Five candidates are running to represent L.A.’s Council District 10 in the March 5 primary election. The district includes the area surrounding Leimert Park, Baldwin Hills, La Cienega Heights, Mid-City, Koreatown, Palms, South Robertson, and part of the Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area.

Council-appointed Incumbent Heather Hutt is being challenged by Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer, Grace Yoo, Aura Vasquez, and Pastor Eddie Anderson.

Heather Hutt served as interim councilmember for months before she was formally appointed in September 2022 after the previous District 10 councilmember, Mark Ridley-Thomas, was indicted on federal corruption charges. Hutt previously served as chief of staff to former City Councilmember Herb Wesson and serves as chair of the Los Angeles City Council’s Transportation Committee.

Hutt was also a senior advisor and statewide director for the office of then U.S. Senator Kamala Harris, and before that led environmental justice policy changes in South Los Angeles and Watts.

Hutt has said her priority is to implement a comprehensive housing first strategy that prioritizes providing permanent housing to individuals experiencing homelessness without preconditions or requirements. Another issue is allocating resources towards expanding rapid rehousing programs that provide short-term rental assistance, case management, and support services to help homeless individuals and families quickly secure permanent housing.

“This position requires someone who is laser-focused on addressing the root causes of homelessness and housing insecurity by investing in more affordable housing units and preventative care like tenant protections, as well as mental health and unarmed emergency services on our streets,” said Hutt. “So everything I do includes innovative solutions and strategies that address those causes, including working in collaboration with community organizations who are also doing the work.”

Another issue Hutt says residents are facing is a need to update transportation infrastructure in Los Angeles, bringing transparency, equity, and badly needed coordination between the City Departments that build and maintain the streets.

“My vision includes expanding public transit options and purchasing 100 percent electric vehicles because I know that they are crucial steps toward alleviating congestion and reducing greenhouse gas emissions – areas of deep concern not just to residents in the 10th District but to all Angelenos,” says Hutt. “I am going to continue to champion investments in public transit, bike lanes, and pedestrian-friendly infrastructure to promote sustainable and safe mobility options. Los Angeles needs smart transportation solutions in order to create a more accessible, equitable, and livable community for all residents.”

Hutt has received $243,353 in campaign donations as of February 17.

Eddie Anderson

Born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, Anderson is senior pastor at McCarty Memorial Christian Church in West Adams and is co-founder of Partnership for Growth L.A., an organization that focuses on food access, jobs, economic security, and workforce development. He studied Theology at Morehouse College and Claremont School of Theology.

He is also a member of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s Committee on Black People Experiencing Homelessness and was formerly homeless himself. He supports tenant protections, increased living wages, access to employment, and preservation of affordable housing units. He wants to invest in mental health resources, community safety ambassadors, youth and senior programs, street improvements, and healthy food access.

“To improve the quality of life for everyone in Council District 10, we need to fight poverty and not the poor,” said Anderson. He says he will push for economic development that generates local, living wage and union jobs, protects worker’s rights, and creates career opportunities for residents. “One job should be enough to live in this city,” he said.

He says he is running to be a fighter for the community, to fight for the fair share of city services in Council District 10, to win policies that advance equity, and to create a district that respects the dignity, power, pride, and participation of all its residents.

“Through my own lived experience of homelessness and as a Member of Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s Committee on Black People Experiencing Homelessness, I know how difficult it is to recover from the trauma of not knowing where you will sleep,” said Anderson. “As the number of unhoused residents has grown by 10 percent in the City of Los Angeles in the past year, people are falling into homelessness faster than we can house them.”

Anderson has received $81,102 in campaign donations as of February 17.

Reggie Jones-Sawyer

Assemblymember Jones-Sawyer was elected to California State Assembly District 59 in 2012. He served as Chair of the Assembly Public Safety Committee for the past seven years, though he was recently replaced following criticism of his pushback on certain public safety legislation. Before joining the Assembly, Jones-Sawyer was deputy to L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan in the 1990s.

While in the State Assembly, Reggie fought to raise the minimum wage and worked to make community college free for Californians. He delivered billions of dollars for new affordable housing, led efforts to protect renters from abusive landlords and evictions, and invested in supportive services to combat the homelessness crisis. He also passed legislation to make neighborhoods safer and protect children from sex traffickers.

He plans to work to make the minimum wage a living wage, lower housing costs to provide a pathway to homeownership for young people and communities of color, and cut red tape to speed up the construction of affordable housing. He wants to help get unhoused people experiencing mental illness or addiction off the streets and into housing and treatment.

If elected to the City Council, Reggie says he will ensure Planned Parenthood and other community health clinics have the funding they need to provide affordable reproductive health care services including birth control and cancer screenings.

He also plans to fight to accelerate Los Angeles’s transition to clean, renewable energy in a way that empowers working families and communities of color.

Jones-Sawyer has received $224,430 in campaign donations as of February 17.

Aura Vásquez

Aura Vásquez was born and raised in Candelaria, Columbia, and moved to the United States in the early 1990s with her family. She was an undocumented student before she graduated from Manhattan Community College and later the City University of New York Lehman College.

After she graduated, she joined United Way of New York City where she managed the Dropout Prevention Initiative and advocated for students at some of the worst-performing schools in the city. Her advocacy efforts helped close the achievement gap for students, improved standardized test scores, and helped them graduate from high school.

She says she is running to bring a renewed sense of optimism and a fresh perspective to the Los Angeles City Council.

She is an environmental activist, small business owner, and community organizer whose dedication to environmental and social justice began when she was 11 years old. She was appointed by then-Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2017 to the Board of the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power.

She prioritizes building housing on city-owned real estate and repurposing city-owned buildings, investing in infrastructure upgrades for sidewalks, bike lanes and crosswalks, and is committed to expanding public transit, including more community watch programs, adequate lighting in public spaces and increased foot and bike patrols from police, an independent redistricting commission, and expanding the number of City Council seats from 15 to 30.

She supports the right to counsel to protect renters while providing services for the unhoused, permanent housing, and medical outreach to get them off the streets, plant 10,000 trees to cool District 10, and create a system of free, efficient, and safe public transportation

Vásquez has received $128,197 in campaign donations as of February 17.

Grace Yoo

Yoo is a community advocate, attorney, and former L.A. City Commissioner for the Department of Transportation. She serves as the Executive Director of the Korean-American Coalition and the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association.

Yoo said it’s critical to address what causes homelessness — addiction, mental health needs, the lack of affordable housing, and financial insecurity. Her other priorities are public safety and delivering reliable city services.

She also said City Hall needs to hear the issues that concern Angelenos, but current leaders make it hard for residents’ voices to be heard.

“City Hall meetings need to be held after work hours and in different parts of the city so everyone has an opportunity to engage with the Council,” said Yoo. “District offices need to be accessible and staffed so that constituents can have issues addressed and problems solved.”

She says her top priority will always be public safety – for the residents, business owners, and those who visit the city.  She says to achieve this, officials must ensure first responders have the tools and resources to effectively do their jobs; dedicate resources to social workers, mental health clinicians, and community outreach teams to focus on homelessness so LAPD can focus on fighting violent crime; and require partners at LA County to provide more temporary healthcare beds for those with mental illness or drug addiction.

Yoo says communities and neighborhoods in the city cannot thrive if people cannot afford to live here.

“We must make it easier to build new housing and rehab old buildings.   We need to streamline the permitting process, provide practical incentives for developers who build affordable housing, and make public transportation safe and reliable.  We must also support small businesses that provide good paying jobs so people can live near their workplace.”

Yoo said the next significant issue is updating and revamping the City’s crumbling infrastructure.  She says in order to ensure that Los Angeles properly functions in every way, the city needs to upgrade and repair roads and parks while investing in technology that will be efficient and effective for decades to come.

She added that L.A. City politics need to be reformed. She says corruption has been so prevalent in city hall that people are no longer surprised when the FBI conducts a raid. She says residents must hold elected leaders to a higher standard and restore trust so residents and business owners can rely on their representatives to provide essential city services.

Yoo has received $236,556 in campaign donations as of February 17.

Photo of Heather Hutt from her Council Webpage. Selecting her photo does not constitute an endorsement. She is simply the incumbent, so we went with her.