Das Williams joins Josh Molina to talk about the early part of his life and career in the latest episode of Santa Barbara Talks. Williams explains how his early work for CAUSE, field representative for Hannah-Beth Jackson and campaign manager for the No on Recall campaign against Gail Marshall led to a successful run for Santa Barbara City Council. He shares about his "troubled" childhood, growing up with divorced parents, and little supervision helped shape his survival instincts. He credits four Santa Barbara City College professors, David Lawyer, John Kay, Manou Eskandari, and Peter Haslund for helping to reset him turn him in the correct direction.

Williams also talks about how he won a seat on the City Council, his campaign strategy of talking to voters outside of the Golden Triangle, and his focus on water, housing and neighborhoods. Williams also talks about lessons he learned from an ill-advised run for Santa Barbara County Supervisor in 2005, two years into his City Council term. Williams also reflects on his mistakes, successes, lessons learned, and his political enemies. This is Part 1. In Part 2 we will discuss his years in the California State Assembly and Santa Barbara County Supervisors, and what went wrong in his bid for re-election.