Plenty of Los Angeles County offices are at stake in Tuesday’s primary election, but every race includes a well-positioned incumbent expected to easily pick up enough votes to reach the runoff, if not win outright with support from more than half of voters.
Two Los Angeles County supervisors, Hilda Solis and Sheila Kuehl, are seeking second terms on the five-member board. Solis is running unopposed in the First District, which runs from downtown east to Claremont, as far north as Azusa and down to South Gate.
Kuehl is facing real estate agent Daniel G. Glaser and journalist Eric Preven in the race to represent the Third District, which covers much of the Westside and San Fernando Valley, from the Ventura County line east to Hollywood, north to Sylmar and south to include Venice.
Kuehl doesn’t have a campaign website or any campaign staff and inquiries about the race are referred to her directly. She told City News Service it has been a privilege to serve and she hopes voters will support her bid for another term.
“I have been very proud of the work I’ve been able to do in my first term on the Board of Supervisors, from raising the minimum wage to designating millions for new affordable housing, to the extraordinary and broad commitment to help those experiencing homelessness,” Kuehl said. “To starting a new community choice greener alternative to (Southern California) Edison, to founding a new Office of Sustainability, to targeting our own safety net clients for job training and advancement, to creating a Women and Girls Initiative and much more.”
On his campaign website, Glaser, who ran as an independent candidate for president in 2016, says he wants to “spread the social justice that is lacking in America and to take it back from the greedy corporations and individuals who have been running it for the past decade.” Glaser also cites his interest in helping those with mental illness and “hardworking middle- and lower-class individuals who can’t get ahead because they, too, don’t have access to the education, tools and resources they need to succeed.”
Preven, who ran unsuccessfully for the seat against Kuehl in 2014, as well as for the Los Angeles City Council in 2015 and Los Angeles mayor in 2017, says he’s running now because he believes the county’s most pressing problems, including homelessness, aren’t being effectively addressed.
“As a journalist covering and commenting on government in Los Angeles for years, I have learned a lot about what works and doesn’t work in county governance,” Preven, who serves on the Studio City Neighborhood Council, said in a campaign statement.
Preven also points to his role as a co-plaintiff with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California in a suit which required the county to disclose bills paid to private law firms.
County supervisors can serve three consecutive four-year terms before reaching term limits. Incumbents are rarely voted out — the last instance was in 1980 — and before term limits were set in 2002, incumbents held their posts for decades before retiring.
The Los Angeles Times editorial board has endorsed Kuehl, noting her work on a number of key initiatives, including justice reform and renewable energy options, and arguing that she deserves another term to follow-through on those and other efforts. The newspaper agreed with concerns Preven has long raised about a lack of county transparency and urged Kuehl to push for better access to information.
Unlike most of the primary races on the ballot, all of the county races are non-partisan.
Sheriff Jim McDonnell is being challenged by Bob Lindsey, a retired sheriff’s commander, and sheriff’s Lt. Alex Villanueva, in what appears to be shaping up as a referendum on McDonnell’s commitment to reform and the concerns of rank-and-file deputies.
McDonnell appears confident of getting the votes he needs to, at a minimum, advance to the November general election, declining to date to debate the other candidates.
The sheriff points to successes in a department that everyone agrees he took over in a time of crisis and, like all three candidates, seeks to strike a balance between attracting those who want him to be tough on crime and voters more concerned with reports of deputy brutality in the jails and on the streets.
“While we have worked hard for reform and to strengthen community relationships, we have also succeeded in bringing crime down,” McDonnell’s campaign website states. “We’ve reduced serious use of force inside the jails, created a series of systems to build greater accountability and established the Public Data Sharing Project to increase transparency. We built the Human Trafficking Bureau to aggressively address a growing regional and national problem that victimizes some of the most vulnerable in our society — our children and young people.”
Both Lindsey and Villanueva have more than three decades of experience in the department.
Lindsay, who leads McDonnell in fundraising when dollars from an independent committee are included, promises in a statement to voters to “lower crime by increasing patrols, fight against early prisoner release, eliminate irresponsible spending on wasteful political projects, issue concealed carry permits with a comprehensive background investigation, pioneer multiple youth programs, revive Education Based Incarceration and job opportunity programs, restore community advisory committees who will directly communicate with the sheriff, and respectfully partner with the legal cannabis community to keep organized crime out while protecting, safeguarding and educating our youth.”
Villanueva takes the stance of a reformer, saying he challenged executive misconduct during Lee Baca’s administration and is willing to take tough positions.
“Alex plans to rebuild the LASD from the ground up, reforming the organization around the principles of community policing and ethical standards of conduct,” according to his website. “Alex’s experience within the LASD, the military, and as an educator, all point to a transformational leader who can reform the LASD, raise morale, inspire people to aim higher, and improve the relationship between the community and the LASD.”
Villanueva has earned the influential endorsement of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party, along with many smaller neighborhood party organizations. He highlights his earlier work as a union organizer, but it is Lindsey who has the backing of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
The Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, which is in the midst of contract negotiations, has declined so far to make an endorsement, after failing to get enough polling participation from its ranks to make a definitive choice. However, the overwhelming majority of the roughly 18 percent of deputies who responded to the poll voted for Lindsey, a vote the union called representative of “a loss of confidence” by many employees. Union concerns include understaffing and what it says are flaws in the disciplinary system that have hurt morale and recruiting, but it is not clear that those issues will move most voters.
McDonnell has been endorsed by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, District Attorney Jackie Lacey, state and county police chiefs associations, as well as the California Peace Officers Association and the Los Angeles Times, though the newspaper’s editorial board faulted McDonnell for failing to more wholeheartedly embrace innovative reforms implemented elsewhere.
Assessor Jeffrey Prang is facing competition from three deputy assessors: Krish Indra Kumar, Sandy Sun and John Loew.
Prang, like McDonnell, took over a county department from a leader tainted by scandal, in this case, John Noguez, who is facing criminal charges for allegedly accepting campaign donations in exchange for lowering property assessments.
The county assessor’s office is responsible for evaluating more than 2.6 million real estate and business properties valued at more than $1.4 trillion and managing an annual budget of nearly $200 million and about 1,400 employees.
In addition to taking responsibility for restoring trust in the department, Prang said he has moved to modernize technology and make more information accessible online.
Kumar, Loew and Sun all ran against Prang in 2014, each picking up less than 10 percent of the vote in that primary race, which featured a more crowded field of 12 candidates.
Prang says he will continue to replace and upgrade legacy systems and make sure assessments are fair.
Kumar cites inefficiencies and says he can cut wasteful spending, while Sun says she will support legislation to generate property tax savings for homeowners and veterans in particular. Loew changed his middle name before the 2014 primary so that he could appear on that ballot and this one as John “Lower Taxes” Loew.
All three of Prang’s opponents have stressed their experience as appraisers, a skill they say is necessary to run the department, while Prang counters that his work in city and county government, as both an elected official and administrator, better suits the job.
Prang is endorsed by the Los Angeles County Democratic Party, all five members of the county Board of Supervisors, the California Association of Realtors, Service Employees International Union Local 721 and the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.