Eunisses Hernandez unseated Gil Cedillo. Can she help solve L.A.’s political crisis?
Last December, just a few weeks before Los Angeles County voters elected the district attorney for their 5th congressional district, a group called Los Angeles Communities Organized for Reform and Transparency (LACOR) announced it would form a coalition to promote reform.
Now, the LACOR coalition is the only statewide group with the broad support of the district attorney’s office, which endorsed its president, Eunisses Hernandez, during the election.
Hernandez, 59, of Van Nuys — a former L.A. City Council member and one of the first Latina women elected to public office in Los Angeles — is now serving the third term of her office. But she’s only been in office for three years, and her critics say that it’s time to elect her to a fourth decade representing the area of South L.A.
The critics have singled Hernandez out for her lack of respect for political norms. “I don’t know of any other D.A. who has allowed herself to be elected in the second district,” said LACOR member and former state legislator Nanette Asimov, who has been arrested several times as a member of the “Billionaires March.”
Hernandez’s critics have also charged that she isn’t committed to fighting against crime in her district, nor is she fighting for the needs of the poor. Hernandez has said her priority isn’t to protect the rich, but to provide for the needs of the less fortunate.
“I don’t think that being a member of Congress, being in the state legislature, being an advocate for people of color, being a woman elected to public office is the right thing for me to do,” Hernandez said last month. “I think, I believe that I can be more effective being focused on other areas.”
Hernandez’s challengers, including
