Spanning portions of the Westside including Mar Vista, Del Rey, Culver City and Ladera Heights, all the way to West Adams near downtown and southwest and south central Los Angeles, much of the newly drawn 28^th State Senate District has been represented for the last few years by Sydney Kamlager, who is leaving to try and replace Karen Bass in Congress. Before that, it was represented by Supervisor Holly Mitchell. The district is worthy of a successor in their progressive tradition, and we believe that candidate is Lola Smallwood-Cuevas.

Ms. Smallwood-Cuevas began her career as a journalist before joining the labor movement. For the past several years she has worked through the UCLA Labor Center to establish California’s Black Worker Center. She has been part of an organizing movement that has now established three worker centers in California and 15 in the nation. She describes herself as a “daughter of labor” and we embrace her philosophy that as a labor organizer she’ll have an advantage negotiating and collaborating with her fellow legislators in Sacramento.

She is passionate about finding humanitarian solutions to homelessness, which she calls the “moral crisis of our time.” We trust her judgment in seeking affordable housing solutions and like that she sees the movement toward building substantial housing supply in places like Culver City as a positive development. We also trust her most to stand up for L.A. renters, something we’re just not sure we can count on in her opponent, attorney Cheryl Turner. Ms. Turner has served as president of the Board of the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles (AAGLA) since 2020, which is the landlord lobby.

Smallwood-Cuevas is in line with our view that we need to reimagine policing and send social work professionals into many situations where we currently send people with guns. She rightly believes that public safety comes with investing in communities and correctly observes that communities with thriving businesses, healthy transit corridors, and good schools are always safer than those lacking these things. She knows we need to bring equity and investment into our struggling areas to make them safer and help them thrive. With Southwest and South Central L.A. a part of her district, she’ll have an opportunity to do that.

We also like that Smallwood-Cuevas is endorsed by many local leaders and organizations that we most trust in making our decisions, including Kamlager and Mitchell. She also boasts the endorsement of district-overlapping Assemblymember Isaac Bryan and Los Angeles City Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson. Her organizational endorsements include prominent nursing, firefighting, and pro-choice organizations, as well as the California Teacher’s Association, the Sierra Club, and dozens of unions and local Democratic Clubs. Ms. Turner seems to be lacking in many endorsements at all.

Finally, we are confident Lola Smallwood-Cuevas will stand up to the big corporate interests including oil and gas that often dominate Sacramento despite majority Democratic representation. She’ll bring a fresh, progressive outlook to Sacramento, and we strongly endorse her for this role. Vote Lola Smallwood-Cuevas for State Senate, District 28.

Lola Smallwood-Cuevas Campaign Website — https://lolaforca.com/

Photo from her campaign Website.