Here are the latest fundraising totals in LA's most closely-watched City Council race

This is adapted from Make It Make Sense, our pop-up newsletter on the 2024 election that included a mini-series on campaign finance through the month of September. Make It Make Sense returns in November to break down the results of the general election. Sign up here.

L.A. City Councilmember Kevin De León has a tough race to keep his City Council seat this November. But there’s an additional pool of money at his disposal to help get his name in front of voters.

LAist has reported that De León established a ballot measure committee earlier this year to support three statewide propositions. As of Sept. 21, the committee had spent nearly $380,000, according to financial disclosures.

The committee is separate from De León's City Council reelection campaign — for which he’s already raised more than $700,000 — but it allows for his name to show up on campaign materials supporting state ballot measures, essentially giving him additional publicity.

There are no restrictions on how much money state ballot measure committees can raise or spend.

The race for District 14

District 14 is home to about 270,000 residents and includes neighborhoods like downtown L.A. and Highland Park. De León previously served as leader of the state Senate and mounted a failed bid for U.S. Senate before being elected to the District 14 City Council seat in 2020.

Two years later, in 2022, a leaked audio recording revealed a secret conversation between De León, two other council members and a union leader using racist and derogatory language while discussing how to amass power in L.A.’s redistricting process. De León faced many calls to resign, but has refused, and today he’s the only one of the group on the leaked tape to still have his job.

Running against him is Ysabel J. Jurado, a tenants’ rights attorney who beat him by just under 400 votes in the March primary.

There’s a lot of interest in this race, not least because an L.A. City Council seat is one of the most powerful jobs you can have in local government. Will voters give De León a chance to serve out another term? How would a Jurado win — which would strengthen the council’s progressive bloc — affect L.A.’s trajectory on issues like rent control or police funding? (You can read a lot more about this race in our Voter Game Plan guide on Council District 14.)

How much money is in this race so far?

Here are numbers fresh off the L.A. City Ethics Commission website, which tell us how much how much money has been raised and spent through Sept. 21:

• De León has raised $736,560 (Search his list of contributors here).
• Jurado has raised $503,825 (Search her list of contributors here).
• Independent groups spent $77,664 to support De León and $30,858 to oppose him.
• No independent groups have spent money to support or oppose Jurado.

De León has a comfortable fundraising lead. But campaign finance doesn’t necessarily predict the outcome of a race — and the March primary showed that.

Back then, there were eight candidates in the running for the District 14 seat. One of them, state Assemblymember Miguel Santiago, out-raised both De León and Jurado by far, with more than $500,000 in campaign donations. He ended up coming third in the race, while Jurado, who raised about half as much as Santiago for the primary, came in first. De León had the second highest fundraising among the field, totalling about $346,000.

The wildcard: A state ballot measure committee

Keen observers noticed earlier this year that De León established a committee at the state level to support three ballot propositions: “Kevin De León Believing in a Better California Ballot Measure Committee - Yes on Propositions 3, 32 and 33.” You can peruse through the committee’s details at the California Secretary of State’s website.

The move has raised questions about whether it’s fair to get additional publicity from a state ballot measure committee. Let’s unpack some of the other details to get a better sense of what the committee is doing:

What exactly is his committee supporting?

• Proposition 3 would amend the state constitution to include a right to marry, and eliminate language that defines marriage as between a man and a woman. 
• Proposition 32 would increase the statewide minimum wage to $18 an hour.
• Proposition 33 would allow cities and counties to enact rent control policies to properties where it currently isn’t allowed.

Where did this committee’s money come from? De León transferred $600,000 from another committee he had previously formed (before the leaked tape scandal) to support a future bid for lieutenant governor in 2026. Of that money, $50,000 was transferred last year and $550,000 was transferred in July.

Is this tactic legal? Yes — and it’s not uncommon. Elected officials, especially state lawmakers, create committees to support ballot measures all the time, including in years when they’re actively running for office.

During the March primary, state Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin and L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn both created ballot measure committees to support Prop. 1, which created a bond to pay for mental health services and housing. Both were running for reelection at the time, although they weren’t necessarily in tight races.

In 2020, L.A. City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez created a ballot measure committee to support Props. 15 and 19, which had to do with property taxes. She wasn’t running for office that year.

But when a candidate uses a statewide ballot measure committee in a year when they’re running a tough race, the tactic can raise eyebrows. We’ve seen that happen before, too:

• Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo, who ran against De León and six other candidates in the March primary, also created a ballot measure committee to support mental health measure Prop. 1.
• De León created a ballot measure committee during the 2020 election — when he was running for his first term as City Council member — to support three statewide propositions on the ballot. That committee reported spending $116,000 to support three measures that ultimately failed: Prop. 15 (which would have reassessed commercial property taxes), Prop. 16 (which would have repealed the statewide ban on affirmative action) and Prop. 21 (a variation of this year’s Prop. 33 which would have allowed cities and counties to expand rent control). The money was used as a final push — spent in the last two weeks before Election Day. 

Has any ballot measure committee money been spent on the 2024 election? This year, the committee reported spending $379,487 as of Sept. 21, and still had $217,393 available. Together, those numbers are nearing the amount De León has raised on his own ($736,560 as of Sept. 21), giving him a lot more money to work with to try and influence voters. We can see from the committee’s filings that most of the money was spent between July and September. And there’s still a month left to go before Election Day.

What’s the takeaway?

If you’re getting campaign mail about the propositions that has Kevin de León’s name on it, now you have a better idea of the context and the campaign finance mechanisms that made it possible. We hope that highlighting this gives you an idea of the unexpected ways that candidates can use money in elections, and helps you keep a closer eye on where the campaign ads you see are actually coming from.