Former state lawmaker Sheila Kuehl has announced her bid for the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, KPCC confirmed Thursday.
She seeks to replace Zev Yaroslavsky in the 3rd District—which spans from the valley to the Santa Monica Mountains to the Westside including West Hollywood—when he leaves office in 2014.
"Honestly speaking, I probably made the decision several years ago," Kuehl, 71, told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday about her candidacy.
Kuehl, a Democrat, served eight years in the Senate and six years in the Assembly starting in 1994. She was the first openly gay person elected to the California Legislature and the first woman in the state’s history to be named Speaker pro Tempore of the Assembly. She termed out in 2008.
In the 1960s, she was a child actress who had roles on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis and The Ed Sullivan Show. Now she owns her own consulting business and runs the Public Policy Institute at Santa Monica College.
Serving on the Board of Supervisors is "really the only place I can imagine using all the things that I learned in the Legislature in 14 years,” Kuehl told KPCC. She said her priorities are the environment, transportation, health and human services.
Her website says she will begin to seek endorsements and look for donors.
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