Meet Nelson Cheng, Candidate For Los Angeles Mayor
Nelson Cheng told Patch why he should be elected as Los Angeles mayor. The primary election is on June 2, 2026.
Chris Lindahl, Patch Staff
Posted Fri, May 1, 2026 at 12:18 pm PT | Updated Fri, May 1, 2026 at 12:19 pm PT
LOS ANGELES, CA — Nelson Cheng, 23, is vying to be elected as the Los Angeles mayor.
In the June 2 primary, incumbent Mayor Karen Bass will face a challenge from 13 other candidates as she seeks a second term. Among them is Cheng.
Learn more about Cheng's goals for Los Angeles:
What is your educational background?
I am a current graduate student who is pursuing a master of public administration at CSULA. I have graduated with two bachelor's degrees in both social welfare and legal studies from UC Berkeley back in 2024.
I have served as a College Corps Fellow and a member of UC Berkeley ASUC Sexual Violence Commission to address issues related to sexual harassment on campus.
I love UC Berkeley! Go Berkeley Bears!
What is your professional background?
I am a Roblox YouTuber known as Evilheartful E who has been doing Roblox games with my team of friends and fans. Along with other popular Roblox YouTubers such as KreekCraft, we do not agree with the new age verification requirements that Roblox impose to limit online chat and scan minors’ faces as infiltration of privacy.
I work as a behavioral interventionist which I conduct 1:1 sessions with children diagnosed with special needs and developmental disabilities in a home, school, and clinic.
Have you ever held public office, whether appointive or elective?
I have never held a public office before, but I have served in the UC Berkeley ASUC student government as a member of the ASUC Sexual Violence Commission.
I also worked with one of the former ASUC senators to advocate the disabled rights and pushing forward to stop discrimination.
I even ran for ASUC President but lost back in 2023 because I have allowed one of the candidates to win.
I am hoping to serve as the next LA mayor in order to improve the conditions in LA. We will use common sense!
What are the top three issues facing Los Angeles right now?
The top three issues facing LA right now are traffic, crime, and homelessness.
In LA, we have heavy traffic congestion, especially near downtown LA where most people commute to work and many highways intersect each other. As mayor, I will shorten the wait time of bus stops to every 10 to 15 minutes around downtown LA during the weekdays at peak times between 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., and 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., adding more buses and making them free only during these time periods. This will reduce the number of vehicles stuck in heavy traffic congestion. From there, I will improve the Metro service safer and highly convenient.
There has been a rise of ICE raids across the U.S., especially in LA where ICE has been going after undocumented immigrants who wanted to come go the U.S. to make a living for themselves or their own families. ICE should only go after real criminals such as murderers, rapists, pedophiles, arsonists, etc., not innocent undocumented immigrants who are trying to work such as farm workers.
What is one specific policy you would implement in your first 100 days?
One policy I would implement in my first 100 days is to be able to reduce homelessness by acquiring abandoned warehouses and facilities in order to convert them into renovated homeless shelters, so that we will not waste too much money on renovating abandoned warehouses and facilities rather than establishing and building new homeless shelters that would be heavily expensive.
I also want to properly fund every department as much as possible in order for all of the departments to serve its own function and role to help out and improve the communities across LA.
I will fix the street lightings and sidewalks, especially in South LA.
I will also add some crosswalks for the people to walk across the streets safely.
I also want to protect our schools and other public places from harm, and to heavily punish criminals who are charged of sexual harassment and abuse since sexual harassment is absolutely disgusting and disgraceful.
I hope to improve LA by implementing positive policies people want me to do in order to make our communities safer and satisfying for everyone to bear with together in compassionate care and kindness.
What is your plan to reduce homelessness, and how would you measure success after one year?
My plan to reduce homelessness is to use abandoned warehouses and facilities and convert these abandoned buildings into renovated homeless shelters in order to house as many homeless individuals as possible.
There are more than thousands of homeless individuals who are living and sleeping off the streets and sidewalks, bringing filth and lack of sanitation with piles of garbage and nasty stuff around the streets, tents everywhere with some crazy people roaming across LA, especially in Skid Row and parts of West Adams.
The reason why LA never use the idea of the renovation of abandoned buildings is because financial institutions are profiting from abandoned buildings to stay abandoned, while developers are continuing to own abandoned buildings just so they can hold on to them longer and sell them for more profits, which will not work. This is why we should cut the red tape and should take abandoned buildings from developers who will no longer profit anymore in order to house as many homeless individuals as possible.
We need to make tenting illegal so that for those who lives off the streets and sidewalks will be asked to leave. For mentally-ill individuals, they should be sent to a mental and behavioral health treatment centers where they will be diagnosed and treated under certified psychotic treatment.
By using abandoned warehouses and facilities and convert them into renovated homeless shelters, we would save millions of dollars from building new homeless shelters to save.
What is one specific change you would make to improve public safety?
In order to improve public safety, I would fix our street lights and sidewalks for people to walk and see safely, in addition of creating more crosswalks for pedestrians to cross the streets safely, especially with children.
I will have the sanitation department to clean our streets and sidewalks, and to reduce the amount of garbage and litter since people just lazily litter, especially young people who just do not want to walk that far to a nearest trash bin.
I will also fix the potholes to make vehicles drive safe.
will have the police to address and reduce crime as much as possible regardless the number of police officers since there has still been violent crimes under Karen Bass’s leadership no matter what, and I will be able to stop street takeovers.
There were two street takeovers in both Rosemead and LA, and street takeovers are dangerous with people driving donuts with their cars that could roadkill anyone nearby, and gun violence must stop.
As mayor, I will try my best and always stay alerted to stop street takeovers, and make street takeovers illegal since the streets are public for everyone, not private for some unpermitted people to use dangerous stunts past midnight!
I want to make sure everyone follow the laws in order to be safe since I care about everyone’s safety. These young people could have just play online games such as Roblox or any other games rather than going out in the middle of the night doing dangerous car donuts and shooting for no reason!
How would you improve transparency or accountability at City Hall?
I will improve transparency by showing the local budget to the public, allowing them to know where our taxpayers’ dollars go to each specific department, and the specific amount of funding that should go to each department in order to balance the budget. We cannot overfund or underfund a department like what Karen Bass did fund more only to the police and homelessness, in which we cannot just put all of our eggs in one same basket case.
I will definitely support the firefighters with proper and necessary funding needed in order for each and every one of the local department to be able to function without making things worse.
I will also improve accountability from myself and the City Council to provide the truth to the public, and be accountable for my actions no matter what. I will show my support for the people since I am a honest, trustworthy man who will show fairness, integrity, and honesty for everyone who I encounter and am willing to risk and sacrifice my life for the people to do my hard effort and having a strong teamwork with the people in order to improve LA as soon as possible for us to have community gatherings.
I will be able to address and want to hear out the issues and concerns that the people want to bring them up and are fed up with for many years.
As LA Mayor, I will provide transparency, accountability, responsibility, honesty, and liability for the people to show our support and strengthen our communities together with helping hands and compassion.
Why are you a better choice than your opponents?
I am a better choice than my opponents because I have a young mindset and am willing to be the people’s mayor, unlike other political opponents who are career politicians and are selfish and greedy by taking putting money into their own pockets and worsening the issues affected across LA.
Karen Bass has a decade of experience serving as a U.S. representative from California, but then finally failed over the Pacific Palisades wildfire issue when serving as LA mayor. She should not have overfunded the police or homeless department since she should also be focusing on other departments such as firefighters or sanitation or even public works as well. If she have never ran for LA Mayor and just continue running for U.S. representative, then we would not have be in this terrible, burning mess and nobody will blame Karen Bass for all of this to happen.
