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Mayor of Santa Barbara

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City of Santa Barbara

Mayor of Santa Barbara

This person would be Mayor of Santa Barbara. Voters elect the Mayor directly, separate from the council seats. The Mayor leads a 6-member council elected by district. The council sets the budget, land use, and city laws. The city has about 88,700 residents in Santa Barbara County. The term is four years.

Four candidates are running for Mayor of Santa Barbara. Eric Friedman represents District 5 and Kristen Sneddon represents District 4 on the City Council. Wendy Sims-Moten is a former school board member, and Matt Kilrain is also running. Voters pick one, with no primary or runoff.

Santa Barbara's Mayor is directly elected citywide, separately from the six district Council seats, for a 4-year term with an existing four-consecutive-term limit. The winner presides over a council-manager government -- the budget, land use, and city ordinances for this Santa Barbara County city of about 88,700 residents -- while a professional city manager runs day-to-day operations. The seat is open: Mayor Randy Rowse is not seeking re-election, described in local reporting as term-limited.

Both Friedman and Sneddon are giving up safe re-election to their current Council seats to run here, opening both of those seats in separate races on this same ballot. The contest is broadly a moderate-vs-progressive choice: Friedman, a business- and labor-backed moderate, opposes the city's rent-stabilization ordinance and favors a more flexible approach to reopening State Street to cars; Sneddon, endorsed by the county Democratic Party and multiple former mayors, supports rent stabilization and wants Paseo Nuevo's redevelopment to go to a public vote. Friedman substantially outraised Sneddon in the first half of 2026. Sims-Moten and Kilrain round out the field with comparatively little independent news coverage found this pass.

Eric Friedman

Eric Friedman is the Councilmember for District 5, a Democrat working at Trader Joe's. He opposes the rent-stabilization rule and wants a slower reopening of State Street to cars. He is recovering from a heart attack he had in April 2025.

Kristen Sneddon

Kristen Sneddon is the Councilmember for District 4. She is a geology professor at Santa Barbara City College, now in her second term. She wrote the 2021 law that created the State Street Advisory Committee. She opposes reopening State Street to cars. Her platform focuses on housing, the environment, and support for low-income and immigrant residents. She also wants a new rent-stabilization rule. She has called for a public vote on the Paseo Nuevo mall redevelopment. She is endorsed by the Santa Barbara County Democratic Party and several former mayors.

Wendy Sims-Moten

Wendy Sims-Moten is executive director of First 5 Santa Barbara County. She served two terms on the Santa Barbara Unified School Board, from 2016 to 2024. The CAUSE Action Fund honored her for community leadership in April 2026. No specific policy platform for her campaign has been reported.

Matt Kilrain

Matt Kilrain is known locally as "Boat Rat Matt." He ran for Santa Barbara Mayor in 2021 and finished last, with 178 votes. No campaign platform statement for him has been reported.

Your pick

A nonpartisan office: candidates do not run as Democrats or Republicans, and no party appears on the ballot.

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