2026 CANDIDATE SURVEY
Rae Chen Huang
Candidate for Los Angeles City Mayor
To help foster greater discussion about reforming City Hall, we asked City of LA candidates to participate in a six question survey. Half of the questions seek general feedback, and the rest are issue specific.
Please note survey responses, candidate information, and website links are provided for informational/educational purposes only. Fair Rep LA is presenting these responses as submitted without edit, evaluation, or commentary. Fair Rep LA does not endorse, support, or oppose candidates or their responses in any way.
Survey Info:
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Answers: Respondents were told that questions could be answered in 1-2 sentences, and that while additional context was welcome, the form had a 1,250 character limit for each question (approximately 200 words).
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Resource Document: Additional background information was provided via a resource document.
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Participation: Surveys were sent to all City of LA candidates qualified to appear on the ballot. This is a very busy time for candidates, so we appreciate everyone who made time to respond. Please avoid reading too much into a candidate’s lack of participation. We respect the limited bandwidth campaigns have, and it's possible that our request(s) may have been lost in their inbox.
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Background: The City of Los Angeles is undergoing the first comprehensive review of our city’s governance structure in 27 years. The Charter Reform Commission recently transmitted a report containing over 60 recommendations to the City Council, who will soon be deciding what will be sent to the November ballot for potential approval by voters.
I strongly support the recommendations to create and strengthen avenues for accountability: codifying the Controller’s watchdog role, adding an Inspector General team to the Ethics Commission, and ensuring City Council policy authority over the Police Department. In the current City government, we have seen power struggles where officials have resisted accountability and auditing. It is vital to our democracy that these protections be put in place. In particular, we need to make sure civil officials are checking the power of the police. Relatedly, the recommendation to affirm First Amendment rights in the Charter is an important check on LAPD abuses against protestors that we have been experiencing recently and for decades.
I would like to further study the recommendation to give the mayor power to move funds between departments. I do not want to concentrate too much power in the executive office. But I also understand the need for efficient government operations, and this may help achieve it.
I would like to enshrine a duty to create and regularly update planning documents about the needs we expect our city to have decades in the future, particularly as they relate to climate change. This does not need to be a detailed plan of everything we will do for the next thirty years. But we should be including a longer timeline when we analyze policy, and we should be incorporating this forward-planning into the work the government does today.
Yes. I would have the City do outreach to schools and youth organizations to encourage voter registration and civic participation.