When an incumbent city attorney finishes third in a primary election, people tend to pay attention. That is exactly what happened in Los Angeles when incumbent Hydee Feldstein Soto crashed out of the primary race, clearing the runway for a high-stakes general election showdown between civil rights attorney Marissa Roy and veteran prosecutor John McKinney.
If you are following municipal politics in Southern California, the race for Los Angeles City Attorney is far more than a local legal contest. It is a referendum on how the nation's second-largest city uses its massive legal arsenal to handle housing, workers' rights, and federal conflicts. Marissa Roy has captured national progressive backing and a commanding first-place finish in the June primary by running a grassroots, coalition-heavy campaign that looks entirely different from traditional machine politics.
The Shift in City Hall
The office of the Los Angeles City Attorney wields immense power over day-to-day urban life. It handles misdemeanor prosecutions, drafts municipal ordinances, advises the city council, and serves as legal defense or plaintiff in major civil lawsuits. For years, voters treated the position as a backroom administrative office.
That complacency is gone. Angelenos are dealing with compounding crises in affordable housing, tenant harassment, wage theft, and public safety. When voters headed to the polls in June, they signaled that they wanted an aggressive litigator rather than a cautious administrator. Roy pulled 43.1 percent of the primary vote, outpacing McKinney and leaving the incumbent far behind.
Her resume bridges grassroots advocacy and institutional legal power. A graduate of USC and Yale Law School, Roy cut her teeth working inside the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office, where she took on wage theft cases and forced bad employers to pay back stolen wages to vulnerable workers. Later, as a California Deputy Attorney General, she joined legal actions against major oil corporations and worked on housing justice teams investigating abusive landlords.
Rethinking the Role of City Attorney
Most people think a city attorney just handles petty misdemeanors or reviews parking ticket disputes. In reality, the L.A. City Attorney acts as a formidable civil watchdog.
Roy’s platform hinges on weaponizing that watchdog role against corporate bad actors and federal overreach. Her campaign centers on three distinct pillars: housing justice, worker protection, and proactive federal litigation.
On housing, Roy points out a staggering enforcement gap. While the L.A. City Council passed robust tenant anti-harassment ordinances, thousands of violations have piled up with minimal municipal pushback. Roy promises to establish a dedicated housing justice team inside the office to sue landlords engaging in illegal lockouts, habitability failures, and tenant intimidation.
On labor, the numbers are glaring. Approximately $2.5 billion is stolen from workers across Los Angeles every single year through wage theft and misclassification. Roy has made it clear that she intends to reverse conservative directives that discourage municipal employee engagement, prioritizing immediate prosecution of predatory employers.
Taking the Fight Upward
One of the sharpest contrasts in the general election is how the candidates propose to handle state and federal friction. Roy has built her entire campaign around immediate readiness to challenge federal overreach, pointing out that she was part of legal teams fighting federal policies during previous administrations.
Her supporters include a broad coalition of labor unions, tenants' rights organizations, and progressive groups who view the City Attorney's office not just as a municipal legal advisor, but as a sword for social equity. Critics, meanwhile, question whether an activist litigation approach strains city resources or oversteps the traditional boundaries of municipal prosecution.
Yet the appetite for aggressive accountability is palpable. Voters are tired of watching housing costs climb while legal protections exist only on paper.
The general election on November 3 will decide whether Los Angeles pivots toward an aggressive civil rights framework or a more traditional prosecutorial model under McKinney. Either way, the era of quiet city attorney races in Southern California has officially ended.
