78 Years of Transformative Leadership in Los Angeles
Los Angeles has a few multigenerational political families including the Ridley-Thomases, the Alarcons, the Calderons and the Burkes. But there are no Los Angeles political families with longevity and pedigree like the Hahns as demonstrated by Supervisor Janice Hahn‘s third and final swearing-in ceremony which celebrated the family’s 78 years of public service in local government. If the McOskers, who served in very important centers of power in Los Angeles, had a second generation of McOskers in the wings, they would be it.
Maybe it is in the blood. Supervisor Hahn noted that her grandfather John was elected mayor of Kindersley Saskatchewan in Canada in 1917 before migrating to Los Angeles in 1919. Her father and uncle began their respective stints starting in 1947, with Gordon Hahn elected to the California State Assembly and Kenneth Hahn to the Los Angeles City Council.
Early in her remarks, Hahn said her record won’t match that of her father’s, but in some ways, she has been able to build her legacy on top of her father’s. Hahn has been able to impact the greater Los Angeles at different levels of local government for nearly 30 years.
The late Supervisor Hahn is credited with bringing the Los Angeles Dodgers to this city and putting emergency call boxes along freeways, establishing the first emergency paramedic care system in California; and championing the then-radical idea of allowing emergency medical care by trained personnel other than doctors and nurses-facilitating the emergency paramedic care system
Supervisor Janice Hahn championed the creation of the Mobile Stroke Unit, a specialized ambulance with staff, equipment, and medications specifically designed to diagnose and treat stroke victims. Research has shown that the outcomes of stroke patients are extremely time-dependent and that medicine administered within the “golden hour” after a stroke gives patients a greater chance of surviving and avoiding long-term brain damage.
Her standing against efforts to rename the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum at a time when selling the naming rights to finance the renovation of public properties was popular speaks to the idea that some things in this city can’t be bought or sold.
Hahn recalled how constituents would come to the family home to speak with her father about problems on weekend afternoon, whether it had to do with keeping a roof over their head at night, the need for medical charity, or addressing community safety, the late Supervisory Kenny Hahn would tell them that he would have an answer the following Monday.
“It is this potential to help people that drew my father to run for supervisor, and it is what drew me to run as well,” Hahn said.
Supervisor Hahn, recalling the battles she had to fight to accomplish what she has in her career in public office, is cognizant of the friends, family and allies that helped to get work done.
“We have been able to do so much these last eight years. And I say, ‘We,’ because I could not have done it without my colleagues, the women of the Board of Supervisors,” Hahn said. “We got the chance to show girls across this country that women are leaders and also powerful.”
Hahn highlighted city leaders and school board members across the fourth district with whom she has been able to collaborate with, such as mayors Rex Richards of Long Beach and Karen Bass, on homelessness, praising the sense of urgency they brought into the fight. Hahn praised Los Angeles County CEO Fesia Davenport and county department heads who she said figured out how “to make even some of her craziest ideas work.”
She praised the work of county assessor Jeffrey Prang who, when homes in Rancho Palos Verdes slid off their foundations and into the ravine, came out personally and told the homeowners not to worry about property taxes because they had no more property.
“He gave them one piece of good news on the worst day of their life.”
