Plaza del Valle in Panorama City is an unlikely political battleground.

Think Olvera Street, but bigger, brighter, more vibrant. Immigrants run barber shops, clothing boutiques and beauty salons. Restaurants offer tacos, ice cream and Filipino food. Murals abound. Mariachi singers roam the block-long complex with portable speaker microphones.

The plaza sits at the intersection of Council District 6, the L-shaped strip of the San Fernando Valley that former Council President Nury Martinez ruled for nearly a decade until the release of a secretly taped racist conversation last fall torpedoed her career. Her resignation rocked city politics and led to a special election on April 4 to choose her replacement.

Imelda Padilla and Marisa Alcaraz were the top two finishers, with only 11.4% of the voters, and will face a runoff election on June 27. Their choice of campaign headquarters? Plaza del Valle.

They modestly celebrated election night Padilla on the north side of the square, Alcaraz on the south side. But the tension between the two campaigns was palpable at the time and has increased since they are so similar.

Both are millennial Mexican American women and lifelong residents of District 6 who left to attend a University of California school. Alcaraz is from the middle class Lake Balboa on the south side of the district, and Padilla is from the working class Sun Valley on the east side.

They each run on a platform of public safety, reform and investment in long-neglected neighborhoods. They are both Democrats, praise their parents for their desire to make a difference in the world, and count prominent Valley Latinas as supporters L.A. Councilman Monica Rodriguez for Padilla and San Fernando Councilman Cindy Montaez for Alcaraz.

The differences between the two candidates are small but significant. Padilla who describes herself as one

guerrera

(a fighter) is a longtime community organizer in the Valley and says her approach to people power is the type of outsider perspective District 6 needs. Alcaraz, an acknowledged policy nerd, has spent the last decade working as a staff member for South LA councilman Curren Price, and touts that background as proof she can navigate City Hall.

I figured out the best way to get acquainted

each them

was for each to give me a tour of Plaza del Valle. I scheduled them on the same day, three hours apart.

When I arrived to meet Padilla

nine

By 9 a.m., District 6’s promise and problems were already apparent.

Stalls opened for the day next to empty spaces. Seniors lined up at a health clinic. Security guards walked around chasing homeless people away. Four giant televisions outside a panaderia broadcast a football game to an elated crowd.

Padilla’s small office is next to a zookeeper. When I entered she was sweeping up a puddle of water that had come in after a janitor washed the sidewalk. Chicano art lithographs and campaign signs from Padilla’s failed 2017 run for the school board hung on the wall.

I put it up to inspire us not to make the same mistakes we did back then, she said, directing my attention to a map of District 6 on a desk decorated with Post-It notes.

Padilla beamed. This is our plan to win now.

She said that Plaza del Valle is perfect as her base of operations because many of the people she has worked with on issues ranging from environmental racism to student mentorship live nearby. By the way, her family has been visiting the square since she was a teenager.

“[The] plaza is a space of entrepreneurship, said the 35-year-old. It is a place where families gather because there are so few public spaces here. I wanted this particular office because the

seoras

can come in and watch their kids play in the playground out front.

The landlord offered me the room where Marisa is now, she continued with a smile. $4,000 per month. This place was only $1,000. I use all that savings for the campaign.

Plaza tenants greeted her as we began our tour. I asked why she was running, and Padilla brought up the tape that brought down Martinez, for whom she was a field aid ten years ago.

This happened in my community, and I would never let the wrong person represent me again, she replied as we walked to Van Nuys Boulevard, where construction of a light rail extension that will cut through District 6 is scheduled for early this year. .

I am running

for gentlemen

[for the people]Padilla continued. This neighborhood was neglected and undervalued. Residents need more jobs, safer streets and better air. As the train is built, there will be a lot of desire to redevelop all of this. We just have to make sure it’s fair.

We stopped in front of La Tapachulteca, a large Salvadoran market. She was thrilled that a second location opened in a former Coco’s near Kaiser Permanente’s Panorama City campus.

There’s so much untapped potential here, Padilla said, it’s not even funny.

After some tacos, we were back near Padilla’s office when we saw a woman posing for pictures in front of butterfly wings painted on a wall. It was Alcaraz.

There was an awkward silence, the kind that happens in it

westerns Wild West movies

when gunfighters scheduled for a morning confrontation accidentally cross paths the night before.

Alcaraz grinned. Padilla continued.

Ella it

, she finally whispered. That is it.

Padilla supporters argue that Alcaraz is little more than a prize puppet who has not done the job in District 6 that their candidate should have done.

has

. Alcaraz’s side counters that Padilla is a political novice who is being held to the San Fernando Valley political machine that spawned Martinez.

I asked Padilla about that charge.

More than 20 years of work counts here, she answered calmly. I am no stranger to this region. Machines are something that people from the outside talk more about. People here vote for the people who do the work.

I walked to Alcaraz headquarters. Her suite was about four times the size of Padillas and was next to a Dennys. Volunteers made phone calls or typed on computers.

Alcaraz greeted me with an apologetic smile.

When I saw you, I thought: Oh no! said Alcaraz, holding a horchata enriched with coffee. We just had fun.

As we toured Plaza del Valle, it quickly became apparent that she was not as familiar with it as Padilla.

What

We looked at the map and thought: we need a central location, Alcaraz, 38, replied when I asked why she had chosen it. My campaign manager worked across the street at the swap meet.

“This is a great place,” she continued. But do you know the Montgomery neighborhood?

About a block away was a long-abandoned outpost of the defunct department store chain that was covered in graffiti.

I’m not going to blame why it’s been this way for so long,” she said. “I just don’t think it’s acceptable to leave a property vacant for a few decades.

Alcaraz, a single mother of a toddler, started out in politics as a staffer for Richard Alarcon, the trailblazing Valley politician whose career ended in disgrace after a jury found him and his then-wife guilty of voter fraud for not living in the house where they were registered to vote (an appeal later overturned the convictions).

What did that scandal teach her?

You must remain humble and sober, Alcaraz said. Don’t let power and politics go to your head. You cannot get sucked into the political sphere. I have to be a role model for my daughter, so I would never do anything that she wouldn’t approve of.

We were back at her sparsely furnished headquarters. She cited the city policies championed by Price, a guaranteed basic income program, hero pay for grocery store workers, the decriminalization of street vendors she worked on. Price calls them Marisa’s brainchildren,” she said.

Alcaraz argued that those accomplishments, along with how the Price district has changed during her time with him, showed what she could bring to the Valley.

You didn’t see South Central as a place where people wanted to invest, Alcaraz said. But it’s not like that anymore. That means lots of jobs and homes. We also helped set up non-profit organizations to help the district and work with each other.

“I don’t see much of that in the Valley,” she continued. ‘Everyone is talking about coalition building and unity. I worked on that. Now I can bring all that experience to this community, she continued, because it

Mine

community.

What about insinuations that she is a Curren clone?

Anyone who cares about you, believes you and supports you will work with you, she replied. If they didn’t come, wouldn’t you worry a little more? I clearly have an opinion of my own. I find [the thought] offensive.

We went back to Plaza to eat pupusas. She boasted that the race was going to us, which indicated that she had great support coming her way from unions and some of her former opponents.

Before we left, Alcaraz asked the staff if they wanted pupusas too. I didn’t hear the full exchange, but I saw the part where Alcaraz said, I will do as I am told.

A volunteer scolded her in jest. No, we’re tracking something

you

participation. You are the leader.

come June 27

6,

that is what the voters decide.