Pelosi, Clinton, Buttigieg, and Meister Are Backing Him — SD-24 Frontrunner Brian Goldsmith on Some of WeHo’s Hot-Button Issues and Why He Decided to Run

The mailers have been landing in West Hollywood mailboxes for months. The commercials are running. Brian Goldsmith, the Beverly Hills-based Democrat running for California State Senate District 24 — the seat being vacated by Sen. Ben Allen — had been walking the neighborhoods earlier in the morning before he stopped at the Helen Albert Farmers Market in Plummer Park, his daughter in tow, working the aisles and talking with voters.

The June 2 primary is just days away.

The race has drawn a crowded field. West Hollywood City Councilmember John Erickson, Malibu-based candidate Sion Roy, and Zennon Ulyate-Crow — the 23-year-old whom WEHOonline profiled earlier this year as the youngest candidate in the race — are among those running. Goldsmith has emerged as the leading fundraiser, raising more than $2 million.

His endorsements reach deep into the national Democratic Party. Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and former Senator Barbara Boxer — honorary chair of his campaign — have all backed him. So has West Hollywood City Councilmember Lauren Meister, who passed over her colleague John Erickson to endorse Goldsmith earlier this spring. Pete Buttigieg, his Harvard classmate and longtime friend, is supporting him too.

Goldsmith spent more than a decade as a political journalist and producer at CBS News, Yahoo News, and CNN, including years as Katie Couric’s political producer. He left journalism to work in advocacy, helped Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign, and went on to build a media consulting firm that advised other Democratic candidates. He also founded two startups along the way. WEHOonline first sat down with him earlier this year. On Monday we caught up with him at the market and pressed him on a few hot-button topics on the minds of many West Hollywood residents lately.

The Wrong Answer to the Right Question

On SB 79, the state’s transit-oriented upzoning bill, Goldsmith said he’s come out against it. West Hollywood’s current council majority has embraced the bill, even as only a few single-family homes remain in the city.

“I believe we need more housing supply, particularly workforce housing, affordable housing for folks to live in,” he said. “But I think this is the wrong answer to the right question. It’s a blunt instrument, and it doesn’t account for all of the infrastructure that the city would need to put in to support these giant buildings.”

He said it doesn’t guarantee the housing would be accessible to middle-class and working families either. He said he’d push instead for more commercial-to-residential conversions, more publicly held land from the county and state along commercial and transit corridors, and smaller multifamily housing built with modular and manufactured construction, which he said has gotten quicker and cheaper.

“If you look at the kind of big experiment we’ve been on for the last 10 years, blowing up local zoning and planning, it has not resulted in dramatically more housing starts,” Goldsmith said. “Certainly not for the lower-cost housing that we need.”

People Just Trying to Earn a Living

SB 79 weighs heavily on residents. But in WeHo’s Rainbow District, a growing crisis is hitting residents and small business owners both.

West Hollywood’s street vendor crisis has been front and center on WEHOonline lately. The brawls in the Rainbow District. A minor found working past midnight at a food cart. Surveillance video showing a vendor urinating in an alley before returning to his cart without washing his hands. Some on the city council have defended the vendors as people just trying to earn a living. We asked Goldsmith what he’d say to that.

“The state needs to set a standard, and hold the local governments to reach that standard,” he said. “It is hard enough to be a small business in these cities without illegal competition that doesn’t have to pay the fees and permitting, that doesn’t have to do all the things that are required of a brick and mortar.”

He said if the state can come in and override local zoning and planning, it can require local governments to protect their small businesses too. He also said the state should look at grants to help cities scale up public safety teams, including unarmed responders for calls involving homelessness, mental illness, and nonviolent code enforcement.

“We don’t always need an armed response, but we do need a response,” Goldsmith said. “It’s unacceptable for people to wait 30 minutes or an hour to get an officer to show up.”

Flock Safety cameras came up next. West Hollywood’s City Council approved them earlier this year after a prolonged debate. Goldsmith said he’s supportive with conditions.

“I want to make sure that people’s civil liberties and privacy are protected,” he said. “So long as that is the case, I think Flock has been a useful tool in supporting public safety.”

He Had to Clean Up a Mess

He also talked about his endorsement from Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman. Goldsmith said Hochman walked into a broken office.

“He had to come in and clean up a mess where more than 90% of the prosecutors in the office were in open revolt against the prior leadership,” Goldsmith said. “He had to rebuild relationships with the sheriff’s department and with police officers throughout the county. And he had to keep his promise to act in a nonpartisan professional way.”

He said Hochman has done an outstanding job and that he’s proud to have his support.

When asked about candidates in the race are running hard on their anti-Trump, progressive credentials, Goldsmith said fighting back against the federal government is baseline for any Democrat in this field.

“Any Democrat will do that,” he said.

He said what separates him is the California-focused questions he plans to ask once he gets to Sacramento.

“I’m the one who’s going to go up there and ask hard questions and demand real answers about why, for example, our budget has gone up from $208 billion to $349 billion, but we’re not seeing a commensurate increase in the quality of our public services,” Goldsmith said. “I’m not going up to stand for one narrow special interest or another. I’m going up there to fight for all the residents and businesses in these districts that just feel overlooked and ignored by Sacramento.”

On representing West Hollywood’s LGBTQ community, he drew a comparison to his friend Rick Chavez Zbur, the assemblymember representing the 51st District, which includes West Hollywood. Zbur isn’t Jewish, Goldsmith said, but represents one of the most heavily Jewish districts in the state.

“He said he felt a deep sense of responsibility to be as strong an advocate as if he were Jewish himself,” Goldsmith said. “That’s how I feel about being an ally of the LGBTQ community, representing West Hollywood, arguably the capital of gay America. I want to stand up to the assault that’s ongoing right now, particularly against kids who have it tough enough without the federal government coming in and othering them or cutting funding for the healthcare that they need.”

Where Is It Going

Back in the aisles, one resident brought up the Los Angeles school system. She said there are no psychologists, no guidance counselors, no support staff, and that the facilities themselves are falling apart. She mentioned Melrose Magnet and backed-up toilets and asphalt playgrounds. Goldsmith said he wants to know where the money is going.

“I really would like to audit that budget, because we’re spending more than we ever have before,” he said. “Where is it going? I don’t know.”

He said two of the poorest states in the country are now beating California on third-grade reading and math.

“People used to move here, including my family, because we had such amazing K through 12 public schools,” Goldsmith said. “People just don’t prioritize it.”

The conversation moved to preventive health care. Goldsmith mentioned stopping by the Saban Community Clinic, which provides free or low-cost vision, dental, and basic checkups to West Hollywood residents.

“Preventive care is so much cheaper than emergency room care,” he said. “And yet we’re paying for the latter.”

That Wasn’t the Plan

We asked if he ever could have pictured himself on the ballot instead of behind it.

“No, I was never going to run for office,” he said.

He said two things changed his mind. The first was the 2024 election.

“Not just the outcome, but the way that the critique of our party was that we were the party of homelessness and disorder and crime,” Goldsmith said. “And there is some truth to that critique, and we’ve got to clean that up.”

The second was the January fires.

“Having grown up in West LA, having known so many families who’ve lost their schools and houses and businesses to the worst disaster in the history of Southern California — I take that really seriously,” he said. “I think the government needs to focus less on its good intentions and its big plans and more on outcomes and results in our communities.”

He left the market with bread under one arm and a bag of produce in the other, his Goldsmith for State Senate cap pulled low. He said he’s aware that stepping outside the traditional pathway isn’t easy — and that’s exactly the point.

“I think more people from outside the traditional pathways need to jump in and run for these offices,” Goldsmith said.

Early voting is already underway. West Hollywood voters can cast a ballot in person at the Vote Center inside Plummer Park’s Fiesta Hall at 7377 Santa Monica Blvd, open daily through June 1 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and on Election Day from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Voters who prefer to drop off a mail ballot can use one of the City’s three bright yellow drop boxes — at Plummer Park, West Hollywood City Hall at 8300 Santa Monica Blvd, or outside the West Hollywood Library at 625 N. San Vicente Blvd. A full list of Vote Centers and drop box locations countywide is at locator.lavote.gov.

Election day is June 2.