Chapter 5: Political Geography

The county is governed by a five-member Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors which today is made up of:
District 1: Gloria Molina, Democrat
District 2: Yvonne Brathwaite, Democrat
District 3: Zen Yaroslavsky, Democrat
District 4: Don Knabe, Republican
District 5: Michael D. Antonvich, Republican
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors created by the state legislature in 1852 and its members are elected to 4 year terms by voters within their respective districts. The Board of Supervisors has executive, legislative, and quasi-judicial roles. The Board appoitns all department heads other than assessor, district attorney, and sheriff, which are all elective positions.

The county must provide numerous services which include law enforcement, property assessment, tax collection, public health protection, public social services, and relief to indignents. The 88 cities within the county each have their own city council. All the cities contract with the county to provide municipal services, 37 of these cities contract for all of their municipal services.

In general the county is liberal, but some of the suburban cities are relatively conservative, as in the 2004 presidential elections 26 cities had majority vote for George W. Bush, while the remainder of the cities and districts voted for his Democratic counterpart John Kerry.