Real Estate Backs Zach Sokoloff's LA City Controller Bid

A veteran developer has moved into the media spotlight thanks in large part to raising more funds for his bid to unseat progressive Kenneth Mejia from the city controller’s office, with nearly $100,000 of the challenger’s kitty coming from real estate donors.

Longtime Hackman Capital Partners executive Zach Sokoloff — who is on leave from the firm as he campaigns for the citywide watchdog post — is making his first foray into elective politics with an eye on knocking Mejia out in the June 2 primary or coming in a strong enough second to force the incumbent into a runoff.

Sokoloff spent the previous eight years with Hackman, an L.A.-based real estate investor, developer and operator with approximately 37 million square feet across the United States, Canada and Europe. His most recent position at Hackman was senior vice president of asset management.

Sokoloff told The Real Deal he took a leave of absence “many months ago” to focus on his campaign.

Of the direct campaign contributions Sokoloff has received — which amount to more than $510,500, according to the Los Angeles City Ethics Committee — 18.5 percent of donors have ties to the real estate industry, per a review by TRD, for a total of more than $94,000. Notable donors in the industry include Ben Ashkenazy, CEO of Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp., multiple individuals from Hackman Capital, including Michael Hackman, and Gary Weiss of LA Realty Partners, as well as brokers from Compass and Sotheby’s.

There’s also an independent expenditure committee seeded by a $2.5 million donation from Sokoloff’s mother, Sheryl Sokoloff.

Mejia, who was elected city controller in 2022, tallies $112,761 in contributions, per the Ethics Committee. The certified public accountant came out of the blue to score a stunning upset over veteran City Councilmember Paul Koretz in the 2022 controller’s race, leaning on a campaign with plenty of social media savvy and the backing of various grassroots progressive supporters. He recently quit the Democratic Party over foreign policy differences.

The city controller’s office is seen as a motherlode of political potential, with its occupant holding broad purview over fiscal matters of municipal government, duties that make it ideal for generating headline-grabbing audits and other reports. Several past occupants of the office — Laura Chick, Wendy Greuel, Ron Galperin — raised their political profiles and sought higher office after stints in the controller’s role.

Zach Sokoloff has gone beyond fundraising to seal several noteworthy endorsements including from Sen. Adam Schiff, state Attorney General Rob Bonta, Rep. Ted Lieu and the Democratic Party of the San Fernando Valley.

Mejia counts Los Angeles Daily News, United Teachers Los Angeles and Abundant Housing LA as supporters. According to Mejia’s website, he is not seeking endorsements from political parties or politicians.

When asked why he’s seeking to dethrone Mejia, Sokoloff said both the city and its budget are “broken.”

“We have a budget deficit that is somewhere between hundreds of millions of dollars to a billion dollars,” Sokoloff said. “We have homeless housing projects that are costing upwards of $1.5 million per unit. We have basic city infrastructure that is crumbling: streets that have potholes that take months to repair and sidewalks that take over a year to repair.”

He said the job he wants carries unique authority at the intersection of city government and real estate.

“The controller’s office is the independent auditor and fiscal watchdog for the city of Los Angeles, and so there are countless programs that touch real estate where I think there has been no accountability and no oversight,” Sokoloff said.

In addition to his work at Hackman Capital Partners, Sokoloff spent time at Tishman Speyer and taught algebra in partnership with Teach For America.

Mejia worked at Ernst & Young as an auditor and has several experiences in community organizing, according to his website.

Some of the programs Sokoloff said he would like to see more auditing and transparency from include Prop HHH funding and Measure ULA revenue. He also wants the city controller to be more proactive in examining the costs and timelines related to building affordable and permanent supportive housing, which he says are far too expensive and take way too long.

Sokoloff said he would increase collaboration with various general managers of departments to work on efficiency and easing operations, as well as track performance metrics more closely. The latter is especially important when it comes to the L.A. Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), he said.

“At LAHSA, funding is not tied to performance,” Sokoloff said. “There’s no accountability to the service providers with whom we work to deliver outcomes that we can measure… (and) you can’t manage what you don’t measure.

“When the fiscal watchdog of the city is failing to hold service providers accountable, we continue to throw good money after bad,” he added.

Hackman Capital Partners, where Sokoloff mostly recently worked, hasn’t been immune from fiscal challenges and has seen its share of turbulence in recent months. Last month, the firm defaulted on a $100 million loan on a Culver City office building which once was home to Sony Pictures Animation. Earlier this year, Hackman defaulted on a $1.1 billion mortgage for the Radford Studio Center in Studio City, which Netflix is in talks to purchase.

When asked to comment on the studio operator’s recent distress, Sokoloff deflected and spoke more broadly about the local government’s role in Los Angeles’ shaky entertainment and production environment.

“Hollywood is maybe as clear an example as any of how the city and the state acted too late and did too little,” he said, pointing to “a massive divestment” from L.A. from the entertainment industry.

That has consequences for more than just the entertainment industry, but also the city’s bottom line.

“The controller has done nothing to highlight the risk that (divestment) poses to our budget — and not only in the sense of tax dollars that we bring in through production in L.A., but when you have production leaving the state, you have more and more people out of work.”