Newcomer Ysabel Jurado’s 1st-Place Finish Rocks Los Angeles council District 14 Race
For progressive policy advocates, results at the local level like Jurado’s win in what could ultimately become a historic upset may hold some of the most valuable insights on national politics so far in 2024.
By HANS JOHNSON
THEY WERE BRAVE WORDS. WHEN young housing attorney and first-time candidate Ysabel Jurado took the microphone at her kickoff rally in Garvanza Park in August 2023, she stated plainly:
“I am Ysabel Jurado. And I am running to represent all of us here in Council District 14. I am not afraid. Because I have so much faith in my community, this community.”
Her remarks drew a wave of cheers from onlookers, who numbered more than two hundred. Dozens in the crowd that Saturday went on to volunteer for Jurado, knocking doors, hosting fund-raisers, and asking friends and neighbors to vote for her.
Seven months later, Jurado backed up the boldness of her initial announcement with a first-place finish in the March 5 primary election.
In doing so, she overcame two sitting Assemblymembers and vanquished naysayers who insisted she could not make a runoff, much less best the vote totals by the incumbent in the seat, Kevin de Leon, another Sacramento politician who formerly served as state Senate president.
Jurado would be the first woman ever to represent Council District 14 (CD 14). She would also be the first Filipina/o American ever elected to L.A. City Council. City Controller Kenneth Mejia, a Filipino, won election citywide in 2022.
For progressive policy advocates, results at the local level like Jurado’s win may hold some of the most valuable insights on national politics so far in 2024. Even in an era of big-money campaigns and unchecked outside spending, Jurado showed that a community-based candidate with a clear progressive message, a diligent voter-outreach program, and a large base of individual small-dollar donors can beat a series of better-funded politicians.
She also took advantage of the nonpartisan nature of city elections and her profile as a fresh, friendly grassroots candidate to reach and activate some middle-of-the-road and a few conservative voters. Her expertise on preventing eviction, housing displacement, homelessness, and outsider candidacy had strong appeal beyond her progressive base.
Indeed, the insider status of Jurado’s three main rivals, along with voters’ impatience and even outrage at the pattern of criminal corruption (José Huizar) and hypocrisy (de León) by the two most recent incumbents in CD 14 may have dragged down all three of her chief competitors.
The trio of current Democratic officeholders competing against Jurado — lacking a breakthrough message of their own or a volunteer door-knocking effort — seemed stale and remote by comparison, as well as dependent on the same cluster of traditional, favor-seeking interests.
Independence, like the directness that defined Jurado’s candidacy from the outset, may be her superpower.
She attracted hundreds of individual donors, many giving $10 or $20 or $50, drawn to her authenticity and firsthand fluency in the struggles of a working single parent from an intergenerational, immigrant household. Jurado, who lives in Highland Park, raised more than $200,000 for the primary and successfully navigated the system of city matching funds to add $174,000 more, for a total of $380,000.
Jurado’s three major rivals — Assemblymembers Wendy Carrillo and Miguel Santiago and the incumbent, de León — all outraised and outspent her. They exploited their fund-raising tethers to Sacramento. They also vastly exceeded her in a most revealing statistic: cost-per-vote.
Based on the expenditure amounts shown on the official L.A. City Ethics disclosure Web site, Jurado came in at an impressive $36.62 per vote.
In contrast, de León spent $53.68 per vote. Carrillo spent $65.40 per vote. And in a signal of the disappointment within the Santiago campaign and among union supporters who sank $700,000 into separate efforts to promote him, total spending for Santiago rang in at $175.06 per vote.
Two of Jurado’s competitors have only themselves to blame for recent negative publicity. Carrillo incurred a highly publicized drunk-driving arrest in early November 2023 after colliding with a vehicle and testing at more than twice the legal limit of blood alcohol while driving
De León was caught on audio recordings released in October 2022 making pejorative remarks about Black people and laughing while others disparaged LGBTQ parents, Jews, Armenian Americans, and Oaxacan immigrants.
His bigoted statements sparked heated and sustained demands for his resignation stretching into 2023 by residents of Council District 14, City Council colleagues, and President Joe Biden.
An L.A. Times poll amid the uproar found that a majority of residents supported ousting de León from office.
De León drew mockery during the primary for sending an unusual letter to voters this January. Emblazoned with a teaser on its envelope saying, “I’m truly sorry,” it was intended to look like a personal appeal.
But in its lengthy message, the political mailing went on to invite pity for himself over how he says his plans and peace of mind were disrupted by protests of constituents justifiably angered by his prejudiced statements.
Jurado, for her part, did not rely on mailings to voters. She told her story, including how she became a mom while still a teenager and worked while earning her undergraduate and law degrees at UCLA, through well-produced videos.
Her canvassing operation touched the doors of tens of thousands of district voters. District 14 includes the neighborhoods of Boyle Heights, Downtown L.A., El Sereno, Monterey Hills, Garvanza, Eagle Rock, and part of Highland Park.
In the runoff campaign, which culminates on November 5, de León is likely to revert to some tactics that leverage his office-holder status and taxpayer resources but that have drawn criticism from voters.
One is the blanketing of voter mailboxes with postcards paid for by the City of L.A. announcing food giveaways, with eligibility restricted to CD 14 recipients based on proof of residency.
If the primary is any barometer, such tactics may endear the incumbent to a few voters but cut against him with others. Likewise, some voters may not recall or will simply ignore the leaked audio and evidence of his seething resentment at Black people in favor of his claims of anti-racism and attempts at face-saving.
But nearly two years after the bombshell recordings made headlines, many residents of CD 14 voice exhaustion and revulsion at de León’s refusal to step down and frustration at the delays in basic requests from the office, such as pothole filling and block cleanups, that are casualties of his distraction.
In the primary, more than 75 percent of voters chose someone other than him. That large base of gettable prospects gives Ysabel Jurado and her invigorated volunteers thousands of voters to door-knock over the next four months to make her a Councilmember and make history in L.A.
Hans Johnson trains nonprofit leaders on advocacy, legislation and coalition strategy. Based in Los Angeles, he guided campaigns to pass state laws in California protecting the Mojave desert and banning throwaway plastic bags.
Republished with permission of LAProgressive.com
Photos by Naomi Villagomez Roochnik
