This story was reported in partnership with The 19th, a nonprofit newsroom covering gender, politics and policy.The video introducing Rae Huang’s candidacy for mayor of Los Angeles evokes arthouse cinema in dry tungsten hues. It opens with jump cuts between frustrated Angelenos honking their cars, caught in the gridlock of rush hour traffic. Huang, a bespectacled Asian-American woman, steps out of her car, onto the sidewalk and turns to the camera. “LA is stuck,” the 43-year-old declares. “I’m running to make Los Angeles affordable and healthy.”
The Hollywood-esque trailer is how Huang, a single mother of two and affordable housing advocate, announced her campaign online Nov. 15. If elected, she would be the city’s first Asian American woman mayor—a progressive challenging Karen Bass, Los Angeles’ first woman mayor, from the left.
Huang is an ordained minister with Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), one of the few Protestant denominations that ordains women and LGBTQ clergy and includes performing marriage for same-sex couples. Religious faith is a deep part of Huang’s pursuit of social justice and her campaign beliefs…