del richardson

Curren Price’s political career appears destined to end before his criminal trial.

Prosecutors first charged the L.A. City Council member in 2023 with embezzlement, perjury and having a conflict of interest in votes on City Council matters in which his wife stood to benefit.

A long-delayed preliminary hearing began this week, where more evidence against Price will be put forth and a judge must decide if prosecutors have enough evidence to proceed. If it moves forward at the current rate, Price’s case is almost certain to drag on after he is forced from office by term limits at the end of 2026.

Price, 75, is unlikely to face prison time even if convicted — and he is expected to retire from public service at the end of the year after decades as an elected official in Sacramento and Los Angeles. Some of his colleagues have questioned whether his alleged impropriety should be addressed by the city’s ethics commission rather than a jury.

But with his preliminary hearing expected to last several more days, more evidence against Price is becoming public — meaning the consequences of the case may echo beyond the courtroom.

There are seven candidates running to replace Price in November, including his deputy chief of staff, Jose Ugarte. The crowd trying to upset Ugarte — Price’s handpicked successor and the current favorite to win — could seize the moment to shake up the primary field. Ugarte has also faced allegations of unethical behavior for failing to disclose income he made through lobbying and consulting work outside of City Hall.

Ugarte — who did not respond to a request to be interviewed for this article — has defended Price’s record as a legislator and denied that the council member committed any crimes. Ugarte recalled joining Price when he had his fingerprints taken for the criminal case.

“I was just heartbroken,” Ugarte said in November on the podcast “What’s Next, Los Angeles?”

“They’re going to find him not guilty and he’s going to be exonerated of everything,” Ugarte added.

Jose Ugarte is running for Los Angeles City Council District 9.

(Jose Ugarte)

The case could also complicate Price’s legacy.

He has survived a tumultuous and scandal-ridden time in City Hall, marked by colleagues getting marched out of office following federal prosecutions, a leaked racist recording and the continued success of young and progressive challengers unseating politicians of his generation. A conviction could see his name forever associated with peers taken down by allegations of graft.

The veteran politician, who served as a member of the Inglewood City Council and in the state Senate and Assembly, has called himself a “progressive, positive, inclusive” leader. He has supported higher wages for low-income workers in the city and has close ties to organized labor.

In an interview this week, Price reiterated that he never intended to do anything wrong and questioned the fairness of a prosecution over what he said was essentially a paperwork error.

“These offenses are built around the intent to do wrong and I had no intent, no knowledge of us doing anything wrong at the time,” he said.

No matter what happens in court, Price believes city residents will remember him for bringing jobs and affordable housing to the district, rather than the corruption charges.

“I’ve got a sophisticated constituency. They certainly know the work we’ve been doing around housing, around economic development… I think I’m going to be judged on how those programs have changed the atmosphere and the temperature in the district,” he said, referencing his work on green space initiatives, boosting wages and the construction of BMO Stadium during his time in office.

Curren Price speaks at a news conference on the L.A. Convention Center expansion along with local union members in Los Angeles in September 2025.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

Price, who grew up in South Los Angeles before attending Stanford, faces 12 counts of violating state conflict of interest laws by voting on city matters in which he had a financial interest, perjury and embezzlement.

Prosecutors allege Price repeatedly voted on items before the City Council that benefited agencies and companies that had previously done business with his wife, Del Richardson, and her consulting company, Del Richardson & Associates.

Richardson’s company received hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments from LA Metro, the city housing authority and land developers before Price voted to approve projects, grants and funding for those businesses and agencies, prosecutors allege.

The perjury charges stem from Price’s alleged failure to disclose Richardson’s income on state forms. Prosecutors say he committed embezzlement by claiming Richardson as a dependent on his city-funded healthcare plan despite them not being legally married at the time. The insurance flub cost taxpayers roughly $30,000.

Price’s attorney, Michael Schafler, has maintained Price had no knowledge of the conflict and the payments to Richardson had no effect on his votes. All of the votes cited in the complaint passed by wide margins, meaning Price did not swing any council decisions.

In court this week, Schafler continually tried to paint his client’s alleged crimes as little more than clerical errors.

While cross-examining the top attorney for California’s Fair Political Practices Commission, Schafler pointed to disclosure forms where Price declared he’d received income from a developer in the same exact amount he’s alleged to have failed to disclose in one of the perjury counts.

The count, Schafler argued, related to income from a business that the developer, Thomas Safran, owns.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman dismissed Schafler’s attempts to downplay the charges in an interview earlier this week, noting Price was made acutely aware of the conflicts when The Times published a 2019 investigation into his record of voting on matters related to Richardson.

“His brazen conduct, even after the L.A. Times brings this to public light, is that he keeps doing it. His explanations might be to blame his staff, to blame Del Richardson’s staff, to blame lawyers, to blame basically everyone but himself,” he said. “But when you have these myriad criminal violations, all roads lead to just one person who is responsible.”

Witnesses in the preliminary hearing — which began on Tuesday and is expected to end next week — included former members of Richardson’s company and Price’s City Hall staff.

On Wednesday, longtime Richardson employee Maritsa Garcia and Deputy Dist. Atty. Casey Higgins sparred on the witness stand over what information the consulting firm provided to the councilman’s office about possible conflicts. At one point, Higgins noted that Garcia had an attorney in the room, paid for by Richardson, and suggested her testimony might be “biased.” The attorney, Michael Freedman, declined to speak with a Times reporter.

Mike Bonin, a former city councilman, said he believed Price’s alleged malfeasance should be handled by the city’s Ethics Commission — not criminal prosecutors. One of the votes at issue was about a project in Bonin’s district that sailed through the council, with Price’s vote unimportant to the project’s outcome.

“Unlike every other homeless or affordable housing project in my district, this one had no objection. It went straight through. There was absolutely no controversy,” Bonin said.

Bonin said the criminal case never “passed the smell test” to him, and that it didn’t seem as serious as crimes committed by other city councilmembers like Mitch Englander and Jose Huizar.

Englander pled guilty in 2021 to obstructing a federal investigation into whether he improperly received gifts from developers while in office. Huizar pleaded guilty to conspiracy and tax evasion two years later, after federal prosecutors accused him of taking in millions in bribes and perks in what they described as a pay-to-play scheme.

“I felt like for whatever reason they wanted to find something against Curren,” Bonin said.

An employee from the L.A. City Ethics Commission — which accused Price of a litany of violations in 2024 — testified this week that Price would still have a conflict of interest even in votes that passed by wide margins.

After former Dist. Atty. George Gascón quietly charged Price in 2023, Hochman added two charges against Price last year and has pursued the case aggressively. His prosecutors have also tried to force Richardson, who has attended court every day this week in support of her husband, to testify against him. Richardson was described as a “suspect” in the initial investigation in 2022, according to documents made public last year, but she was never charged with a crime and has denied all wrongdoing.

Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches at the Loyola Law School, said Hochman should continue pursuing cases involving political corruption, especially given the recent history at City Hall.

But with Price’s career winding down and the charges not indicating a major financial loss to taxpayers, she questioned if the case has lost value over the years.

“The importance of this case can very much change over time,” she said. “He’s not in the same political space as when [Gascón] first brought the charges, and there might have been a lot of incentive to do it then.”

Hochman confirmed attempts were made to resolve the case through a plea deal, but they were not successful. He declined to elaborate on the potential terms. Schafler also declined to detail those conversations.

Price has no intention of stepping down before his term.

The race to replace Price is likely to be one of the more competitive in June, with numerous well-funded candidates. Estuardo Mazariegos is running to Ugarte’s left and has been endorsed by Controller Kenneth Mejia and the Democratic Socialists of America Los Angeles. Also running is Elmer Roldan, a nonprofit leader who works to keep students from dropping out of schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Roldan was endorsed by Mayor Karen Bass on Thursday.

A dedicated group of supporters has flanked Price at nearly every court hearing. In the past, he’s held miniature rallies and prayer circles in the courthouse hallways.

Rose Rios, 80, who is the head of a homeless outreach group in South L.A., said she believes prosecutors are unfairly maligning Price and expressed concern the charges will overshadow his legacy of “building up South-Central.”

Rios said she will never accept a guilty verdict in the case, and neither will many of Price’s constituents.

“I trust him. I trust him with my life. He’s loved through all the district,” she said. “That many people wouldn’t love you if you weren’t doing the right thing.”