DP High School shows off new learning center

Good morning, Santa Barbara ☀️

Here’s what we have for you today:

Temperature drop, rain and large swell on deck for Santa Barbara
Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy unveils its new 11,000-square-foot creative learning center
Kristen Sneddon is Santa Barbara’s next mayor
And shoutout to reader Mary Harris, who correctly guessed Thursday’s newsletter question correctly. The answer was “massage therapists.” Thank you for reading and please forward this newsletter to someone and ask them to subscribe!

Joshua Molina

News-Press Editor

Stories you should know about

Bring back the Boss’: Nvidia employees petition for Jensen Huang’s return (Wired)
Fearmongering or fair warning? A fierce debate over how bad California’s El Niño winter will get (Los Angeles Times)

The fall of Jensen Huang: Tracing the undoing of one of the most influential figures in the A.I. boom. (New York Times)

The Microsoft crash

The crash of Microsoft office products forced millions of people on Thursday to stop working—or at least sending email. Check out the stories below to understand the impact and how it devastated the professional workplace.

Microsoft scrambles to fix major outage affecting millions across the world (NBC News)

Major Microsoft Outlook outage leaves people with Email jobs unable to Email (WIRED)
Microsoft’s latest email outage turned into a full blown global cloud crisis (TechCrunch)

The Kristen Sneddon victory

Santa Barbara Mayoral candidate Kristen Sneddon appears on the latest episode of Santa Barbara Talks with Josh Molina. (Photo courtesy Santa Barbara Talks)

Although she was behind on Election Night, Kristen Sneddon pulled ahead as more ballots were counted, and it is now official—she will replace Randy Rowse as mayor of Santa Barbara.

A year ago, it was conventional wisdom that Sneddon would get elected. She served two terms on the council and has always been widely popular with voters. She was outspent in fundraising dollars both times she ran for City Council, but it didn’t matter.

Santa Barbara has a long tradition of female mayors: Sheila Lodge, Harriet Miller, Marty Blum, Helene Schneider and Cathy Murillo, before Rowse was elected. Sneddon, actually, was endorsed by four prior mayors.

Even though Sneddon was the favorite a year ago, when Rowse decided not to run, and Eric Friedman joined the race, it shook things up and the race became competitive. Friedman, like Sneddon is a Democrat, but leans moderate, so he presented voters a choice. Friedman has decades of public service experience and quickly emerged as a formidable challenger.

Although they are both Democrats the two disagreed on two major issues: Rent stabilization and keeping State Street closed. Sneddon supported these ideas, and Friedman opposed.

So, did that make the difference? Probably. But one thing is clear. The Santa Barbara County Democratic Party was essential to Sneddon winning the mayor’s seat. If you are a Democrat, you want the Democratic Party’s endorsement. The group works, and it shows. As is true with every election, volunteers were up at 5 a.m. the day of the election to Get The Vote Out. They made final literature drops at people’s doors. This matters.

Candidates who win are usually strong in three areas: Money, message and organization. And in close races, organization usually matters most. Whether you like Democrats or dislike Democrats, it is undeniable that they know to organize. They do this across multiple weeks during election years, and make active efforts in non-election years to build political power by finding candidates.

Conservatives often complain about all of the perceived problems in the world, but unless it is matched with work on the front lines, it won’t translate to victory on Election Day. It’s simple math: You reach more voters when you work as a team to knock on doors and call voters. Candidates without this infrastructure are fighting an uphill battle that not even money and mailers can overcome.

In one notable exception, Roy Lee upset Democratic Party-backed Das Williams two years ago to win the First District Supervisor’s seat. This was an anomaly, a perfect storm that still needs to be studied. Williams had somehow transformed himself into a political villain over his unwavering support of a badly received county cannabis ordinance—and other factors—while Lee, with the backing of off-the-beat political consultant Wade Cowper, pulled off a stunning upset that still boggles my mind. It should be noted that Lee is also a Democrat.

Democratic Party-endorsed candidates Sneddon, Devon Wardlow, Gabe Escobedo, Ian Baucke and Ricardo Valencia, to name a few, all won election. They all benefitted from the organization of the Democratic Party. Its chair Christian Alonso deserves a lot of credit also.

If conservatives or moderates want to have any chance of building political power, they will need to build an infrastructure that includes a mass effort to knock on doors and reach voters face-to-face. They will need to engage voters every year, not just in election years. Hard work matters. Memes, mailers and money by themselves won’t lead to victory on Election Day.

The Democrats prove this year after year after year.

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