Zach Sokoloff, speaking at a Hollywood-themed jobs rally.

Courtesy of Zach Sokoloff

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Spencer Pratt’s Hollywood-honed theatrics have made the Los Angeles mayoral race national news. Meanwhile, a behind-the-scenes industry player is attempting to secure the third-most-powerful elected job in the city with a notable campaign that’s so far received little attention.

Zach Sokoloff, on leave from his top executive role at Hackman Capital, where he manages the firm’s Television City and Radford studio lots, is running for Controller — L.A.’s fiscal watchdog, independent auditor, paymaster and accountant. A Democrat who’s sewn up a slew of party endorsements, he’s hoping to knock out incumbent Kenneth Mejia, a progressive upstart who took office in 2022.

“I decided to run because the city is broken,” Sokoloff says during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in which he criticized Mejia for being ineffective: too passive in confronting multiple civic crises and too uncollaborative in his dealings with fellow elected officials. “I bring an outsider’s perspective and an outsider’s experience.” He adds, “I think I embody the independent spirit of the Office of Controller — I’m not beholden to anybody.”

The definitions of outsider and independence are in the eye of the beholder. Sokoloff, who’s been a registered lobbyist with the city to pursue his Hackman real estate work, is a scion of the L.A.’s financial overclass. His father Jonathan Sokoloff, a former lieutenant to Michael Milken, is a private equity heavyweight. “My dad is a great question-asker who always taught us that God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason,” he explains.

Sokoloff, 37, grew up in a Holmby Hills mansion alongside neighbors like Hugh Hefner and Larry Gagosian, and attended the prestigious local private school Harvard-Westlake before graduating from Yale. He now lives with his wife and two children in Westwood.

Sokoloff’s list of campaign contributors, which is heavy on non-Angelenos, provides a window into his rarified world. They include maxed-out donations from a slew of billionaires and heirs: Bobby Kotick, Steve Roth, Howard Schultz, Stewart Resnick, Ben Ashkenazy, Eli Bronfman and Matthew Winnick. There’s also plenty of other finance folks, including Saul Goodman, Ken Moelis and Dan Levitan — plus legendary attorney Alan Grubman, Universal Music Group head Sir Lucian Grainge and several CAA agents.

Michael Klausman, left, long time lot manager at Radford Studio Center, and Zach Sokoloff, asset manager at Hackman Capital Partners, along New York Street, where ‘Seinfeld’ was produced at Radford Studio Center on Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2023 in Studio City, CA.

Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

The most notable name, though, is Sokoloff’s mother Sheryl. Since late April, she’s donated — from her address in the tony ski town of Big Sky, Montana — $4 million to an independent expenditure committee in support of his candidacy. Her contribution on its own is more than twice the total raised in any previous campaign for L.A. Controller.

Mejia has criticized the donation, which already paid for a mudslinging ad against him. He’s said that “my opponent, his rich mom and his billionaire elite friends” are “buying elections.” To THR, Sokoloff first characterized questions about his mother’s financial support of his run as a “personal attack,” then pointed to other examples across the state of wealthy families backing a relative’s bid for office, including current San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie (heir to the Levi Strauss fortune), California lieutenant governor Eleni Kounalakis (daughter of a real estate magnate) and San Diego area U.S. Congresswoman Sara Jacobs (her grandfather founded Qualcomm).

Sokoloff — who is wonkish, earnest and spreadsheet-centric — has garnered other supporters, too, including local Democratic clubs and politicians, as well as a passel of union chapters. (Notably absent are any of the major Hollywood unions, including SAG-AFTRA and the WGA, which threatened legal action over their picketing conditions at the Radford lot during the 2023 dual strike.) Most meaningfully, he’s earned endorsements from the former L.A. controllers Laura Chick and Wendy Greuel.

“Laura is not known for being a go-along-to-get-along type — she’s very forceful,” Sokoloff observes. “But she says the most important relationship that a Controller can build is with the Mayor,

L.A. Controller Election: Zach Sokoloff Aims to Oust Kenneth Mejia