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LOS ANGELES () — Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia is in a reelection fight against Zach Sokoloff, an asset manager for Hackman Capital Partners.
Sokoloff, who has the endorsement of the L.A. Democratic Party, is questioning whether the city is delivering better services than before Mejia took office.
Mejia left the Democratic Party last year. During his first term, he’s butted heads with other elected officials, including Mayor Karen Bass and City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto.
“We are an outsider in City Hall who’s actually using my profession as a CPA auditor to open the books,” Mejia told Eyewitness News. “We’re showing everything.”
Sokoloff said he thinks Mejia has “alienated the office.”
“And I think taxpayers pay the price,” Sokoloff said. “When you have a mayor who would rather hire a third-party auditor to conduct an audit of the city as opposed to using her own city controller, Angelenos pay the cost of that.”
In his first term, Mejia launched a homeless spending tracker and made the city’s finances more accessible to taxpayers.
But Sokoloff says the majority of Angelenos don’t feel the city’s budget is better managed with less waste under Mejia.
“If your job starts and stops with transparency, I think you are falling way short,” Sokoloff said. “In my view, transparency is the first step. Angelenos are tired of reports. They want to see results.”
Since there’s only two candidates running in the race for L.A. controller, the winner will be decided on June 2. There’s no runoff in November.
“We don’t have money like he does. You know, he has a ton of money,” Mejia said about his challenger. “His mom poured in $2.5 million to take me out of office. It’s nuts.”
That money was donated to an independent expenditure supporting Sokoloff. Mejia says there’s nothing independent about that donation.
“A record that he cannot defend, and so he’s resorted to personal attacks instead,” Sokoloff said.
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