A civil rights attorney who began his legal career representing low-income tenants facing eviction — including some of his own neighbors in Venice — said this week he is jumping into the 11th district City Council race in the wake of the incumbent’s 11th hour announcement that he was dropping out.
Erin Darling, a life-long Venice resident, was prompted to run for the seat, after news that Councilman Mike Bonin will no longer seek a third term. He said his treasurer has delivered initial paperwork to the Secretary of State and the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission.
The 11th district race is unfurling against the backdrop of a pitched, citywide battle over ways to address the homelessness crisis, with Venice community becoming one of the flashpoints where many are recommending that law enforcement step in to more quickly remove unhoused people living in encampments. The debate will frame not just the City Council races, but also the battle to succeed Mayor Eric Garcetti.
In an interview Thursday, Darling said communities in the 11th district’s westside, who are some of the wealthiest in the city, agree that “the status quo is not acceptable.”
But he believes “it’s important to be smart about solutions, not punitive.”
Darling said that as a member of the City Council, he hopes to support solutions that take a “smart, science-based approach, but also a community-oriented approach.”
He was “motivated to be a civil rights lawyer because of the values I learned growing up in Venice,” and he feels a sense of urgency to protect those values because he is now a father.
“I think it’s important to fight for that and not lose that,” he said. “Especially with a 3-year-old, I want him to grow up in a community that he can be proud of.”
Darling has worked for the Eviction Defense Network, a prominent legal services organization aimed at helping low-income tenants. He was a federal public defender from 2014 until 2017, during which he represented indigent individuals affected by “war on drugs” policies, and undocumented residents who were targeted for arrest, detention and deportation under the Obama administration.
He also represented farm workers, including on a class action case that called attention to the need for regulations to protect workers from heatstroke, as part of Public Counsel’s Impact Litigation Project.
Darling is joining a race that includes Traci Park, an attorney who represents businesses and municipalities; Allison Holdorff Polhill, a former chief advisor and district director for Los Angeles Unified School District board member Nick Melvoin; and Greg Good, a mayoral appointee to the Los Angeles city Public Works board who stepped down this week to run for the 11th district seat. The field also includes Jim Murez, president of the Venice Neighborhood Council, Gary Copeland, Matthew Smith and Vincent Sulaitis.
Word had already been floating about Good coming into the 11th district field, when Bonin announced he was stepping out of the race. He has close ties to Mayor Eric Garcetti’s administration, for which he served as the chief of legislative and external affairs, before being appointed as president of the Board of Public Works, the only commission post in the city that is paid.
Previously, Good worked at LAANE, where the mayor’s wife, Amy Wakeland, had been a board member.
LA Public Works Board President Greg Good, who is expected to run for the coastal 11th district council seat, has ✔️ off another step. He resigned from the board, effective today, per the dept's release.
He's already on the LA Ethics site as raising money for the CD11 race. pic.twitter.com/aJN5VOZOKG
— Elizabeth Chou (@reporterliz) January 31, 2022
The 11th district includes Brentwood, Mar Vista, Venice, the Pacific Palisades, Westchester, Del Rey, West Los Angeles, Playa Vista and Ladera.
Darling is entering the race amid a new political landscape in Los Angeles in which city elections are expected to attract additional turnout because they are now aligned with national elections, and in which more progressives are launching challenges to incumbents in several other districts, in a bid to join the slim minority of like-minded members now on the council.
Bonin is considered one of at least two progressive members of the Los Angeles City Council, and was among the dissenting votes on the city’s anti-camping ban that is targeted at unhoused people, that was passed overwhelmingly. He also made an ultimately unsuccessful bid to implement a blanket ban on evictions during the pandemic.
A recall effort accused Bonin of not doing enough to address homelessness and crime. Meanwhile, Bonin said efforts to build housing that would house people experiencing homelessness was often stymied by residents who consistently opposed those projects.
Bonin last fall was able to take advantage of the availability of more housing vouchers to begin an effort to move entire encampments of people in his district, with the aim of placing them into housing. Initially they would go into motels, but given the overall lack of housing, the office resolved to do everything it could to surmount those limitations and ensure those people were eventually housed. Those handed vouchers often still needed to contend with finding an apartment unit that is affordable enough and a landlord willing to rent to them. In recent weeks, despite that effort, some residents have already begun complaining of encampments returning — something that others saw as inevitable, due to the lack of housing, and adequate services that have yet to be fully addressed.
Bonin cited personal reasons for not seeking re-election, despite only recently surviving a recall effort that was seen by many as an indication he had a good chance of winning a third term, on top of carrying the advantage of being an incumbent.
Bonin said in a video message, on Jan. 26, that he had only made the decision to drop out of the race in the few days prior.
His years-long struggle with depression was at times eased by the job he now holds, but also has been hampered by it, he said, and rather than campaign for another term, “it’s time for me to focus on health and wellness,” he wrote in his announcement on Twitter.
The announcement sent shockwaves through L.A.’s progressives. Some swiftly began seeking someone to fill the role Bonin would leave behind.
Darling said this week he was called on to run by a long-time friend and former Venice resident, Lex Steppling, soon after Bonin’s announcement.
Steppling is the director of organizing and campaigns at Dignity and Power, a group that successfully halted the county’s $4 billion plan to expand its jails, and worked to develop an “alternative to incarceration” plan that eventually served as the basis for Measure J, which sets aside 10% of the county’s unrestricted funds for community investments aimed at tackling racial injustice.
Steppling said he was not speaking on behalf of the nonprofit, but rather as a friend who has known Darlings since they were both teenagers. He had left Venice as a child, noting that gentrification pushed many such as himself from being able to live in that community.
He felt compelled to recruit Darling to run on such short notice, because he has watched Darling build up trust and respect while representing activists and others who are jailed or targeted by police, as well people being evicted from their homes.
“Erin for years has been a real resource to the community, and he’s often the first person that people call, because not only does he make himself accessible as an attorney, he provides quality service,” Steppling said.
Darling attended public schools from kindergarten through law school, receiving a history degree in 2003 from U.C. Berkeley, and then graduating from the U.C Berkeley School of Law in 2008.
Darling was elected to the Venice Neighborhood Council in 2014 and 2016, but stepped down in 2017 to focus on his private practice.
Darling now represents children harmed by the foster care system, women who are sexually assaulted by county law enforcement deputies and probation employees, and in a case with the Council of American-Islamic Relations in representing, a Muslim woman who’s headscarf was removed while in the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department’s custody.
