Attention Los Angeles County voters:
These races are for countywide offices and also there’s a measure restricted to LA County. Here is a brief overview of county races appearing on the June 2 primary ballot:
Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors
–First District: This is an open seat. Supervisor Hilda Solis has served for nearly 12 years and is termed out. So, that means a new supervisor will be elected from the following five candidates vying to represent about 2 million residents in a district that includes Skid Row and and Boyle Heights in Los Angeles, spreading into the central San Gabriel Valley cities of Alhambra, Monterey Park, Montebello, El Monte, Baldwin Park, La Puente, West Covina, Azusa, Walnut and Pomona, including unincorporated communities of Avocado Heights, Hacienda Heights, Valinda and Rowland Heights.
The county has a total of 10 million residents and the supervisors manage about a $50 billion budget and 117,000 budgeted employees across 38 departments, including public health, homeless services, public safety, social services, animal care and public works.
Elaine Alaniz, 44, a disaster recovery specialist, said the board is acting “below expectations,“ adding: “We continue to see rising costs in areas like homelessness and public safety without the level of progress residents expect and deserve,” she said.
Despite massive cuts from the federal HR1 bill to county healthcare services, Alaniz does not support Measure ER, which would temporarily raise the sales tax a half-cent to bring in a billion dollars a year of stop-gap funding. She said the county can’t just close Men’s Central Jail without first building “a facility to better separate individuals with serious mental health needs from those in custody for criminal offenses.”
Noel Almario, 40, a birth doula, said the board has made incremental progress in fighting poverty, homelessness and providing adequate healthcare to those in need but is moving too slowly.
She recognized that federal cuts to Medi-Cal will put the most vulnerable county residents’ lives at risk and supports Measure ER.
She agrees with the county’s new approach to homeless services, the new LA County Office of Homeless Services & Housing. Almario favors adding multilingual alerts for those facing an impending disaster, such as a spreading fire or a toxic gas leak.
David E. Argudo, 55, a councilmember for the city of La Puente, said the board has been in a reactive mode and wants to see more bold actions. “We need a board that actively champions healthier communities, environmental justice and the creation of more productive green spaces.”
As a member of the La Puente City Council, he emphasizes better cooperation with the county’s 88 cities, saying “one-size-fits-all mandates” are troublesome. He is concerned the county’s HSH department may just add another layer of bureaucracy.
He is opposed to Measure ER, saying he’s not sure the money will go toward helping clinics and hospitals. Also, he doesn’t agree that the half-cent sales tax is the right solution.
State Sen. Maria Elena Durazo said she has spent her career fighting for workers and their civil rights. In 2004 she was executive vice president of UNITE-HERE international union. And from 2006 to 2014 she was secretary-treasurer of the L.A. County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO.
Her three top priorities are: Addressing housing affordability and homelessness; expanding access to healthcare and mental health services and attracting good-paying jobs to the county.
In response to problems with nonprofits providing services for the homeless and the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) being audited for not always keeping track of dollars spend and for late payments, Durazo wants to use the California Attorney General’s Office to provide oversight of tax dollars on homeless shelters and housing.
On responses to wildfires, Durazo wants to see greater investment in early warning systems, pre-position resources, and ensure that recovery is equitable.
Annabella Figueroa Mazariegos could not be reached for this report; she did not return an SCNG news questionnaire nor submit a photo and a campaign website could not be located.
–Third District: This zone is 446 square miles large, home to 2 million people. It includes portions of 10 cities, 26 unincorporated communities, and 49 neighborhoods in the City of Los Angeles. The district stretches from Santa Monica to Hollywood, Sylmar to San Fernando, and takes in most of the Santa Monica Mountains and the San Fernando Valley.
The incumbent, Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, is running for re-election for a four-year term against three challengers.
Tonia Arey, 55, a Realtor from Calabasas, said the board is not “getting the job done,” in areas of homelessness, public safety and emergency preparedness. “Right now, it feels like the focus is on bureaucracy and politics instead of solving real problems.”
She agreed with the county breaking from LAHSA but has concerns about the county’s new homeless services department. As to Measure G, a voter-approved reform measure that increases the five-member board to nine members, she’s worried it will cost county taxpayers. “Expanding from five to nine supervisors raises a basic question: Where is the money coming from?”
Arey wants the board to get the 10 million county residents much more prepared for a wildfire or other disaster by performing readiness audits annually.
Lindsey Horvath, 43, incumbent supervisor, said her leadership in moving to a central, homeless services system within the county will bring the structural reforms and accountability lacking under LAHSA. “As we enter this transition, we are ensuring providers are paid and financial best practices are in place,” she said.
Second, she described Measure G that she championed as “the most significant reform of L.A. County government in over a century.” She said expansion of the board from five to nine members helps by “broadening representation and reducing concentrated power.”
In response to the Palisades and Eaton fires, Horvath said the county is modernizing the communication system used by first responders. Also, she said the county Public Works is upgrading water and other infrastructure. The county has hosted emergency preparedness fairs teaching people to build go-bags and create evacuation plans, she said.
Horvath did not take a position on Measure ER, saying she’s leaving it up to the voters to make the decision.
Carmenlina Minasova Minasyan, 54, a reform activist from Los Angeles, rated the board as “not good” due to “all the fires, empty reservoir, crime, high taxes, homeless and drug addictions.” She later added: “Our government system is broken and too often works only for billionaires rather than local residents.”
She wants the county to follow “the values God teaches us.” She also favors “centralized homelessness and mental health services, including free detox and recovery programs for those struggling with drug and alcohol addiction.”
For better emergency preparedness, she wants to reduce 9-1-1 response times and offer free EMT-to-paramedic training.
Tomás Sidenfaden, 45, a software engineer from Los Angeles, said the board has a big budget but is not delivering tantamount results, especially on homelessness, housing and public safety. “We’re still building $750,000-per-unit permanent housing that takes a decade to deliver while 45,000 unsheltered homeless citizens suffer on our streets,” he said.
He calls for more emergency shelters on government land. The new county homeless services and housing department “is just rearranging deck chairs.”
Alerts are too disorganized and the county needs a “unified, real-time communication platform across Fire, Sheriff and OEM (Office of Emergency Management) –– a clear, codified authority so alerts don’t require a game of telephone between departments.”
On Measure ER, he said he understands the urgency felt for asking voters for a tax increase to fill gaps in health care, but doesn’t accept the tax hike on what he called “an already overtaxed county.”
Los Angeles County Sheriff
Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna is seeking reelection and faces the man he unseated, former Sheriff Alex Villanueva, and three challengers from his own department. In all, the June 2 primary has eight candidates who want to oversee the agency’s 10,000-plus deputies.
Alex Villanueva, who served as sheriff from 2018 to 2022, wants his job back. He said he wants to re-establish a culture in which deputies are supported, by focusing on deputy health, reducing overtime and increasing the staffing of the department by making it a place where deputies want to work.
Deputy gangs, he says, are not an issue in the department — instead, the topic is but “political talk,” adding he didn’t, and wouldn’t, tolerate deputy misconduct.
“When you fire as many people as I did, the people that are claiming that I tolerate misconduct were just lying because they created the narrative ‘deputy gangs,’ they created the narrative that I didn’t hold people accountable,” he said.
He said people in jail who are in the country illegally should get deported. “Let’s stop playing games here, and let’s not get involved in obstructing federal immigration,” he said. “I’d much rather have them (federal agents and officers) figure that out there in the jail than chasing people through car washes or strawberry fields, because that was just ridiculous.”
Andre White, 34, joined the department in 2014 and is a gang detective, according to his campaign website. He wants to modernize the department’s technology, increase hiring from the communities the department serves, work on community building and increase accountability in policies, hiring and investigations.
Attempts to interview him were unsuccessful.
Oscar Martinez, 45, has been with the Sheriff’s Department since 2008 and worked in custody, patrol, professional standards and public information and served as a chief’s executive aide.
He aims to make the department more responsive to people, rather than just a county bureaucracy.
Martinez said deputies need to feel supported. “They should not be looking behind themselves all the time,” he said. “At the same time, I do believe that those who commit wrong, that violate policy or especially if they break the law, that they need to be held accountable.”
Martinez said fostering a supportive environment will increase recruitment.
Robert Luna, 60, the current sheriff, pointed out that crime went down during his first term, along with use-of-force episodes in the jails. A second term under him would bring continuity in leadership, he said, especially important as the county prepares to host the Olympics, the Paralympics, the Super Bowl and the World Cup.
“I want to continue on the trajectory I’m on to gain full compliance with all of the federal settlement agreements and court orders that I inherited when I walked into the Sheriff’s Department,” he said. “I want to continue to evolve with discipline, risk management and gang-like behavior that has been, again, very well documented in the Sheriff’s Department. I want to continue to modernize our department.”
Luna said he is in negotiations for raises within the Sheriff’s Department, and he is putting in place strategies to continue boosting the hiring and retention of deputies. He had body-worn cameras added to deputies working in the jails, he said.
Luna has asked the supervisors for money to upgrade custody facilities, and he said he oversaw the addition of mental-health intake screening for the county jail system and a pilot program for health-monitoring bracelets for inmates.
“I’ve made significant progress and I need more time to continue on the path that I’m on,” he said.
Mike Bornman, a retired captain, spent 36 years with the department, which he says is struggling with historically low morale and has an immediate need to address retention.
“They’re getting them in and they’re training them,” said Bornman, 71. “But as soon as they get off training and they’re able, they are hightailing out and going to other agencies,” he said.
As Los Angeles prepares to host a number of high-profile sporting events in the coming years, Bornman says upping the number of personnel is critical.
Also, Bornman would call for a forensic audit of the department to address mismanagement and an overreliance on overtime.
To address custody deaths in Los Angeles County jails, Bornman wants to increase staffing and drug searches and look at contracting with outside hospitals and treatment centers for ill and addicted people in jail.
Karla Carranza, 46, a 21-year veteran in the department and now a sergeant, said deputies would benefit from fresh leadership that can prioritize the agency’s future. She wants to focus on community policing and fostering a relationship between deputies and the communities they serve.
Closing the Men’s Central Jail, which she said is an unsafe facility, would be prioritized. Looking at what the department could offer officers for competitive salaries and retirement is critical to retention, Carranza said.
Addressing homelessness in the county should come from addressing any crimes first, increasing staffing for resources for homeless people and having the Sheriff’s Department work in close partnership with the county, she said.
Brendan Corbett, 66, began working in the Sheriff’s Department in 1985. During his 37 years there, he worked K-9 and SWAT and served as an assistant sheriff before retiring.
“What I see happening in my beloved department right now is why I’m coming back to try to right the ship, for lack of a better term — breaks my heart, I’m seeing our community suffer,” he said. “Communities aren’t safe. Our department is suffering. We’re not addressing crime like we should.”
He has a familiarity with how immigration enforcement intersects with the county jails and that informs his plans, Corbett said.
“ICE agents serve no purpose in the jail,” he said. “An ICE agent being in there, their presence in there, does nothing but gives anxiety to an undocumented person in our custody of care” and scare off friends and family members who would otherwise visit.”
He also advocates bolstering the department’s reserves, connecting with communities through advisory councils, increasing deputy engagement with the community.
Corbett says that deputy gangs do not exist in the department, that in the past cliques and subgroups have existed, and that focus on the issue has eroded public trust and deputies’ morale.
Eric Strong, worked for the Compton and Pasadena police departments before joining the Sheriff’s Department in 2000. He also served as chief of the Los Angeles County Probation Department.
He wants to implement a pilot program to effectively respond to mental-health and substance-abuse problems. The Sheriff’s Department could take the lead in addressing homelessness.
Strong also says he could change department culture.
“People are not leaving because the work is too difficult,” he said of outgoing department employees. “People are leaving because they don’t want to be in this, in a system that’s built on cronyism, that’s vindictive, that’s not supportive, and the employees are not valued — they’re going elsewhere. That’s a cultural change that we make.”
Los Angeles County Assessor
Jeffrey Prang, the incumbent, is being challenged by four challengers for the Office of the Assessor.
Stephen Adamus, 47, a property assessment specialist from Whittier, is a 14-year veteran of the Los Angeles County Assessor’s Office. He is also a licensed California attorney.
“I know the law. I know the job. I know the office. I know the problems, and I know how to fix them,” Adamus said. For starters, he would like to reduce the time it takes to hire employees into the office.
He said Proposition 13 protects the revenues from volatility. However, he says many residents don’t understand the ground-breaking property tax limiting measure.
“I plan on holding many town halls were I educate property owners (and non-property owners) on Proposition 13: its history, why it exists, what it is, how it works and why we need to protect it,” he said.
He said the best ways to improve the system is to remove politics from the equation because politics clogs the system. Second, follow the law that the legislature gave on how to do the job. And third, focus on the job. “If we focused on simply completing our mandate, the system would improve.”
Rob Newland, 50, a real estate appraiser from Lake Balboa, said he has the smarts and the experience to do the job.
“At its core, the assessor’s job is valuation. That’s what I do. I’ve spent years working with property data, market trends and the factors that drive assessed value,” he said. “I’ve also worked directly with property owners trying to understand their assessments, and I’ve seen how confusing the system can be.”
He said the office should be more transparent and he aims to make it easier to navigate for the average property owner. He said a lot of people don’t fully understand the rules for assessing property values.
“The process itself isn’t explained in plain terms, and most people don’t really know how their value was calculated or what factors went into it. That’s something that should be fixed,” he said.
He added: “Using more modern tools, including automation and AI, could automate routine work and free up staff to actually help people.”
Steven Palty, 68, of Los Angeles, has 45 years of experience as a tax consultant.
“I want to function not as an employee of LA County, but as a representative of the voters of LA County who elect me to office,” he said. “The current assessor has already served three terms in office. The last thing we need is more bureaucracy. We need someone who works for the residents of LA County.”
To improve the system, Palty said he would initiate a “thorough audit” of the system. Second, he’d increase the staff to help speed up processing of any appeals. “First, I must determine that the budget is free of waste and fraud and that funds are allocated correctly and efficiently,” he said.
Jeffrey Prang, 63, incumbent, lives in Baldwin Hills and is a California-licensed appraiser. He has 30 years of government policy and administrative experience, including 18 years as a West Hollywood councilmember and mayor.
“I have managed what is arguably one of the most successful assessment offices in California,” he said. “I took over following a scandal involving my predecessor and successfully restored public confidence in the agency. I enacted sweeping reforms to ensure security and integrity of the office and have invested in technology and operational improvements.”
When asked how people could better understand how assessments are made on their property, he said his office has made public education a priority, because the property tax system can be confusing.
“We use a wide range of communication platforms, including a robust website, active social media and direct email communication, reaching more than 1 million property owners,” Prang said.
He said he supports “the careful use of artificial intelligence and advanced analytics” to help improve accuracy and flag any inconsistencies while streamlining administrative processes, such as assessment appeals.
“Our new technology platform has allowed us to launch an e-Service program, in which property owners can create their own online profile to handle many transactions online, as well as the free anti-title fraud “Homeowner Alert” service,” he noted.
Sandy Sun, 57 of Los Angeles, is deputy assessor. She has 26 years of experience in the office. She is crossed-trained and certified, and has worked in both real property and personal property divisions. “I bring actual hands-on work experience and insight to lead this department effectively,” Sun said.
To help people better understand what the assessor does, Sun offered several options:
“I will focus on providing user-friendly assessment process information on the assessor website. Additionally, believe it or not, many taxpayers still prefer, if not solely depend on, hardcopy literature. Use of pamphlets in a Q&A format would go a long way in explaining and helping the public navigate the complex assessment process, she said.
She said a modernization project that was supposed to take 3-5 years has been in the works for 12 years and is incomplete and not fully functional. “Even though this AMP project has many deficiencies, I believe it can be salvaged with recent breakthroughs in technology,” she said.
Hiring is too slow and that needs to be rectified, she said. “Not hiring and filling these vacant positions has been a pattern over the last 12 years. This has led to a significant backlog of work and low employee morale,” she said.
Measure ER
The measure, put on the ballot by the Board of Supervisors, asks voters to support a half-cent sales tax increase to help stave off the effects of federal cuts affecting county healthcare facilities, including the risk of some clinics and even hospitals closing.
The measure is led by Second District L.A. County Supervisor Holly Mitchell and is supported by a coalition of clinics, labor unions and physician groups.
The general sales tax increase puts money into the county’s general fund for five years and sunsets in October 2031.
The Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 to put the measure on the ballot, with an allocation plan that will move revenue primarily to nonprofit health care providers and county health departments and hospitals, but also to Planned Parenthood and city health care departments in Pasadena and Long Beach.
The measure needs 50% of the vote plus one for approval.
In the races, unless one candidate garners more than 50% of votes in the June 2 primary to outright win the seat, the top two vote-getters will move on to the November general election ballot.