Search Results

Politicians, educators and decent people in Santa Barbara, throughout California and the nation are scrambling to craft political and legal strategies to fight Donald Trump’s termination of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The 46 percent president has called on Congress to decide over the next six months the future of the policy, which has allowed undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children to pursue education and obtain work permits; however, the plain fact is that, at least as of today, the Obama-sponsored program is seriously dead. Trump’s gambit, yet another sop to his hardcore right-wing base, affects about 800,000 people nationwide, nearly 30 percent of them in California, including 9,000 on the Central Coast. You can find a good primer on the whole controversy here. Five takeaways: Murillo in motion. Trump’s move provides both a political challenge and an opportunity for mayoral candidate and city council member Cathy Murillo to demonstrate leadership on a huge issue to the community. Murillo says she’ll be meeting with the Mexican Consul next week, along with a coalition of churches, school district representatives and law enforcement officials, to come up with guidance to offer families with undocumented members at a workshop later in the month. “We will discuss what the state of California can do, legal actions, and how schools and local police can respond to attempts at deportation or removal,” she told me. “It is so cruel for these young people in the program, working and studying, to now be experiencing this.” Murillo also notes that there is a forum on Senate Bill 54, the so-called “ sanctuary state” legislation, scheduled at the Unitarian Society tomorrow night at 7 p.m. Salud’s slip-up. S.B’s freshman congressman Salud Carbajal says he’ll be in the middle of the battle by congressional Democrats to reinstitute and “codify” DACA, as a co-sponsor of the so-called DREAM Act, after the name given to those who have been protected from deportation by the program. Salud also was a headliner at last week’s rally in support of DACA, but he managed to step into the soup in the course of his speech, as the Indy's Hector Sanchez-Castaneda reported: In the middle of Carbajal’s bashing on President Donald Trump, a woman in the crowd shouted, “Fuck that puto,” to which Carbajal laughed and responded. “She said it more adequately.” “Puto” is a strong, derogatory slang term in Spanish, used against homosexual men; it roughly translates to “faggot.” When asked after the rally if he stood by his comment of support, Carbajal vehemently denied supporting the comment. “The statement of what they were trying to say was just ‘be negative toward the president,’” he said. “I’m on the LGBTQ caucus, so it’s not in that framework in which I would condone that statement.” When pressed on his “more adequately” statement, Carbajal said he “kind of thought” the woman might have used another word. Salud’s blood pressure spiked after the Indy published Hector’s story online and he issued a, um, clarification, which probably only seemed as if it was longer than the original story, claiming he was “unfortunately unaware this term was used by the member of the audience that I responded to.” Memo to Salud: Next time, just try saying, “Sorry, screwed up, I apologize.” Two-faced Trump. It’s silly, of course, to look for any rationality, let alone consistency, from the White House on any issue, but the contradictions on DACA are really special. Josh Marshall had an excellent take on this at Talking Points Memo: Last night the White House sent out guidance to offices on Capitol Hill that were clarifyingly stark about what we should be expecting. The memo says quite simply that DACA recipients should use their remaining time with work permits and protection from deportation to prepare to leave the United States. No, six months maybe Congress we’ll solve this, no we’ll see what happens. Just you’re leaving. At the same time, the President himself can’t seem to keep his story straight. The President’s tweet communications have presented his DACA decision as putting the matter into Congress’s lap with the implicit message that DACA is something to be solved. Let me put that more clearly. For diehards like Jeff Sessions and the hardcore anti-immigrants types, this is the solution. There’s nothing for Congress to solve. It’s done. This is the goal. Past is prologue. Back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, I covered Gov. Pete Wilson’s 1994 re-election campaign, when he trumpeted the immigrant-bashing Prop. 187, which sought to deny undocumented people public education and health care, among other benefits. Wilson won his race against Jerry Brown’s sister, Kathleen. going away, but he also inflicted permanent damage on California’s Republican Party among Latino voters; the action taken on DACA by Trump and fellow GOPers almost certainly will have a similar, but much bigger, impact nationally. Rats flee ship. The Democratic Party needs to flip 24 seats in the 2018 midterms to regain control of the House and reclaim a slice of power against the GOP’s current hegemony in Washington. They’ve targeted seats across the country where Hillary Clinton beat Trump, including seven in California, several with large Latino populations. It’s not surprising to find at least a few Republican incumbents, who opposed DACA in the past, running away from Trump on this one, as Sarah Wire of the L.A. Times noted in an excellent round-up: Now that the president is putting the issue on Congress’ agenda, the vulnerable Republicans will be squarely in the center of the debate As the Romans always liked to say, "Auribus Teneo Lupum." -JR .

Angel Martinez, whose biggest political problem is letting voters know he exists, is first off the line with 30-second spots in the crowded race for SB mayor. Martinez has the lowest public profile among the five mayoral wannabes, in a field that includes three incumbent city council members and a former councilman who previously served four terms. Now the wealthy former Deckers Outdoor Corp. CEO is betting that his ads, shown on multiple platforms, will build his name I.D. faster and more effectively than the traditional grind of precinct walking and door knocking. “I’ve got to go wholesale before I go retail,” Martinez told me last week. Beauty shots and bare storefronts. Somewhat surprisingly, neither ad is a classic “bio spot,” which typically provide a rapid-fire recap of a novice candidate’s life experience; instead, both focus on political positioning, seeking to establish Martinez as a pragmatic but innovative, center-right outsider who’ll challenge the status quo. The first spot intersperses images of Martinez standing on the beach and traditional Santa Barbara beauty shots of the Courthouse and the Wharf with pictures of empty State Street store frontst; Angel recites a voiceover that asserts “our city is going in the wrong direction and the politicians at City Hall keep pushing failed policies that put our future at risk” as he claims the mantle of “a new vision,” “new leadership” and “new ideas.” The second spot is likely to be more controversial. Tough talk on homeless. Implicitly criticizing Santa Barbara’s social services-based “restorative policing” policy on homelessness, Martinez flat out promises to “ban aggressive panhandling.” “Letting people live on the street is neither compassionate nor safe,” Angel says directly to the camera. “We need to help people who are truly in need. But we need to be firm with those who abuse our system, take advantage of our generosity and make our city unsafe." As he speaks, the camera cuts between images of a man sitting on the street with a cardboard sign – “I’m homeless, help me” – a guy sacked out on a State Street bench and another in De La Guerra Plaza. Yet another holds yet another sign, this one saying “Why Lie – I Need Beer.” Who's behind the ads. Both ads were produced by Brian Robinson, owner of Terrain Consulting in Santa Barbara, who’s previously done campaign work for Joyce Dudley, Gregg Hart, the late Dr. Dan Secord and various school bonds and taxes, among other clients. Robinson said in a telephone interview that the Martinez ads are scheduled to begin airing this week on various platforms. “We’ve got a balanced mix of things,” he said, including local news, network news and online streaming on Hulu. “He’s really genuine,” Robinson said of his client. “These are his own words – it’s nice it’s his own message.” You can view the ads here and here. -JR .

At first glance, a Republican has exactly two chances of capturing the top job at Santa Barbara City Hall: minuscule and microscopic. The laws of arithmetic, as set forth in the California Secretary of State's most recent Report of Registration show that: A) the GOP has barely one-third the total number of voters in Santa Barbara as the local Democratic party and; B) Republicans are merely the third-largest voting bloc in the city, mirroring their decline statewide: Voting Group Voters Percent Democrats 25,676 52.9% Decline-to-State 11,735 24.1 Republicans 8,665 17.8 Third Parties 2,451 5.0 Total 48,527 99.8 (rounding). However, the special circumstances of the 2017 election - a five candidate field with three well-known Democrats competing in what is certain to be a very low turnout contest - means that council member Frank Hotchkiss, the only Republican running, starts with a fair chance to upset the conventional wisdom. A back of the envelope calculation: Assume, based on history, that one-third of those registered actually send in ballots in the all-mail election, for a universe of about 16,000 voters; Recall that this is a winner-take-all affair, with no run-off, meaning the first-place finisher could win with one-third, or even less, of the total vote amid five rivals, making his or her magic number approximately 4,000 ballots; Bear in mind that Republicans, who trend older, traditionally are far more dependable voters in this kind of low-profile election. So if Hotchkiss consolidates the GOP vote with a smart and well-organized campaign operation, it may be him on the dais next January, accepting the gavel from Mayor Helene. Tyler Hayden, who's covering the race for the Independent, drilled down on the possibility in a recent smart piece: Nevertheless, Hotchkiss’s Republican allies are bullish on his chances. “People are underestimating the support Frank has from pro-business Democrats and Independents,” said Mike Stoker of the Santa Barbara County Taxpayers Association. “I think he’s well on his way to becoming mayor.” State Street matters. While Stoker measures the drapes for Frank, however, there's one big obstacle to scramble his rosy scenario: Angel Martinez. Angel, the former Deckers Outdoor Corp. CEO and Reebok senior executive, is running as a Decline-to-State independent (brief digression: Martinez was a longtime Democrat who previously tweet-attacked Trump and donated about $5K to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, but changed his registration to Decline to State for the mayor's race; in the course of doing so, he briefly registered with the right-wing American Independent Party, founded by the late segregationist George Wallace, because, you know, "independent," then quickly caught and fixed the mistake. So there's that). So far, he is outflanking Hotchkiss on the political right on homelessness, loudly vowing to crack down on aggressive panhandling by the "lifestyle homeless," i.e. able-bodied young men, on State Street, a top issue for retail merchants and other business types. Bad omen for Frank: Martinez already swiped the Santa Barbara Chamber of Commerce endorsement, a big deal that should have been a natural for Hotchkiss. P.S. Check out our half-hour "Newsmakers" interviews with all five candidates right here. (Hotchkiss photo credit: Paul Wellman SB Independent) -JR

As Santa Barbara voters in 2017 confront the most wide-open and consequential mayor’s race in years, there’s just one big hitch: “Two thirds of the voters don’t know there’s an election,” explained one of the five mayoral hopefuls, who has diligently been walking precincts door-to-door. Given the high stakes of critical election issues to everyone who lives in Santa Barbara (from the workforce housing dilemma and the future of State Street, to taxes and public employee pension liabilities, for starters) and the current low profile character of the campaign, TVSB’s “Newsmakers” program launched a special project aimed at bringing as much information about the race to as many voters as possible. Over the last several weeks, the Newsmakers team produced five shows featuring Jerry’s one-on-one interviews with contenders Angel Martinez, Bendy White, Cathy Murillo, Hal Conklin and Frank Hotchkiss. The interviews are now available on our You Tube channel by clicking here . Also TVSB will televise them in a block on Cox cable Channel 17 at the following days and times: Fridays at 4:30 pm Sundays at 5 pm Wednesdays at 11 a.m. How the deal went down. Organized by veteran public media producer Hap Freund, the five shows present each of the candidates, not only discussing the key public policy issues facing Santa Barbara, but also answering questions about their personal beliefs and life experiences. As a political matter, we asked each of the candidates a series of questions about five critical issues: • Housing: Does the city face a “housing crisis”? What, if anything should the next mayor and city council do to increase the supply of rental housing, manage the new state mandate about “granny units” and regulate short-term, vacation rentals? • State Street: Given the current physical and economic state of State Street, what should City Hall do about the local impact of the global transformation of the retail industry, current storefront vacancies, the vacant Macy’s building and aggressive panhandlers and other homeless-related problems in the city’s most important commercial area? • Taxes: Do you support the proposed 1-cent increase in the sales tax on the November ballot? Why or why not? • Pensions: Is the city doing enough to protect itself financially against the huge and growing fiscal pressure of $250 million in unfunded liabilities for pensions for retired public employees? What more should be done, if anything? • Immigration: Do you support or oppose legislation in Sacramento to make California a so-called “sanctuary state” that resists cooperation with federal immigration authorities? Do you support or oppose the Trump Administration’s conduct of federal immigration policy? A veteran political reporter, who has covered local, state and national candidates, campaigns and policies for four decades, Jerry believes strongly in this journalistic idea: What people who hold or aspire to public office say is fundamentally important; for that reason, his interview style is informal and conversational, aimed at providing candidates a platform that offers time and space to express their views in depth and detail. In this space, in days to come, Newsmakers will present regular analyses and commentary about the race, as well some special reports drawn from our interviews. Thanks for watching – and for reading. You can find all our shows, including the mayoral interviews, which were the first we posted, here. -JR