Voters in LA City Council District 9 will choose between two candidates to replace outgoing Councilmember Curren Price, who has served the district since 2013 and has now reached his term limit. Estuardo Mazariegos and Jose Ugarte were the top two of six candidates on the ballot for June 2’s primary election, one of the city’s most crowded races.
LA’s 15 councilmembers hold most of the city’s policy-making power, setting a course for everything from parking tickets to the city budget.
Whoever ultimately wins the District 9 seat will represent an area stretching from downtown LA through South Central. The district — long a hub for Black political power in LA — will choose its first non-Black councilmember since 1963.
Election Day is Nov. 3.
Estuardo Mazariegos
About the candidate: Estuardo Mazariegos, the Los Angeles Co-Director of ACCE, is a father of two, an immigrant, and a twenty-year community organizer. He has driven the adoption of landmark tenant and housing legislation (to protect south central residents from displacement and prevent tenant harassment citywide), expanded affordable housing funding through Measure ULA, and helped workers win the Olympic Wage Ordinance, raising hotel and airport pay to $30 by 2028. He’s running for District 9 on a 100% clean money campaign (no corporate PACs, no developers, conflicted donations) to build a city government accountable to the people who keep it running.
How would you improve city services, especially cleaning up streets?
Overall, I would make better use of the resources immediately available to our district, and I would be more effective in securing new resources for our district to be applied to safer, cleaner, better lit streets and more reliable city services.
Every district struggles to some degree with things like keeping streetlights on and garbage off the streets — but anyone who lives here knows it’s different and much worse here. Our council office has not been as attentive and responsive to the needs of our people here as other districts deserve. It sounds simple, but it’s important: my (and my staff’s) only priority will be to deliver for South Central, meaning every dollar we have for services will go further. I and my team will be on top of it and responsible for it in a way we haven’t seen here in years.
Additionally, I will be more aggressive in leveraging the financial interest outsiders have in our neighborhoods into support for our quality of life, meaning under my council leadership, you won’t just see better deployment of city resources for safety, cleanliness, and quality of life — you’ll see more resources being deployed.
It will be the first time in years this community has had leadership solely focused on delivery within the district, and that difference will be noticeable.
This district has the city’s most important Olympic venues — BMO Stadium, Crypto.com Arena, LA Convention Center, LA Memorial Coliseum — how would you bridge the gap between the influx of LA28 money and the needs of your constituents?
District 9 hosts these venues and is still the lowest-income district in the city. Wealth flows in, wealth flows out, and residents are left with the traffic, the policing, and virtually no benefits to speak of. My job is to close that gap — and I’ve been doing this work for years.
I’ve stood with the Tourist Workers Rising fight that won the Olympic Wage Ordinance, raising hotel and airport workers to $30 by 2028. That didn’t happen because corporations got generous; it happened because organized residents and workers forced it. Already I’ve defended that win as it’s come under attack, I’ll continue to defend it, expand the $30 floor to more industries, ban wage thieves from Olympic contracts, and prioritize local and minority-owned businesses for the work.
Look: the same interests that stand to profit most from these Games — short-term rental platforms, hotel conglomerates, developers — are already organizing to claw back what working people won, and pouring money into this race to do it. My campaign has refused all of it: no corporate PACs, no developers, no real estate. The contrast in this race is real.
That’s why I’ll fight for a short-term rental moratorium so our homes don’t become hotels, for eviction protections near venues, and for the Fair Games demand for $5 billion from the IOC and LA28 toward worker housing. And that’s why I’ll push for legacy investments residents will actually use — the six-acre Expo Park green space, the Vermont Bus-only Corridor, fare-free Metro and DASH, expanded PlayLA.
What else will you promise to people in the community?
I promise, above all, the district that the people here deserve.
I’ve organized in this community for two decades now. And that means organizing through heartbreak: families losing their homes, mothers losing their children, relatives taken by masked federal agents. When you’ve really stood shoulder to shoulder with people like this, it changes you.
This is such a beautiful place full of the most inspiring, hardworking people. And it’s wrong that the people who make this city function come home to the fewest and worst parks in the city, the most dangerous streets in the city, some of the dirtiest streets in the city. It upsets me.
I have specific proposals to address each of those things and more that I will fight tooth and nail for in office to deliver — from 10,000 new trees planted to new funding streams for street safety improvements — but here I just want to say that my promise is that every day I will wake up and go to bed thinking about nothing but how to deliver the communities that every person I’ve sweat with, organized with, cried with, celebrated with, and above all stood with for the last two decades deserves.
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Jose Ugarte
About the candidate: Jose Ugarte was brought to Los Angeles at the age of 4 as an undocumented immigrant by his family, and he has been fighting for our communities since. Jose has worked to secure funding for clean, drinking water, make our streets cleaner & safer, bring hundreds of good-paying jobs, build affordable housing in CD 9, legalize street vending, and stand up to ICE & Trump. Jose has never forgotten his roots and he has organized alongside our community to deliver real results for South Central, which is why he is the only candidate supported by Los Angeles Firefighters & the Democratic Party.
How would you improve city services, especially cleaning up streets?
The City needs to focus on essential services: repairing streetlights, fixing potholes, addressing illegal dumping, and delivering on our most basic promises. This begins by taking an honest look at our City’s budget and cutting out wasteful spending. We should refuse to renew agreements with contractors who are unable to provide transparency on their spending, invest in City departments to avoid expensive outsourcing costs, and halt the bleeding of money in unnecessary ways. We can work with the City Attorney’s office, for instance, to hold those who dump illegally in our community accountable. This will discontinue the cycle that makes our community a hotspot for trash from outside the District and save the City millions of dollars that we would otherwise spend on clean-ups day-after-day. I also disagree with the cuts for our city services that have gutted departments, slashed hours, and made it impossible to take action on cleaning streets, fixing our infrastructure, and other necessary responsibilities. We can invest in these services with a balanced budget, and I can point to my record in having done just that. I led the Community Safety Partnership at South Park to improve public safety by allocating funding for youth programs, hiring of black-and-brown folks who grew up in our community to serve our residents, and engaging in nonviolent enforcement of our laws. As a result, trust increased, crime decreased, and South Park now serves as one of our District’s most popular parks, a drastic shift from its former reputation.
This district has the city’s most important Olympic venues — BMO Stadium, Crypto.com Arena, LA Convention Center, LA Memorial Coliseum — how would you bridge the gap between the influx of LA28 money and the needs of your constituents?
In all of my efforts working to bring economic development to the Ninth District, I have always held the line on making sure that projects in our community benefit our residents. With billions of dollars on the line for the George Lucas Museum, Los Angeles Convention Center, BMO Stadium, Crypto.com Arena, and others, I’ve sat at the negotiating table to demand Community Benefit Agreements that include local hire requirements and tangible resources for South Central. This has meant hundreds of good-paying jobs that must be hired from our black and brown community so that working families have these opportunities available to them. Also, contracts for small businesses to help local entrepreneurs succeed. Furthermore, the investments that come with the Olympics will impact generations to come. My wife, Vanessa, was taught to swim at the pools brought to South LA from past Olympics, and even today, Angelenos feel that investment from the LA84 Olympics through a foundation that helps fund local sports leagues, pay to replace old equipment, and enrich our youth through programs funded by our investment into the Olympics over four decades ago. Our District needs a councilmember with a proven track record of working to make sure that every dollar put into a project in District 9 travels far, to the pockets of working families, small businesses, and across our community. I’m proud to have fought diligently for the resources that we deserve, and I will continue to prioritize our residents in every decision impacting the Ninth.
What else will you promise to people in the community?
I’m a father raising my two-year-old daughter, Loxely, with my wife, Vanessa, in South Central. I want what we all want for our kids: good schools, safe parks, and a bright future that invests in our children. I’m proud to call South Central Los Angeles my home, and my love for this community is what drives me to get up in the morning and work hard for our neighbors. As a formerly undocumented immigrant, I want to set a good example for my daughter to never take what we have for granted. Over the past decade, I’ve taken the initiative to secure millions of dollars to support the work of immigrants rights organizations such as CHIRLA, CARECEN, and others to defend vulnerable members of our community. I’ve helped pass the $15 minimum wage for Los Angeles, Universal Basic Income programs to uplift struggling families, built new public parks, expanded green spaces, and supported the approval and construction of hundreds of units of affordable housing focused on serving women who’ve survived domestic violence, seniors, former foster youth, veterans, and folks who shouldn’t have to spend their lives living on our streets. As a Councilmember, I promise to continue building upon the progress we’ve made together and to never back down from a fight for our working families. I will always put the people of our District first, remain accountable to our residents, and work to deliver a safe, affordable community for all of us and our children.
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Updated: 12:04 p.m., Sept. 2, 2026. This post has been updated to reflect the two candidates appearing on the November ballot.
