Rafu Wire and Staff Reports
Candidates in the June 7 elections in Los Angeles included two with ties to Little Tokyo.
In the 37th Congressional District, former City Councilmember Jan Perry was in second place with 8,701 votes (18.51 percent). State Sen. Sydney Kamlager led the field of seven candidates with 19,584 (41.67 percent). Culver City Mayor Daniel W. Lee was in third place with 7,616 (16.20 percent).
If the percentages hold, Perry and Kamlager will face off in the Nov. 7 general election. The winner will succeed Rep. Karen Bass, who is running for mayor.
Finishing after Lee, each with less than 10 percent of the vote, were, in order: county commissioner Sandra Mendoza, business owner Chris Champion, private equity investor Baltazar “Bong” Fedalizo and journalist Michael Shure.
Mail-in ballots that were postmarked by Tuesday will likely continue to arrive in the coming days and will be added to the totals, but the overall results are unlikely to change.
Perry represented Little Tokyo when she served on the City Council from 2003 to 2013. She unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 2013 and for the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in 2020. She was general manager of the Los Angeles Economic & Workforce Development Department from 2013 to 2018.
Perry pledged that if elected, her top priorities would be “preserving the environment, improving education, stopping an alarming increase in violent crime, expanding access to affordable, quality health care, and ensuring that America pursues a foreign policy that is sane, just, and maintains our strong support for our allies.”
Her endorsers include Rep. Maxine Waters; former Rep. Diane Watson; County Assessor Jeffrey Prang; former City Councilmembers Mike Hernandez and Bernard Parks; George McKenna and Genethia Hudley Hayes, LAUSD Board of Education; Andra Hoffman, Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees; Trisha Murakawa, El Camino College Board of Trustees.
City Councilmember Kevin de Leon, who represents Council District 14, finished a distant third in the mayoral race with 23,665 votes (7.49 percent). Billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso was in first place with 133,059 (42.14 percent) and Bass was second with 116,688 (36.95 percent). The two will face off in November.
De Leon, whose district includes Little Tokyo and Skid Row, said during the campaign, “All my life, I’ve been told ‘it’s a long shot.’ But I never saw it that way. As Senate leader, I took on the NRA to pass historic gun safety laws. When Trump attacked immigrants, I stopped him in his tracks. They say ‘long shot.’ I say, that’s the leadership L.A. needs.”
De Leon’s endorsers include Reps. Jimmy Gomez, Norma Torres and Lou Correa; former State Controller and State Treasurer John Chiang; Assemblymembers Miguel Santiago, Mike Fong, Rudy Salas, Eduardo Garcia, Sabrina Cervantes, Eloise Gomez-Reyes and Bill Quirk; former Assemblymember Warren Furutani; State Sens. Monique Limon, Dr. Richard Pan, Richard Roth and Maria Elena Durazo.
Finishing after de Leon were, in order, community activist Gina Viola, City Attorney Mike Feuer, lawyer Andrew Kim, social justice advocate Alex Gruenenfelder Smith, Councilmember Joe Buscaino, business executive Craig Greiwe, real estate agent Mel
Wilson, entrepreneur Ramit Varma, and business owner John “Jsamuel” Jackson.
Buscaino, Feuer and Varma dropped out of the race in May but their names remained on the ballot. Feuer threw his support behind Bass, while Buscaino and Varma endorsed Caruso. The winner will succeed Eric Garcetti, who is termed out.