One year after the Palisades fire destroyed thousands of homes in her own district, Traci Park stood before residents still living with the damage and told them the disaster “wasn’t climate change, and don’t let anybody try to tell you otherwise.”
The statement contradicted overwhelming scientific consensus. Climate scientists have documented for years that hotter temperatures, prolonged drought, and intensifying wind events, all driven by climate change, create the conditions in which wildfires spread faster, burn hotter, and overwhelm response systems. LA Times climate columnist Sammy Roth and others have explained this repeatedly: climate change does not need to strike a match. It sets the table.
Park has positioned herself as a leader on fire recovery, calling for new fire stations, more firefighters, and infrastructure upgrades. But she is unwilling to acknowledge the climate conditions that made the disaster inevitable, and that will make the next one worse. Pouring money into emergency response while denying the underlying cause is not a resilience strategy. It is managed decline.
In April 2025, the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission voted to delete all references to “climate change,” “environmental justice,” and “disadvantaged communities” from its annual work plan, without legal requirement and without a written mandate from the Trump EPA.
Traci Park’s appointed designee, Jacob Burman, voted in favor of the deletions. He did not question the rationale. He moved the Commission to approve the vote.
The decision came just months after the Palisades fire. Park had branded herself a coastal resilience leader. Yet neither she nor her office raised a single objection as climate language was stripped from a foundational environmental planning document, the first time a state body had voluntarily done so under pressure from the Trump administration.
Other cities and agencies chose to push back. Traci Park’s office chose to go along.
In two campaigns for City Council, Traci Park has never received the endorsement of a single environmental organization. Not the Sierra Club. Not the LA League of Conservation Voters. Not any coastal, wetlands, or climate advocacy group active in her district.
Instead, her political operation is funded by Chevron, supported by the Western States Petroleum Association’s institutional network, and run by a consultant who directs the PAC of an organization that is currently suing the state to prevent corporate climate disclosure.
That is not a record of environmental leadership. It is a record of alignment with the industries most responsible for the climate crisis, in the district most exposed to its consequences.
Traci Park’s campaign consultant is Robb Korinke of GrassrootsLab, who has served since 2014 as PAC Director of BizFed, the Los Angeles County Business Federation. In that role he has run more than 150 independent expenditure campaigns for the organization.
BizFed is institutionally embedded with the fossil fuel industry. Patty Senecal, the Southern California Director of the Western States Petroleum Association, whose members include Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, and ConocoPhillips, sits on the BizFed Institute Board as Secretary and has been named BizFed’s “Advocate of the Year.” The Chair of the BizFed PAC is a Southern California Gas Company executive.
In January 2024, BizFed joined as a co-plaintiff in a federal lawsuit challenging California’s landmark climate disclosure laws, SB 253 and SB 261, which would require large corporations to publicly report their greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related financial risks. It was the first time in BizFed’s history that its board had voted to take legal action, and it chose to do so on behalf of corporate secrecy over climate transparency.
BizFed has endorsed Traci Park in both her 2022 and 2026 campaigns.
The revolving door between Traci Park’s office and the fossil fuel industry runs in both directions. Her former District Director now works on the Government Relations team at Southern California Gas Company, the same utility whose executive chairs the BizFed PAC that funds Park’s campaigns.
SoCalGas has a direct financial stake in LA’s energy policy decisions, including building electrification, appliance standards, and climate commitments that the Council is routinely asked to take positions on. The proximity of Park’s former senior staff to SoCalGas’s lobbying operation raises serious questions about whose interests are being served.
The fossil fuel industry and its allies have poured money into Traci Park’s campaigns. These are the donors whose interests she serves.
Chevron — $89,000 Chevron contributed $89,000 to an independent expenditure committee supporting Traci Park’s 2022 campaign, as documented in FPPC Form 496 filings with the Los Angeles Ethics Commission. Chevron operates a major refinery in El Segundo, just south of LAX, that has been cited repeatedly for safety breaches and pollution harming nearby working-class neighborhoods. The company spends millions lobbying and donating in California to block climate laws and protect its drilling and refinery operations. In Los Angeles, Chevron has fought efforts to phase out fossil fuel extraction, opposed local drilling restrictions, and worked to maintain a status quo that keeps communities breathing toxic air.
BizFed — $6,600 The political arm of the Los Angeles County Business Federation is a powerful corporate lobby that is currently suing the state to stop climate disclosure laws. Its PAC director is Traci Park’s own campaign consultant. BizFed donated to Traci Park to advance a business-first agenda at City Hall that favors corporate profits over workers and communities.
Todd Stevens — $500 President and CEO of Black Knight Energy, a private oil and gas company backed by major Wall Street investment. Stevens has been a vocal opponent of Los Angeles efforts to ban new oil wells and phase out existing drilling, prioritizing fossil fuel profits over community health and climate action.
Craig Taylor — $5,200 Founder and CEO of Iapetus Holdings, a portfolio of energy-service companies and alternative investments spanning oil, gas, utility infrastructure, and drone inspection businesses. His firm is deeply embedded in the energy sector, leveraging policy, regulation, and corporate contracts for profit.
James Enstrom — $500 A hired-gun scientist whose work has repeatedly served tobacco and fossil fuel interests. After taking $700,000 from the tobacco industry in the late 1990s, he published research claiming the link between secondhand smoke and disease was weaker than believed, drawing sharp rebukes from the American Cancer Society. He later became a go-to contrarian on air pollution and climate, arguing that deadly fine-particle pollution is not linked to premature death. His fringe conclusions were cited by the Trump EPA to justify keeping weak soot standards and to attack mainstream public health studies. His pattern is consistent: industry-aligned funding, outlier findings, and heavy promotion in right-wing policy circles to undermine regulations that protect public health and the climate. Traci Park took his money.
Kimberly Perttula — $2,700 Kimberly is the spouse of Joshua Perttula, a well-connected City Hall insider linked to fossil fuel polluters, subprime mortgage profiteering, and the LADWP bribery scandal.
Nancy Sunkin — $1,800 Wife of influential lobbyist Howard Sunkin, whose clients have included Pacific Coast Energy, the oil company behind the West Pico drill site. Howard once offered his home as a fundraiser venue for a councilmember while simultaneously representing that oil company in the same councilmember’s district.
McCabe and Company Consulting — $3,400 Susan McCabe is a former Coastal Commissioner and one of the most powerful forces shaping development along California’s coast. Through her firm, she has represented clients including MacPherson Oil and Southern California Edison, both linked to environmentally controversial projects. Watchdogs say she used her access to sway commission decisions, and her influence was cited in the ouster of Coastal Commission Executive Director Charles Lester, a move condemned by environmentalists as part of a broader effort by developers and lobbyists to weaken the Coastal Act’s protections.
Kevin and Silvia Dretzka — $3,199 Kevin Dretzka is a private equity investor with holdings in real estate, oil and gas, and agritech. Their contributions to Traci Park tie her campaign to a national network of Republican real estate investors whose agenda stands in direct opposition to affordable housing, labor rights, and climate action.
