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CITY HALL - Every few years, when Los Angeles finds itself stuck in gridlock—literal and political—someone inevitably suggests that the solution is to elect a mayor who isn’t a “politician” at all. The latest version of this argument is that the city needs an engineer in charge. After all, engineers are practical, rational, and data-driven. They design bridges, transit systems, and skyscrapers. Surely, they could straighten out City Hall.
It sounds appealing. It’s also completely wrong.
Los Angeles is not a system waiting to be optimized. It is a living, breathing, messy, sprawling metropolis with nearly four million people and problems that defy neat equations. Electing an engineer as mayor would be less a bold solution than a dangerous misunderstanding of what leadership actually requires.
The Engineer’s Mindset Doesn’t Fit the Mayor’s Job
Engineers are trained to approach challenges with precision. They break problems down into parts, design solutions, test them, and expect results to follow. In the world of bridges and water systems, this works beautifully. But governing Los Angeles is not like building a bridge. A bridge doesn’t argue back. A freeway interchange doesn’t demand equity. A storm drain doesn’t protest displacement.
Homelessness, perhaps the city’s most urgent crisis, offers a stark example. To an engineer, the problem might look straightforward: supply and demand. Build more units, create more shelter beds, move people indoors. But homelessness is not simply a housing shortage. It is entangled with mental health, drug addiction, poverty wages, systemic racism, and deep mistrust of government institutions. No amount of technical modeling can resolve the human complexity at its core.
The same is true of public safety. An engineer may see policing as a matter of resource allocation and technology—more cameras, more data, better deployment algorithms. But safety is not just about tools. It’s about trust, history, and accountability. Communities don’t measure public safety in numbers on a dashboard. They measure it in whether they feel respected, protected, and free from abuse.
Governing Is About Coalitions, Not Calculations
The job of mayor is not to design the perfect system. It is to manage conflict and bring together people with competing interests. Los Angeles is a city of neighborhoods, unions, business lobbies, activists, developers, and 15 city councilmembers who wield their own power. A successful mayor must be able to negotiate, compromise, and—at times—fight.
This is where an engineer’s instincts can fail. Engineers are problem-solvers who seek efficiency and precision. Politics is the opposite: it is often inefficient, emotional, and messy. Progress comes not from a flawless design but from a coalition that can hold together long enough to move the city forward.
The Scale of LA Demands Political, Not Technical, Leadership
The city’s budget is nearly $13 billion. Its workforce numbers more than 40,000. Managing that bureaucracy requires administrative skill, political savvy, and the ability to inspire. It’s closer to running a Fortune 100 company than running a lab experiment. An engineer with no political background would be overwhelmed.
Yes, Los Angeles desperately needs leaders who are data-informed, forward-thinking, and unafraid of long-term planning. But that doesn’t mean we need a technocrat at the top. The real risk of an engineer-mayor is what might be called the “technocrat’s blind spot”: the belief that every problem has a technical fix. But cities are not machines. They are human ecosystems where perception, culture, and history matter just as much as numbers.
When Expertise Matters—And When It Doesn’t
This is not an argument against engineers themselves. Their skills are invaluable to Los Angeles. We need their expertise in transportation planning, water infrastructure, housing design, and climate adaptation. But engineers should advise mayors, not become mayors. Governing requires a different toolkit: political instincts, communication skills, and the ability to balance values as much as budgets.
Los Angeles is filled with contradictions. It is a global city and a struggling city. It is innovative and deeply unequal. It is environmentally progressive and yet smog-choked. No algorithm will resolve these tensions. They can only be managed—by leaders who understand people, not just systems.
The Bottom Line
The appeal of an engineer-mayor comes from frustration with politics as usual. Voters are tired of corruption, dysfunction, and promises that never translate into results. But replacing politicians with technocrats is not the answer. Los Angeles doesn’t need someone who can calculate traffic flow. It needs someone who can build trust, inspire hope, and forge unity out of division.
In short: engineers can build our bridges. They should not be the ones to lead our city.
(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)
