By Stephen Witt, Los Angeles County Politics
Brian Goldsmith, a former journalist and small-business owner running for the Westside’s open state Senate seat, is pitching himself as a results-first, mainstream Democrat in one of California’s most expensive legislative races.
Goldsmith faces West Hollywood City Councilmember John Erickson, a fellow Democrat, on Tuesday in the race for the 24th Senate District. The coastal district stretches from Westlake Village, Calabasas and Malibu through Santa Monica, Westwood, Beverly Hills and West Hollywood down to the South Bay beach cities and the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
State Sen. Ben Allen, who has held the seat since 2014, is termed out and running for state insurance commissioner. Erickson narrowly edged out Goldsmith in the June primary with 20.5% of the vote to Goldsmith’s 18.3%, in a 10-candidate field.
The race has drawn about $5 million in spending and divides sharply over renter protections, CalMatters reported.
Erickson wants to repeal two state laws: the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, which limits the rent control cities can impose, and the Ellis Act, which lets landlords evict tenants when they take a building off the rental market. The California Apartment Association has spent $450,000 on ads attacking Erickson, and a political committee funded mainly by the California Realtors Association has spent more than $600,000 backing Goldsmith. Organized labor and criminal justice reform advocates are funding ads for Erickson.
“Number one, we have to make it more affordable for businesses and residents here, and that includes, you know, lowering the cost of housing, healthcare, childcare, the big drivers of unaffordability. Number two, addressing the quality of life concerns people have most of all homelessness, where we’re just not, you know, trying to solve it. We’ve got to actually move beyond managing the problem to fixing and eliminating the problem,” said Goldsmith in an interview with Los Angeles County Politics.
He listed two more priorities: preparing for future challenges like artificial intelligence regulation, keeping entertainment jobs in California and improving schools, and protecting communities targeted by hate, including LGBTQ, Asian American and Pacific Islander, Jewish and Latino residents facing immigration raids.
Goldsmith, who started three businesses and was a senior adviser to the pro-Israel group Democratic Majority for Israel, is backed by Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi. He opposes SB 79, the state law allowing taller apartment buildings near transit, the Beverly Press reported. Goldsmith also backs AB 715, the 2025 law holding school districts accountable for protecting Jewish students, and said Erickson was the only primary candidate to oppose it.
Goldsmith said California has to make it easier to do business, starting with an audit of all the rules and regulations that the state imposes on businesses.
“We’ve got to get the litigation environment to be more reasonable, so that companies have an opportunity to resolve problems before they devolve into lawsuits. We have to make it easier and more affordable to bring on new employees. I’m a Democrat. I believe in high standards for, you know, workers and for the environment, but I also think that you can’t be pro-jobs and anti-business,” said Goldsmith.
“I’ll give you another business example, which is our entertainment industry is really at risk. Hollywood could leave Hollywood, and we have to fully fix and modernize our tax credit. We have to uncap it. We have to have it apply above the line as well as below the line, and we need to make it stackable with a federal credit that hopefully is coming soon,” Goldsmith added.
Above-the-line pay covers stars, directors and writers. Below-the-line covers crew and production costs.
On homelessness, Goldsmith said the state should copy cities that have cut street homelessness by building temporary shelter quickly and then enforcing camping bans.
“You don’t wait for permanent supportive housing. You scale up temporary modular dignified individual shelter units. You pair it with effective, transparent supportive services, mental health services, job training, drug treatment, and then you enforce anti-camping laws. You say once the shelter and the services are in place, it is no longer legal to build encampments and to live on the street, because the status quo is producing, you know, an emergency,” said Goldsmith.
He pointed to San Jose, San Francisco and Redondo Beach, a city in the district, which he said has reached functional zero homelessness. He noted that about six homeless people die every day in LA County, a figure backed by the county Department of Public Health, which counted 2,208 such deaths in 2024.
With much of the district burned in the January 2025 Palisades fire, Goldsmith said the state must invest as much in prevention as in emergency response, including making home hardening affordable and community-wide, and rebalancing its relationship with insurers so that communities that reduce risk get better coverage. He cited Escondido as a model.
“They weren’t pre-deployed. We hadn’t fixed and filled the reservoir. The brush wasn’t appropriately cleared. There was a lot that we failed to do, you know, in anticipation of that. And what we need is a playbook for future fires and other disasters, so that we actually aren’t kind of riding by the seat of our pants, but know what we’re doing,” said Goldsmith.
LACP has reached out to Erickson’s campaign for a similar interview before Election Day.
