Part 69: With Love in Defense of Los Angeles – Why I’m Endorsing Aura Vásquez for CD-10

Published January 22, 2024

Photo of Los Angeles City Council District 10 candidate Aura Vásquez from website.

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By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist

Most people would go, Zach you don’t get to make endorsements, but I do! This will actually be the second endorsement that I make as severely underfunded independent journalist covering politics, investigations and media in Los Angeles. That’s something that newspapers do, and with all the discussion lately about the endorsements made at the Los Angeles Times, like Nika Soon-Shiong alone was the only reason they endorsed Karen Bass and Kenneth Mejia, it’s come to the point where I feel no shame at all in saying that I want Aura Vasquez on the Los Angeles City Council.  

On March 5, 2024 voters will go to the polls for the primary election, the top two without regard to party advanced the final stage. In the Council District 10 race, which covers neighborhoods ranging from Koreatown to West Adams to the north and west, and even down to the Baldwin Hills along Crenshaw Boulevard. This was the district held by Mark Ridley-Thomas, and after he was suspended from Los Angeles City Council and eventually Heather Hutt was appointed to serve as the interim councilmember, and later voted in as a full voting member of the Council.

Current Councilwoman Heather Hutt has decided to seek re-election, and along with attorney and Neighborhood Councilmember Grace Yoo who previously ran for the seat, and Reggie Sawyer-Jones whose seeking a landing pad from the State Assembly, and Pastor/Organizer Eddie-Anderson there’s a strong and somewhat contentious field competing for voters. If you ask me though, it’s Aura Vásquez who’s the standout, the former Department of Water and Power Commissioner works in environmental organizing and has a long career doing so leading coalitions to make positive change.

I think Aura, who is Afro-Latina, born in Colombia and who has lived in New York brings vision, perspective and experience that the other candidates don’t have despite having respectable resumes. The Los Angeles City Council needs to change, and that change needs to start happening now, first with an attitudinal change, and secondly with some major organizational structure changes i.e. expansion and charter reforms. My expectation is that Aura will sit for the full council meetings, and without the flippancy shown by members in disregarding and appearing uninterested in what even normal people have to say.

You don’t have to go to many meetings, or even watch them, to understand that at present the meetings mostly function as showcases for groups followed by the airing of grievances in a spectacle that approaches the best, and perhaps, the worst elements of Festivus. While I do hear some of our current Councilmembers saying positive things, and addressing some issues, overall it’s simply not delivering the results that people in Los Angeles want and need. You don’t have to be a governance expert to know that something isn’t quite right.

So for the duration of the campaign, I’ve shadowed Aura who is perhaps the most accessible candidate, and I give her my full support with love in defense of Los Angeles, because it’s worth defending despite all the criticism we hear from people that don’t love this place. The hope and the change that Council District 10 needs, and that Los Angeles needs more broadly as we navigate the post LA Fed Tapes environment and Karen Bass’s mayorship reaches its midpoint can be found in Aura. I think Bass is doing okay, but she needs help, and people who will tell her the bold truth, and also be pragmatic.

Turning to some of the other races, I’ve been very impressed with the approach of the Los Angeles Forward Institute, which although they haven’t endorsed Aura (yet?) have the right idea about where we need to go. Led by David Levitus and Godfrey Plata the progressive group has been at the forefront of pushing City Council to move expansion forward sooner than later. Los Angeles has the highest ratio of voters to representatives in the country, and although some have fairly expansive staffs, it clearly needs to be bigger to bring in more voices.

The choice in Council District 4, Hollywood/Mid-Wilshire, made by the group is solid, Nithya Raman although she needs to work on outreach is the better choice over challenger Ethan Weaver who seems eager to ingratiate himself with the political establishment whereas Raman has sometime drawn scorn for her advocacy on behalf of the unhoused. I never expected that Nithya would be able to change everything herself, and of course the LAPD sadly can’t be quite shuttered even if it does need some fumigation (rats?). People have to be treated fairly under the law, and the recent stories of corruption in the department are beyond disturbing.

In Council District 12, the west San Fernando Valley, Serena Oberstein is facing off against current Councilmember John Lee. Oberstein is a former Ethics Commissioner, and well John Lee is still in trouble with the municipal body, which just got a quorum to meet after City Council approved Controller Kenneth Mejia’s nominee Rabbi Aryeh Cohen. Yes, it’s that bad they had to call in the Rabbi after Council unanimously rejected his initial nominee Jamie York over apparent concerns that she might push them too hard in the right direction. Oberstein is more progressive than Lee, a Republican, and she brings much needed reform expertise.

The most complicated race perhaps is Council District 14, where Kevin de León’s anti-Black racism was captured on the LA Fed Tapes. Yes, Kevin really said some atrocious things, and was totally cool with Nury Martinez saying them too, despite his weak salsa apologies KDL has got to go down just to end the melodrama and give Los Angeles the peace it deserved. He even ignored President Joe Biden’s suggestion that he resign. LA Forward went with attorney Ysabel Jurado, who is a Filipina in a crowded race similar to CD-10. Assemblywoman Wendy Carrillo has refused to drop out despite a drunk-driving conviction in which she crashed her car.

The more vexing challenge is whether to simply replace KDL with Assemblyman Miguel Santiago, who although a former friend of him, has turned against him ostensibly and although not the most progressive person offers an alternate choice. Santiago is clearly an establishment candidate, and that’s the last thing we need. It appears unlikely that Jurado can pull-off the same type of Democratic Socialists of America backed candidate victory that propelled first Raman and then Hugo Soto-Martinez and Eunisses Hernandez into office over Mitch O’Farrell and Gil Cedillo, KDL’s friend also heard on the LA Fed Tapes. Things would be simpler if Wendy would have just dropped out. I heard she’s getting treatment, but come on, seriously?

Only in Los Angeles, and although I won’t defend Carrillo, I’m not condemning her as a person, but I probably wouldn’t have voted for her even as a fellow Trojan. There’s just something that gives me that feel that she wants to be part of the establishment so bad that she’d do just about anything. I want fierce defenders of immigrants, the environment and civil rights, but enough with the culture of sell-outs, that’s how we get to Kevin de León, who although not the devil some make him out to be, clearly has his own best interest at heart. I haven’t seen any polling for these races, but with the Los Angeles Times in disarray it’s hard to expect them to do so just so I can better inform my readers.

The meltdown at the Los Angeles Times continued today with well-regarded Managing Editor Sara Yasin stepping down immediately. This came after 10 members of Congress wrote a letter to owner Patrick Soon-Shiong demanding that he stop the proposed 20% cut that appears to have forced top Editor Kevin Merida out amidst controversy over news coverage. They’re still rolling that it’s just about the breach in the newsroom over Israel and Hamas, and not anything else suspicious or odd. Still no follow-up coverage on the December 19 story that LAPD chief ordered an investigation into Cory Palka and USC stopped, and instead ordered Karen Bass investigated over the scholarship.

The Times hasn’t defended their reporting, or advanced it further ahead. I’ll hope they do so soon, and that Congress takes up legislation to tax social media companies that benefit off the widespread distribution of news content across their platforms. I’m not sure how we change Los Angeles totally just yet to stop being the news apocalypse, but I think voting in Aura would be a pretty good start. Council District 10 deserves someone different from business as usual, whether that’s Heather Hutt or Reggie Jones-Sawyer, and I don’t think that Grace Yoo, although respectable has the same energy or dynamism for hope and change.

So there you have it, my endorsements to date, and I’ve decided to abstain from making an endorsement in the District Attorney’s race. It’s not that I don’t want Gascón to hang on, we need someone like George, but I’m not sure that he’s heard some of the more reasoned criticism, and rest assured most of the hatred towards him is pretty irrational, but making endorsements in regards to a District Attorney’s race would undermine my objectivity about criminal cases in a way I’m not quite prepared to do yet, even if I will play politics, and that starts with putting Aura Vásquez on Los Angeles City Council.

Link: Aura for the People

Link: Nithya Lifting L.A. Together

Link: Ysabel for the Community

Link: Serena Oberstein for L.A. City Council

Link: LA Forward Endorsements for the March 5, 2024 Election

Link: Managing Editor Sara Yasin departs amid L.A. Times turmoil

Please support my work with your subscription or for direct aid use Venmo

Zachary Ellison is an Independent Journalist and Whistleblower in the Los Angeles area. Zach was most recently employed by the University of Southern California, Office of the Provost from October 2015 to August 2022 as an Executive Secretary and Administrative Assistant supporting the Vice Provost for Academic Operations and the Vice Provost and Senior Advisor to the Provost among others. Zach holds a Master’s in Public Administration and a Graduate Certificate in Sustainable Policy and Planning from the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. While a student at USC, he worked for the USC Good Neighbors Campaign including on their newsletter distributed university-wide. Zach completed his B.A. in History at Reed College, in Portland, Oregon and was a writer, editor, and photographer for the Pasadena High School Chronicle. He was Barack Obama’s one-millionth online campaign contributor in 2008. Zach is a former AmeriCorps intern for Hawaii State Parks and worked for the City of Manhattan Beach Parks and Recreation. He is a trained civil process server, and enjoys weekends in the great outdoors.