The Battle of Surf City: the People of Santa Cruz versus Drew Glover
Welcome to Socialism on the Ballot, folks.
When an abrasive socialist advocate for the homeless wields his political power against an entrenched, NIMBY-esque political block in his home city, what do you think happens?
Better question. What doesn’t happen?
In today’s lengthy piece, an examination of socialist, DSA member, and Santa Cruz councilman Drew Glover, the people of Santa Cruz, and one incredibly messy political dispute over the future of the city that still echoes through the city today.
The Battle of Surf City
In 2018, Santa Cruz did something quite surprising: it elected two black socialists.
This was not an area in which this was supposed to happen. California has probably never been lacking in socialist officials—in fact at least 20 DSA members hold elected office in the state right now, including state legislator Alex Lee—but prior to 2018 that success had been virtually exclusive to the Bay Area and Los Angeles. The Central Coast, despite mimicking the strong Democratic leanings of those areas, barely had a Green Party official to its name (much less a socialist). The local DSA chapter, DSA Santa Cruz, had been organized just a year and a half before and even today is quite a small chapter. Santa Cruz, moreover, has a population that is just 4 percent black.
And yet, on December 11, 2018 here were those two black socialists being sworn in, decrying social and economic injustice, and calling for sweeping political change in the city in their first speeches. Justin Cummings, a recent transplant who nonetheless quickly became well known in Santa Cruz’s nonprofit scene, was one of those men. But the protagonist of this story is the other: the unassuming Drew Glover, a native of Santa Cruz from birth.
Cummings and Glover had not been foregone conclusions for the positions they now found themselves in. Far from it, actually: only three city council seats were up in 2018 (Santa Cruz has seven total), and they were among ten candidates seeking those seats. Glover had already tasted failure in this arena before too, having missed out on a seat in 2016 by just 555 votes. But these were fiery men with fiery rhetoric—and it was Glover in particular who shined in his desire to take the fight against inequality to the streets of Santa Cruz from City Hall, even if that fight pit him against entrenched political powers in the city. Hard-fought campaigning and a bold political vision bolstered them across the finish line, and with the alignment of incumbents Sandy Brown and Chris Krohn, the two newly-elected councilmen solidified a 4-votes-to-3 progressive majority on the Council.
Within just a few days this new majority was hard at work. But little did Glover know that his rhetorical fight would become very real, and little did the progressives know that they would quickly become ensnarled in a political crisis that would shake the whole city.
“A janitor without a dustpan”
That “political crisis,” at first, was homelessness. Santa Cruz—both the city and county—had for years struggled to address their homeless population, and by January 2019 the issue was at an unavoidable inflection point. A long-term solution seemed out of reach. An alphabet soup of local, state, federal, nonprofit, church, and police programs had come and gone with little success in bringing the area’s homeless population down. Even as local nonprofits such as 180 Together successfully rehoused hundreds of community members, Housing and Urban Development statistics in January 2019 suggested no fewer than 1,700 residents of Santa Cruz County were unsheltered, and more than 2,000 residents were homeless overall.1 Put retrospectively (and currently) by local outlet Good Times Santa Cruz: “Santa Cruz’s homeless strategy is more akin to a janitor without a dustpan, hopelessly sweeping in circles and wondering why everyone is stepping in his dust piles.”
In this bleak environment, the “Ross Camp” suddenly sprung up in the city, so named because of its proximity to a Ross Dress for Less. The chronology of the camp seems muddled. Local reporting implies the camp swelled in size to a peak of over 200 residents after a city-run camp was closed near Christmas 2018 (a decision that presumably would have been made by the outgoing Council).2 By February 2019, it was well established and neighbors complained of “theft, property damage, mounting garbage, discarded needles and excrement” in the area, although the city attempted to provide services to the camp’s population.3 Tensions mounted quickly. Within days it was clear City Council would need to take decisive action on the camp (and homelessness more broadly) when it met on February 12, 2019.
The exact details of what preceded the meeting are not totally available, but Drew Glover’s account is provided in an essay he wrote, “The Fierce Urgency of Now“, just four days before the meeting. In the weeks leading up to the City Council’s February 12 meeting, Glover states he was “working […] alongside fellow Councilmembers, interns, advocates and people experiencing homelessness, on creating actionable policies that [could] be implemented now”, only to then allege that Mayor Martine Watkins obstructed these policies from the February 12 agenda. According to Glover, Watkins objected on the grounds “that it would make the meeting go ‘too long’ into the evening.” Glover then toured Ross Camp on February 6—and he found the conditions there so dire that “The Fierce Urgency of Now“ called on residents of the city to demand Glover’s items be submitted to the council agenda. Although unsuccessful, Glover entered City Council that day with some wind at his back from the community. But it was here that what began as a crisis of homelessness would spiral into something much bigger for the city.
The Beginning of Hostilities
At that night’s meeting, two important things would happen.
Firstly, Glover’s homelessness plan would controversially—and against the votes of Mayor Watkins and the other two non-progressives—pass by four votes to three. While the city staff’s plan had recommended a closing date of March 15 (giving camp residents just a month to vacate), Glover’s suite of reforms stalled the closing of Ross Camp until either a new location supervised by the city could be established, people within the camp could be rehoused, or both. This delaying action would cause a political firestorm and haunt the city in the months to come.
But, more significantly, Mayor Watkins would—without warning—suggest intentional bullying at the hands of Glover (and another progressive councilmember, Chris Krohn) on the basis of her sex. In a prepared statement before the council Watkins disputed Glover’s accusation of obstructing agenda items and insinuated it to be a smear against her. As she put it: the agenda was already full, Glover was late in submitting his items, and they were too complex to add on such short notice anyways. She then asserted, “[…]there are perceptions that my colleagues, both Councilmember Glover and Councilmember Krohn, are intentionally bullying me because I am a woman. That, if not for my gender, if I were a man, there would not be this question of my integrity. There would not be this question of my character.”4
The impacts of this assertion were not immediate. Although Glover disputed them in the meeting itself, the actual meeting continued and adjourned without further issue. Glover’s priorities passed; Watkins’s priorities did not. The council went to work on what it could from Glover’s plan. But within days, battle lines were drawn in the community on whether Watkins had been correct to make such public accusations of wrongdoing. Former councilmember Micah Posner, a supporter of Glover and Krohn, roundly criticized Watkins for making her own error into an issue of “gender politics”; county supervisor Ryan Coonerty fired back in support of Watkins, charging he had “[…]heard the same concerns from a dozen women who’ve watched or are involved with city government.” Dozens of other local officials and community members also weighed in—most significantly Donna Meyers, a supporter of Watkins and a member of the non-progressive minority. Glover and Watkins, for their part, apparently talked privately on February 15, but were unable to come to an agreement on the matter.5
And more allegations followed from Watkins’s statement—four others in total. One came against Krohn from a city employee; another, a detailed one against Glover, was brought by councilwoman Donna Meyers just ten days after the city council meeting. According to Meyers, on February 1, Glover accosted her over a meeting running a few minutes late in a room Glover was due to use. Meyers claims this was done in front of two witnesses, and that Glover not only refused to make space for her, but briefly followed her to complain about her lateness and disrespect toward him. Earlier that day, she also alleges a heated meeting with Glover over just cause eviction, unsuccessfully mediated by Justin Cummings. From these experiences, Meyers concluded that Glover was in violation of the city’s conduct policies and was acting in such a manner because she was a woman.6
Media was quick to pick up on these allegations and the growing schism in City Hall. On March 5, a longform article ran in Good Times Santa Cruz with the headline “Does Santa Cruz City Hall Have a Bullying Problem?“ and detailing all that was known to that point. One week later, on March 11, Santa Cruz officially hired attorney Joe Rose to investigate the allegations made by Watkins, the city employee, and Meyers—an investigation which would take until July to conclude, and which would ultimately only exacerbate what was already in motion.
Scuffle At Depot Park and Santa Cruz United
As the investigation proceeded, the City Council tried to move forward on homeless issues—and the results would leave much to be desired when all was said and done. Things were not so bad at first. By the March 12 meeting the city could count on the upcoming 1220 River Street program, a 60-bed encampment to be managed by the Salvation Army, to relocate some of the Ross Camp’s residents. It also seemed to have another 50 beds secured at another location: lot 24, at Depot Park. On February 12, the city had been empowered to identify properties it could use to create a designated safe-sleeping site, and in early March it appeared settled on Depot Park, whose lot (the aforementioned “lot 24”) seemed more than adequate for the purpose. Thus, 110 of Ross Camp’s residents now had potential places to stay by the time of the camp’s closure sometime in April.
But political opposition to the Depot Park safe-sleeping site galvanized quickly and spectacularly. At the March 26 meeting—with Glover and Krohn absent—nearly fifty people spoke, almost all of them in opposition to the site. Some were concerned with the tensions the site would cause in the community; many more fell back on fears of crime, seemingly validated by the trajectory of Ross Camp itself. But virtually all speakers had a united position: Depot Park should not be the location of a safe-sleeping site. All five present votes swiftly voted to reconsider lot 24 on April 9, the next city council meeting.7 (Ironically, Glover himself had pushed for this on different grounds at a special meeting on March 19.) And on April 9, any hope of any safe-sleeping site was swiftly erased. Glover was the single no vote on a motion which “rescind[ed] the City Council prior approval of Parking Lot 24 as a site for a safe sleeping or camping site and not pursue other campgrounds in City neighborhoods and parks at this time,” effectively killing 50 beds for Ross Camp residents on the spot.
Efforts would be made to fight this suddenly-perilous state of affairs. With an April 30 deadline now looming and total beds slashed in half, some Ross Camp residents sued to keep the camp open on the grounds that Santa Cruz could likely not provide the required housing for camp residents. Glover even testified to this end. But the case was quickly decided for the city. Remaining residents (some had already transitioned to other camps or diffused around the city) were evicted within days, and the camp was demolished early in May.
On the fight for homeless issues, this first battle had just decisively gone against the progressive majority—and it was soon to get much worse. A clear chance put the majority on the defensive had shown itself and Santa Cruz United, a NIMBY-oriented and anti-progressive group who had already successfully opposed rent control and just-cause eviction in 2018, wasted no time in doing so. At the end of May, the group made a formal pronouncement: they would seek to recall both Drew Glover and Chris Krohn on multiple bases. Both, they charged, had acted “without regard for public safety” by deferring the closure of Ross Camp and attempting to push the Depot Park safe-sleeping site; and further by refusing to meet with neighborhood and business stakeholders about the site. Both, they charged, had been negligent in their city council duties by missing numerous meetings. And both, they charged, had fostered a toxic work culture at City Hall and treated their coworkers with disrespect unbecoming of their offices.
Both Glover and Krohn seemed to at first regard the recalls with a mixture of disbelief and amusement—Glover in particular responded to his recall almost as a grievance and not a legitimate effort to oust him from office. But both would be quick to take the recalls seriously when it became clear that Santa Cruz United would fight; and the recall efforts would be given a serious boost by the release of Joe Rose’s investigation into the conduct of the councilmembers and the headlines thereafter.
The Battle of the Campaign Trail
7,938 signatures were needed to remove a city councilmember that year, and Santa Cruz United was serious about getting them. By July, the group had assembled 150 canvassers and was circulating 700 petition sheets for the recall, and luck would be on their side in keeping Glover and Krohn in the news from then on.8 Joe Rose’s investigation on August 21, 2019 was the first shoe to drop. While most of the approximately dozen allegations against the councilmen were not substantiated (that is, they could not be proven nor disproven; this category included Mayor Watkins’s allegations) nor were the sexism allegations, one allegation each was proven against Glover and Krohn. For Glover, that allegation was the incident with Donna Meyers on February 1—and in an early show of poor judgement, Glover refused to concede the matter, in the process all but implying Meyers had lied. It was a boon on all fronts for Santa Cruz United, all but validating their case against Glover and his contributions to a toxic work environment. Later still, they scored another rhetorical win in this domain: shortly before the recall, Good Times Santa Cruz reported that Glover “had a heated exchange with a city staffer” at some point after the investigation’s release and was sanctioned severely—including restrictions on who at City Hall he could talk to.
And the progressive majority only added optical fuel to the fire and kept the two in the headlines. In a contentious meeting on September 25, they successfully tabled a motion to censure both Glover and Krohn by four votes to three—an action which polarized many in the community, and infuriated longtime city employee Susie O’Hara, who just moments later testified to being one of Glover’s accusers, saying she “withstood months of abuse and abuse that continues through Councilmember Glover’s persistent victim-blaming.” O’Hara, who had also been found credible by the Rose investigation (she was City Employee 4) and had an extensive history with Glover, received the backing of the Commission for the Prevention of Violence against Women (CPVAW) from then on about the censure and her experiences.
It is highly likely that these events—particularly O’Hara revealing herself to be one of the accusers and her subsequent testimony—ultimately contributed to Santa Cruz United’s ability to collect signatures. Despite the difficulties inherent to any recall, by November Santa Cruz United had easily collected the signatures necessary against both Glover and Krohn, and they would eventually claim 15,899 verified signatures, double the needed amount. For the first time in Santa Cruz history, local recalls were officially on the ballot—and now faced with the potential to actually lose his seat, Glover would have certainly been justified in cooling his rhetoric and antagonism, at least for a time.
This was not what happened. Instead, Glover was hit with another investigation that found him in violation of city workplace guidelines, this time for a November 2019 Facebook post criticizing the CPVAW chairs for their resignation from the body and calling one now-former chair a “hypercritical white man” in doing so. Worse, in February 2020 and just weeks before the recall, Glover’s behavior toward UCSC College Democrats—who had endorsed his city council campaign wholeheartedly—made news when he alienated them into supporting his recall. It was avoidable, and yet in character for him. When asked about his conduct toward female employees by a College Democrats member, Glover reputedly stated that Mayor Watkins was using the “woman card” and subsequently offended many students, who engaged him for 20 minutes on his characterization of events. At a Skype meeting approximately a week after the incident, UCSC College Democrats weighed whether or not to endorse Glover’s recall; he was in attendance, and one attendee characterized his participation as “proceed[ing] to gaslight the members of UCSC [D]emocrats by lying” about the woman card comment. An accurate characterization or not, the UCSC College Democrats then overwhelmingly endorsed his recall—to hammer home his specific failings, they did not endorse Krohn’s.
So Glover was on the ropes by the end of the campaign, having managed to lose one of his most prominent allies in the city. But he had one thing bolstering him yet: the difficulty of winning a recall, even in the best of circumstances. Just as it had not been a given that Glover would be elected to begin with, it was legitimately in question whether all the ink that had been spilled would be sufficient to run him out of office.
Losing the Battle, Losing the War
The answer was yes.
On February 3, 2020, both Glover and Krohn were narrowly recalled by the citizens of Santa Cruz, in a historic result for the city and county that also decisively broke the progressive majority on the council. The two’s replacements—one progressive and one not-progressive—returned the balance of power back to what it had been before 2018. Within one year, Santa Cruz had gone from electing a 4-3 progressive majority to losing it, and with it, the progressives had effectively lost a war on homelessness and their pet issues.
It must obviously be emphasized that these were very close races and that more than anything, they revealed a deeply divided city on the matters of the previous year. Santa Cruz United could not have claimed a resounding mandate for its policies—and indeed, it did not after the recalls. But with such high turnout—60% countywide due to the presidential primaries—progressives equally could not blame the recalls on the usual suspects of apathy, voter suppression, or misdeeds on the part of the political establishment. For the most part Glover and Krohn were simply outnumbered by their opponents, and for that, the unpopular implementation of their vision, and the drama, they paid with their offices.
Despite the overall closeness in both races, the gap between Glover and Krohn’s margins is also striking: out of 25,000 voters in either race, more than a thousand had been willing to throw Glover out, but not Krohn—suggestive that Glover alienated many people who might otherwise have supported him at the ballot box that day.
To be clear, Glover’s morals, values, and empathy are not in question. He fought hard, fought for his principles, and fought for the dignity of every person in Santa Cruz in short his time in office. His time on the City Council was beneficial to many, and in another circumstance he’d be everything you ask of a socialist elected official. But his abrasive actions, inability to get out of his own way, and poor strategizing among other things no doubt contributed to his and Krohn’s recall by the people of Santa Cruz and a major setback for the progressive organizers there.
In the end, there were few benefactors of this affair.
Glover, post-recall, has made no efforts for higher office and seems content to stay out of the headlines and local politics for the foreseeable future. He still defends his actions and legacy on the city council—and has defenders in the city even two years on—but the Glover era of Santa Cruz politics appears over.
Santa Cruz remains saddled with the same homelessness crisis that Glover attempted to fix, and over which the recalls began three years ago. In many respects, the city seems to have actually lost ground. Reflecting bitterly to Good Times Santa Cruz in November 2021, Cummings noted a double standard from the Council: “Some of what’s being proposed [by the City Council] is the same stuff [Glover] brought up.” The lack of community input for which Glover was critiqued then similarly seems to be commonplace in City Hall now, only in the opposite direction.
The changes Glover and Cummings fought so hard for in their campaigns have also not been won—since the recalls, the progressives on the council have remained in the minority, Cummings included. Santa Cruz United is a large part of that: they reelected Watkins alongside two new councilmembers in 2020, ensuring a minimum 4-3 non-progressive majority. Said non-progressive majority has thus far been content to pass criminalization measures like an “Oversized Vehicle Ordinance” rather than policies which materially help residents of Santa Cruz.
As for the instigators to the whole affair: Martine Watkins is now Vice Mayor Martine Watkins, halfway through another four-year term on the council and seemingly unfazed by the events that took place. But Susie O’Hara, who is Glover and Krohn’s only public accuser, seems to have been run out of City Hall unceremoniously in the time since. O’Hara alleges nearly two years of on-job harassment by city officials, particularly following her testimony against the two now-former councilmen. This harassment reportedly included attempts to coerce her resignation and later her transfer; stripping her of job duties; and eventually placing her on administrative leave before terminating her. After pursuing a lawsuit against the city for a hostile work environment, she recently settled for $250,000—the city maintains no wrongdoing.
Drew Glover’s story is ultimately a cautionary tale in many ways for the aspiring socialist elected official—of the costs sometimes associated with taking a principled stand; of the level of chicanery entrenched interests will undertake to fight you; of the importance of organizational backing; and of the importance in maintaining relationships with others. But it is from his story that we can learn how to ensure there is only one Drew Glover story.
Footnotes
Numbers taken from “Homelessness: Big Problem, Little Progress. It's Time To Think Outside The Box“, published June 30, 2020 for Santa Cruz County.
KAZU 90.3, “Federal Court Steps Into Santa Cruz Homeless Camp Controversy” (April 25, 2019).
NBC Bay Area, “Nearly 200 Ross Camp Residents to Relocate by Friday After Judge Rejects Request“ (April 30, 2019).
Jessica A. York, Santa Cruz Sentinel, “Hostilities mount between Santa Cruz policymakers” (February 13, 2019).
Joe Rose, “Investigative Report: 2019 Complaints Against Two Councilmembers“ (July 25, 2020): “On February 15, 2019, Mayor Watkins spoke personally to Councilmember Glover again expressing her belief he was publicly mistreating her because of her gender. According to Mayor Watkins, Councilmember Glover disagreed, did not apologize, and explained he has always stood for women[...]“
ibid.
Jessica A. York, Santa Cruz Sentinel, “New sanctioned Santa Cruz homeless camp site may be off table“ (March 27, 2019).
Kara Meyberg Guzman, Santa Cruz Local, “Councilmembers Glover, Krohn respond to recall campaign“ (July 10, 2019).