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# Engineering Credentials Won’t Win Mayoral Power — Los Angeles Needs Political Muscle
September 29 2025
Written by Mihran Kalaydjian.
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ONE VOICE - The mayor’s job isn’t to draft blueprints. It’s to fight for people. And in 2026, Angelenos can’t afford to be fooled by résumés that mistake technical know-how for leadership.
Los Angeles is on the edge. Homelessness is exploding. Crime worries families. Corruption scandals keep rotting City Hall from the inside. Affordability is crushing working people. In every direction, residents see a city staggering, not thriving.
Into this storm steps a candidate selling themselves as a fixer with an engineer’s toolbox. Their pitch: “I’ve handled big infrastructure projects. I know how to make systems work. I’ll do the same for the city.”
It sounds clever — until you stop and realize how empty it is.
Los Angeles doesn’t need a mechanic. It needs a fighter.
Homelessness isn’t unsolved because we lack diagrams for shelters or modular housing. It’s unsolved because politicians cave to NIMBYs, bureaucrats drag their feet, and developers protect profits. An engineer can draft plans. A mayor has to bulldoze the resistance that keeps thousands on the street.
Public safety isn’t reduced by plugging in sensors or launching an app. It’s reduced when communities trust law enforcement enough to work with them — and when City Hall has the guts to reform a department mired in mistrust. Trust isn’t built with gadgets. It’s built by leadership.
Housing affordability may be the city’s biggest structural failure. But it’s not pipes or wiring that hold us back. It’s politics: zoning restrictions, bought-off politicians, and entrenched homeowner interests that lock renters out. Breaking through requires the spine to confront power, not the patience to draft another blueprint.
And corruption? No diagram fixes corruption. No résumé line about “infrastructure modernization” proves someone will stand up to backroom dealmakers or rip out City Hall’s culture of insider favors. That takes political will. That takes courage.
Climate change, too, cannot be solved with engineering alone. Yes, LA needs innovation in energy, water, and transit. But climate change is also about equity. It requires building consensus between labor, business, and frontline communities. That’s not design work. That’s political work of the highest order.
Governing is political combat — not project management.
This is the hard truth: Los Angeles is not suffering from an engineering problem. It is suffering from weak, compromised leadership.
The next mayor will be judged not on how many systems they’ve designed, but on whether they can rally a fractured city, crush bureaucracy, call out corruption, and force through the change Angelenos are desperate for.
Leadership here is not about flowcharts. It’s about combat. It’s about persuasion, pressure, and yes — sometimes confrontation. A mayor who doesn’t understand that is simply unfit for the office.
Campaigns expose weakness early.
Even the campaign trail exposes the hollowness of this technocrat act. Running for mayor of Los Angeles means raising millions, winning endorsements, commanding media, and, above all, connecting with voters emotionally. People don’t cast ballots for résumés. They cast them for leaders they believe can fight and win for them.
A candidate hiding behind technical jargon and infrastructure projects cannot inspire that belief. And if they can’t even inspire it during a campaign, what chance do they have inside City Hall’s cage fight of interests and egos? None.
The wrong job for the right skills.
To be clear: Los Angeles absolutely needs engineers, planners, and innovators. We need them inside our departments, modernizing infrastructure and delivering services. But mayor is the wrong job for that skillset.
Electing a technocrat as mayor is like asking an electrician to captain a ship. Their skills are real, but they’re not the ones you need at the helm.
The mayor’s job is to see the storm, chart the course, and rally the crew. An engineer can tighten the bolts. But without leadership, the ship still sinks.
What Los Angeles must demand in 2026.
The next mayor must bring vision, courage, and the political muscle to take on entrenched interests. They must be ready to unite unlikely coalitions, cut through a bureaucracy that has stalled real progress, and confront the corruption that has poisoned trust for decades.
Anything less is failure.
Los Angeles cannot and will not be engineered back to health. It must be fought for, led, and won back — block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood. That requires grit, vision, and political strength, not a binder of project specs.
Angelenos deserve a leader who understands that this election is about people, not plans. About power, not projects.
So when a candidate waves around their infrastructure résumé like it’s a golden ticket to City Hall, the city should answer with clarity:
Los Angeles doesn’t need a technocrat in the mayor’s chair. It needs a fighter.
And in 2026, Angelenos must choose accordingly.
*(Mihran Kalaydjian has over twenty years of public affairs, government relations, legislative affairs, public policy, community relations and strategic communications experience. He is a leading member of the community and a devoted civic engagement activist for education spearheading numerous academic initiatives in local political forums. Mihran is also the President of Industrial Intermediates & Infrastructure of TCCI)*
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