Why some want this rising star among L.A. Democrats to run for mayor
Lindsey Horvath knew all the words to “Pink Pony Club.”
It was an overcast Sunday in June, the WeHo Pride parade was in full swing and the hit song about an iconic West Hollywood gay bar was blasting at full volume.
Sure, the county supervisor’s sequined, rainbow muumuu was giving her an angry rash. But that did little to dampen her spirits as she danced atop her pink pony-themed Pride float, swaying and mouthing the lyrics.
Five hours later, Horvath had traded her sequins and rainbow sneakers for a simple black dress and heels.
Now, she sat on a wooden pew for evening Mass at her 121-year-old Catholic parish in Hollywood.
But she still knew all the words, albeit this time to a traditional hymn about the holiness of the Lord. And then she knelt down in quiet prayer.
Horvath, 43, defies easy characterization.
She is the first millennial member of the county Board of Supervisors, a governing body that wields tremendous power despite remaining unknown to most Angelenos.
When elected in November 2022, she went from representing roughly 35,000 people as a West Hollywood City Council member to having more than 2 million constituents across a sweeping, 431-square-mile district that sprawls from the Ventura County line down to Santa Monica, east to Hollywood and up through much of the San Fernando Valley.
While attending the University of Notre Dame, Horvath held a leadership position with the school’s College Republicans chapter, helped create Notre Dame’s first gay-straight alliance and drew national opposition for staging “The Vagina Monologues” at the Catholic university — all while working three jobs to pay off her student loans. (She’s still paying them off.)
During her 2022 campaign for supervisor, she had the backing of some of the most progressive politicians in the city, including then-Councilmember-elect Eunisses Hernandez, as well as then-Councilmember Joe Buscaino, one of the more conservative members of the body.
As a member of the West Hollywood City Council, she helped approve what was then the highest minimum wage in the country, yet her county reelection bid was just endorsed by one of the region’s most prominent pro-business groups.
In the three years since she was elected to the county Board of Supervisors, she has effectively rewritten the structure of county government and drastically changed its approach to homelessness response.
Horvath’s Midwestern mien, unflagging politeness and warm smile belie her fierce ambition.
She has long been seen as someone who does not — to crib a phrase occasionally used about her behind closed doors — “wait her turn.” And that impatience has worked out OK for her so far.
All of which raises the question, will Horvath challenge Karen Bass in the June 2026 Los Angeles mayoral race?
Horvath speaks as supporters rally in September for her motion to pass an emergency rent relief program.
(Al Seib / For The Times)
Her name has been bandied as a potential Los Angeles mayoral candidate since early in the year, when her public profile exploded in the wake of the devastating Palisades fire and tensions between her and Bass first became public.
She has done little to tamp the speculation since, though some posit she is merely expanding her profile ahead of a run for county executive in 2028.
Still, the political rumor mill went into overdrive in early summer, as word trickled out that the erstwhile mayor of West Hollywood had moved into a two-bedroom apartment at the edge of Hollywood — firmly in the city of Los Angeles.
When asked about her mayoral intentions late last month, Horvath demurred, but made clear the door was open.
“I have no plans to run for mayor,” she said, sitting under the sun in Gloria Molina Grand Park, just outside her office in the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, within direct view of City Hall.
“I continue to be asked by people I deeply respect, so I continue to listen to them and consider their requests, and I’m taking that seriously,” she continued. “But I’m focused on the work of the county.”
Horvath, left, embraces Mayor Karen Bass in August at an event in Pacific Palisades.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Horvath declined to share specifics about who was pushing her to run, though she said they were “significant stakeholders” that didn’t hail from any single community.
On Monday, former schools chief Austin Beutner kicked off his campaign for mayor, becoming the first serious candidate to challenge Bass. Political watchers have speculated that Beutner’s entrée could potentially open the floodgates by offering a permission structure for others to challenge the mayor of the nation’s second-largest city.
In the immediate wake of the January firestorm, Bass’ political future appeared to be in real jeopardy, but she has since regained some of her footing and shored up support with powerful interests, such as local labor groups.
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Horvath was 26 and had lived in West Hollywood for all of 18 months when Sal Guarriello, a 90-year-old West Hollywood council member, suddenly died.
It was spring 2009. The advertising executive and Ohio transplant was active in Democratic and feminist circles, co-founding the Hollywood chapter of the National Organization for Women and leading the West Hollywood Women’s Advisory Board. (Raised by conservatives, Horvath started college as a Republican but soon evolved into a staunch Democrat.)
Former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti — who was then president of the Los Angeles City Council — had become a friend and mentor to Horvath through her activism. He and others urged her to throw her hat into the ring for the open seat.
More than 30 people applied, but Horvath was ultimately chosen by the remaining members of the council to join them — an outcome that was stunning, even to her.
After two years in her appointed role, she lost an election bid in 2011 but continued to make a name for herself in the tight-knit, clubby world of progressive West Hollywood politics.
Undeterred, she ran again for West Hollywood City Council in 2015 and won.
Horvath is sworn in as the new county supervisor for District 3 in December 2022.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Horvath remained on the council for the next seven years and twice served as mayor before turning her ambitions toward the county Hall of Administration.
She was seen as an underdog in her supervisor’s race, running against former state Sen. Bob Hertzberg, a political veteran who had a 3-to-1 fundraising advantage and first took elected office as she was entering high school.
Hertzberg had far more name recognition, but Horvath ultimately defeated him with a coalition that included local Democratic clubs and some of labor.
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On the Board of Supervisors, Horvath has been unafraid to take chances and ruffle feathers.
Less than two years into her first term, Horvath was leading the charge to fundamentally reinvent the structure of county government, which hadn’t been meaningfully changed in more than a century.
Horvath’s bold plan to increase the size of the board from five to nine supervisors and create a new elected county executive position was approved by voters last November.
Voters will choose the county’s first elected executive in 2028. Opponents (and even some allies) have long griped that Horvath has her sights set on the very position she helped create, which will undoubtedly be one of the most powerful elected offices in the state.
“There are people who are never going to be convinced that I created this measure without seeing a seat for myself in it,” she says. “I’m not interested in convincing people of that. I’m interested in doing the work.”
As she campaigned for Measure G, critics also said Horvath and her allies were moving too fast, with too much left to figure out after the vote, including the price tag.
“Not everybody always loves you when you do things that upset the status quo. But I think history judges people not by ‘Did everybody love them in a given moment?’ … It’s were they smart and were they brave,” Garcetti said of Horvath.
“And she’s both,” he added.
Still, some of those criticisms came to bear in July, when it was revealed that county officials committed a near-unthinkable administrative screwup. When voters approved the sprawling overhaul to county government in November, the move unintentionally repealed Measure J, the county’s landmark criminal justice reform passed by voters in 2020.
Horvath said she didn’t think she and other proponents moved too fast, arguing that if they hadn’t seized the moment, they would have missed the opportunity “to bring about the change that has been stuck for far too long.”
Horvath argues that the fact that Measure J could have been unwritten in the first place is why Measure G was so needed.
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Horvath was, briefly, everywhere during the fires.
While Mayor Bass receded into the background, Horvath was a constant presence at media briefings and on the news.
Her face was so omnipresent that a man she’d recently gone on a date with — someone who didn’t fully understand what she did for a living — spotted her on television with some confusion.
That was the last she heard from him, she said. (Dating as a public official is “very weird,” and not just because the one time she tried to use Tinder while abroad, she was seemingly banned for impersonating herself.)
She also tussled with Bass behind closed doors in late January, as revealed in text messages obtained by The Times that highlighted an increasingly fractious relationship.
The two women were at odds even before flames laid waste to a wide swath of coastal paradise.
Last November, Horvath went public with a proposal to shrink the duties of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which is overseen by city and county political appointees.
Horvath called for hundreds of millions of dollars to be shifted out of the agency and into a new county department focused on homelessness — a proposal to which Bass strenuously objected.
Horvath ultimately pushed her strategy forward in April, but not without warnings from Bass about creating a “massive disruption” in the region’s fight against homelessness.
Horvath attends a news conference celebrating the Army Corps of Engineers clearing debris from the final house in the Palisades in late August.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Horvath’s relationships in the Palisades have also not been without some tension.
The supervisor recently pledged $10 million of her county discretionary funds to help rebuild the Palisades-Malibu YMCA, but some in the community have felt betrayed by her, according to Pacific Palisades Residents Assn. President Jessica Rogers.
“We don’t believe that she’s properly engaging her community,” Rogers said, citing the independent commission that Horvath convened in the wake of the fires. “She put a lot of time and energy into creating this report. The intentions might have been good, but she didn’t include proper community participation.”
Rogers was particularly bothered by Horvath’s proposal for a countywide rebuilding authority, since Rogers felt like Horvath hadn’t earned their trust. The rebuilding authority, which was supported by the mayor of Malibu, did not come to fruition.
“There’s a perception that [Horvath] is too aggressive,” said another community leader, who asked to speak anonymously because they hope to get things done without alienating anybody. “But there’s more of a mix to how people feel about her than you can see.”
The loudest voices, particularly in community WhatsApp groups, NextDoor and other forums, tend to be the most vitriolic, the community leader said, positing that some of the gripes about Horvath had more to do with her progressive politics than her leadership.
“People are suffering, and I will always show up for my constituents — especially when the conversations are difficult. The Blue Ribbon Commission provided independent, expert guidance on a sustainable rebuild. Its recommendations were meant to inform, not replace, community engagement,” Horvath said.
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The chances of Horvath entering the mayoral race still remain far slimmer than the alternative, particularly because she is up for reelection in 2026 — meaning she would have to sacrifice her safe board seat for an uphill battle challenging an incumbent who still has deep wells of support in the city.
Former Los Angeles City Councilmember Mike Bonin, who long represented the Westside and now directs the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State LA, said he wondered why someone would want the job of mayor while in the comparatively plush position of county supervisor.
Supervisors have more power and suffer far less scrutiny, he argued. Still, there were benefits to remaining in the mix.
“Being mentioned as a potential candidate is one of the greatest places a political figure can be. Because when you’re in the mentioning stage, it’s all about your strengths, your assets, your positive attributes,” Bonin said with a laugh. “Once you declare, it’s the reverse.”
Times staff writers David Zahniser and Rebecca Ellis contributed to this report.
