For Moy Valdez, the recent campaigns of New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and Deja Foxx for Arizona’s seventh congressional district were “huge” inspirations. Following these races, Valdez “realized just how impactful youth can be on the community and actually have a chance of winning,” he said in an interview with the Daily Trojan.

Growing up, Valdez, a senior majoring in political science and a USG senator, said his father would have been happy if he had ended up working at a Walmart. But now, Valdez is running to represent Los Angeles’s ninth district, which covers USC’s University Park Campus, at just 21 years old. 

“I know a lot of Hispanic people who are [taught to keep their heads down],” Valdez said. “That really spoke to me as a kid, and I realized that there [are] so many, specifically young people and youth, that grow up with that mindset that they can’t aspire to more than what their parents did.” 

Beyond recent elections, another factor that inspired Valdez’s candidacy is his current role as president of the Youth Council for the City of L.A. In this role, Valdez said he saw issues like the mismanagement of funds that he wants to address as a city councilmember. 

On Aug. 12, the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office filed two new public corruption charges against current District nine representative Councilmember Curren Price Jr., following previous charges of embezzlement, perjury and conflict of interest against him in 2023.

Valdez said that seeing the recent charges of corruption against Price “was very eye- opening” and led to his candidacy. 

“Just seeing that blatant corruption happen at the city level, especially in my district, was very eye-opening and very frustrating,” Valdez said. 

If elected, Valdez says one of his main priorities as a councilmember would be to lower the cost of housing in L.A. by initiating a rent freeze. Valdez also said he wants to restructure aspects of how the city council is run, such as the standards for councilmembers during meetings, to curb government corruption.

Valdez said he wants to invest more in L.A.’s infrastructure, such as fixing damage to streets and sidewalks. 

As for the campaign itself, Valdez is his “sole campaign team,” filing his own paperwork for candidacy. He said funding will primarily come from the L.A. City Ethics Commission matching funds program, which provides city funding to match private campaign donations for qualifying candidates. 

While USG does not endorse Valdez’s campaign, he said his experience as a senator has been a key learning experience. 

“USG has been helpful because it teaches you critical skills when it comes to knowing how to connect with constituents, how to connect with organizations, how to build bridges and make bonds with individuals in a way that you can help them, whether that be logistically or policy-wise,” Valdez said. 

Other USG members, like speaker of the senate Jeremiah Boisrond, a sophomore majoring in legal studies who has worked with Valdez, said that Valdez’s enthusiasm for his work is something that stands out about him, both as a USG senator and a person.  

“Something I really, truly admire about Moy himself as an individual person is his passion for all the work that he does, whether it’s with advocacy for affordable housing or just expanding resources for students; he is so driven,” Boisrond said. 

USG vice president Emma Fallon, a senior majoring in political science, has known Valdez for more than a year through being transfer students and through USG, and said she’s noticed his enthusiasm for his work. 

“[Valdez] is very authentic, very genuine and very passionate, which I think are all skills and traits that a good leader needs to have,” Fallon said. 

Fallon said there is a theme of advocacy in both Valdez’s work for USG and his campaign for L.A. City Council. She said Valdez worked as an important advocate for the Undocumented Trojan Success Assembly, as well as advocating for more student representation among the University’s Board of Governors, Board of Trustees and administrator groups as a USG senator. 

“It all kind of ties back to [Valdez] being a really good advocate and wanting to amplify students and his constituents’ voices and focusing a lot on transparency and communication,” Fallon said. 

While Valdez’s goal in his campaign is to be elected, he said that’s not his main reason for running. 

“My main goal in this, while it would be to win the seat, is also to encourage more youth to get involved, whether that be at the city level, whether that be just politically in general,” Valdez said. “That’s my main goal of this campaign… just to inspire others to do the exact same thing.”