Opinion: I’m voting for Genevieve. Here’s why you should too.

I’m voting for Genevieve Taft-Vazquez for District 4.

I’m reluctantly considered a political insider, so I know how this race has been shaped. I understand why a lot of people will pick the safe choice, the person with the tidy stack of endorsements. They’re fine. City Council has been running on “fine” for a long time, and look where it’s gotten us.

I want someone better than fine.

When I first had coffee with Genevieve, I was struck by how she listened. She asked just the right questions to get to the heart of my gripes with the city. We didn’t agree on everything, but I felt heard. That alone set her apart from the others, some of whom just talk and talk and talk and never give you a turn.

Genevieve grew up here, the daughter of a teacher. Santa Barbara High, then Yale, Wharton, and Johns Hopkins. She could have cashed in that resume anywhere. She came home instead, to raise her three kids with her husband Carlos in the same district where she grew up, and she’s been showing up at the schools and on the city’s Neighborhood Advisory Council ever since.

Here’s the part I know something about. I’ve watched city budgets up close, and our city’s books are the thing nobody wants to talk about on a mailer. Genevieve talks about them like someone who’s read them. She’s against new taxes. She wants to build our reserves back up instead of spending them down. And when someone retires or a job opens up, she wants to stop and ask whether we really need to refill it one-for-one or whether that money’s doing real work for the people who pay it. That’s not a slogan with her. She’s done this for a living, at a scale that dwarfs our city’s budget.

I’m a progressive, and so is she. She wants our kids to be able to afford to live in the city they grew up in. She wants a downtown worth walking through.

We as voters keep being told to pick one — the progressive who’ll spend freely, or the fiscal hawk who’ll cut what we love. But here’s what sets Genevieve apart: she is the first candidate who doesn’t make us choose between a city we can afford to live in and a budget that adds up.

Santa Barbara has real problems. It’s also been dealt a winning lottery ticket, and her name is Genevieve. We’d be fools not to cash it in. 

Ballots go out October 5. Fill yours out, vote for Genevieve. I know I will.

Suzanne Cohen
Reluctant political insider and Santa Barbara District 4 voter

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