A Changing of the Guard in South L.A.

THE FRONTRUNNER TO REPRESENT Los Angeles’ Council District 9 was not expecting controversy when he delivered his opening statement in Spanish at a candidate forum on a cloudy Saturday morning in May. 

Seated with six other candidates in the yard of a South Central youth center, with palm trees and a rusted check cashing sign looming behind him, Jose Ugarte spoke in his mother tongue — and that of much of the audience — saying he had been born in Oaxaca and spent his youth undocumented after arriving in the United States. He touted his prior service and accomplishments working in the state Legislature and for the current CD 9 council member, Curren D. Price.

It was, as far as these things go, pretty standard campaign fare. Save for the hecklers, and ensuing bout of fury.

“Everyone else addressed this community in English and Spanish,” one woman yelled, amid a handful of other cries about translation. “Says a lot about his candidacy,” another woman muttered. “He’s running for his people.”

Ugarte looked taken aback, and sought to clarify that he’d been told he could speak in Spanish or English, and that translation would be provided. The majority of attendees seated in neat rows of chairs on the artificial turf were Latino and wore translation headsets, but the non-Spanish speakers raising concerns, who were Black, did not appear to have been offered headsets. 

After a few minutes of commotion, Ugarte delivered his opening remarks again, this time in English. 

The brief moment of tumult spoke to the transformation of a district that includes a narrow sliver of downtown Los Angeles, the University of Southern California and a wide swath of South Los Angeles. Once a stronghold of Black Los Angeles, CD 9 is now overwhelmingly Latino, a shift that mirrors broader demographic trends in the city. 

Just down the street from where the candidates convened, the famed 27th Street Bakery still sells homemade sweet potato pies — a specialty that catered to migrants from the South who once helped make Central Avenue the Black cultural heart of a segregated city. But a carniceria now dominates much of the block, and most of the neighboring stores advertise in Spanish. 

The story of this year’s CD 9 election is also a story of demographic and representational change: The district has been represented by a Black council member since 1963, when Gilbert W. Lindsay made history as L.A.’s first Black elected official. But after more than a half-century of Black representation, all six of the candidates on the ballot vying to succeed Price are Latino. 

(Chris Martin, a seventh candidate who was also present at the May debate, is waging a write-in campaign. He is Black.) 

Representation tends to be a lagging indicator of demographic change, particularly for communities with fast-growing Latino populations. 

This part of South Los Angeles remained a hub of Black political power through the turn of the millennium, even as it became a gateway for recent immigrants from Mexico and Central America beginning in the 1980s. By 2001, the district was more than 60% Latino and about a third Black, but Latinos still only made up about 15% of voters. By 2013, when Price was first elected, it was an open question whether the district — which was by then nearly 80% Latino by population, though the share of Latino voters still lagged far behind — would switch hands from Black to Latino. But Price, who is now being forced out by term limits, handily won reelection twice. 

“Our district has so many fires burning around immigration, around economic poverty, around access to health care. Many of our undocumented residents, migrant workers, are going to lose their Medi-Cal if they haven't already,” said Dr. Jerry Abraham, a civic leader who serves as director of public health integration, street medicine, and workforce development at Kedren Community Health Center in the district. 

Affordability was one of the key issues discussed at the May candidate forum, with candidates and constituents raising concerns about ensuring resources are spread to the poorest corners of the district, and not just the comparatively shiny attractions near its northern border, like the Convention Center, L.A. Live, USC and the museums at Exposition Park. 

Ugarte — Price’s former deputy chief of staff —  is widely viewed as the frontrunner in the race, with the most institutional backing and a large financial advantage, including more than a million dollars in outside spending. Along with Ugarte, two other candidates — community organizer Estuardo Mazariegos and nonprofit executive director Elmer Roldan — are largely seen as waging the most serious campaigns. But in a six-way race splayed across a district where most voters are far too busy making ends meet to pay attention to the details of city politics, anything could happen. 

Another candidate, Jorge Nuño, runs a graphic design firm and community hub The Big House and previously lost to Price in the 2017 primary election cycle. He has raised just under $30,000 and was endorsed by County Supervisor Holly J. Mitchell and former state Senate Majority Leader Lena Gonzalez. A fifth contender, Martha Sánchez, is a professor and therapist who has raised a little more than $18,000. The sixth would-be council member, Jorge Hernandez Rosas, is an educator and therapist who has not reported raising any funds. All six are immigrants or the children of immigrants. 

The race is in some ways a microcosm of the city’s broader political moment, in that each of the prominent candidates represent different, albeit overlapping, camps of Democrat power in Los Angeles. 

The DSA Candidate

Estuardo Mazariegos is endorsed by the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, which has become a potent force in the city over the past half-dozen years, and LA Forward, another progressive group with an increasingly visible profile in L.A.’s civic landscape. He’s also backed by Bernie Sanders, Controller Kenneth Mejia and Eunisses Hernandez, the City Council’s leftmost member. He’s led Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Los Angeles, a grassroots organization advocating for tenant rights and other issues. 

An independent political action committee sponsored by teachers unions has put $100,000 toward supporting him. His campaign donors also include some of the same Hollywood names — like Hacks star Hannah Einbinder and Abbott Elementary writer Brittani Nichols — who’ve been outspoken supporters of other progressive candidates. 

He has also come under fire for a gun possession charge from his early 20s.

The CoCo Lineage

Community Coalition, a South Los Angeles nonprofit founded in the early 1990s by now-Mayor Karen Bass, has decades of clout in the community.  With Bass’ election, the CoCo coterie became a new power center at City Hall.  Bass protégé Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who represents a neighboring district and previously led the organization, is City Council president; other Community Coalition alumni have held senior leadership roles with both offices. 

Elmer Roldan has been involved with Community Coalition since he was a middle schooler being ferried home in a beat-up minivan by a much younger Bass. Harris-Dawson and Bass have both endorsed Roldan’s candidacy, though Bass’ bruising mayoral race has likely limited how much, if any, muscle either politician is putting behind his council campaign. An independent committee sponsored by Community Coalition is also spending tens of thousands of dollars on field support for his bid. 

Roldan worked with Community Coalition for nearly two decades, beginning as a youth leader, and is now executive director of the education nonprofit Communities In Schools of Los Angeles.

The Old School City Hall Establishment Candidate

Jose Ugarte is the chosen successor of Curren Price, a well-liked third-term council member and veteran politician who was criminally charged in 2023 on accusations of embezzlement, perjury and conflict of interest —charges which are still pending.  He has pleaded not guilty, and challenged the fairness of the prosecution, arguing to the L.A. Times that the issues were essentially  paperwork errors.

Like his former boss, Ugarte has also faced ethics violations. He was fined by the city Ethics Commission for repeatedly failing to disclose outside income from his lobbying and consulting firm made while he worked as a council staffer. (Ugarte characterized the issue as an “unintentional clerical reporting error” to the Los Angeles Times.)

He was previously an organizer for the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, an umbrella group of unions that holds tremendous sway in L.A. politics, and is financially supported by some labor groups along with corporate interests like Airbnb. 

He also has the endorsement of the County Democratic party, four of Price’s colleagues on the council, City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto and many labor unions. 

Price’s Coalition Politics and What Comes Next

“The question is how big is Jose Ugarte’s lead and does he crack 50% or not? It’s possible, but not plausible,” said political consultant Michael Trujillo, who has previously run campaigns in the district, including Dulce Vasquez’ unsuccessful bid to unseat Price in 2022. Should any candidate receive more than 50% of support in the primary, they will win outright; otherwise, the top two finishers will proceed to the November ballot. 

The district is the poorest in the city and has some of the lowest rates of voter participation — factors that create unique challenges for candidates trying to engage voters. Residents often work two or three jobs or have irregular hours, making it harder to reach them when door-knocking. Many naturalized citizens in CD 9 fled from instability in their home countries, and have less of a tradition of political engagement. 

Price managed to hold on to his seat for three terms in large part because of his immigrant advocacy and success at building deep ties with his Latino constituents, along with his support from labor groups.  

“After he came to office, he had an overwhelmingly Latino staff. He launched the first Día de los Muertos [celebration] that had been held in South L.A. by a political figure and worked with [prominent immigrant rights nonprofit] CHIRLA to put an immigration clinic in his district,” said Manuel Pastor, director of the USC Equity Research Institute and an expert on social movements and South Los Angeles. 

Pastor, who has donated to Roldan’s campaign, said the district has also had one of the largest undocumented Latino populations in the city, which meant that Black voters had a share of voting power well above their raw numbers. 

Despite the shift in racial representation inherent in Tuesday’s election — and the broader implications for Latino and Black political power on the 15-member council — the race’s retail politics have focused on issues of community empowerment, community safety, immigrant protection and raising wages, Pastor explained. 

“There’s not an ethnic campaign. It’s a community campaign. And that is very interesting,” he said. “I think it speaks to the Black-Brown politics that have become important within South L.A.”