Your guide to the L.A. city controller race: Kenneth Mejia faces challenger Zach Sokoloff

The Los Angeles city controller sometimes flies under the radar compared to the mayor or city council members.

But Kenneth Mejia, who was 32 when he was elected controller in 2022, has used social media to highlight his role as auditor of the city’s finances, attracting an audience interested in transparent government spending.

Mejia said he is running for reelection on his track record of increasing transparency and accountability by performing audits and creating dashboards that show spending on public safety, affordable housing and homelessness.

Zach Sokoloff, who is on sabbatical from his job as senior vice president for asset management at Hackman Capital Partners, is challenging Mejia in the June 2 primary.

Sokoloff questions whether the city is delivering better services than before Mejia took office. He said he is running to ensure that taxpayer dollars are being spent to make L.A. “safe, prosperous, affordable and inclusive for all.”

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Voter guide to the 2026 California primary election

California’s primary election takes place on June 2. Learn about L.A.’s city and county races and others for state offices.

May 1, 2026

Kenneth Mejia, 35, is a certified public accountant who lives in Westlake. In 2022, he won the most votes of any controller candidate in city history, despite lacking name recognition and running against a sitting city council member, Paul Koretz.

Mejia, who is of Filipino ancestry, became the first Asian American to hold citywide elected office in Los Angeles.

He’s well-known online, and his two corgis, Killa and Kirby, are a constant presence in his campaign as well as on the official controller’s website. He points to his audits of city spending on homelessness, police, housing and animal services.

“We said we were going to provide more financial transparency and accountability and oversight, and we’ve done that,” Mejia said in an interview.

The controller’s waste, fraud and abuse team began investigating a homeless service provider after receiving a phone call alleging fraud. Mejia said it became the catalyst for a federal investigation into Alexander Soofer, who in January was charged with wire fraud amid allegations that he took $23 million in public funds meant for homeless people.

“Because of the work that we do, it also forces agencies to better look at their internal controls, to hold service providers accountable,” Mejia said. “These events can lead to systemic change, and that’s what it did.”

Zach Sokoloff, 37, lives in Westwood with his wife, two kids and two rescue dogs. He was born and raised in the Westwood area. He graduated from Yale University, received a master’s in education policy and administration from Loyola Marymount University and an MBA from Harvard University before teaching algebra at a middle school in Boyle Heights and a high school in Watts.

Since joining Hackman in 2018, he has worked on multibillion projects transforming legacy studio lots. The company is considered one of Hollywood’s largest landlords.

Sokoloff points to his experience managing large-scale projects as key to navigating the city’s budget and bureaucracy. He said he would work collaboratively across different departments.

“Angelenos are tired of reports. They want results, and so my approach balances accountability and collaboration,” Sokoloff said.

The controller has a bully pulpit to vent about the city’s dire financial straits, as well as auditing powers to unearth where the city might be overspending, but does not actually manage the budget.

Sokoloff said the previous budget crisis — the city recently faced a nearly $1-billion deficit — will be the pervading issue in the coming years. If elected, he would audit basic city services — roads, sidewalks, street lights — to see where the money is going. He would appoint a chief revenue officer to find new income streams.

Mejia said he has tried to right the budget by warning about potential shortfalls as well as large increases for liability payouts. He also has discouraged the city from raising taxes and pushed for other ways to make money, including hitting owners of empty properties with a vacancy tax.

“Unchecked overspending and liability claims continue to be a major cause of financial troubles,” he said in a February statement, ahead of the mayor’s budget proposal, which offered a more hold-the-line approach. “This could result in the use of the Reserve Fund and in future fiscal years, more furlough days and the risk of more layoffs.”

Mejia’s first campaign took off when he bought a 1,200-square-foot billboard showing a bar chart with police spending that far outstripped housing and homelessness spending.

Four years later, asked if the LAPD should grow, shrink or stay the same, he pointed to the data, which shows that crime in L.A. is down, including homicides, while the department has shrunk to about 8,700 officers. This might indicate that strategies like unarmed response teams are working, he said.

“If we keep increasing spending, what are we going to keep cutting? If people want to get to 10,000 [sworn officers], are you going to cut more street lights? Are you going to cut fixing your sidewalks? Are you going to cut fixing the animal shelters?” he said.

Sokoloff said he supports expanding community policing programs. He does not support reducing the size of the LAPD and said the city should determine whether it “can do more with less.”

“I do think that having more officers on the beat is a good thing for public safety, and especially when folks have connections to the communities that they’re serving,” he said.

Mejia has been critical of the city’s spending on homelessness, citing an instance in which half the money budgeted to address the issue went unspent. The city controller’s office should review spending on homelessness programs to potentially catch situations like Soofer’s, Mejia said. Prosecutors have accused Soofer of faking invoices for fresh meals while clients were left to eat breakfast bars, canned beans and ramen noodles. But Mejia said that with just five investigators, it’s “next to impossible” to investigate all of the 700 waste, fraud and abuse claims his office receives each year.

Mejia said his team built a map showing that multifamily housing projects have been concentrated in denser, low-income areas. The city, he said, could increase housing affordability by building in single-family areas that haven’t experienced racial redlining.

Sokoloff said affordable housing units cost too much to build and he wants to work with the city to build cheaper housing more quickly. He supports bringing back a dashboard showing city-owned vacant land that potentially could be built on.

With L.A. County officials pulling out of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, or LAHSA, Sokoloff said it’s important to maintain a working relationship with the county to avoid duplication and finger-pointing.

“The controller needs to play a role in mediating or liaising between the two to ensure that there is not duplication of efforts,” he said.

Both candidates said they have not endorsed in the mayor’s race.

Mejia, a member of the Green Party, is backed by major labor unions, including United Teachers Los Angeles, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, the Working Families Party, LA Forward and Streets for All.

Sokoloff, a Democrat, has been endorsed by U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, Rep. Ted Lieu, state Atty. Gen.Rob Bonta, California Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez and former city controllers Rick Tuttle, Laura Chick and Wendy Greuel.

Sokoloff also has been endorsed by the L.A. County Democratic Party, L.A. County Young Democrats, the Democratic Party of the San Fernando Valley and the Avance Democratic Club, the largest Latino political club in California.