Imelda Padilla
2023 - Present
2028
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Imelda Padilla is a member of the Los Angeles City Council in California, representing District 6. She assumed office on July 5, 2023. Her current term ends on December 11, 2028.
Padilla won re-election to the Los Angeles City Council to represent District 6 in California outright in the primary on March 5, 2024, after the general election was canceled.
Biography
Padilla's work experience includes serving as a commissioner for the Los Angeles County Commission on Woman and Girls and as a community organizer for Pacoima Beautiful and for the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy. Padilla founded the nonprofit Together We Do More. She earned a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of California at Berkeley. At the time of the election on May 16, 2017, she was working on her master's degree in public administration from the California State University of Northridge.[1]
Elections
2024
See also: City elections in Los Angeles, California (2024)
Nonpartisan primary election
Nonpartisan primary for Los Angeles City Council District 6
Incumbent Imelda Padilla won election outright against Ely De La Cruz Ayao, Carmenlina Minasova, and Richard Serrano in the primary for Los Angeles City Council District 6 on March 5, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Imelda Padilla (Nonpartisan) | 78.3 | 16,476 |
 | Ely De La Cruz Ayao (Nonpartisan) | 11.8 | 2,485 | |
| Carmenlina Minasova (Nonpartisan) | 9.8 | 2,067 | |
| Richard Serrano (Nonpartisan) (Write-in) | 0.1 | 13 | |
| Total votes: 21,041 | |||
 = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
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Endorsements
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Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for Padilla in this election.
2023
See also: City elections in Los Angeles, California (2023)
General election
Special general election for Los Angeles City Council District 6
Imelda Padilla defeated Marisa Alcaraz in the special general election for Los Angeles City Council District 6 on June 27, 2023.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Imelda Padilla (Nonpartisan) | 55.8 | 8,547 |
| Marisa Alcaraz (Nonpartisan) | 44.2 | 6,765 | |
| Total votes: 15,312 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Nonpartisan primary election
Special nonpartisan primary for Los Angeles City Council District 6
The following candidates ran in the special primary for Los Angeles City Council District 6 on April 4, 2023.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Imelda Padilla (Nonpartisan) | 25.7 | 3,424 |
| ✔ | | Marisa Alcaraz (Nonpartisan) | 21.1 | 2,821 |
 | Marco Santana (Nonpartisan) | 18.9 | 2,524 | |
| Rose Grigoryan (Nonpartisan) | 14.9 | 1,986 | |
 | Isaac Kim (Nonpartisan) | 10.9 | 1,455 | |
 | Antoinette Scully (Nonpartisan) | 5.6 | 745 | |
| Douglas Dagoberto Sierra (Nonpartisan) | 2.9 | 393 | |
| Total votes: 13,348 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Ely De La Cruz Ayao (Nonpartisan)
- Lanira Murphy (Nonpartisan)
- Wendy Goodman Thum (Nonpartisan)
- Anthony Lopez (Nonpartisan)
- James Thomas (Nonpartisan)
- Ermias Alemayehu (Nonpartisan)
- Jaime Carlos Gallo (Nonpartisan)
- Victoria Del Rosal (Nonpartisan)
- Richard Serrano (Nonpartisan)
- Oscar Portillo Jr. (Nonpartisan)
- Andrew James Ashborn (Nonpartisan)
- Carmenlina Minasova (Nonpartisan)
Endorsements
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Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for Padilla in this election.
2017
Three seats on the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education were up for primary election on March 7, 2017. A general election was held on May 16, 2017, for the District 4 and 6 seats. In her bid for re-election to the District 2 seat, incumbent Mónica García defeated challengers Lisa Alva and Carl Petersen and won another term outright by receiving a majority of votes in the primary. In District 4, board President Steve Zimmer advanced to the general election with challenger Nick Melvoin after they defeated Gregory Martayan and Allison Holdorff Polhill. Melvoin defeated Zimmer in the general election. Six candidates—Kelly Fitzpatrick-Gonez, Patty Lopez, Imelda Padilla, Araz Parseghian, Gwendolyn Posey, and Jose Sandoval—filed to run for the open District 6 seat in the primary. Fitzpatrick-Gonez and Padilla advanced to the general election, where Fitzpatrick-Gonez won the seat. District 6 incumbent Monica Ratliff opted not to run for re-election to the board and instead ran for a Los Angeles City Council seat.[2][3][4][5]
Results
| Los Angeles Unified School District, District 6 General Election, 5-year term, 2017 |
||
|---|---|---|
| Candidate | Vote % | Votes |
 Kelly Fitzpatrick-Gonez |
51.46% | 16,961 |
| Imelda Padilla | 48.54% | 15,996 |
| Total Votes | 32,957 | |
| Source: Los Angeles City Clerk, "Official Election Results May 16, 2017: Certified Final Bulletin," accessed May 30, 2017 | ||
| Los Angeles Unified School District, District 6 Primary Election, 5-year term, 2017 |
||
|---|---|---|
| Candidate | Vote % | Votes |
| Kelly Fitzpatrick-Gonez |
37.16% | 15,984 |
| Imelda Padilla |
31.13% | 13,390 |
| Patty Lopez | 11.99% | 5,159 |
| Araz Parseghian | 8.96% | 3,853 |
| Gwendolyn Posey | 5.77% | 2,483 |
| Jose Sandoval | 5.00% | 2,149 |
| Total Votes | 43,018 | |
| Source: Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, "Los Angeles County Election Results: Consolidated Municipal and Special Elections March 7, 2017," accessed March 30, 2017 | ||
Funding
Padilla reported $169,914.59 in contributions and $166,800.44 in expenditures to the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission, which left her campaign with $3,114.15 on hand in the election.[6]
Endorsements
Padilla was endorsed by the following organizations and elected officials:[7][8][9][10][11][12][13]
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After the primary election, Araz Parseghian and Jose Sandoval, Padilla's former opponents, announced they were endorsing her for the District 6 general election.[14]
Campaign themes
2024
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Imelda Padilla did not complete Ballotpedia's 2024 Candidate Connection survey.
2023
Imelda Padilla did not complete Ballotpedia's 2023 Candidate Connection survey.
2017
Candidate website
Padilla highlighted the following statement on her campaign website:
| “ | Greetings Neighbors,
My name is Imelda Padilla and I am the proud daughter of a landscape-gardener and a warehouse worker who was born and raised in Sun Valley. In fact, I still live in my childhood home, I attended all my local schools, Roscoe Middle School, Bryd Middle School, and Polytechnic High School, and I am determined to give kids like me an opportunity to be change agents. Today, too many outside interests burden our neighborhood schools with bureaucratic red tape making it challenging for quality teaching to reach the desks of students. Rather than encouraging kids to pursue post-secondary opportunities, the Los Angeles Unified School District has put forward an adult agenda disconnected from classrooms. I intend to focus on the needs of all students and educators by being solutions oriented to ensure every child reaches their fullest potential. The Los Angeles Unified School District has had many challenges over the years from struggling neighborhood schools to failed programs costing our families millions of dollars. However, there are pockets of quality programs that continue to nurture our youth to graduate from top universities the way my sisters and I did, but we do little to help those programs grow and service more children. As a youth and labor organizer, I have a winning record in fighting for the needs of all students; demanding resources be redirected to our students and parents. I’ve devoted my life to advocating for our most vulnerable and will not stop until we reach 100% graduation. Our fight for quality education needs individuals like you to join this campaign. We need to protect our kids from outside interests to remain focused on closing the achievement gap. With your help, we can get back to making every school in this district competitive, safe, teacher driven, accessible to parents, and able to serve all students.[15] |
” |
| —Imelda Padilla (2017)[16] | ||
89.3 KPCC survey
Padilla participated in the following survey conducted by 89.3 KPCC. The questions provided in the survey appear in bold and Padilla's responses follow below.[17]
Why do you want to be a member of the L.A. Unified School Board?
| “ | Helping young people has always been my priority. I’ve done it in all of the different capacities I have had.
I did it when I was working in the environmental justice sector. I helped increase environmental justice clubs at seven of our local schools. In addition, I have always played a role and been involved in creating mentorship spaces for young people, so much so that I even created a leadership conference where we emphasize leadership and mentorship with our local people with different professionals in the community working on a Saturday to inspire our young people. I want to be on the school board because we need a school board member who puts the needs of parents and families ahead of everything else. I’m the only candidate in the race who has a proven track record of doing that — going to parent centers, hearing their stories, understanding their issues, and doing something about it. I don’t feel we have had that sort of representation before and I know I can bring it to the table. I will be able to hit the ground running to make sure parents, youth and families finally feel like they have an advocate on the board.[15] |
” |
| —Imelda Padilla (February 17, 2017)[17] | ||
Superintendent Michelle King is in her thirteenth month in the district’s top job. On an A-F scale, how would you grade her first year? Please explain your answer.
| “ | I would give Michelle King an 'incomplete.' It’s far too early to evaluate her performance, and it’s impossible to separate her performance from that of the board itself, which hired her and oversees her. However, if I am granted the opportunity to represent my families, I plan to help her identify some of those missing components she wrote into her strategic plan. For example, I noticed she wants to increase magnets and dual immersion programs, as these are programs that help to increase our attendance, as they are the programs that our parents are attracted to. I know that if I’m there, I would already be able to tell her the name of maybe five schools that have told me they want to start up a magnet program, or a STEAM or a STEM program, or increased dual language immersion programs. I look forward to helping her get an A by the time I’m there, to work with her.[15] | ” |
| —Imelda Padilla (February 17, 2017)[17] | ||
Please name one idea or policy you don’t see Superintendent King, district leaders or the school board discussing often enough that — if elected — you’d work on either implementing or expanding in L.A. Unified?
| “ | I could go on for hours answering this question. However, just in general, I would focus on putting the needs of children and parents ahead of everything else. Too often, the discussion is about institutional and structural factions, none of which help our students or our parents. I think this is especially true with parents of special needs children. I think we have a habit of lumping all special needs together and there is a big difference in that population between a student who might have a physical impediment versus those who might have a learning disability or a disability that is unseen but is definitely there. We need to focus on really understanding the special needs community and what their challenges and realities are.
However, there are a few things that I know they are talking about that I want to continue to talk about. That’s to have more counselors or more staff on campus trained on restorative justice practices. I think that’s very important. I want to continue having the conversation of increasing the discussion of college and college readiness and college-related topics at the middle school level. In addition, I think something we also need to be focusing on is how we support librarians and making sure we have librarians at every school level because they’re not just someone who checks out books. They are very unique people who work with teachers to talk about curriculum and teaching those skills that you don’t necessarily cover in a classroom, like how to do research and what’s the difference between real news and fake news, and how to be seasoned on different sorts of catalogs. Every university has a different catalog. Students should learn about those sorts of things as early as middle school.[15] |
” |
| —Imelda Padilla (February 17, 2017)[17] | ||
Do you believe expanding “school choice” policies (giving parents more ability to choose the school their child attends) is a force for eliminating or exacerbating the educational opportunity gap between privileged and less-privileged racial, linguistic or socioeconomic groups? Please explain your rationale.
| “ | I think parents should have the ability to choose the best possible public school that meets their child’s needs. Thousands of LAUSD parents — rich and poor — want more choice. The desire to give your kids the best possible education is universal.
However, what we have failed to do as a district is to empower the less privileged on what those choices are. Assuming that parents are going to pick up a booklet that talks about choice and understand what their choices are just because it’s delivered to them once a year is not doing anybody any favors. What we need to do is be more aggressive as a district to host workshops, to host forums, to go to the parents — whether it’s at their worksites, their place of worship — to tell them what their options are and to help them navigate through the system. We have also failed as a district to replicate the best practices. For example, I myself had a father who died never speaking a word of English or being able to have a conversation in the English language, yet he had three daughters that got into the top universities in the state of California — UCLA and UC Berkeley. But that was because we had teachers in our community who were willing to bring in our mother and tell them about what the district was willing to offer, sat her down with a magnet choice book, and explained it to her. Unless we have a board member that’s willing to have those aggressive recruitment efforts to work with our parents about what the choices are, we’re going to continue to have a situation where those who have access to the internet or have access to time to sit down and research and think through, then we’re never going to be able to help those that are less fortunate to understand what their options are. I plan to address that.[15] |
” |
| —Imelda Padilla (February 17, 2017)[17] | ||
How, if at all, would you change L.A. Unified’s approach to “authorizing” and overseeing charter schools? (Your answer may touch on any facet of the relationship — from vetting applications to open new charter schools; renewing or revoking existing charters; monitoring charter schools’ performance, governance and finance; handling Prop. 39 campus-sharing arrangements.)
| “ | I believe that all charter schools must be held accountable for their academic and financial performance. They already have autonomy to pursue excellence in their own ways, but they nonetheless must be held to the same standards as traditional schools.
One thing I think we need to focus on as well, however, is we need to support the charter department of the district. Do they have the proper amount of resources given the amount of charter schools we currently have? Are we respecting their decisions whenever they have something to bring to the discussion? In terms of Prop. 39, there’s a lot of work to be done, and I’m hoping we can figure out a way to make it more of a seamless process between the parents of the traditional schools and the stakeholders who are interested in the co-location. Currently, I have not — at least on my side of town — seen a situation where it has felt seamless.[15] |
” |
| —Imelda Padilla (February 17, 2017)[17] | ||
L.A. Unified faces long-term financial challenges, including declining enrollment and rising costs for pensions and employee benefits. A blue-ribbon panel in Nov. 2015 also highlighted further issues that cloud the district’s financial future. If elected, what immediate steps would you take to address these financial challenges?
| “ | The financial priority has to be making sure that money goes into the classrooms, not into overhead. And while there are many causes for declining enrollment, the one we have the best ability to combat is the quality of our schools. Many parents are leaving the district because they believe their children aren’t receiving a quality education or receiving quality programs that make them want to stay on our campuses. If we fix that, we will substantially reduce declining enrollment. There is also a number of things on the report of the Independent Financial Review Panel that I hope to explore and work on if elected to the board.[15] | ” |
| —Imelda Padilla (February 17, 2017)[17] | ||
The L.A. Unified board has set a district-wide goal of a 100 percent high school graduation rate. How, if at all, would you change the district’s approach to meeting this goal? (Or would you change the goal itself?)
| “ | I do support the goal, and in fact, believe that we also need to incorporate the goal that every student who graduates must be college- or career-ready. The goal shouldn’t be to pass tests; the goal should be to prepare our children for adulthood.
I bring up 'career-ready' because I’m a true believer, in that because we stopped to focus on career-ready is why we also had some of our 16-year-olds, 15-year-olds leave the district early, before they were 17, and en route to graduation. If you’re not supporting programs that prepare you for adulthood that are not necessarily college-based, then you lose them for the high school graduation age. We need to make sure that our schools service all types of students to get that high school diploma regardless of whether they’re going to college or whether they’re going to the blue-collar workforce. I’m going to be the board member that brings back that sort of readiness and also replicates the best practices of our schools that have the highest rate of A-G completion for those who want to go to college.[15] |
” |
| —Imelda Padilla (February 17, 2017)[17] | ||
See also
2024 Elections
External links
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Candidate Los Angeles City Council District 6 |
Officeholder Los Angeles City Council District 6 |
Personal |
Footnotes
- ↑ Imelda Padilla for Los Angeles School Board District 6, "Meet Imelda," accessed January 18, 2017
- ↑ Los Angeles City Clerk, "2017 Primary Nominating Election Candidates: Nominating Petition Filing Status," accessed December 13, 2016
- ↑ 98.3 KPCC, "Crowded field for Los Angeles primary election in March, but no serious threat yet for Garcetti," December 8, 2016
- ↑ Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, "Los Angeles County Election Results: Consolidated Municipal and Special Elections March 7, 2017," accessed March 8, 2017
- ↑ Los Angeles City Clerk, "Election Night Results (Unofficial): May 16, 2017," accessed May 17, 2017
- ↑ Los Angeles City Ethics Commission, "2017 City and LAUSD Elections," accessed August 1, 2017
- ↑ Service Employees International Union Local 99, "A Voice for Quality Schools, Good Jobs: Members vote to endorse Imelda Padilla for LAUSD Board," accessed January 19, 2017
- ↑ LA School Report, "District 4 dominates while first outside money enters school board race, campaign finance reports show," January 13, 2017
- ↑ Imelda Padilla for Los Angeles School Board District 6, "Endorsements," accessed March 16, 2017
- ↑ Los Angeles County Democratic Party, "Endorsements for Spring 2017 Local Elections," accessed February 2, 2017
- ↑ Stonewall Democrats Club, "SDC Has Officially Made Endorsements To Local Candidates," accessed February 16, 2017
- ↑ Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) Southern California, "Endorsements," accessed March 3, 2017
- ↑ LA School Report, "John Legend, Bernie Sanders, Barbara Boxer rush to make endorsements in the most expensive school board race in U.S. history," May 9, 2017
- ↑ La School Report, "Imelda Padilla scores endorsements from two former competitors in LAUSD school board bid," April 3, 2017
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 15.3 15.4 15.5 15.6 15.7 Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Imelda Padilla for Los Angeles School Board District 6, "Hello." accessed January 16, 2017
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 17.3 17.4 17.5 17.6 17.7 89.3 KPCC, "KPCC's LA school board candidate survey: Imelda Padilla, District 6," February 17, 2017
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Nury Martinez |
Los Angeles City Council District 6 2023-Present |
Succeeded by - |
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