Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia has prevailed over challenger Zach Sokoloff. As of this writing Wednesday evening, Mejia received 59% of the vote to Sokoloff’s 41%.
Sokoloff posted a concession to Mejia on Wednesday taking a strikingly different tone and posture than he has in the last few weeks, congratulating and wishing Mejia all the best. He also asserted, “We set an example for how the city can start to talk about solving the problems that we face.”
That’s putting quite the spin on it.
Sokoloff’s mother spent millions of dollars on attack ads in the last month against Mejia. In the closing days of the campaign, Sokoloff spoke not about his own ideas for what he’d do in the Los Angeles controller’s office, but on regurgitating the years-old allegations. Those allegations were disputed not only by Mejia but also current and former staff members.
Indeed, columnist Rafael Perez interviewed Sokoloff just prior to the election and found him incapable of answering questions without turning everything into an attack on Mejia. “All in all, I found Sokoloff’s unending mudslinging to be at times dishonest and at times plainly lacking in factual basis,” Perez noted.
By contrast, Mejia ran on his record. From launching various dashboards to help make government more accessible to unearthing fraud, Mejia could actually point to things he did and wanted to do more of. As the city’s fiscal watchdog, he has clashed with City Hall and has to fight for more funding so he can get more fraud, waste and abuse investigators and more auditors. That’s what you want to see from a truly independent city controller.
With Mejia receiving far more votes than Mayor Karen Bass, he should have the political capital to get whatever funding he needs to properly hold the city financially accountable.
In the end, it didn’t matter how much money the Sokoloffs set ablaze or that Sokoloff had the backing of Democratic machine politicians like U.S. Senator Adam Schiff and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas. Sokoloff brought overdone attacks, while Mejia delivered results.
The voters chose wisely.
Sal Rodriguez can be reached at salrodriguez@scng.com