Mayoral Campaign Update

As of today, I am no longer running for Mayor of Los Angeles.

In order to be on the ballot in LA, every Mayoral candidate needs to collect 500 signatures from registered voters in the city of Los Angeles (not LA County, by the way, the CITY of Los Angeles. So that means "no" to everyone in Culver City, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Compton, Pasadena, Long Beach, etc...) and this all has to be done in the span of 26 days (7 Feb - 4 Mar).

During this period, I personally walked around dozens of neighborhoods in LA, talking with strangers, trying to collect signatures, hear their concerns, and explain my plans for the city of Los Angeles. And even though I was able to get about 600 signatures during this time, after verifying each signature with the city clerk, only around 400 were actually verified, meaning I missed the required threshold.

But as exhausting as this last month has been, it's also been extremely reassuring. Almost everyone I spoke with was on the same page:

• We want better leadership.
• We want rent control and affordable housing.
• We want to feel safe in our city and for our neighbors to feel safe, regardless of where they come from or what they look like.
• We want to help the human beings who are struggling to survive on the streets, not punish them.
• We don't want so much of our taxpayer dollars to be syphoned into an LAPD that terrorizes our communities.
• We want better, free public transit.
• Most of all, we're sick of people acting like these goals are unachievable.

So I want to say thank you to everyone who supported my campaign, thank you to all of my friends and family who encouraged me to try to do something this crazy, and thank you to everyone I spoke with on the streets of Los Angeles who took the time to talk with me and share their stories and hopes and dreams. (And thank you to the people who work at the city of Los Angeles, who were extremely kind, helpful, and professional, who were always available to answer questions and help however they could.)

But looking forward, this doesn't change much. I'm still planning on talking about how our city can be better for all of us, I'm still planning on sharing all of the things I've learned while going through this process (which was a lot) and I'm still as passionate as ever about fighting to fix the broken government systems that are supposed to work for all of us, not just the ultra-wealthy.

-Nick Harron