Supervisor Holly Mitchell aims to keep the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors’ quintet all female as she runs to fend off three challengers for her seat at the helm of the board’s District Two.
The 2nd District
It’s a nonpartisan race for a seat in a district that includes about 2 million people and has traditionally included an array of traditional Black-voter strongholds.
However, the shape of the district has changed since the last vote. Reshuffled by the 2021 redistricting effort, the Second District now includes a swath of the South Bay’s coastal communities — Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach, El Segundo and Redondo Beach, which shifted over from Janice Hahn’s old 1st District — as well as Hawthorne, Lawndale, Gardena, Culver City Inglewood, Compton, Carson, and a dozen unincorporated L.A. communities, including Watts, Exposition Park and Koreatown.
It will be interesting to see if the new footprint aligns with the district’s long-forged polling patterns. The seat has been occupied by a Black supervisor since Yvonne Brathwaite Burke succeeded Kenneth Hahn way back in 1992.
If no candidate finishes with more than 50% of the voters, the top finishers will head for a runoff in November.
The candidates
Holly Mitchell (Courtesy)
–Incumbent Holly Mitchell, 59, served in both the Assembly from 2010-2013 and the state Senate from 2013-2020 as a Democrat, and was the first Black senator to chair the Budget and Fiscal Review Committee. She defeated former L.A. City Councilmember Herb Wesson to snag her seat on the Board of Supervisors in 2020. That victory made Southland history, as all five supervisors were women.
Mitchell has oft said she’s especially qualified to represent the district, which includes her “hometown” neighborhood of Leimert Park, where she grew up.
On her website, she lists as her proudest achievements passing “a landmark guaranteed income program” that made L.A. County the first in the nation to “phase out urban oil drilling and has strengthened the County’s ability to quickly respond to mental health crises among our unhoused residents.”
Recently, Mitchell pushed for federal dollars to help pay to extend the Metro C (Green) Line along Hawthorne Boulevard in the South Bay. The route of the extension has not yet been decided. She’s also a big supporter of the county’s Juneteenth celebrations, the Racial Justice Learning Exchange, and “Breathe,” the county’s guaranteed income initiative.
She has promised to make riding Metro trains and buses safer.
Her campaign platform also includes her vow to work to bring people together to ease the homeless crisis, improve access to mental health care and to bring more affordable housing to the county. Her foes have taken issue with how current officials have dealt with homelessness, however.
She’s been endorsed by L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, the L.A. County Democratic Party, an array of labor union groups, and elected officials including Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, Assembly members Isaac Bryan and Tina McKinnor, state senators Lola Smallwood-Cuevas and Steven Bradford, state schools chief Tony Thurmond and insurance czar Ricardo Lara, and more than two dozen local city council members.
Daphne Bradford (courtesy)
—Daphne Bradford, 57, describes herself as a longtime resident of the 2nd District, growing up in Inglewood. She’s an educator, an education consultant and a “seasoned entrepreneur.”
President Barack Obama selected Bradford as a White House Champion of Change Connected Educator in 2013 for her efforts to buoy STEM education for elementary school students.
Her education consulting company, Queen James Entertainment, has a deal with LAPD whose goal is “rebuilding relationships and re-establishing trust between youth and law enforcement officers.”
Bradford vows to improve public safety — taking particular aim at the rash of smash-and-grab robberies and catalytic converter thefts — by partnering with an array of local agencies. She has promised to make riders and drivers of Metro buses and trains safer.
She’s a passionate defender of the 90 freeway, and penned a high-profile online petition aimed to keep it from being torn down.
Bradford’s campaign website does not list any endorsements.
Clint Carlton (Courtesy)
—Clint Carlton, 42, had deep experience with non-profit agencies. He created and runs the company Safe Squad, which trains people how to protect kids and older residents on the internet. He ran the Los Angeles Dream Center, a faith-based provider of services for the unhoused, for two decades.
L.A. City Councilmember Traci Park appointed Carlton her staff director of affordable housing and homelessness.
Carlton promises to create a “multifaceted” approach to the homeless crisis, supporting affordable housing, access to mental health and addiction treatment and support programs for people living on the street.
Carlton describes himself as a supporter of police agencies and vows to “build and maintain a high level of morale within the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and other law enforcement agencies.”
He’s been endorsed by actor/businessman Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Dream Center founder Matthew Barnett.
Katrina Williams (courtesy)
—Katrina Williams, 50, runs Changing the Faces of Homelessness, a non-profit service provider for the unhoused.
She describes herself as a “case manager who has served the homeless and mental health population for over 20 years.”
Her platform promises to initiate permanent supportive housing programs for the homeless, create youth programs in at-risk areas and launch a business program to fuel small non-profit programs and neighborhood churches.
According to her campaign website: “To rebuild our communities we need to fund our inner-city non-profit programs who are providing services within the community, develop permanent housing with supportive staff on site and bring real community resources to our youth by providing mind sustaining programs to prepare them for higher learning and employment opportunities.”
Williams’ campaign website does not list any endorsements.
Election Day: March 5, 2024. Polls close at 8 p.m.
Early voting: You can vote at the Los Angeles County registrar’s office beginning Tuesday, Feb. 6. The registrar’s headquarters are at 12400 Imperial Highway, Room 3002, in Norwalk. That office is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday.
Vote-by-mail: Ballots begin/began going out on Monday, Feb. 5. You can submit VBMs in three ways: By mailing them to the registrar’s office (VBMs include return envelopes with the correct address and postage already included); by placing them in an official drop box; or by dropping them off at any county Vote Center.
VBM deadline: VBMs sent via mail must arrive no later than 10 days after the election, but they must be postmarked by March 5. The deadline to place VBMs in a drop box or deliver them to a Vote Center is 8 p.m. on Election Day.
Vote Centers: Vote Centers open 10 days before Election Day. This year, that’s Saturday, Feb. 4. You can vote at any Vote Center in Los Angeles County. Prior to Election Day, the Vote Centers will be open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. On Election Day, they will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
About the ballots: In California, the order races are listed on ballots goes from local to federal, meaning the nominees for president will be listed at the bottom. Except for presidential races, California’s primaries for “partisan” offices – now known as “voter-nominated offices” have a top-two system. That means the top two vote getters in a given race advance to the general election, regardless of political party.
To find a drop box or Vote Center and for more information: lavote.gov.
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