Many expect big things in Zach Friend’s post-Santa Cruz County supervisor act. Where will he go?

Over the last three years, now former county supervisor Zach Friend’s future has been somewhat of a local curiosity.

Half of a Santa Cruz County power couple, the intrigue around Friend’s plans began in 2021 when his wife, Tina, left her post as Scotts Valley city manager to take the same executive job in Coronado, proximate to Friend’s San Diego roots. No divorce, just a new arrangement. Their son would eventually move south with Tina and Friend would at least finish out his term serving the District 2 residents as he had done for eight years. On weekends, the family would commute to see each other, sometimes north, sometimes south.

Although Friend publicly kept the door open on a fourth term, it was widely presumed this would be his last. Unlike fellow supervisor Bruce McPherson, 80, who also stepped down this month after 12 years at the helm, Friend is only 45 with a lot of runway left on his career. 

After he announced in August that he wouldn’t seek re-election, many thought Friend would just head south to join his family in 2025. When the supervisors honored him with a proclamation this month, several people said they would miss him when he left for Southern California.

Not so fast.

“I don’t necessarily know that I’m moving,” Friend told Lookout over the phone last week. “I don’t know where my next role will be. I just knew I couldn’t do this any more.”

Whether this is Friend’s latest attempt to play it coy about his future plans, he said his post-supervisor priority is to spend more time with his family, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a job based in Southern California.

“As far as work goes, the main focus has to be in the public good and I have to be contributing to the betterment of society,” Friend said over the phone en route to Southern California, where his parents also live, for his father’s birthday. “There are a lot of opportunities that could be here [in Santa Cruz County]. The future is not yet defined. The only thing that was certain was that it was time to transition out of being supervisor.”

Over the last three years, Friend said “every weekend” has been for family, whether he went south or his wife and son came north. While location isn’t the prime criteria as he searches the job market, a more flexible schedule will be. The supervisor role, he said, required him to be “hyper-present, both physically and mentally.” With more free time, for now, he said he’s most looking forward to coaching his 10-year-old son’s baseball team.

Although Friend will be spending more time in Southern California, he expects the family to maintain some degree of presence in Santa Cruz County. There are no plans to sell their Aptos home, and he kept the door open on the possibility of taking on a job that is based in the area, but allows him to be remote.

“We consider Santa Cruz County our home in many respects, and we’re going to maintain a strong footprint there,” Friend said.

Friend knows people in high places: he is a best-selling author who worked on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and sat on the former president’s Council of Economic Advisors. Those Beltway relationships helped Friend secure the hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for the Pajaro River levee’s reconstruction, what he and many others say is his greatest accomplishment as supervisor. He’s also become a thought leader on how the government can use and regulate artificial intelligence. AI interests him, he said, but so does public health policy. 

Friend told me that whatever comes next, he wants to be able to explain the work to his son and for his son, after understanding it, to be proud.

“One of the things I liked about being a supervisor is that I got to work on so many different issues, I don’t think I’d do well if I had to focus on just one thing,” Friend said. 
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FOR THE RECORD: This story was updated to clarify that Zach Friend said his priority in post-supervisor life is to spend more time with his family.
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