Your last-minute cheat sheet for voting in key Los Angeles elections

You stay in Los Angeles County and also you’ve been too busy to give attention to the native races.

Now, it’s important to vote.

Here is a last-minute cheat sheet protecting key races in Los Angeles and L.A. County. Consider this an entry level to understanding the problems. We embody hyperlinks to our extra in-depth guides:

Los Angeles mayor

This race pits incumbent L.A. Mayor Karen Bass in opposition to Councilmember Nithya Raman.

The candidates

• Bass, 73, is a veteran lawmaker who served in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., earlier than coming to City Hall. She’s drawn support from extra conventional corners of town’s political institution, together with Los Angeles County’s Democratic Party and its Federation of Labor, which represents tons of of 1000’s of staff.
• Raman, 45, arrived in L.A. in 2013 and launched a City Council bid six years later. She’s been endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America and other groups which are newer to metropolis politics, together with Streets for All, which seeks to broaden town’s bus and bike lane community.

In their very own phrases

Here are Q&As with every of the candidates.

State of the race

Bass has struggled with unfavorable ratings in the wake of the January 2025 firestorm. Homelessness, the Boyle Heights warehouse fire and different points have made her susceptible. But she holds a fundraising lead.

Raman says she’s a candidate of change. But a few of her positions and her connection to the Democratic Socialists of America have raised eyebrows, and key allies are backing Bass.

The newest Los Angeles Times/UC Berkeley poll showed the race in a dead heat.

Issues

Housing

Bass factors to fast-tracked inexpensive housing, whereas Raman has championed robust tenant protections. YIMBY teams again Raman; development and commerce teams favor Bass.

Policing

Bass has publicly backed Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell, saying the Police Department might be thrown into disarray if he’s eliminated earlier than the 2028 Olympic Games. Raman has known as for a change in LAPD management with out giving a transparent timeline of when she would substitute McDonnell if she defeats Bass.

Environment

Bass has argued that Los Angeles stays a world chief on the setting, whereas Raman has stated town has misplaced its focus in latest years.

Transportation

There are myriad public transportation challenges for town’s subsequent mayor, together with the long-delayed LAX folks mover, new rail traces and quite a few site visitors challenges associated to the Olympics.

Olympics

The winner shall be in workplace when the Summer Games come to Los Angeles in 2028. There stay considerations about whether or not town might be left holding the invoice. Raman initially opposed internet hosting the Games, and now says she is going to guarantee they don’t trigger monetary issues. Bass says she is targeted on the Olympics as a supply of lasting advantages for town.

Homelessness

Bass made tackling homelessness a central effort in her first time period. Despite some progress, the variety of those that are homeless went up this 12 months. Raman says she will do higher however has confronted criticism from some inside her district over how the problem has been dealt with.

Marissa Roy and John McKinney are vying for the job of L.A. metropolis legal professional.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Time)

Los Angeles metropolis legal professional

The race for L.A. metropolis legal professional delivered a shock this spring when incumbent Hydee Feldstein Soto was ousted, an upset the likes of which hadn’t occurred in nearly a century. The pair of candidates who stay have since laid out their extensively differing visions of the job.

Here’s what it is advisable know.

The candidates

• John McKinney is an L.A. County deputy district legal professional with almost 30 years of authorized expertise. He vows to wash up what he calls a blighted downtown and work carefully along with his boss and backer, Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman, to scale back crime in town.
• Marissa Roy is a deputy legal professional basic in the California Department of Justice. She plans to make use of the workplace to battle for tenant and wage staff. Her marketing campaign says town legal professional ought to be the “people’s lawyer” for L.A.

In their very own phrases

Here are Q&As with every of the candidates.

State of the race

Roy is main in the race to change into the following Los Angeles metropolis legal professional. She was forward by 10 proportion factors in the newest ballot performed by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times.

Still, some native voters don’t know the candidates by title.

Issues

Criminal justice

• McKinney is focusing his marketing campaign on tamping down quality-of-life crimes in town resembling organized retail theft, drug dealing and avenue racing. McKinney would prioritize public security and vows to go after demonstrators who block freeways or have interaction in conduct just like the 2024 pro-Palestine encampments on UCLA’s campus.
• Roy needs to funnel nonviolent offenders to diversion packages resembling psychological well being remedy or vocational coaching.

Hefty authorized payouts

• McKinney stated he’d lean on his lengthy expertise as a trial legal professional to shortly determine which incoming lawsuits in opposition to town ought to be fought and which ought to be settled in order to scale back town’s authorized prices.
• Roy needs to convey civil litigation again in-house to rein in the thousands and thousands spent on exterior counsel. She additionally argues for beefing up the claims course of so professional fits are settled successfully and frivolous ones are fought.

How every candidate would deal with Trump

• McKinney would work to stability respecting federal authority as required by legislation in opposition to defending the constitutional rights of metropolis residents and defending native sources if threatened by federal overreach.
• Roy has made preventing the Trump administration a centerpiece in her marketing campaign.

Homelessness

• McKinney needs to make use of the court docket system as a “last resort” to leverage folks into accepting companies or shelter.
• Roy says renter protections shall be important to stemming town’s homelessness disaster.

L.A. County Sheriff Robert Luna, left, and former Sheriff Alex Villanueva.

(Los Angeles Times)

Los Angeles County sheriff

This is a rematch between rivals for the job of working the Sheriff’s Department, which additionally oversees county jails.

The candidates

• Robert Luna is the sitting sheriff. The former Long Beach police chief, Luna got here out of retirement to run for sheriff in 2022, arguing that incumbent Alex Villanueva had taken the division in the improper path. The division says the variety of new deputies graduating from the sheriff’s academy has risen. Luna factors out that violent crime has fallen yearly since he took workplace. Between 2023, his first full 12 months in workplace, and 2025, homicides fell by greater than 25%.
• Alex Villanueva was elected sheriff in 2018 in an upset victory. His tenure was marked by controversy, and he grew to become a favourite of conservative media. He faults Luna, saying the division has points with recruitment and retention. County and Sheriff’s Department data affirm that, though sworn vacancies greater than doubled throughout Villanueva’s time period from about 477 in December 2018 to 1,069 by Nov. 9, 2022, Luna has presided over an additional enhance in sworn vacancies to 1,452 three years later. Villanueva additionally says the division doesn’t have the sources it wants.

Los Angeles City College is amongst 9 colleges in the L.A. Community College District.

(Al Seib/Los Angeles Times)

The Los Angeles Community College District is the most important group school district in the nation, serving 200,000 college students with a price range of $10 billion.

Voters will elect three members to the board.

Seat 2

Steven F. Veres

Veres is a member of the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees and works as a state political adviser. He says he has labored to strengthen job coaching packages and enhance commencement charges and desires to make school as inexpensive as potential.

Robert Payne

Payne taught at L.A. Mission College, labored on film crews and ran an import enterprise. He would give attention to low enrollment progress. He additionally needs to make group schools “cheaper, faster, better” in half by providing college students extra coaching for particular jobs and cheaper on-line textbooks.

Kristina Irwin

Irwin serves on the overall advisory board at Santa Monica College. She beforehand served on the board of trustees at Palisades Charter High School. She needs to supply college students extra instruments to succeed in school and to ascertain “preentry” packages in each native highschool to higher put together college students for group school.

Adriana Cabrera

Cabrera served as president of the Central Alameda Neighborhood Council and co-founded Empowering Youth in South Central. She needs to make pupil companies simpler to navigate and to strengthen monetary support and different help, together with for meals, housing, little one care and psychological well being.

Roy Payan

Payan has suspended his marketing campaign.

Seat 4

Nancy Pearlman

Pearlman is an environmentalist who served on the LACCD Board of Trustees from 2001 to 2017 and taught half time in any respect 9 schools. She would give attention to bettering low enrollment whereas making certain college students are given the mandatory help and sources to succeed. She additionally cites the necessity to ensure college obtain equal pay.

Darryn Harris

Harris is a authorities and group affairs officer for St. John’s Community Health and teaches at Santa Monica College. Harris needs to sort out the affordability disaster blocking pupil achievement by constructing extra low-cost housing on district land and making it “easier for students to get help with food, transportation, child care, and other basic needs.”

Adam Bruno

Bruno has labored as a therapist serving to kids and been a group school pupil. His foremost targets are to extend enrollment and make it simpler for college students to afford school. He’d discover pupil stipends as a strategy to make group school extra inexpensive.

Elaine Alaniz

Alaniz serves as a public affairs specialist with the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Disaster Recovery and Resilience. She needs to higher put together college students for a altering workforce and guarantee classroom instruction “keeps pace with a rapidly changing workforce” in the age of synthetic intelligence and different applied sciences.

Isidro J. Armenta

Armenta didn’t reply to The Times’ survey.

Priscilla Umana

Umana works as an American Sign Language interpreter. She says the district’s largest problem “is the high percentage of students experiencing housing insecurity, homelessness, and food insecurity.” She would work with the district to broaden inexpensive housing, work-study alternatives and meals support.

Jason R. Aula

Aula has labored as a political marketing campaign advisor and in the world of cell apps. He considers fraud a serious concern together with folks posing as community college students to steal financial aid. He proposed a moratorium on noncitizens attending district colleges and a give attention to pandemic studying loss.

Seat 6

Gabriel Buelna

Buelna serves on the board of trustees. He is also an legal professional and teaches historical past and political science at Cal State Northridge. He stated a key concern is making school extra inexpensive to college students and making certain that they graduate. He additionally stated the board should conduct robust fiscal oversight of the billions in voter-approved bond funds.

Tonia Arey

Arey has labored in actual property, public advocacy and group engagement. Arey would work to implement campus security plans, help further educational advising and profession schooling and extra carefully “examine spending, contracts, program outcomes and administrative costs to ensure resources reach classrooms and directly support students.”

Randall Winston

Winston works as a licensed architect and legal professional and serves as Los Angeles’ deputy mayor of infrastructure and local weather resilience underneath Mayor Karen Bass. Winston’s priorities for the district embody making certain schools are a pathway to alternative and good jobs, that college students can afford primary wants and that folks traditionally shut out of upper schooling are let in.

Four Los Angeles Superior Court seats shall be crammed in Tuesday’s election.

(Google Maps)

Los Angeles Superior Court judges

Voters determine 4 runoff contests for Superior Court seats on Tuesday, selecting who will preside over felony and civil instances throughout the area.

Seat 131

The candidates

• Donna Tryfman, a deputy public defender, serves in the main instances unit, the place she handles murder and different high-profile defendants. She additionally has intensive expertise in juvenile instances.
• David Ross is an alternate in the Torrance department of the general public defender’s workplace and in addition works in Bellflower and Long Beach. He claims to have represented greater than 10,000 purchasers at hearings and in trials.

Dive deeper

The Los Angeles County Bar Assn. charges each attorneys as “qualified” for workplace. Ross stated his mixture of authorized and life expertise and his time as a journalist, when he “listened to real people, gathered the facts and told objective stories,” present a singular perspective. Tryfman has served as a Superior Court choose professional tem, dealing with site visitors and small claims instances. She has proctored teen courts at Dorsey and Hamilton excessive colleges.

Seat 64

The candidates

• Maria Ghobadi is an L.A. County deputy district legal professional. As a baby, Ghobadi fled Iran along with her household in the course of the Islamic Revolution and settled in Southern California. She joined the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office in 2015 and has dealt with misdemeanors, felonies and home violence instances. She’s spent seven years in the gang murder division.
• Rhonda Haymon is an L.A. County deputy public defender. She grew up in Southern California and have become an legal professional in 2001. She began in the Orange County public defender’s workplace earlier than shifting to L.A. County, the place she’s spent 23 years as a deputy public defender. She has been assigned to a restorative justice drug court docket and consulted on police misconduct instances.

Dive deeper

The Los Angeles County Bar Assn. ranked Ghobadi as “well qualified” and Haymon as “qualified.”

Seat 87

The candidates

• David DeJute, who defended President Obama in opposition to the so-called birther claims, spent a decade as vp of litigation at Sony Pictures Entertainment. He now works in litigation at a personal agency. An adjunct professor at Pepperdine’s Caruso School of Law, he’s taught ethics, antitrust, copyright and patent legislation. After final 12 months’s wildfires, he returned as director of the catastrophe aid clinic, the place he instructed college students who offered professional bono authorized companies to victims of the Palisades and Eaton fires.
• Anthony “A.J.” Bayne’s background contains almost twenty years serving in the Compton Courthouse, the place for a time he served as deputy in cost. He’s now dealing with severe felony instances on the Torrance department. Bayne is an inventor, with patent-pending purposes for synthetic intelligence instruments that automate authorized workflows. One helps with closing arguments; one other makes use of court docket reporter transcripts to generate cross-examination questions.

Dive deeper

DeJute is rated “qualified” to serve by the Los Angeles County Bar Assn. Bayne is rated a notch greater, “well qualified.”

Seat 65

The candidates

• Justin Allen Clayton is in cost of the Inglewood department of the general public defender’s workplace and has defended three instances with life sentences. Clayton stated a precedence is bettering court docket effectivity via pretrial preparation and “firm but fair enforcement of deadlines.” Clayton stated working a public defender department workplace provides him a “comprehensive understanding” of the courtroom.
• Anna Slotky Reitano represented juvenile and grownup purchasers, lots of them accused of felonies, earlier than becoming a member of the county counsel’s workplace. Reitano centered on psychological well being diversion and remedy, aiming to help rehabilitation when potential. A former little one actor, she volunteers with native colleges and, based on her web site, mentors “future lawyers” via moot court docket competitions.

Dive deeper

The Los Angeles County Bar Assn. considers each certified to serve.

Charter Amendment A would require binding arbitration in contract talks between the county authorities and public security staff together with Los Angeles County firefighters.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

L.A. County Charter Amendment A

This measure offers with labor negotiations for key public security personnel in L.A. County.

Basics

Measure A is a constitution modification that might require binding arbitration between county authorities and negotiators representing sheriff’s deputies, firefighters, lifeguards and different public security staff if contract talks attain an deadlock and no compromise may be reached. It would alter the present final step, in which county supervisors can impose a ultimate supply that these workers should settle for — by legislation, public security personnel can’t strike.

Impact

The preliminary section of contract talks nonetheless would have union and county representatives in search of to hammer out a mutually useful deal, with a presumption that each side would negotiate in good religion. But if a spot stays and an deadlock in the end is said, the supervisors now not would dictate the ultimate supply. Instead, a three-member arbitration panel could be shaped. The county and union every would choose one member, with the perimeters collectively selecting the third individual, who would function chair. If they will’t agree on the ultimate panelist, a state entity might present a listing of certified arbitrators to select from. The arbitrators would give attention to key employment components resembling wages and hours and would maintain hearings and obtain proof from the events. At the top of the method, a binding end result could be issued and made public.

The Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration on Temple Street in Los Angeles.

(Al Seib / For The Times)

L.A. County Charter Amendment E

This is a sophisticated measure that entails jail financing and seeks to wash up some bureaucratic muddles.

Basics

Jails: In 2020, 57% of county voters approved Measure J. This mandated that not less than 10% of domestically generated, unrestricted income be allotted to incarceration alternatives. The downside? Voters later authorised the county reform effort Measure G, which had the unintended impact of repealing Measure J. Measure E would make sure that Measure J stays in impact.

Governance: Measure G additionally created, amongst different issues, a county ethics fee and an ethics compliance workplace. Officials decided that for true independence, the fee and the compliance workplace should be completely enshrined in the county constitution.

Impact

Backers say Measure E would clear up these messy governmental points.