Paul Wellman (file)

Greg Gandrud

Greg Gandrud moved around a lot as a Southern California child of divorce in the 1970s, attending four high schools in four years. Raised independent enough to manage his own checking account at 13, Gandrud spent time at schools in Redondo, Chatsworth, and Manhattan Beach—plus a year spent studying in Norway.

“Every time I moved,” he recalled, “it was an opportunity to reinvent myself.”

At 47, the ex-Carpinteria city councilmember is trying to reinvent himself again, campaigning as the Republican candidate in a steep uphill race for an Assembly seat against Democrat Pedro Nava. The South Coast’s biggest gadfly on transportation issues, he was ousted after one very maverick term on the council and is running once more in the familiar role of outsider, battling a two-term incumbent in the 35th Assembly District, where Democrats outnumber the GOP by a 3-2 margin.

Bluetooth appliance in his right ear and gym bag in his left hand, Gandrud sat down to discuss the race over house coffee at downtown Santa Barbara’s NorthStar café last week, before heading off to a weightlifting workout. With a choir boy face and a small linebacker build, he spoke in unfailingly earnest tones about his political values; issues on which he differs with Nava; and his gnarly, if entertaining, four years on a council where he often finished on the short end of 4-1 votes.

“Carpinteria is not really a Republican town, and the other people on the council didn’t really want me there,” he said. “There’s tremendous pressure to go along, to be the good ole boy.”

Going along was not exactly what he had in mind when he was elected by 11 votes in 2002—after losing by 14 votes two years before, when his recount took almost as long as the better-known Bush-Gore race. Pushing a pro-business agenda in a slow-growth town, he fought other members over development, a plan to permit slant drilling for offshore oil, and, most notably, his effort to get the 101 freeway widened. At one point, Gandrud embarked on a one-man freeway fundraising mission to Washington, a grandstand play that annoyed his colleagues back home.

“The famous ‘Mr. Gandrud goes to Washington’ did not sit well,” he understated.

Gandrud moved here in the 1980s for a job selling medical imaging systems and equipment (“We sold the gastric band, that’s proven to be a gold mine—a big rubber band inside your stomach that makes you feel full”). Next, he started a business selling dental imaging equipment, going partners with his father, a successful L.A. photographer whose core client was USC, which Gandrud attended (“I was raised to go to USC. I was stuck in the whole fraternity-sorority thing”).

In the 1990s, he started another small business, an accounting and financial services company that he still runs today, and became active in local politics. After his landslide win in 2002, he said, his aim was to represent the “Chamber of Commerce people who believed the city had been too heavy-handed with business.”

“I don’t think that keeping a small-town atmosphere and having some economic growth are incompatible,” he said. However, his views ran afoul of community sentiment, when he backed a proposal by Venoco to site a slant drilling tower in town, and he lost his 2006 reelection bid.

Moderate to liberal on social issues—as a gay man, he opposes Proposition 8, which seeks to reverse the Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage—Gandrud is a gung-ho free-market conservative on fiscal matters, which creates a clear choice for voters in key areas:

Taxes: Gandrud opposes raising any state taxes and wants the $17 billion state budget deficit closed through cuts and unspecified economic development programs; Nava has endorsed the Democratic budget plan, which includes $8 billion in new taxes.

Energy: Gandrud favors expanded exploration and development of oil off the coast of California; Nava has taken a strong anti-offshore drilling stance.

Transportation: On Measure A, the $1 billion regional proposition to reauthorize a half-cent sales tax for transportation in the county, Gandrud said his “formal position is neutral,” though his informal one leaves little doubt he’s against it; he complains it directs too much money to local government projects instead of regional solutions. Nava supports Measure A.

When I asked Gandrud how he planned to overcome the sizeable partisan advantage Nava enjoys in the race, he answered this way: “That’s a tough one. The conventional wisdom is that’s not a district that Greg can win.”

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