People's Budget Candidate Forum: Alex Gruenenfelder Smith                                    ...back >
QUESTION: Why are you the best candidate for Mayor?

Gruenenfelder Smith: I'm running mayor of Los Angeles. I'm a community organizer, a social justice advocate, and an Echo Park neighborhood councilman. My background in politics is in community organizing, it's in protest organizing. That's where I come from; that's how I got involved in electoral politics.

I got involved in my community through my neighborhood council first. It was my first entrance into politics. I co-chair our planning and land use committee, I work on our reimagining public safety committee, and that's the kind of work we're doing there in the branch of the city government that's supposed to be closest to the people. And that's what I'm trying to bring to city hall because I feel that I have a lot of respect for a lot of the other candidates in this field, but what we need is someone who has worked in the streets and worked directly with the community, who can get the job done and bring these policies home, that I'm just not seeing represented in this field.

These are policies like ending homelessness with a decriminalized approach; things like reimagining public safety by reallocating more money away from policing and toward more social services that really keep our communities safe; and overall, prioritizing welfare of the people over more corporate welfare in the city of Los Angeles. And that's what we're offering. We're offering an approach that's been tried and true in the streets, in community organizations, and in local governments. We believe that we can bring that to City Hall in the best possible way.


QUESTION: How do you get to City Hall given all the high profile candidates?

Gruenenfelder Smith: Absolutely. I mean, it's a great challenge for us. We're an all-volunteer campaign. We have a few dozen people are volunteering for us. We're going out there and hitting the streets, kicking off canvassing operations, calling people asking for more money so that we can actually keep doing this. Because although we are doing some of the things other candidates are doing, whether it be digital advertising or phone banking, we obviously just don't have the resources that some of these other campaigns have. So it's gonna take a big push to get us there. And we hope as the youngest mayoral candidate in our city's history, that we're mobilizing a lot of young people, a lot of young volunteers, and we're hoping that we can bring that enthusiasm out in a way that can get us to that runoff. It's going to be hard, but once we're in the runoff, then we hope we can do more of a push with more earned media things to really get.

QUESTION: How young are you?

Gruenenfelder Smith: I'm 20 years old.

QUESTION: Have you even graduated from University?

Gruenenfelder Smith: I graduated from UC San Diego when I was 19.

QUESTION: What was your degree?

Gruenenfelder Smith: Theater.

QUESTION: When did you formally launch your campaign?

Gruenenfelder Smith: I launched my campaign in April of 2021. And that was at a time where the only folks in the race were City Attorney Mike Fueur and City Councilman Joe Buscaino.  So it was a much less crowded field. We were doing a lot of small press interviews really trying to get out there directly. But over time, we found that especially among young voters, among progressives and folks on the left, we're starting to gain some traction and we're really hoping that we can turn us into one of those campaigns that comes from being an underdog to getting into more of these debates, more of these televised things and doing more interviews like this one.

QUESTION: Is there something you've done thus far that seems to be working particularly well or something you've done that hasn't worked as well as you had hoped? In other words, lessons learned?

Gruenenfelder Smith: Absolutely. I think one thing that's a big lesson learned is that I did not come into this with a lot of fundraising experience, and that's definitely been the big uphill battle of this. Fundraising, I think. For any campaigns I were to run in the future and any candidates I was giving advice to, I would say make sure from day one that fundraising is one of your priorities. That's a big lesson. We're bringing some folks on the help us with fundraising. So we're hoping that we can get that more than a high gear especially as we go into this year's second quarter of fundraising.

And in terms of things that are good, really just the more days we can be out of events like this here at the LA People's Budget candidate forum, the more we can meet people face to face, the more that word of mouth spreads, the more journalists we get to talk to, and then the more I meet people on the street who say, Hey, you're Alex, I've heard of your campaign. And that's the beautiful thing.
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