Because there are only two candidates running for Los Angeles City Council District 12, the race will be decided in the March 5 primary. Either voters will give incumbent John Lee another term, or replace him with rival Serena Oberstein, a nonprofit executive and former chairwoman of the Los Angeles city Ethics Commission.
For voters it is a choice between clinging to outdated ideas about the northwest San Fernando Valley or embracing a new, sustainable and vibrant vision for the future. We hope you choose the latter and vote for Oberstein.
Lee represents the status quo. He is the product of a pattern of conservative Ward 12 council members anointing their top deputy as their successor. Lee won the seat in a special election in 2019 when his former boss (and now convicted felon) Mitch Englander abruptly resigned to become a lobbyist.
We thought Lee was the wrong choice for the council then, and his performance since then hasn't changed our opinion. His policies seem tailored to a narrow group of constituents — anti-growth residents, business groups, and police and fire unions — who often resist the kind of necessary changes sweeping California and Los Angeles.
Time and time again, it has acted in ways that run counter to a healthy, sustainable and prosperous city. For example: He helped thwart a Metro plan to build a bus rapid transit lane along Nordhoff Street, a major artery to Cal State Northridge. These types of projects often face localized opposition, but they are necessary to build a public transportation system that people will actually use.
He also has not been an effective leader on homelessness. Lee says when he took office in 2019, there were no temporary homeless shelter beds in his district, which spans West Hills, Chatsworth, Porter Ranch, Northridge and Granada Hills. There are now over 200 beds with more to come.
That is not enough to serve the district and pales in comparison to what other council members are doing in their communities. Additionally, there would be far less homeless housing if Lee had been successful in his attempt to defund Proposition HHH (which he voted for two years earlier) for the first permanent supportive housing project in his district, the last city district to approve such a housing project. He argued that the 54-unit building was not the correct use for the former used car lot on Topanga Canyon Boulevard, a state highway, near Devonshire Street.
Homeless advocates say his office is unresponsive and abuses encampment raids. And while his district has the fewest homeless people in the city, it had the highest number of arrests (by a wide margin) for violations of the city's anti-camping law. Early last year he voted against some tenant protections aimed at helping tenants avoid eviction and perhaps homelessness, and later against a compromise that reduced the allowable rent increase by up to a 9% to a more reasonable 6% when the rent freeze was lifted on February 1. .
And finally, he does not support expanding the council or limiting the power to use land, two City Council reforms that good government experts have urged to help curb public corruption, which has brought down several city officials. city in recent years. That includes Englander, who received a 14-month prison sentence after he was caught taking envelopes of cash from a businessman, including on a trip to Las Vegas. It is still unclear what Lee's role was in that case, although his identity as “City B employee” in the federal indictment was revealed in October by the city's Ethics Commission, which accused He reads of a series of ethical violations, including his boss's complicity in the misuse of his position in the city. Lee denies any wrongdoing and is suing the commission over the allegations. The case will not be heard until after the March elections.
We believe Oberstein would be a better representative of the district and a more thoughtful member of the city's leadership. She worked for former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and served four years on the Ethics Commission, including as chair, and helped push for significant reforms to the city's matching fund campaign finance program. She has deep ties to the district where she grew up and now she is raising her family. We also like that she brings a broader worldview to the board from her work as executive director of Jewish World Watch, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping survivors of genocide and mass atrocities around the world. .
Oberstein would be among the most moderate members of the council. For example, he does not support reducing the police force and says public safety should be a priority in the city. She does not believe in criminalizing people for being homeless and will push for outreach campaigns instead of raids. But she also says she's willing to use 41.18, the city's anti-camping law, though only as a last resort. While she would listen to community concerns about development, she would continue to push for more affordable, denser housing to be built in appropriate locations, such as along transit corridors and near Metrolink stations in Chatsworth and Northridge. .
His approach is refreshing and forward-thinking and will help guide District 12 toward a brighter future.
