2011 Election

Apparently, Los Angeles' voters think everything is going pretty well in Los Angeles right now.  How else to explain the "clean sweep" that incumbent Councilmen, and in one case a hand-picked successor, enjoyed.  Not even one of the races went to a runoff, meaning that even in crowded fields incumbents garnered over 50% of the vote.  You can read the election results, here.

Election Day is finally here, and half of Los Angeles' City Council is up for re-election.  Streetsblog has covered each of the seven City Council elections and Ballot Initiative O.

The race for the CD14 City Council seat has been a contentious one between two former friends.  The City Maven breaks down the relationship between the former friends that has led to a very personal campaign.

In the North part of the San Fernando Valley, there's a six candidate free-for all to replace retiring Councilman Greig Smith.  The clear front-runner in the race, in terms of endorsements and dollars, is Smith's Chief of Staff Mitch Englander.  Leading the pack of challengers is Brad Smith, who is joined by Dinesh Lankanpahl, Kelly Lord, Navraj Singh, and Armineh Chelebian.  In this election, the major issues are jobs and trying to protect the Valley's suburban residential neighborhoods.

Unlike the other races we've covered thus far, Council District 10 has a group of candidates challenging the incumbent, the affable Herb Wesson.  Wesson hasn't been regularly featured on Streetsblog as Krekorian, LaBonge and Parks.  However, he has been a major player in some of the large issues we've discussed because they happen to go directly through his South L.A. District.

The race for the 8th District City Council race, pitting Councilman Bernard Parks against Forescee Hogan-Rowles and Jabari Jumaane was supposed to be a cakewalk for the incumbent.  Parks, like most of his fellow Council Members, has a massive fund raising and name recognition advantage.  However, in the wake of his significant loss to Mark Ridley-Thomas in the Supervisor's race, Parks is not considered a political shoe-in by residents and activists in the 8th.

After Tuesday's review of the race for the 6th Council District attracted comments from two of the insurgent candidates in the race.  Since our story focused on the mixed record of the incumbent Councilman, Tony Cardenas, I thought we would highlight the comments by David Barron and Rich Goodman in the order that we received them.  Both candidates full comments are available after the jump.

Voters in Los Angeles' 6th Councilmanic District face a choice between Councilman Tony Cardenas, and a trio of lesser known neophytes all banking that Cardenas's record has turned off enough voters to allow one of them to slip past the well-funded incumbent. Thus, Jaime Cordaro, David Barron, and Rich Goodman haven't focused much on transportation and Smart Growth to tilt this San Fernando Valley District, leaving us with little to analyze other than Cardenas' record and a couple of sentences in campaign platforms.