{"id":477323,"date":"2026-09-27T10:54:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T10:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/477323\/"},"modified":"2026-09-27T10:54:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T10:54:08","slug":"poll-shows-roy-leads-in-l-a-city-attorney-race-with-most-undecided","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/477323\/","title":{"rendered":"Poll shows Roy leads in L.A. city attorney race \u2014 with most undecided"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

California Deputy Atty. Gen. Marissa Roy has a lead in the race to replace Los Angeles City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto, who lost her seat in a historic primary rout this spring, new polling shows. <\/p>\n

Among likely Los Angeles voters, Roy leads by 10 percentage points over her rival, Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. John McKinney, following the pair\u2019s shocking electoral upset in June, according to a poll released last week by UC Berkeley\u2019s Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times.<\/p>\n

The spread closely mirrors City Councilmember Nithya Raman\u2019s breakaway lead in her bitter fight to unseat Mayor Karen Bass, who has outraised her for months. <\/p>\n

But that\u2019s where the similarities end. <\/p>\n

The mayor\u2019s contest has been called a \u201cknife fight<\/a>\u201d for its no-holds-barred campaigning. It has also drawn sustained \u2014 and occasionally sensational \u2014 national attention since Raman\u2019s buzzer-beating entrance in February. <\/p>\n

By contrast, the city attorney\u2019s race remains all but unknown: More than two-thirds of likely voters are still undecided, versus about a third who remain uncommitted in the mayor\u2019s contest, polling showed. <\/p>\n

L.A.\u2019s top litigator commands a budget of nearly $200 million, plays a role in shaping city ordinances, and wages court battles on behalf of the public. The city attorney also prosecutes misdemeanors \u2014 a job most other cities keep separate. Each year, the office weighs some 120,000 violations, deciding whether to file charges and how to pursue them. <\/p>\n

More recently, city attorneys across the country have championed activist litigation, spearheading suits against the Trump administration, among others. <\/p>\n

Yet, few local voters know the job exists, and fewer still know the candidates by name. <\/p>\n

Seventy percent of likely voters said they had no opinion of either McKinney or Roy \u2014 a fairly typical result for a down-ballot race, experts note. <\/p>\n

Still, new data about voter priorities could signal how those undecideds might shake up the race in its final weeks. <\/p>\n

Roughly a third of L.A. voters rank \u201cmoving homeless people indoors\u201d and \u201ccrime and public safety\u201d as top priorities, respectively; just slightly less say \u201cfixing streets, sidewalks, streetlights and other city infrastructure\u201d is essential. <\/p>\n

McKinney, 58, pitches himself as a law-and-order moderate with plans to use the city attorney\u2019s prosecutorial power to reduce disorder and move unhoused people off the streets. He manages more than 300 people at the district attorney\u2019s office and spent decades in the courtroom securing high-profile convictions \u2014 advantages that he contends outweigh his lack of civil litigation experience. <\/p>\n

Roy, 34, campaigns with an aura of sunny progressive pragmatism, arguing that the city can rein in ballooning liability in part by tackling its vexing infrastructure issues. She nods to the recent $17-billion settlement with Meta \u2014 a case her team at the attorney general\u2019s office led \u2014 as evidence of the kind of ambitious, public interest litigation a large municipal attorney\u2019s office could join. <\/p>\n

Those disparate visions \u2014 along with crucial endorsements and influxes of cash \u2014 helped the pair define clear brands and constituencies going into the primary. <\/p>\n

Both also got a boost from nationwide anti-incumbent fervor, staking sides across a mutual opponent whose name recognition had turned sour while rarely taking aim at each other. <\/p>\n

But the general election is a different animal. <\/p>\n

Although the Los Angeles electorate has been moving leftward <\/a>for years, primary voters typically skew older and more conservative than those who show up for the general election, experts said. <\/p>\n

Polls suggest that fact could create an uphill battle for McKinney, whose sway is biggest among conservatives, about 19% of the city\u2019s electorate. <\/p>\n

Some 21% of Republicans and nearly 30% of self-identified MAGA voters favored McKinney in the most recent poll, while Roy is favored by 25% of Democrats and by 3 in 10 voters who identify as progressive or democratic socialists. <\/p>\n

By contrast, about a quarter of Republican voters now say they favor Bass for mayor, while Raman has a 14-point lead among Democrats. (Both are about equally underwater with MAGA voters.) <\/p>\n

Like Raman, Roy has deep ties to the city\u2019s insurgent democratic socialist political machine and hard-won endorsements from its progressive clubs. She has also successfully courted L.A.\u2018s influential unions and got an early boost from the L.A. County Democratic Party when it endorsed her this spring. <\/p>\n

McKinney is endorsed by the city\u2019s powerful police union and championed by L.A. County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"California Deputy Atty. Gen. Marissa Roy has a lead in the race to replace Los Angeles City Atty.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477324,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[17358,2000,136736,48,52,51,5814,187377,47,50,49,4415,1554,346,20790,8111,6162,2211,32081,141911,72],"class_list":["post-477323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-city-attorney","tag-contest","tag-john-mckinney","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-lead","tag-likely-los-angeles-voter","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-mayor","tag-name","tag-office","tag-pair","tag-poll","tag-public","tag-race","tag-raman","tag-roy","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}