Two women are vying for a seat at Los Angeles City Hall to represent District 10, which includes Mid-City West, Adams, West Pico, Palms and Koreatown.
Heather Hutt was appointed as a Los Angeles City Council member in September 2022 to fill the seat of ex-Councilmember Mark Ridley-Thomas. He stepped down after he was suspended by the City Council in 2021 and was sentenced in 2023 to three years and six months in prison for conspiracy, bribery and other charges.
Before joining the council Hutt served as statewide director to U.S. Senator Kamala Harris and was chief of staff to former L.A. City Councilmember Herb Wesson.
Today she is chair of the City Council’s Transportation Committee and is running for a full term. She is the first woman to represent District 10.
Grace Yoo is an attorney, neighborhood council member and former city commissioner for the Department of Transportation.
Yoo has represented abused and neglected children at L.A. County’s Children’s Law Center. She has also worked as the executive director of the Korean-American Coalition and the National Asian-Pacific American Bar Association.
Heather Hutt
Hutt said her top priorities include making the city safe and affordable, addressing the homelessness crisis and supporting small businesses.
If elected, she plans to focus on “expanding access to after-school, community college, and labor-affiliated apprenticeship programs that set up our children for success.”
Hutt said the state is in “a dire need for more affordable housing.” But building new housing “should not come at the expense of our historic homes and communities, and can be built without major disruptions to single-family neighborhoods.”
She added: “We need to ensure that affordable housing is built in every community and neighborhood in the city.”
Hutt supports Mayor Karen Bass’ vision to boost hiring at the Los Angeles Police Department.
“The most immediate concerns I have for public safety are the attraction, hiring, and retention of good police officers who understand the residents of the city and their needs,” she said, adding that “nonviolent response strategies should not take away from law enforcement funding, but rather be an investment to enhance law enforcement’s abilities.”
Bass, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and the Sierra Club have endorsed Hutt.
Grace Yoo
Yoo supports the idea of building more affordable housing but said, “It’s not fair that you make poor parts of the city continue to take on more and give us less.”
She noted, “I would like to see some equity in where the affordable housing is built. (Council District 10) seems to have built way more than any of the others.”
Yoo said her top priorities include public safety and building more affordable housing units, “which will prevent more people from becoming homeless or unhoused.”
When it comes to Bass’ plan to increase the police force, Yoo said, “There are maybe anywhere from 500 to 1,000 officers who are on desk duty. Is there any way we can make some of those desk duties clerical, administrative and non-police?”
She added: “I would like to see how we can work with what we have. I do believe we probably need to grow our police force, but I don’t know what the number should be.”
Yoo won endorsements from Albert Jang, former president of the Korean American Chamber of Commerce Los Angeles, former L.A. Councilmember Bernard Parks, and East Area Progressive Democrats.
