Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, a leading proponent of the successful push to create an elected county executive position, officially is running for the new post. She’s the first to throw her name in the hat for the primary in March 2028.
Horvath cruised to reelection in the June 2 primary to represent L.A. County’s 3rd District, which stretches from the San Fernando Valley to the Westside. The district includes West Hollywood, where she previously served as mayor.
Horvath filed paperwork declaring her candidacy on Monday, checking the box for “nonpartisan” but providing little additional information. She has long been viewed as a top contender for the executive job.
“I fight everyday to reform our government because I believe the people of Los Angeles deserve better — a government that works for them, delivers real results and is accountable to the people it serves,” Horvath said in a statement. “That’s why I’m running to become Los Angeles County’s first elected County Executive.”
Zev Yaroslavsky, a former county supervisor and City Council member who is the director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the UCLA Luskin School for Public Affairs, declined to speculate on her chances.
“We don’t even know who else is running, and there are going to be a lot of people running,” he said. “There are a lot of big names who are thinking about running.”
Two years ago, Horvath helped propel a county motion called Measure G to approval by a slim majority of 51.6% of voters. The measure’s success set in motion what will be the eventual expansion of the Board of Supervisors from five to nine members and the creation of both an independent ethics commission and the county chief executive position that Horvath is angling for.
Asked this summer whether she planned to run for the position, Horvath was noncommittal.
“A lot of people are asking me to take a look at it, so I am,” Horvath told The Times. “I appreciate the voters’ confidence in me to continue the work that I’m doing in the county, and so I appreciate the encouragement.”
Though the primary is nearly 500 days away, the race already is generating controversy at the Hall of Administration. Last month, Supervisor Kathryn Barger told The Times that she advocates a “pause” regarding Measure G, citing concerns about the process and speed of its implementation.
She called on the board’s members to pledge not to run for CEO in the meantime; Barger and her colleagues Supervisors Holly Mitchell and Hilda Solis all said they will honor the pledge.
“This position is going to change the county. We’re going to become the city of L.A. on steroids,” Barger told The Times one day after the supervisors debated the issue. “Once again,” she added, “we are rushing to put something together, I think maybe in the hopes that no one will peel back the curtain and expose what is going on.”
Horvath, however, criticized Barger’s approach in an emailed statement to The Times last month.
“Pressuring others out of an election is political interference, no matter how many times she calls it ethics,” Horvath said. She added that voters “took this power away from politicians like Supervisor Barger because they wanted to make this choice themselves. She doesn’t get to claw it back and dress up a power grab as an ethics crusade.”
Barger put out a statement Monday saying she believes campaigning for the new county executive position is premature given “serious questions about whether the office itself is constitutional.”
Times staff writer Jon Regardie contributed to this report.
