The incumbent faces a primary challenge from his upstairs neighbor, as well as two others, in District 13, which includes Echo Park, Atwater Village and much of Hollywood.
Four candidates are trying to unseat the incumbent in L.A. City Council District 1, which includes the neighborhoods of Highland Park and Westlake, among others.
Los Angeles City Council District 5, making up much of Los Angeles’ Westside, is bounded on the north by Mulholland Drive, on the west by the 405 Freeway and on the east and south, in part, by Beverly Hills and Culver City. The district includes iconic institutions like UCLA, the La Brea Tar Pits, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, several well-known country clubs and golf courses and the neighborhoods of Bel Air, Holmby Hills, Westwood, Century City, Carthay Circle, Cheviot Hills, Pico-Robertson and Fairfax.
Under a plan approved by Metro earlier this year, the district will be linked with the San Fernando Valley by a heavy rail line running through a tunnel under Bel Air and through the Sepulveda Pass, with current completion date set for 2033.
What’s at stake in the City Council races
Voters will choose who will be their chief steward of city services in each of eight odd-numbered council districts (look up your district here) for the next four years and will determine the ideological makeup and effectiveness of the 15-member City Council.
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Challenges include federal immigration enforcement, homelessness, the city’s readiness for the 2027 Super Bowl and the 2028 Summer Olympics and continuing city budget shortfalls.
What does a City Council member do?
Council members have three distinct roles:
Each member curates their district by identifying local problems and opportunities and working with more than 40 city departments to steer needed services to residents and businesses. They may work to bring in non-city resources in the form of county, state, federal or philanthropic grants. They serve as intermediaries between their constituents and City Hall. Members play a vital role in shaping development in their districts.
As part of the full-time, 15-member council, they set citywide policy, adopt ordinances, commission studies and provide a counterweight and oversight to the mayor and city departments and bureaus. They adopt an annual city budget ($14 billion in 2025-26) based on a proposal provided by the mayor, divvying up money among the Los Angeles Police Department, homeless services, libraries, parks, sidewalk repair and tree-trimming, among other services. They approve or reject the mayor’s appointments to city commissions and to lead most city departments. They focus on areas such as policing and public safety by leading or serving as members of council committees.
Council members often work outside their formal roles through appointment to other governmental boards such as Metro and the Metropolitan Water District and by providing leadership in their communities through assisting charities, schools and civic institutions.
District 9 in South L.A. is one of the most competitive races for a City Council seat in the June 2 primary, partly because the incumbent is termed out.
Fast facts about the City Council
Each City Council member represents about 260,000 Angelenos.
Annual salary is $244,727.
A term lasts four years. Members may serve a maximum of three terms.
City elections are non-partisan.
Voters may have a chance to enlarge the council from the current 15 members to 25 members under a charter reform proposal that supporters say will provide better representation. (As a point of comparison, several other major cities have far larger councils. New York has a 51-member City Council. Chicago has a 50-member council.) It’s up to the current council whether to put the question on the Nov. 3 ballot.
What it takes to win
Candidates who win more than 50% of the vote June 2 will be sworn into office in December. If no candidate wins more than 50%, a runoff between the top two vote-getters will be held Nov. 3.
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The candidates for City Council District 5
Katy Yaroslavsky, incumbent
Incumbent Katy Yaroslavsky was elected to an open City Council seat in 2022 after her predecessor, Paul Koretz, was termed out. Yaroslavsky grew up in the San Fernando Valley and became a land-use attorney at L.A. law firm Latham and Waktins, then became a Coro fellow. Her father-in-law is Zev Yaroslavsky, who was the District 5 council member for nearly 20 years, and her mother, Laura Plotkin, served as chief deputy in state Sen. Sheila Kuehl’s district office. When Kuehl became a county supervisor, Katy Yaroslasky became the lead climate policy deputy in the office and led the creation of the county office of sustainability, the passage of the Measure W parcel tax to capture and reuse stormwater and a clean electricity joint powers agency.
On taking office, she found the city’s bureaucracy even more dysfunctional than the county’s and was frustrated by “how hard it is to do even the most simple things” because of a lack of funds and restrictions imposed by the City Charter. As chair of the council’s powerful Budget Committee, she played a key role in closing the city’s projected $1 billion deficit last year.
Yaroslavsky was the subject of an attempted voter recall in response in part to the 33-bed Midvale Pico Project for people experiencing homelessness, but she said opponents of the project “are now cool with it.” She cites as first-term achievements a slate of tenant protections and a program to solarize street lights.
If reelected, Yaroslavsky said she would draw on her connections in Los Angeles County government to ensure the city and county work better together on resolving homelessness. “There are people working hard to repair the rift,” she said. “I’m one of them. I’m a coalition builder.”
Tenants’ rights attorney Henry Mantel grew up in Hancock Park and Wilshire Park and has lived for the past five years in Park La Brea. He worked at Neighborhood Legal Services and at Downtown L.A. Law Group.
His platform is based on affordable housing, which he sees as the key to bringing social justice, better transportation, better education and a chance to slow climate change. He would eliminate single-family zoning, streamline permitting and encourage production of affordable, public and social housing. He would increase the Housing Department's power to crack down on landlords for unlawful rent increases and failure to keep apartments legally habitable.
He supports proposed charter amendments to expand the City Council and use ranked-choice voting in city elections.
Morgan Oyler is an accountant who was born and raised in Los Angeles. He attended Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., and later ran as a Republican for a seat in the Washington House of Representatives in 2010 and 2012. He was unsuccessful both times.
He returned to Los Angeles in 2016 and worked as a youth counselor at a residential care home, then earned his accounting certificate and a master’s degree in economics.
His platform focuses on housing. He would work to roll back zoning laws and other land-use restrictions. He would seek to lift height limits in Westwood Village to add density, which he said would reinvigorate the area.
Oyler said he would seek full implementation of SB 79, a state bill to require increased housing density near transit stops in the absence of sufficient city efforts to add housing. He would enforce ordinances banning homeless encampments, along with building more places for currently unhoused people to live.
Oyler criticizes incumbent Katy Yaroslavsky for her position on SB 79. “The idea that the city of L.A. is doing enough on housing is disqualifying,” he said.
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The incumbent faces a primary challenge from his upstairs neighbor, as well as two others, in District 13, which includes Echo Park, Atwater Village and much of Hollywood.
Four candidates are trying to unseat the incumbent in L.A. City Council District 1, which includes the neighborhoods of Highland Park and Westlake, among others.
