Quick Take
Community Voices editor Jody K. Biehl reflects on her three years editing columns by Mike Rotkin and the education he offered her about Santa Cruz County, UCSC and being human.
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I drank lemonade with Mike Rotkin about two weeks ago. I knew it might be the last time we saw each other. We sat under the leafy shade of his backyard trees, a small table between us.
He was weak from pain and from the leukemia that would end his life, but also clear-headed and forthright. We talked about affordable housing and the rail-trail, about leadership and legacy and the importance of changing one’s mind. We also talked a little about dying. I asked Mike if he wanted to write a farewell column or offer some final words to the community he had devoted so much of his life to serving.
He chuckled, took a swig of lemonade and told me he had said quite enough in his 55 years of public service and teaching. He felt the work spoke for itself.
Indeed.
I loved to talk to Mike because of his encyclopedic knowledge of Santa Cruz, but also because of his logical way of connecting thoughts, of drawing lines from cause to effect, of understanding the reason behind people and their actions. He was one of the few elected leaders who had roots (and branches and flowers) in both the campus and the community.
I didn’t know Mike long enough, so I feel unworthy to tell much of his story. All I can say is how grateful I am for the time his story intersected with mine.
I have edited his columns for close to three years. He was Lookout’s first columnist, and “Lookout columnist” was his last in a long line of job titles. The whole Lookout family mourns him.
Mike was an editor’s dream, always grateful and gracious. He occasionally mixed up dates, but he always got the big picture right. He never did master Google Docs. Most of the edits I offered involved putting the news on the top. Mike, ever a politician-academic, loved to bury his main point (in journalism, we call that the lede), to warm his audience up and lead them to his conclusion with heaps of background argument first. Our very own Socrates. We often joked about it.
I will miss that banter.
Mike also never took politics personally. He accepted, even welcomed, critique. He liked reading letters to the editor that disagreed with him, and he took student feedback on his courses seriously. He wasn’t afraid to admit he was wrong or had changed his mind.
When I arrived at Lookout in 2022, a newcomer to the community, Mike often served as my sounding board, a guide. I didn’t always agree with him, but I always learned from him.
I sometimes called him when an author submitted on a topic I didn’t know well (hello wastewater treatment and the minutiae of railbanking). He made me a smarter editor. Sometimes, he would tell me he didn’t agree with the author’s argument, but the reasoning was sound and the public should see it.
He had a self-effacement that is rare today, especially in a public servant. And he played the long game – always looking to what Santa Cruz could be, of how the community would thrive long after he (and all of us) departed.
Every year, after the Lookout holiday party, he made a special effort to thank Lookout founder Ken Doctor for including him and his wife in the festivities — as though he couldn’t believe his good fortune at being part of the team. We felt the same way.
Mike knew his time was coming to a close and he felt at peace. His biggest worry, he told me, was about his final class of UC Santa Cruz undergraduate students. He needed to get their grades done, to leave enough feedback to help them absorb their time in local non-profits.
Remarkable.
Mike was proud of his long record of arrests for non-violent civil disobedience, including organizing a mass draft card burning in Central Park during the Vietnam War. But he was also a pragmatist, whose nearly 25 years on the Santa Cruz City Council and five years as mayor taught him the value of befriending those with differing views, of finding compromise and making a deal.
He became friends with current Santa Cruz Police Chief Bernie Escalante, and in recent years often invited the chief to his UC Santa Cruz classes to talk to his undergraduates, many of whom had participated in “defund the police” rallies.
Mike loved turning young people on to the power of activism – and to the importance of meeting and talking to those they disagree with.
I once asked Mike how he did it – how he had arrived in Santa Cruz in 1969 and within a decade got elected as the first socialist mayor. His answer was simple: activism. He had access to a printing press and helped every progressive cause he could.
Lighthouse Field, Wilder Ranch, Community Bridges, the Santa Cruz Community Credit Union. The list of his causes is stunning, like reading a history of the community and the progressive movement.
He was never afraid of work. He reveled in it.
In UCSC’s Community Studies department and then Merrill College, he placed generations of students into nonprofits, mostly in Santa Cruz, but also around the world. He introduced them to their own power.
His impact is unfathomable.
MIKE ROTKIN ON SANTA CRUZ POLITICS: Read his columns for Lookout’s Community Voices opinion section here
He asked me not to tell anyone his time was almost up. He didn’t want swarms of people coming to pay him homage. He was too humble for that and perhaps too private. He wanted to spend his last days with his wife of 30 years, Madelyn McCaul; his stepchildren, Jesse Matonak and Jarel Chavez; and his cats, Ming and Galahad, and with his best friend, Mark Stephens.
When I got up to leave, Mike pointed to my half-finished lemonade and asked if I planned to finish it. I shrugged and asked if he wanted it. He nodded and took it, and poured it into his glass and took a long drink.
I love that he did that. Even in his final weeks, he was still savoring – and still worried about goodness going to waste.
Thank you, Mike, for teaching me and so many readers about Santa Cruz County, and for showing us a model of work and community and of a life well-lived.
I will miss you, my friend.