Sheila Kuehl and Bobby Shriver faced off in a debate Tuesday to fill a Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors seat.
The runoff candidates debated in anticipation of the Nov. 4 general election.
The five-member Board of Supervisors represents 10 million people, oversees 4,000 square miles of land -- 88 cities -- and controls a budget of roughly $25 billion.
The sitting members have held office for a combined century.
The third district covers the western part of Los Angeles County, including the Westside and the Santa Monica Mountains to the Ventura County line, the San Fernando Valley and east to Atwater Village.
The two sparred when it comes to experience.
"This is not an entry-level position and I look forward to the election," Kuehl told the crowd.
Local
Get Los Angeles's latest local news on crime, entertainment, weather, schools, COVID, cost of living and more. Here's your go-to source for today's LA news.
Shriver quickly dismissed her criticism, noting his nonprofit experience with high-level government agencies.
"I’m not an entry-level guy. I’m 60 years old. I got George Bush and his Republican legislature to give HIV treatment to 7 million people in Africa. That’s a complicated system," Shriver said.
Kuehl served for eight years in the California State Senate and six years in the State Assembly. She represented over a million people on the westside of Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley in a district that ran from the ocean to Hollywood and Westlake Village to Universal City.
In 2008, she left the legislature under California's term limits statute.
She currently serves as founding director of the Public Policy Institute at Santa Monica College, an institute devoted to undergraduate and community education and the exploration of public policy at the local level.
In the spring of 2012, she was appointed regents' professor of Public Policy at UCLA, and taught a class for graduates and undergraduates on the role of law and regulation in the formation of public policy.
She was the first woman in California history to be named Speaker pro Tempore of the Assembly and the first openly gay or lesbian person to be elected to the California Legislature.
Shriver is cofounder and chairman of DATA and (PRODUCT)RED, which lobby governments on the issues of debt, AIDS and trade policies as they effect Africa. He started both organizations with Bono of the rock band U2.
Shriver served on the California State Parks and Recreation Commission from 2004- 2008 and was elected to the Santa Monica City Council in 2004, and re-elected in 2008 serving until 2012, serving as mayor pro tem in 2006 and mayor during part of 2010.
Shriver attended Yale College at Yale University with a BA in American Studies and earned his law degree from Yale Law School in 1981.
