Los Angeles voters choosing their next city attorney face a choice between two candidates with different professional backgrounds and competing ideas about how one of the city’s most powerful legal offices should use its authority.
Marissa Roy, 34, a deputy California attorney general, has put greater emphasis on using the city’s civil enforcement powers to protect workers, tenants and consumers and has pledged to make Los Angeles a more aggressive participant in legal challenges against the Trump administration.
John McKinney, 58, a longtime Los Angeles County prosecutor, has emphasized prosecuting repeat offenders and crimes that affect the neighborhood quality of life, while supporting diversion and treatment in cases involving substance abuse, mental illness or homelessness.
The two will face off on Nov. 3 to succeed City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto, who was eliminated in the June primary after receiving 18% of the vote. Roy finished first with 43%, followed by McKinney with nearly 29%.
The winner will take control of an office whose responsibility stretches well beyond criminal prosecution. The city attorney prosecutes misdemeanour offenses, represents Los Angeles in lawsuits, provides legal advice to the mayor, City Council and city departments and can bring civil enforcement actions on behalf of residents.
The next city attorney will also inherit a city that paid more than $200 million in liability claims in the most recent fiscal year, along with ongoing debates over homelessness, public safety and how Los Angeles should respond to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement actions.
Different approaches to prosecution
One of the clearest contracts between McKinney and Roy is how they describe the office’s role in prosecuting misdemeanor offenses.
McKinney, who has spent nearly three decades as a prosecutor, said the office should operate under a principle of “compassionate accountability,” focusing prosecution on conduct that threatens public safety or significantly affects neighborhoods.
He pointed to repeat offenders and offenses including theft, vandalism, organized retail theft, street racing and open-air drug markets as priorities.
But McKinney said prosecution should not be “about punishment for its own sake.” When someone’s conduct is driven by substance abuse, mental health problems or homelessness, he said, diversion, treatment or services should be available when they can safely and effectively address the behavior.
“The objective is to reduce crime and make communities safer. Sometimes that requires prosecution,” McKinney said in response to a SCNG election questionnaire. “In other cases, treatment and intervention can address the underlying behavior more effectively and reduce the likelihood that someone returns to the criminal justice system.”
Roy also said prosecution can be appropriate when a misdemeanor is violent and poses a threat to public safety, but she has placed greater emphasis on alternatives to prosecution for nonviolent offenses involving mental illness or addiction.
She said prosecutors should have the flexibility to determine the appropriate response to individual cases and argued that supervised diversion can both hold people accountable and connect them with services.
“We’ve seen the one-size-fits-all approach – so-called ‘tough on crime’ approach – fail because it’s not smart on safety,” Roy said in her questionnaire response.
Roy said her approach would focus on strategies that maintain accountability while reducing the likelihood that people reoffend.
Asked this week to identify a position of Roy’s with which he disagrees, McKinney pointed to what he described as her “support of a plan to place a moratorium on the prosecution of a list of misdemeanor crimes,” as well as what he called “her unwillingness to support” enforcement of Los Angeles Municipal Code 41.18. The ordinance restricts sitting, lying, sleeping or storing property in specified public locations, including areas that block the public right-of-way and near schools and daycares.
McKinney said he believes the ordinance is “a critical tool for helping the homeless get off the sidewalks and into treatment.”
Roy’s campaign disputed McKinney’s characterization, saying she does not support a blanket moratorium on prosecuting certain misdemeanors and that she has repeatedly corrected him on the issue.
Asked about 41.18, Roy’s campaign said the ordinance is no longer within the City Attorney’s prosecutorial jurisdiction because violations have been reduced from misdemeanors to infractions.
How aggressively should the city attorney sue?
The candidates also differ in how prominently they would use the office’s civil enforcement powers.
Roy has emphasized affirmative litigation in her campaign, saying she would pursue companies accused of wage theft, landlords who violate tenant protections and corporations responsible for pollution or other harms.
Asked this week to identify a position of McKinney’s with which she disagrees, Roy pointed to what she described as his view that the City Attorney’s Office should not operate as a public interest law office.
“The reality is that Angelenos need a fighter against the massive corporations that pollute our neighborhoods, take advantage of renters, and exploit workers – and the City Attorney’s Office has the power to be that fighter,” Roy said.
McKinney said he draws a distinction between serving the public interest and operating as a public interest law firm. He argued that adopting the latter role could create conflicts with the city attorney’s responsibility to represent and defend the city.
“The City Attorney’s Office cannot assume the role of a ‘public interest law firm’ without creating conflicts of interest and compromising its fundamental responsibility to defend the City,” McKinney said.
McKinney said he nevertheless supports using affirmative litigation to protect consumers, workers, tenants and the environment “consistent with the role of the City Attorney’s legal obligation to the City of Los Angeles.”
Roy, who previously worked in the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office and now works at the California Department of Justice, has pointed to her experience handling consumer and tenant protection cases.
She has also promised to bring Los Angeles more aggressively into litigation challenging the Trump administration.
“I will bring the L.A. City Attorney’s Office into the legal fight against the Trump administration,” Roy said when asked what she would do in her first year that would most clearly distinguish her administration from the current office.
Roy said she would challenge federal actions affecting Los Angeles and pursue companies involved in federal immigration enforcement.
McKinney also said he would use the office’s civil powers against serious consumer fraud, tenant exploitation, wage theft and environmental violations.
He said he would challenge unconstitutional federal overreach, including immigration enforcement that violates residents’ rights, but argued that litigation should have a clear legal and public purpose.
“Litigation should be strategic and tied to a clear public purpose—not pursued simply to make a political statement,” McKinney said.
On tenant protections, McKinney said he would prioritize chronic habitability problems, illegal evictions, tenant harassment and retaliation, fraudulent rent increases and other violations, while targeting enforcement at what he described as bad actors rather than responsible property owners.
Reducing the city’s legal bills
Whoever wins will also inherit a costly problem: Los Angeles has spent substantial sums resolving lawsuits and legal claims against the city.
City Controller data show Los Angeles paid about $203 million in liability claims in fiscal year 2025-26. Since fiscal year 2019-20, those payouts have totaled more than $1.2 billion.
Both candidates say the city attorney should do more to identify practices driving those costs before they result in repeated lawsuits.
McKinney said he would establish a citywide risk-management strategy to track claims and litigation across departments and identify recurring problems.
“The City Attorney should not repeatedly defend the same preventable conduct while taxpayers continue paying the bill,” McKinney said.
When patterns emerge, he said, the office should work with department leaders to change policies, strengthen training and supervision or establish other safeguards, and then track whether those changes actually reduce subsequent claims.
McKinney also said he would reduce the city’s reliance on outside counsel, vigorously defend against frivolous claims and seek earlier settlements when doing so could protect taxpayers from larger judgments.
Roy also wants to reduce spending on outside attorneys and has criticized the current office’s handling of litigation.
She said she would establish a process to evaluate cases earlier, helping city lawyers determine which cases should be settled and which should proceed to trial.
Roy has also argued that the city attorney should take a more forceful role when recurring lawsuits reveal problems within individual departments, pointing in particular to litigation involving the Los Angeles Police Department.
“As City Attorney, I will take a tough stance to bring departments into compliance with the law to prevent lawsuits before they occur, rather than a soft approach that allows repeat transgressions,” Roy said.
Police-related claims have accounted for the largest share of the city’s liability payouts in recent years. City Controller data show the city paid about $456 million on more than 2,200 police-related claims from fiscal year 2019-20 through 2025-26, accounting for nearly 38% of the roughly $1.2 billion paid across city departments during that period.
Two different paths to the office
The candidates also point to different professional backgrounds and political coalitions in making their case to voters.
Asked this week to identify the biggest difference between himself and Roy, McKinney pointed to what he described as a gap in their qualifications and management experience.
McKinney said he currently manages more than 300 lawyers and staff in the District Attorney’s Office and has tried more than 100 jury trials.
He has framed his candidacy around public safety, fiscal accountability and making the city attorney more responsive to neighborhood concerns. McKinney said one of his first actions would be to restart the Neighborhood Prosecutor Program, an initiative that placed prosecutors in closer contact with communities to address recurring neighborhood problems.
Asked what she saw as the biggest difference between herself and McKinney, Roy instead pointed to the candidates’ differing political support, noting her endorsements from the Los Angeles County Democratic Party and Planned Parenthood and saying McKinney had been recommended by the Republican Party.
Roy has framed the office as a potential public interest law firm for the city, emphasizing civil litigation and enforcement involving workers, tenants, consumers and immigrant communities.
She has pointed to her experience handling wage-theft, tenant and consumer protection matters and argues that her background as a civil litigator would better prepare her to oversee the city’s civil cases and reduce its legal liabilities.
The race has also drawn millions of dollars in campaign spending. Los Angeles City Ethics Commission records show Roy has reported about $1.2 million in contributions, while McKinney has reported about $483,000, although their latest filings cover different periods. Across the primary and general elections, independent groups have spent substantially more on McKinney’s behalf: Ethics Commission data show about $5.2 million in independent expenditures supporting McKinney, compared with about $1.3 million supporting Roy.
The candidates have also drawn support from different political, labor and law enforcement figures and organizations. McKinney’s endorsements include Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman, the Los Angeles Police Protective League and City Councilmembers Traci Park, Monica Rodriguez, John Lee and Tim McOsker. Roy’s supporters include Democratic Socialists of America-Los Angeles, California Attorney General Rob Bonta, Sen. Bernie Sanders, City Controller Kenneth Mejia and the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.
The candidates are competing to lead an office that receives far less attention than the mayor or district attorney but makes decisions that can affect everything from neighborhood misdemeanor cases to multimillion-dollar lawsuits against City Hall.
Voters will decide between them Nov. 3.