Republican Alex Balekian is facing Democrat Laura Friedman in the
30th Congressional District race. (photos courtesy of Alex Balekian/Laura Friedman)

On Nov. 5, residents in the 30th Congressional District will head to the polls to decide which candidate will replace Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) in the United States House of Representatives. The Beverly Press conducted wide-ranging interviews with both potential successors.

Alex Balekian

Physician Alex Balekian is a Republican running for Schiff’s open seat. The area, which covers a large swath of Los Angeles County including Hollywood, West Hollywood and Burbank, has been an overwhelming Democratic stronghold for decades. But Balekian thinks he’s the Republican that can break through.

“I am not aligned with Paul Ryan or Liz Cheney or Donald Trump. I am aligned with my neighbors here [in District 30], most of whom are immigrants, and it’s those immigrant values of home and family, first and foremost – quality education for kids, working hard to start a small business and be your own boss, and build the American Dream – that is my core value system.”

Many of Balekian’s views run counter to the positions of Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank), who is vacating the seat and is now a candidate for the U.S. Senate.

“Adam Schiff has been a friend to the Armenian population, and that is why he was reelected over a 22 year period. So that same support that he gave to my Armenian community, I will continue,” he said.

The biggest issue Balekian thinks the district is facing is crime.

“I think criminals should be caught and charged and prosecuted and punished,” Balekian said. “I am very explicit in my support of Nathan Hochman for [District Attorney] and also my support of Prop 36 so that we can get different penalties for criminals.”

Proposition 36 would increase some penalties and upgrade some crimes to felony charges.

Balekian takes issue with many of his opponent’s positions, particularly in terms of development, housing and the homeless crisis.

“I will solve the homelessness crisis because as a physician, I will diagnose and treat the mental illness and drug addiction, and say that this is not simply a housing issue,” Balekian said. “So, some concrete moves that I will make are to reopen the federal mental hospitals when I’m in Congress [to] get those severely mentally ill people off the streets and on treatment, and also the other people who live in the tent cities, 40% of whom have their families in other states. I will essentially move them across state lines and reunite them with their families and pair them with federal dollars to establish rehab and mental health in their home states, because the medical literature shows that when your family’s involved, your mental health and drug rehab outcomes are better.”

As for building more housing, Balekian thinks that California should look to its unused land.

“There are 100 million acres of land in California, we have developed only 6% of it for residential use. So, if you double that to 12% if you grant new city charters and build new planned neighborhoods and cities, you can double the number of houses and drive down the cost of housing by half and still have 88% of the land left over for farming and for nature,” he said.

He also takes issue with the ways in which Democrats in California have invested in energy.

“Utilities in Glendale, they’ve gone up like 200%. Garbage rates have gone up by 400%. We have been sold this all-electric dream. And people like Laura Friedman, I call them the climate cartel, have overloaded the grid, increased the demand, but have not commensurately increased the supply. So, all we’ve seen is extortionate increases in electricity rates, and we’re still being told that we need to do more for the environment.”

Though he is a married gay man, Balekian does not believe identity should have a place in politics.

“When I say ideas over identity politics, I don’t want people from West Hollywood to vote for me simply because I’m gay. I don’t think that Armenians are going to vote for me simply because I’m Armenian. I want people to get to know me and vote for me because my platform, which is based on my values, aligns with their own, regardless of what their identity is and who they are,” he said. “I’ve said personal decisions – abortion, gay marriage – the government should stay out of it. I will never vote for an abortion ban, and I will never vote for any sort of gay marriage ban.”

He places the home above all else in his belief system.

“The home is the primary unit of governance, and so families should decide what they want to do and what they don’t want to do. And I don’t think the government should again, legislate people’s personal decisions,” Balekian said.

Balekian describes himself as a Republican largely because he can’t successfully run as an independent.

“I have explicitly run as a disenfranchised Republican. I started this race as a no party preference, but had to switch to the Republican ticket because of having infrastructure that I needed to use,” he said. “But I have not been shy at all about saying how I do not align myself with the National Republican platform. I do not align myself with all of the Project 2025 or MAGA platforms. And two minutes into knowing me or hearing about me, people are refreshingly surprised, because they are looking at this no longer as Democrat versus Republican. This is now progressive versus non-progressive. And as I mentioned, because of these progressive policies, and my opponent is the Queen Mother of the progressive movement, and started the Progressive Caucus in the assembly, crime has gotten worse on her watch. We have been too soft on criminals. Homelessness has gotten worse on her watch. And it’s not that people are voting for Republicans; people are voting against progressive policies that ruined our state.”

Laura Friedman

Long before Assemblywoman Laura Friedman, 44th District, became a figure in the California political scene, she was entrenched in the community, working as a film executive. Now, she is running to become Rep. Adam Schiff’s (D-Burbank) replacement.

“I love being in the legislature,” Friedman said. “It’s incredibly fulfilling work, and there’s a lot that we need to do for California, and a lot of the things that we do really are limited by federal policies. So, for me, a natural extension of the work that I’ve done around issues that I think are crucial for our region that really need to also be addressed federally.”

After serving on the Glendale City Council and as the city’s mayor, she made the leap to the state legislature, where she has made the interconnectivity between housing, homelessness and transportation her primary objective.

“It’s become clear to me over the years of working that there is a real link between mobility and public transportation and housing policy,” Friedman said. “You really have to look at these issues holistically. You have to have enough ways of moving people around to deal with a growing population so that you don’t end up with everyone stuck in traffic forever in a day. And you also have to remove that huge concern that people have when you want to add new housing in areas where you have a housing shortage. So that’s why working on these issues together – working on housing at the same time as you’re working on better mobility – is so important.”

Friedman said that immigration should be addressed in a humane way.

“What we need is to secure our borders and we need to fix our asylum system,” she said. “It’s really a shame that we had a bipartisan border bill that Donald Trump derailed. That is an indisputable fact. I would certainly work in Congress to make sure that that bipartisanly supported and created bill gets passed. It’s really a shame that people’s misery south of the border was used as a campaign tool by Donald Trump. We need to fix this. We need to make sure that people who should be getting asylum have a much faster road to be granted that asylum. And we need to also make sure that we can vet and keep people out who truly are dangerous and shouldn’t be in our country. And for people who are already here – who are working – we need for a lot of these people to be brought out of the shadows. And if they shouldn’t be here, if they are criminals, we need to get them out of the country. But if there are people who are here – contributing, working, part of our community – [we need] to have a path to citizenship for them. Because they’re ripe for exploitation and wage theft and the underground economy is awful for businesses.”

While Friedman’s opponent sees her legislative experience as a liability, Friedman said it is this experience that has prepared her to represent the 30th District in Congress.

“It’s what people always say when they don’t have any experience at all,” she said. “I’m someone that the community knows, who has devoted almost two decades to serving the public, and before that as a volunteer – working for nonprofits, working as a volunteer in my community – while I raised a child and had a full-time career in the entertainment industry. I think people know who I am. They know how I vote. They know what my values are, and you can’t say any of that about my opponent. I think that serving the public is a noble, noble goal. And I’m really, really proud of the work that I’ve done.”

While Friedman resides in Glendale, she said she has made a point of connecting with and listening to the needs of the entire district. With recent national attacks on the rights of LGBTQ+ people, Friedman said she recognizes the importance of being a voice for the city of West Hollywood. She questions Balekian’s positions on LGBTQ+ rights, characterizing Balekian as an “anti-trans activist” and said “his inner circle of supporters” were “some of the worst anti-trans activists we have here in Glendale.”

“I do see our transgender community members being disproportionately the victims of violent hate crimes, facing discrimination in housing, in schools, facing bullying,” she said. “This is really not an easy thing – to know how to support your child going through this. These parents need support. The kids need support. And certainly, they don’t need the kind of hatred and dehumanization that they’re seeing.”

For Friedman, the race is about being a voice that will help alleviate many of the problems facing Los Angeles County.

“We [should] continue to be a community where we can have policy discussions and disagreements without people demonizing other people, and trying to stir up hatred and division,” she said.

While Friedman may hail from the East Coast, L.A. is her forever home.

“We have people who come here because it is a place where dreams are made, where anything is possible,” she said. “It’s a county filled with creativity and the creative economy. It’s incredibly diverse, which is why I chose to have my family here. I have a diverse family. My daughter is African American, and having that diversity reflected in the community is really important to me.”

Friedman adopted her daughter with her husband, a French immigrant – now citizen – whom she met when they were working in the film industry.

“Being in a place where there’s all these different cultures coming together, to me, makes for a kind of vibrancy that I love,” she said.