Laura Capps announced her bit for First District Supervisor at a Tuesday afternoon kickoff event at the Santa Barbara Mission Rose Garden.
Ms. Capps gave a short speech, surrounded by local school children, including her son Oscar, before walking amongst a group of supporters, shaking hands, conversing and thanking them for coming out.
“This is the most special place,” Ms. Capps said of the Rose Garden.
“It’s a place where people come to gather with their family, friends…there’s often volunteers who take care of these roses. To me that’s a wonder symbol of how this community is filled with such caretakers. We believe deeply in this special place we get to call home.”
She continued that the County’s elected officials have “bond of trust,” with the community and need to listen to their concerns over those of their political allies and financial benefactors.
“They need to listen to us regardless of our status in the community or if we can donate a campaign contribution. As supervisor I’ll provide a leadership that listens with integrity, and not to outside interests to the people that I serve.”
During her speech, Ms. Capps took a moment to thank her mother, longtime politician and former 24th District Representative Lois Capps, for her support.
But the Capps family matriarch took a more active role in the speech than she anticipated.
When Ms. Capps stumbled over a statistic on childhood poverty, her mother stealthily corrected her which made for a tender moment between the two.
“Our county has the third highest rate of poverty in the state, thanks mom. She’s actually pretty good at that,” said Ms. Capps to laughter from the crowd.
The child poverty issue appears to be a focus for Ms. Capps, the sitting vice president of the Santa Barbara Unified School District School Board.
“There’s far too many of them (kids) that are living in poverty. Far too many of them go to school with empty bellies which makes it harder for them to thrive, harder for them to have a lot of the opportunities that my son Oscar gets to have.
She added that USCB and Santa Barbara City College are also hurting and many rely on local food banks to get enough to eat.
“Poverty and hunger is something I worked on in Washington with Ted Kennedy and others it’s something that I’ve brought back here to our community working to make sure kids have food.”
Ms. Capps holds degrees from UC Berkeley and the London School of Economics, according to a statement from her campaign.
Previously she was appointed by then Supervisor Salud Carbajal to the Santa Barbara County Women’s Commission where she served as chair.
She has worked with No Kid Hungry and local partners to ensure that more kids in Santa Barbara County have the food they need in the summer.
