CD-14 candidate Ysabel Jurado could make history
Ysabel Jurado is running for Kevin de León’s seat in an L.A. City Council election.
By JENNIFER NEHRER
Sixteen days before the Nov. 5 election, canvassers gathered at the Yosemite Recreation Center in Eagle Rock for a “Filamenomenon.” Speakers included Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia, Monterey Park Mayor Thomas Wong and the woman whom they hope will be the first Filipino elected to the L.A. City Council: Ysabel Jurado.
Jurado is a tenants’ rights attorney from Highland Park who supported herself financially through her education while raising her daughter, Stella, as a single mother. She attended Pasadena City College and UCLA for her bachelor’s degree, and she went on to UCLA’s law school to pursue a career in line with her passion for social justice.
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“I went to law school thinking I was going to do labor law, or labor and employment law, which I did my first year,” Jurado said. “But then the second year, the housing issues, I got to know them a little bit better. And gentrification in Highland Park hit pretty hard, and I noticed renters were being displaced.”
Jurado applied for a Skadden Foundation Fellowship in 2018 by submitting a project designed to prevent displacement in Historic Filipinotown, and was selected to receive the foundation’s financial support. She has been an attorney ever since, even continuing legal work as she runs to unseat Kevin de León in November.
It is in part because of de León, Jurado said, that she decided to run. She was frustrated by the tapes scandal — where de León and other councilmembers were heard laughing at and making racist remarks on tape, which broke in October 2022 — and his refusal to step down, as well as how the coronavirus pandemic had exacerbated financial issues for members of her community.
“I was like, ‘You know what?’” she said. “‘This incumbent won’t step down, he doesn’t represent us. I’m gonna try it because my community has given me so much.’”
Jurado has run a grassroots effort to get this far. Despite going up against elected officials, who campaign manager Naomi Villagomez Roochnik admitted have “more name recognition” than Jurado does, she managed to beat all seven candidates in the March 2024 primary by around 400 votes.
“I knew we were gonna make it to the general because … we’re following a trail that was blazed by the progressives before us,” Roochnik said. “Were we pleasantly surprised to make it in first place? Absolutely. We were up against three seated elected officials. We were up against the incumbent himself. So of course, we were out-raised.”
Keera Bhakta / Daily Trojan
As Jurado and her campaign have geared up for the faceoff against de León, their strategy has not changed. Jurado continues to appear each weekend at local events like the “Filamenomenon” — the name being a play on the word “Filipino” and the hit Chappell Roan song “Femininomenon.”
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Roochnick said. “We haven’t deviated from the same formula that we used in the primary; just now the volume has been boosted up times 10 because we have a lot more visibility, name recognition and more people have rallied behind us.”
Since her campaign kicked off in 2021, Jurado has been steadily attracting endorsements from some of L.A.’s most valuable players, including the L.A. County Democratic Party, councilmembers Nithya Raman and Eunisses Hernandez, several unions and the L.A. Times. After the primary, the Times changed their endorsement for the race from Assemblymember Miguel Santiago to Jurado.
Another powerful endorsement Jurado keeps by her side is Kenneth Mejia, the first Filipino to be elected to the L.A. city government. Mejia said Jurado’s legal experience gives her the perfect perspective to work for the city’s people and reduce both the homelessness crisis and the city’s budget deficit.
“We need someone who’s in [the council] who’s actually gonna fight for the working people, the tenants, everybody,” he said in his speech. “I know that Ysabel is gonna do that.”
Jurado’s Instagram revealed she gained yet another endorsement during the “Filamenomenon”: Mejia’s “Watch Dogs,” two corgis named Killa and Kirby.
Keera Bhakta / Daily Trojan
Being Filipino is a central part of Jurado’s life. A key aspect of her upbringing is the principle of kapwa, or “shared identity” in Tagalog. She pointed to times in her life when the community came together to help or entertain each other whenever they needed. Jurado said someone would always be at her house cooking or fixing something while she entertained the crowd.
At the rally, Jurado’s Filipino identity and potentially historic win was put first, but she and Mejia both emphasized that identity is not enough. The people of District 14, they said, deserve “good Filipinos,” a term Mejia used in his speech at the rally to mean those who do the work they were elected to do.
“We need to work to elect good Filipinos,” Ysabel said, echoing Mejia, “progressive candidates, people that go beyond their identity to make sure that this is a solidarity amongst all of us.”
There are other things Jurado wants voters to know about her: She is a “dorky, nerdy mom” who watches “The Real Housewives” and does home improvements when she is stressed.
“I dance like a mom. I guess I dress like a mom. I guess I talk to people like a mom; my daughter says I try too hard to be cool, which is probably true,” she said. “I have big mom energy, and I didn’t realize I did until this campaign.”
