Cathy Murillo has made it no secret she’s running for mayor — “raising money like crazy,” as she put it, and drumming up support among South Coast Democrats for months — but on Saturday the Santa Barbara city councilmember made her campaign official during a kickoff party at Mulligan’s Café & Bar. With more than 100 guests, the event doubled as a birthday bash, featuring chocolate and vanilla cakes laid out near the 18th green and Murillo’s sisters in attendance. Supervisor Janet Wolf, who nudged Murillo, a former journalist, into politics six years ago, introduced her to the crowd, remarking afterward, “Cathy’s integrity and passion are beyond reproach. She’s doing what she’s doing for just the right reasons — because she cares.”
Murillo, 56, enters the mayoral race in a fashion similar to her style on the dais: energetic and first out of the gate. “We want to get the momentum going early,” she said Monday. So far, no other candidates have filed the necessary paperwork to run, though a handful have expressed varying degrees of interest. Murillo was first elected to the council in 2011, and then in 2015 won the seat to represent the city’s Westside neighborhood — where she’s lived as a renter for 16 years — under the new district-election system. This November, three council seats will be on the ballot as well as the at-large mayoral race.
One of the more consistent voices in City Hall for working-class Santa Barbarans, Murillo has made it a point of pride to organize and participate in a dizzying number of community meetings, from neighborhood-watch workshops to business-creation roundtables to environmental study groups. “The only job I have is doing the city’s work,” she said. “I don’t just approve budgets. I’m out in the community learning things all the time.” According to Murillo, her achievements on the council include helping to pass the plastic-bag ban, hire a new police chief, reopen city libraries on Mondays and renovate the Children’s Library, and defeat Measure Y and preserve the Arroyo Burro Open Space.