Long-time local politico Fred Keeley cruised to an easy victory over opponent Joy Schendledecker to become Santa Cruz’s first elected four-year mayor.
Election 2022: Santa Cruz mayor’s race
Posted inPolitics & Policy
As the parade of Santa Cruz annual mayors comes to a stop, how strong will the new four-year pioneer be?
There are too many ex-Santa Cruz mayors to count, and they’ve served in times of celebration and horror. Mike Rotkin served five one-year terms as mayor, Cynthia Mathews four and Don Lane three. Now, as the city of Santa Cruz adopts a more traditional four-year mayor position — with a newly districted system of city council — a new civic experiment begins.
Posted inPolitics & Policy
12 stories? Keeley’s new plan would flip script on controversial Warriors-area downtown expansion vision
Advanced by the Santa Cruz City Council in June, the downtown expansion plan’s proposal for 15- and 17-story towers has found few supporters in the city. Mayoral candidate Fred Keeley has unveiled a new proposal that he vows, if elected, to put on the city council agenda in January. The focus? Lower height, more affordability.
Posted inEndorsements
A Lookout View: Vote Fred Keeley for Santa Cruz mayor
Lookout Endorsement: Fred Keeley can’t sweep in and fix all of Santa Cruz’s problems. However, given his deep experience and wide connections, he is well suited and well qualified to be the city’s first directly elected mayor in this time of great stress. Politics is about timing as much as policy, and Keeley matches this moment well. What we would expect from him over the next four years can be summed up in one word: leadership.
Posted inPolitics & Policy
Lookout candidate forum: Some sparks, some smiles as Fred and Joy, Shebreh and Justin debate
At Lookout’s first forum of the season Thursday evening, 75 Santa Cruzans packed a room at the Hotel Paradox to see mayoral candidates Fred Keeley and Joy Schendledecker and county supervisor candidates Justin Cummings and Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson face off. Community Voices editor Jody K. Biehl moderated the two panels, which covered the serious issues of the day and produced some sparks.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Joy Schendledecker for mayor: Santa Cruz needs truly progressive ideas and a mayor who will fight for justice in housing, jobs and the environment
Joy Schendledecker is a community organizer, member of the Santa Cruz chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, co-founder of Santa Cruz Cares and Sanitation for the People, as well as an artist and a mother of two teens. Her leadership skills, she says, are “generally not recognized in our culture” and include grassroots organizing and neighborhood consensus-building and care work for family and community. She believes Santa Cruz needs new ideas and to elect someone who is rooted in the community she represents: the underpaid and overworked, tenants, workers and unions, families, elders, people with disabilities, our LGBTQIA+ community, students and young people.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Fred Keeley for mayor: I have the experience, relationships and know-how to take on Santa Cruz’s pressing issues
Fred Keeley has worked to better this community for 44 years. He has served as county supervisor, county treasurer, state legislator and on numerous countywide task forces. He’s also a professor, a member of numerous local nonprofit boards and the largest Democratic fundraiser in the region. He’s a man with connections, experience and plans. Here, he explains how, if chosen as the city’s first directly elected mayor, he will tackle homelessness, affordable housing (hint: it’s a bond measure), neighborhood integrity and water issues. He also offers key ways his thinking differs from his opponent’s.
Posted inPolitics & Policy
Joy and Fred: A mayor’s race in high contrast
The immediately apparent differences between career politician Fred Keeley and political newcomer Joy Schendledecker deepen as they begin to talk about their platforms in the campaign for Santa Cruz mayor. Keeley, with nearly three decades of public office experience behind him, takes a more traditional approach to addressing the city’s most pressing needs. Schendledecker, an artist and member of the Democratic Socialists of America who came to Santa Cruz in 2015, speaks of the necessity of paradigm shifts she thinks the city needs.
Posted inPolitics & Policy
Time for a ‘laser beam’ of action: Fred Keeley says he hopes to move Santa Cruz’s biggest issues forward
One of two candidates to lead the city of Santa Cruz into its district-elections future as mayor, Fred Keeley, a noted consensus-builder as both state Assembly leader and as an involved Santa Cruz County changemaker, is looking to speed up the way things get done around here on important issues like homelessness and affordable housing.
Posted inPolitics & Policy
Joy Schendledecker thinks Santa Cruz’s first elected mayor doesn’t need to be a professional politician
Despite having never held elected office, Joy Schendledecker says her mutual aid work in the community has provided her with a unique perspective on what the city needs, and that she is well in tune with the area due to her standing as a typical Santa Cruz resident.