Your guide to the L.A. City Council District 13 race: Hugo Soto-Martnez faces three challengers

When Hugo Soto-Martínez won his seat in 2022, he joined a wave of progressive leaders elected to the City Council during a huge shake-up of local politics.Now, Soto-Martínez is running for reelection in Council District 13 against three challengers who say he failed his constituents as the city struggled with reduced services and a housing affordability crisis.Their positions differ from Soto-Martínez’s on key issues, including homelessness, city finances and policing.Soto-Martínez said his biggest accomplishments include raising the minimum wage to $30 for tourism workers, updating the rent stabilization ordinance for the first time in 40 years and growing his district’s rapid response network to combat federal immigration raids.

“We came in with a very big vision, a very bold vision, and we’ve delivered,” he said.California California’s primary election takes place on June 2.

Learn about L.A.’s city and county races and others for state offices.Before joining the City Council, Hugo Soto-Martínez, 43, was a labor organizer for Unite Here Local 11.

The son of street vendors, he grew up in South Los Angeles.His upbringing and his experience in the service industry shaped his political views, said Soto-Martínez, who was elected with the support of the Democratic Socialists of America’s L.A.

chapter.While working as a room service server at a hotel, he helped unionize his workplace and became active in the labor movement.

Colter Carlisle, 37, who happens to live in the same apartment complex as Soto-Martínez, is from Illinois and moved to L.A.in 2007.

Carlisle works in freelance legal sales and is vice president of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council.He said the City Council’s efforts to address housing affordability will create problems down the road and threaten rent-stabilized apartments.“There were a lot of issues that motivated me to run,” he said.

“The biggest one was what I felt was a major threat to the rent-controlled ...