L.A. City Council District 2 election voter guide: Burgos vs. Nazarian

For nearly 15 years, L.A.’s 2nd City Council District has been represented by Paul Krekorian, a veteran politician who played an outsized role at City Hall. He chaired the powerful budget committee, served nearly two years as council president and still sits on the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Now Krekorian is termed out, and two candidates are running in the Nov. 5 election to replace him. Former state Assemblymember Adrin Nazarian, who served for several years as Krekorian’s chief of staff, is facing off against Jillian Burgos, a business owner and member of the NoHo Neighborhood Council.

Nazarian, 51, is running as a champion of mass transit and the environment — a “pragmatic progressive” who twice endorsed U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders for president. Endorsed by Mayor Karen Bass, he says he has the knowledge and experience to tackle the city’s problems. He is of Armenian descent in a district with the city’s largest concentration of Armenian Americans.

Burgos, 45, is campaigning as an opponent of the status quo, vowing to take on corporate interests and prioritize “community solidarity.” She promises to work to ensure that “housing is a human right.” She says she would break new ground at City Hall, becoming the council’s first Afro-Latina member.

Nazarian came in first in the top-two primary election, outpacing Burgos and five other candidates but falling short of the majority needed to avoid a runoff.

Who are the candidates?

Burgos, a resident of North Hollywood, is a licensed optician — she describes herself as an essential healthcare worker — and co-owner of a murder mystery theater company called Dainty Dames Events. She grew up in Ohio and received a degree in theater and forensic anthropology from Ohio State University.

Since 2021, Burgos has served on the NoHo Neighborhood Council, working to provide $5,000 grants for such groups as Polo’s Pantry, a food assistance program, and NoHo Home Alliance, which provides meals, showers and other services for homeless residents.

Burgos says she’s looking to expand the bloc of “super-progressives” who have been pushing the council to the left. She has been endorsed by City Controller Kenneth Mejia and a number of left-of-center groups, including the L.A. chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, Ground Game LA and the California Working Families Party.

“Right now, currently, the Valley is just surviving, as is a lot of Los Angeles — just barely surviving and fighting for everything that they can, tooth and nail,” she told LA Progressive earlier this year.

Nazarian also lives in North Hollywood. His Armenian family fled Iran when he was 8, eventually making it to the U.S. He spent six years as Krekorian’s chief of staff — first in Sacramento when Krekorian was in the state Assembly, then at City Hall. Nazarian won his own Assembly seat in 2012, and represented much of the eastern San Fernando Valley for a decade.

Nazarian has a bachelor’s degree in economics from UCLA. As an Assembly member, he focused on issues such as healthcare, public transit and education, and worked to create and expand programs to help children save for college. He also supported efforts to create a universal single-payer state healthcare system, which were defeated.

He has been endorsed by an array of big-name California politicians, including U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, Rep. Adam B. Schiff, Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath. He is also backed by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, the hotel workers union Unite Here Local 11 and Service Employees International Union Local 721, which represents thousands of city workers.

Nazarian, who is also endorsed by Krekorian, said he wants to ensure that L.A. is a well-functioning city.

“I want to make sure the middle class always feels welcome. I want businesses to invest in this city. I want to make sure younger families are not moving to other parts of the region but want to raise their kids here in Los Angeles,” he told The Times.

Where is the district?

Locator of L.A. city council district 2.

The 2nd District is anchored by North Hollywood and takes in all or parts of Studio City, Sun Valley, Valley Glen, Valley Village, Van Nuys and Toluca Lake.

Public safety

The two candidates have sharply different approaches to public safety — particularly on funding for the Los Angeles Police Department.

Nazarian supports Bass’ effort to hire more police officers and bring sworn staff back up to 9,500. He has spoken in favor of the police raises that Bass negotiated last year. And he has touted endorsements from the Police Protective League, the union that represents rank-and-file officers, as well from Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna.

Burgos is much more skeptical of police spending. She disagrees with Bass’ push to get to 9,500 officers, saying the city should invest in other community safety strategies. She opposed the mayor’s package of police raises, which are projected to add $1 billion to the LAPD budget over four years.

When the raises were approved last year, Burgos accused city leaders of choosing militarization instead of humanity, saying on social media that it was “time to vote out the status quo.”

Burgos identified herself as an “abolitionist” — someone who supports the “abolition of police and the prison-industrial complex” — in a candidate questionnaire she submitted to the Democratic Socialists of America Los Angeles. She told The Times that to her, being an abolitionist means moving away from “reactive” law enforcement responses and supporting “community-based care” instead.

“For me, it’s saying that we can help support our communities through preventive services, by giving people job training, job placement, mental health services” and affordable housing, she said. “All of that is community care, and that’s what I am for.”

Nazarian has sought to make Burgos’ public safety stances an issue, portraying her as someone who would defund law enforcement. He said he wants the LAPD to focus more heavily on de-escalating potentially violent situations. And he warned that officers are more likely to make lethal mistakes if the department is severely understaffed.

“I’ve been in a lawless state,” he said, referring to his childhood in Iran. “I’ve been in a society that does not have people who protect the public. I don’t want that here.”

Homelessness

Both Burgos and Nazarian support Mayor Bass’ Inside Safe initiative, which has been moving unhoused Angelenos indoors. Of the two, Burgos sounds more skeptical of the program.

Burgos said Inside Safe participants have not always received the social services they need after moving into city-funded hotels and motels. She said that if elected, she would vote to approve funding for Inside Safe — but only after receiving assurances that those services are in place.

Nazarian strongly supports Inside Safe, saying the program is moving homeless people into interim housing so that social workers can identify their long-term needs. In some cases, he said, that might be a housing voucher. In other cases, it could be a job placement, reunification with family members, or taxpayer-funded housing with extensive wraparound services, he said.

The two candidates outright disagree on another policy — Municipal Code 41.18, which prohibits encampments within 500 feet of schools, day-care centers and other locations selected by the City Council, such as certain senior centers or freeway underpasses.

Burgos said the ordinance does nothing to get people into housing and should be repealed.

“It’s a temporary solution to beautify the area,” she said in an interview. “It’s not taking care of people. Everything I do is people-centered.”

Nazarian supports 41.18, arguing that children should not have to make their way around encampments to get to school. But he said his bigger priority is to build more interim housing.

“I don’t want people to just get pushed into some other dark corner,” he said. “I want them to move into short-term housing. I want them to then receive the necessary support.”

Housing

Burgos said that if elected, she would seek a new cap on rent hikes in the city’s more than 600,000 rent-stabilized apartments. She believes that rent hikes should be no larger than 4% per year in those units, which were built before October 1978.

She also supports the creation of “social housing” — government-owned apartments that are at least partially managed by tenants. She wants the city to provide funding so that every renter who faces eviction has access to a lawyer. She also backs the idea of allowing new apartments to be built in R-1, or single-family, neighborhoods — as long as they are not too big.

“Do we need to have a huge seven-story building [in single-family areas]? No, not necessarily. But we can have the dingbats, the duplexes, the triplexes,” Burgos said. “There are so many creative ways to add additional housing to an R-1 neighborhood.”

Nazarian said he would concentrate growth on the district’s transit routes, adding multistory projects to corridors such as Lankershim Boulevard, Vineland Avenue, Victory Boulevard and Vanowen Street. He largely opposes the idea of putting apartments in R-1 areas.

He would consider small-scale apartments on R-1-zoned lots that are immediately adjacent to transit routes. But those areas would need to serve as transitional spaces between high-density transit routes and low-density, single-family neighborhoods, he said.

For rent-stabilized units, Nazarian wants yearly rent hikes to be tied to inflation, with increases capped at 5%.