Endorsement: Hugo Soto-Martínez for Los Angeles City Council District 13
Hector Luis Sanchez-Padilla’s campaign for City Council District 13 may have gotten its start, but it surely won’t come to an end.
At first, I looked at my district map and saw something that no one else on my team had. There was no one on the page; there was a blank space where there should have been a blue dot, the only one with a blue dot in a district that had more Hispanics than other parts of the city. That’s a big problem when you’re trying to get out the vote.
So I decided to call Hector Sanchez-Padilla and check him out. I told him about a campaign I’d recently run in which my district—or my voters—played no role. I mentioned that I’d never heard of Hector Sanchez-Padilla, and if he wanted to learn my campaign style, he should ask. Now, my district is Latino, but the voters in my district weren’t even Latino when I started my campaign.
Hector asked if I was aware of him—he was an underdog, he said. He was a former high school principal who was running for the District 13 seat to run on the issues he cared about—voter education, school choice. He had more experience and more money than anyone else running for the District 13 seat. I looked him up on the Internet and realized that his campaign was based on sound ideas and smart campaigning, and I thought I could help him in this campaign.
I made a call to his campaign this week to learn more about him and to ask if he was interested in a campaign together. I was surprised when he said yes. I asked him what he thought I should do; he offered no suggestions. That’s when I thought the relationship didn’t make any sense. I asked him for suggestions about how we can work together and made a promise that if he ran for City Council, I would support him.
“I want to be involved in this campaign in a bigger way,” Hector said, so I thought I’d invite him to my campaign strategy session. He was very impressed that I was considering working with
