Wendy Carrillo announced Thursday she’s running for city council in District 14 in 2024, joining a growing number of candidates who are vying to replace embattled councilmember Kevin de León on the city governing body.
The state assemblymember – whose 52nd district overlaps a portion of CD14 – took to social media to make the official announcement. Her posts include a link to a Los Angeles Times column earlier in the week in which she divulged her reasons for running for the local seat.
In the column, Carrillo said the controversy following De León’s participation in a leaked recording in which he and other councilmembers made racist statements and the ongoing calls for his resignation were taking away from the councilmember’s ability to serve his constituents.
She said that Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass “currently doesn’t have a partner in [District] 14. It’s a challenge when you have someone in office that folks don’t want to associate with.”
Carrillo, who was raised in Boyle Heights, said she made up her mind after her staffers began to hear from constituents who said De León’s office wasn’t returning their calls.
“It wasn’t always like that,” she said. “Before, we worked together. There’s a different political dynamic now.”
On her campaign website, the 42-year-old politician published a letter in which she highlighted her connections to Boyle Heights:
This community raised me, it’s where I grew up and where my family and I call home.
This community offered my mother and I refuge when we fled the civil war in El Salvador in the early 1980’s. This is the community that offered my father, who left his home in Zacatecas, Mexico following the dreams of his father, a Bracero worker, the opportunity to start a new life in Boyle Heights, to dream, raise a family and create a better future for my four younger sisters and I. This is a community whose arms have always welcomed, supported and encouraged working class families like mine, and like many of yours.
I am proud to be a homegrown candidate running to represent you and your families.
Carrillo, a former aide to disgraced councilmember José Huízar, was first elected to the State Assembly in 2017. She is the second Eastside elected official to announce her intention to run for CD14, following a similar announcement earlier this month by Assemblymember Miguel Santiago, who represents Boyle Heights in the state legislature.
As of Friday, a total of six candidates have declared their intention to run for De León’s seat in the March 2024 primary – including former councilmember Nick Pacheco, who represented CD 14 from 1999 to 2003.
De León himself has not announced his intention to run again for the seat.
Wendy Carrillo is the author of AB665, a bill that is designed to permit kids 12 and older to consent to residential shelter facilities without any claim of abuse or serious risk of self-harm or harm to others. This is a state-sanctioned kidnapping bill. Carrillo claims that the bill would just open mental health counseling to kids on Medi-Cal but to do that, all she needed to do was amend another code section, Cal. Welfare and Institutions Code 14029.8 to say the Medi-Cal must pay for outpatient mental health. Do you want a councilperson who is empowering kids 12 and older to go to shelters where there is no abuse at home? Why is she doing this? Because she wants school counselors to send gender confused kids to shelters right from school. She thinks parents are criminals without any claim of abuse. Do you know what happens to a kid in a residential facility?
No thank you. I prefer someone who isn’t ideologically captured and understands that parents are the only ones who have a child’s best long-term interests in mind. Either she doesn’t understand the impact of the bills she’s authoring or she’s lying. Either one is a lousy addition to her list of qualifications. Under normal circumstances, the child welfare agencies always seek to keep children with their parents. What is Ms. Carillo’s goal in separating a child from their parents with no evidence of harm? Maybe if she was a parent and understood the reality of raising a teen she wouldn’t be so quick to hand out children over to residential facilities. Another politician who is completely out of step with her constituency. Giant no.
What say you, Wendy Carrillo? I want to hear why you believe this bill is a good idea?
And please don’t tell us that children are not safe in homes that won’t use the name and pronouns that the child has adopted or that the parents ARE abusive for questioning whether their children should be binding their breasts or asking for hormone therapy that is currently prescribed off label with no FDA approval. Parents who are asking these questions before affirming to a social transition that can lead to permanent life altering medical consequences are NOT abusers, bigots or transphobes. We are loving parents who have only their child’s wellbeing in mind and heart.
Wendy Carrillo, Many kids who end up in residential shelters are there because, sadly, their families have thrown them out due to rejecting their lgbt identification. Yet you propose that parents of self-identifying trans kids – parents who are trying to step in with a voice of reason for their 12+ kids who want to make up permanent life-changing decisions – should have their kids taken and put in a shelter?! How is this protecting kids?
Wendy Carillo,
Let’s talk about AB665. What is your thinking? Many kids who end up in shelters are there because, sadly, their families have thrown them out due to rejecting their lgbt identification. Yet you propose that concerned parents of self-identifying trans kids – who are trying to step in with a voice of reason for their 12+ kids who want permanent life-altering surgeries – should have their kids taken and put…in a shelter? How is this protecting kids?
Wendy Carrillo has betrayed kids and families and does not deserve our votes. We need a strong Latina who will stand up for the kids in our community who need support, not take them away from loving families. Why is she not working on bills that support working class families to stay together and protect kids from being recruited into gangs and the sex industry? Instead she is fronting for Big Pharma to encourage transgenderism and destruction of our kids’ fertility with wrong-sex hormones. Que vergüenza!
By looking at all the bills she authored, I am not sure how qualified Wendy Carrillo is to run anything. I would advise voters to stay away from her. California is already riddled with so many issues, that is making it pretty difficult to leave a normal life here. LA people deserve better. If you’re a parent, please make sure to check her egregious AB665 bill. This is a horrendous bill that would allow a mental health provider to send any 12 yo and older children to a residential shelter without a claim of abuse. There are no shortage of horror stories about rogue mental health providers that destroy families, and this bill will make families and children vulnerable towards malicious actors.
Wendy doesn’t care about children, therefore cannot be a good member of society. She wrote a bill AB665 that will remove children from their parents with NO sign of abuse! She believes that kids can decide their gender and if their parents don’t agree to go along with made up names- that is grounds for their removal from their parents. She wants a school counselor to be able to send that child from school to a state home without any notice given to the parents. This is kidnapping pure and simple at the hands of gender ideology. Do not elect someone who makes bills promoting break up of the family.
AB665 is a state sanctioned kidnapping children from parents bill.
Reject Wendy to protect your children from sexual exploitation, abuse, trafficking and theft from their families.
No on Wendy!!!!
It’s concerning how Wendy Carrillo is denying any discussion around AB665, which aims to put kids 12 years and older into residential shelters without any investigation or discussion of abuse by their families. How can we trust Wendy to represent our voice as a councilman when she automatically assumes parents (a large part of the demographics she would be representing) are abusive and in turn, destroys families by placing kids in residential centers with no investigation? How is a residential center or foster care better than a loving household? How would one even know if there is a loving household with no investigation? Wouldn’t we effectively be sending a lot of false positives (e.g. confused youth) into our system, which already can’t support what it has. How would these living conditions be better for anyone, most importantly our youth?
I have left numerous comments. Why are they not visible here??
She proposed AB665 & I work in the foster care system (that is overburdened and broken) & putting children into state sanctioned housing is a horrible idea! She is ignorant to the history of when government tried to raise children. Research the reason we passed ICWA – Indian Child Welfare Act! Look at the foster care system and how their history and data KNOWS children are ALWAYS better off with their parents – even those who have abused them. Child courts ALWAYS push for reunification with parents. It’s why we spend so much money on rehabilitating parents who have lost children due to abuse or neglect. It’s for the children because government always fails at parenting. Taking children away from parents for reasons beyond abuse or neglect is wrong!
I see many people commenting here. Boy it’d be nice if one of you were to run for this position. You say there’s no change, then be that change.
Why won’t Wendy Carrillo have any discussion about AB665? What is she hiding? This bill would put children 12 years and older into residential shelters. Why does she assume parents are abusive first without any real investigation? How can Wendy represent families voices when it seems she doesn’t care about families at all, and assumes a residential facility is better than a loving home. She is destroying families. What is her motive? Is she receiving any kind of financial kickback from these facilities?
Insane. Dangerous. Inhumane. AB665 should be called AB666. It is evil and will place 12 year old children and older in grave danger. Wendy Carrillo is not thinking straight. AB665 exemplifies she is ineffectual as a state legislature and this bill proves it. Carrillo needs to take a Child Abuse Mandated Reporting class.
AB 665 Bill will give sex traffickers carte blanche to hurt, exploit, and murder young children. Residential facilities will be the temporary housing depots for the perpetrators. Residential facilities are not the answer. Family reunification is.
As a long time Social Worker who is a 3rd generation constituent of CD 14 who has worked in foster care, in ER, and on Skid Row helping all target populations and especially children, youth, and young adults, AB665 is a precursor to increased homelessness, children sex trafficking, exploitation, and deliberate physical, emotional, and mental abuse and neglect.
This is one of many reasons why I am running for LA City Council District 14. Like many of you, I am tired of the musical chair corruption in CD 14 and the deplorable leadership.
I ran against Wendy Carrillo’s former boss, now federally convicted criminal Jose Huizar in 2015, and I am running a again in 2024 because of the lack of leadership that has existed for decades. Enough is enough with these corporate politicians and carpetbaggers like Miguel Santiago who voted against the incarceration of criminals who human sex traffic a month ago, and racist individuals like Kevin de Leon who moved into CD 14 to run for Mayor and now his re-election while at the same time running for California State Lieutenant Governor with 3.6 million in his campaign bank account. All three of them who are Huizar allies, supporters, or former staffers should be ashamed of themselves.
It’s time to “Get Up! Stand Up! For your rights! And vote them out!
There are a lot of comments here denouncing Wendy Carrillo for letting adolescents choose residential care, or something like that, but when I read about the bill, that doesn’t seem accurate. Here’s what I find: “The mental health provider, per AB 665, would be required to discuss with the young person whether the involvement of a parent or guardian is safe or appropriate and must involve the parent or guardian unless that involvement is deemed unsafe or inappropriate.” (From https://youthlaw.org/resources/californias-ab-665-equitable-access-mental-health-services) This seems like a reasonable safeguard. Why is there so much opposition. According to the National Center for Youth Law, this makes it easier for young people to access Medi-Cal for mental health issues. They can already do this using private insurance. This seems like a good idea.