Tish Hyman strolled through the Anytime Fitness in Chatsworth, speaking directly to a cameraman from her campaign — and, she hoped, potential voters.
“I’m on a gym tour, baby! I wanna come to your gym. I wanna work out with you,” she said before launching into squats, push-ups and bicep curls.
Hyman, 43, is a hip-hop artist and Grammy-nominated songwriter. And she is running a long-shot campaign to become the next mayor of Los Angeles.
At the campaign stop, witnessed by a few people sweating through workouts but no other voters, Hyman highlighted a central part of her platform: protesting transgender women in female locker rooms. The culture war issue may not play well in deep blue L.A., but it has gotten her name out there.
In an underdog campaign, she said, name recognition is everything.
The race for L.A. mayor includes five candidates who have dominated news coverage and fundraising: incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, City Councilmember Nithya Raman, reality television star Spencer Pratt, community organizer Rae Huang and tech entrepreneur Adam Miller.
But nine other candidates in the June 2 primary, including Hyman, are far less known. They include a Gen Z video game streamer, a longtime engineer for the city and a mental health worker pregnant with her third child.
Each faces a steep uphill battle. But they all hope — with varying degrees of seriousness — to lead the nation’s second-largest city, which is grappling with an entrenched homelessness crisis, sky-high housing costs and fallout from last year’s fires and federal immigration raids.
When Nelson Cheng, 23, got confirmation from the city clerk that he had qualified as a candidate after submitting more than 500 signatures, he posted a video on YouTube. “My name is on the ballot! That’s mine!” he said, holding up the letter and giggling.
Known by the handle Evilheartful E, Cheng has 45,000 subscribers who watch him stream videos of himself playing Roblox. His social media pages say he is campaigning “to make LASAGNA (Los Angeles Sexy And Gorgeous in Nelson Administration)!”
In an Instagram message to The Times, Cheng said he is running because he wants to reduce traffic, crime and homelessness — and to voice privacy concerns about Roblox taking photos of users’ faces to verify their age.
Asaad Alnajjar, a structural engineer who has worked for the city of L.A. for 36 years, describes himself as “the ‘Iron Resolve’ — the underdog who will surge ahead to claim victory.”
A 61-year-old immigrant from Baghdad and a member of the Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council, Alnajjar said that at his job interview with the city in 1989, he was asked where he saw himself years later. Easy, he replied. Mayor of Los Angeles.
Since then, he said, he has worked on the city’s sidewalks, streetlights and Los Angeles International Airport expansion.
“If you don’t know the ins and outs and nuts and bolts inside City Hall, how are you going to be mayor?” he said.
Of the less-known candidates, Alnajjar has raised the most money as of April 18, according to the city’s Ethics Commission. He has raised nearly $140,000 — $80,000 of which he lent to his own campaign. By comparison, Bass has raised $2.8 million. Miller reported that he lent his campaign $2.5 million and took in about $200,000 in donations, while Raman and Pratt have each raised more than $500,000.
Juanita Lopez kicked off her campaign in March at a low-rider club’s downtown cruise. Supporters hoisted a red, white and blue “Juanita Lopez 4 Mayor 2026” sign from the trunk of a gold Chevrolet El Camino.
The sign used to say 2022, the year Lopez first tried to run, but she came a few dozen signatures short of making the ballot. She slapped a “2026” sticker on it and hit the campaign trail again, knocking on doors and posting up outside the Target in Silver Lake to collect signatures.
Lopez, who would not give her age, said she worked in banks for more than 17 years and once owned a small flower shop downtown. In 2022, she graduated from UC Irvine with a bachelor’s in political science — a degree she said she pursued to be better qualified to run for mayor.
As mayor, she said, she would have nonviolent jail inmates pick up litter in exchange for time off their sentences.
“I’ve seen Los Angeles when it was beautiful, and what it has snowballed into,” she said. “It’s a shame to see our streets dirty. We pay so much in taxes.”
Suzy Kim is a mental health clinician who works with people experiencing psychiatric crises.
Kim, 44, said in an email that her campaign got a late start because she was busy working, supporting her mom, who is battling pancreatic cancer, and raising her 2- and 4-year-old sons. She is pregnant with a girl, due right around the June primary.
“I understand some may ask whether I can carry all of that and take on the responsibility of serving as mayor. For me, the answer is yes,” she said, adding that the decision to run was driven by her Christian faith.
Also running is Bryant Acosta, a Hollywood resident who owns a small business producing parties, raves and other events, many of which are geared toward the LGBTQ+ community.
“The good thing for me is I’m used to being the underdog, being gay and being Latino,” he said. “There’s never a seat for me at the table, so I have to make one.”
Acosta, 43, said he wants to help solve the city’s affordability crisis, which is preventing young people from buying houses and having families, because “our generation is cooked.”
John Logsdon, a member of the Westchester/Playa Neighborhood Council, said he threw his name into the ring at the last minute after billionaire developer Rick Caruso and L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath decided not to challenge Bass.
“I got all fired up and said, ‘I’m just gonna take a massive swing,’” said Logsdon, 51, a film producer and director.
Lodgson said he joined the neighborhood council after a 2018 shooting at Westchester Park, where he and his then-8-year-old son were playing. As mayor, he said, he would focus on public safety and increase the number of police officers and firefighters.
Andrej Selivra, a 40-year-old technical systems engineer and coder, said that, if elected, he will push to rapidly expand city bus and microshuttle lanes before the 2028 Summer Olympics and to build low-cost, high-density public dormitories to help alleviate homelessness.
Selivra spent part of his childhood in foster care and, as a teenager, was homeless and slept in his car for more than a year before enrolling in community college, he told The Times.
“Our campaign was never going to win with money … but I’m a problem solver,” he said in an email. “And I’m used to doing a lot with very little. I’ve been building a strategy that is more powerful than money. It’s called People.”
Candidate Andrew Kim, an attorney, did not respond to a request for comment.
Hyman, who has hundreds of thousands of social media followers, is the best known of the underdog candidates.
Last fall, she lost her membership at a local gym after filming a transgender woman walking into the locker room. Hyman shouted, “There are girls naked in there! Look at him walking in there like it’s OK — it’s not OK!”
Videos of her confronting the woman and yelling expletives at gym staffers about the gymgoer’s genitalia went viral, landing her interviews with TMZ, Fox News and conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly.
Soon after the confrontation, at a talk by State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), she said that the transgender woman’s presence in the locker room — which is protected by state law — made her feel unsafe.
“I’m a lesbian Black woman,” she said. “I’m not transphobic. I’m not homophobic. … I’m telling you as a woman, first and foremost, that this is dangerous.”
Wiener responded that “trans women are also brutalized in this country … and cisgender women are brutalized in this country, and we have to protect the safety of all women.”
At the Anytime Fitness, general manager DeMarco Majors told Hyman’s campaign manager that a couple — both transgender women — were there to work out.
As Hyman filmed talking points, the women quietly lifted weights next to a man wearing a Turning Point USA T-shirt and carrying a camouflage National Rifle Assn. gym bag.
Hyman, who recently lost more than 100 pounds, said that as mayor, she would promote healthful living and lead monthly public hikes. She also would push to extend hours at bars to boost the city’s nightlife.
“L.A. has a culture,” she said. “Our culture is, we’re beautiful, we like to work out, we take care of our families, we love beauty, we love the palm trees. … We love the weather, we love the landscape. This is our city — and we have to represent that.”
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