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Politics Dec 16, 2021
| Photo courtesy of the Office of State Senator Henry Stern
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State Sen. Henry Stern Thursday officially announced his candidacy for the Third District seat on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors being vacated by Sheila Kuehl.
Standing at the corner of Ventura Boulevard and Stern Avenue in Sherman Oaks — with the Stern Avenue street sign serving as a backdrop — the lawmaker announced on Zoom, “I’m running.”
Stern said he waited until after the recently redrawn supervisorial districts were approved before announcing his run, saying, “I didn’t want to declare for this office not knowing who I’d be working to represent. That didn’t feel right.”
He indicated that, if elected, he would focus on quality-of-life issues in L.A. County — saying, “You may not even know who your county supervisor is, but you do know that something’s not working right in L.A.”
“This job is really not a political steppingstone,” Stern said. “The job of county supervisor isn’t about politics or gender, it’s not about playing games at the high level or even the important policy debates necessarily that have been going on in my job as state senator in Sacramento, or the red versus blue that’s defining the existential future of this country.
“The job’s about getting work done on the ground. And it’s not working.”
Stern — a Senate Democrat who is seeking what is officially a nonpartisan seat on the five-member Board of Supervisors — joins a field that also includes West Hollywood Councilwoman Lindsey P. Horvath, Los Angeles City Controller Ron Galperin and Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica. Horvath has been endorsed by Kuehl, Supervisor Janice Hahn and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.
Sen. Bob Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, confirmed on Tuesday to the political news website Politico that he is “seriously considering” running for the seat representing the San Fernando Valley and Westside.
Stern was elected to the state Senate in 2016 and re-elected in 2020, representing a district stretching from Encino to eastern Ventura County and north to the Santa Clarita Valley and including Malibu. He has chaired the Senate Natural Resources & Water Committee since 2018 and the Joint Legislative Committee on Emergency Management since December 2020.
He has sought to bolster the state’s wildfire preparedness, push to have the state address climate change, change the state’s election laws, aid people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and assist the elderly and disabled populations.
Stern was appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in October as one of the three co-chairs of the Governor’s Council on Holocaust and Genocide Education along with Attorney General Rob Bonta and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond.
The council was inspired by the Never Again Education Act, introduced by Stern in February, intended to provide teachers with training and resources for teaching content such as genocide within existing curriculum and the social science framework.
“As the generation of survivors in many of our families pass on, it is essential we find alternative ways to express the impact of hate and bias to ensure atrocities like the Holocaust, Armenian and Rwandan genocides never happen again,” Stern said in October in connection with the appointment.
“Education is a key component of the puzzle to lift up the stories of our community long after they’re gone.”
Stern is a sixth-generation Californian and a graduate of Malibu High School and Harvard University, playing water polo at both schools, and the UC Berkeley School of Law. Stern served as counsel to then-Rep. Henry Waxman, D- Los Angeles, on the House Energy & Commerce Committee, was a law lecturer at UCLA and UC Berkeley and founded a tech incubator.
Stern is the son of actor Daniel Stern, best known for his roles in “Home Alone” and “City Slickers,” and their sequels, and as the voice of the adult Kevin Arnold on the 1988-93 ABC comedy, “The Wonder Years.”
The younger Stern delivered the next-to-last line of the series in a voiceover as Arnold’s son, calling to his father, “Hey Dad, wanna play catch?” to which his father replied, “I’ll be right there.”
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