal when he was a member of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors, is possibly 17 days away from becoming Santa Barbara’s next mayor.
Once considered a longshot candidate, Friedman in recent weeks has experienced a sudden surge in popularity after winning influential endorsements and staying steady in focus and message as a candidate who will listen and make compromises if it’s for the overall good of the city.
He has peaked at the right time, but can he hold on against a still strong rival opponent Kristen Sneddon, once considered the favorite?
Wendy Sims-Moten, the former chair of the Santa Barbara Unified School Board is also running for mayor.
In the topsy-turvy world of Santa Barbara politics, anything can happen, but Friedman, in this moment, is the candidate with the shine and the wind at his back.
As mayor, he said he would listen to different perspectives and attempt to reach a place of mutual understanding, even when disagreements arise.
It’s an approach he’s asking voters to trust in as the city struggles with a variety of challenges.
Housing costs remain high. City finances have been strained. And after years of debate, the future of State Street has sparked deep division in the community.
Friedman isn’t making any promises to settle those disputes single-handedly. Instead, his campaign centers on his ability to bring people together—an approach he says has helped move projects forward.
With three new councilmembers coming into office, Friedman believes his roughly 25 years of government experience could assist in transforming competing ideas into effective implementation.
His political education began in high school with his attendance at Boys State, an American Legion-sponsored government program. He would later spend 14 years working for Santa Barbara County supervisors Naomi Schwartz and Salud Carbajal, earn a master’s degree in public administration, and serve on the city’s Harbor Commission and Library Board.
Friedman took office in January 2018, with his swearing-in falling on the same day as the deadly Montecito debris flow.
Nearly nine years later, Friedman splits his working life between the council dais and the aisles of Trader Joe’s on De La Vina Street, where the occasional customer recognizes him and strikes up a conversation about city politics.
“Most people don’t. They’re there shopping, so I don’t bring it up,” Friedman said. But when someone does approach him with a concern, he’s happy to talk.
“If they want to get into a more deep conversation, I always offer that, you know,” Friedman said. “Just send me an email, and I’ll be glad to meet with you as a city council member.”
During his tenure at City Hall, Friedman says the renovation of Library Plaza and the city’s investments in affordable housing are examples of what cooperation can accomplish.
A former president of the Library Foundation, Friedman spent years advocating for improvements to the plaza prior to joining the council. Once elected, he assisted in securing funding and advancing the public-private partnership behind the renovation.
He also points to the Local Housing Trust Fund, which was formally established in 2024 using nearly $2.9 million allocated by the City Council in 2022, and has helped support affordable housing developments, including a 45-unit project on South Hope Avenue. He and councilwoman Meagan Harmon worked together to establish the Trust Fund.
Friedman has served on the city’s Finance Committee and most recently as chair. He said he would continue to bring fiscal responsibility to the council.
When Santa Barbara received $22 million in federal pandemic relief funding, Friedman said he worked with the city’s finance director to put $11 million of it into reserves rather than new spending. The city later set aside another $6 million from a roughly $12 million budget surplus.
“So right off the bat, that’s $17 million of responsible budgeting,” Friedman said.
He also highlighted a pension trust fund initially supported with $2 million, which he said has now grown to nearly $3 million.
But the city still found itself facing a major budget shortfall.
Friedman said the Finance Committee and city staff reviewed more than 200 recommendations to close the gap, and ultimately produced a balanced budget with a small surplus.
He said that the city had to put rebuilding the reserves on hold until it could find a way to address its ongoing expenses.
He also acknowledged that there were some decisions that could have come sooner.
“I think we could have looked at our expenditures a little earlier on, as a whole, on the council, when we were in labor negotiations,” he said.
On budget matters, he is often in the minority, on the losing side of 4-3 votes. He voted against the city budget two years ago because he disagreed with how the majority of the council was spending money.
Friedman also has ideas about how to raise revenues.
Friedman said within his first 100 days, he would bring together business leaders and economic experts to explore ways to diversify the local economy in ways that go beyond tourism and technology.
He has drawn opposition from the Santa Barbara Tenants Union for his opposition to the city’s rent stabilization ordinance, and his acceptance of campaign contributions from real estate interests.
Friedman voted against the rent stabilization measure, contending that caps on rent increases could discourage investment and lead smaller “mom and pop” landlords to sell and raise rents for properties not covered by the ordinance.
He said the answer to the housing crisis is to develop more housing, and points to affordable developments already underway and plans to convert the former Nordstrom property downtown into apartments.
But new housing takes years to build, leaving open the question of what immediate relief Friedman could offer renters struggling with rising costs.
“Many of the renters cannot wait a year or two for these projects to come online,” he said.
His alternatives include incentives for local landlords to lower rents, legal assistance for tenants and housing mediation services.
Friedman also pointed to concerns from local housing developers as well as research on rent policies as reasons for his opposition.
Despite his vote against the ordinance, he said he would be willing to negotiate changes to it rather than rejecting the process in its entirety.
That’s the same attitude he has on State Street.
Friedman supported the city’s State Street Master Plan but advocated for a shorter, four-block pedestrian promenade rather than the longer closure envisioned for downtown.
He said conversations with officials in Boulder, Colorado, and Burlington, Vermont, reinforced his belief that starting smaller would make the promenade easier to maintain and give the city the opportunity to demonstrate success before potential expansion.
But when he proposed a four-block closure during the council’s September meeting, none of his colleagues seconded the motion.
Friedman now wonders whether he could have done more to build support for the compromise.
He also acknowledges that the city has fallen short in addressing the concerns of businesses outside the downtown core.
“They feel like we’ve done very little for them, and I can’t disagree with that,” Friedman said.
Friedman, who has also served on nonprofit boards, including the Library Foundation, CALM and Fighting Back, said working those worlds has taught him how to work towards shared goals. He believes its a quality that separates him from his opponents.
“I am willing to work with all sides on an issue to bring everyone together,” Friedman said.
