Mike Rotkin is a lecturer at the

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge of ...

, long-term city council member, and the 5 time mayor of

Santa Cruz, California Santa Cruz ( Spanish for "Holy Cross") is the county seat and largest city of Santa Cruz County, in Northern California. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 62,956. Situated on the northern edge of Monterey Bay, Santa Cruz is a po ...

. source: https://scmtd.com/en/fares/38-agency-info/administration/board-of-directors/103-bod-bio-mike-rotkin A former motorcycle mechanic with a Ph.D. in the

History of Consciousness History of Consciousness is the name of a department in the Humanities Division of the University of California, Santa Cruz with a 50+ year history of interdisciplinary research and student training in "established and emergent disciplines and fiel ...

, Mike first ran for city council on a protest campaign as a "socialist-feminist" in 1979, taking first place among voters at a time when Santa Cruz was more Republican than Democrat. He taught Marxist theory at UC Santa Cruz for over 40 years, while serving six terms as a city councilman, including five terms as the mayor, longer than anyone in the city's history (the mayoral post of Santa Cruz passes yearly to a councilmember selected by a majority of other councilmembers). During his 20 years in city government, city spending on social services and programs increased from $80,000 ($200,000; 2000US) a year in 1979 to $2 million by 2000. However, in the 2006 election, he was criticized for supporting pragmatic pro-economic development positions. He served as president of the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) teachers' union.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rotkin, Mike American Marxists Santa Cruz, California University of California, Santa Cruz alumni University of California, Santa Cruz faculty Mayors of Santa Cruz, California Living people Year of birth missing (living people) American socialist feminists