What you should know before Election Day

So just three weeks from today, voters will cast their ballots. Some already are. Tonight, the two candidates for L.A. mayor will hit the stage to square off in what could be a very impactful debate. All right. Here to break it all down for us, the other big race is to political strategist Matt Clank. Thanks for coming back, as always. All right. So one hour, it's all happening tonight. Nithya Raman, Karen Bass, 33 percent. That last check of voters still undecided. What's going to be happening on that stage tonight? You're gonna hear both candidates try to appeal to the undecideds to make the case why they should be the choice and the other person is a politically unacceptable choice. It should be really interesting. The strategy for Nithya Raman would likely be if you're sick of the same old stuff, then you gotta vote for somebody, right? You gotta vote for her. Yeah, she would be called the candidate of change. That's right. city's not working, I can make the city work better, therefore vote for me. And then what is Karen Bass's strategy? Karen Bass's challenge is a little higher because she's been the mayor for four years. And generally speaking, people aren't happy with the way that the city of Los Angeles is being run. What the mayor is trying to say is, hey, I promise more stability. And by the way, I'm not Nithya Raman and I'm not a democratic socialist. It's a much more complicated argument, but it's one that the mayor has to make. The mayor's also saying she claims she's changed, but she's been part of this the entire time. So how is she really the change? Yeah, again, it assumes that people are really paying attention that Nithya Raman has been on council for six years. They know Mayor Karen Bass has been mayor. Most people don't know even who their city council people are. So Nithya Raman has the advantage of what we call low information voters. So Karen Bass needs to really make that message over and over tonight. Essentially, we're in the sort of like the closing argument stage, right, with early voting already happening, people voting and they're trying to appeal to those quote unquote undecided voters. Are we seeing that now in terms of the ground game of the things that the mayor is doing right now, the things that Nithya Raman is doing right now to try and really get to those those quote unquote undecided voters? Well, a couple of things, so one, absentee or vote by mail ballot turnout has been really low so far. Because the ballot is massive. It is. People aren't just gonna pick it up and vote it and mail it back in. It's about what, 12 pages? At least, you have to sit down and think about it, it takes some time. So campaigns are pushing all of their efforts towards the last three weeks of the election, which is right where we are. So you'll see a lot of advertisements on digital and on TV talking about why Nithya is the choice or Mayor Karen Bass is the choice or from independent money, why Nithya is the wrong choice because she's out of touch or the mayor is the wrong choice. And then the field game, the ground game is gonna be super important. Yeah, I mean, I know the Democratic Socialists of America has endorsed Nithya Rahman. We are seeing this big groundswell of Socialist Democrats across the country, you see what happened in New York. Is she poised to essentially do the same thing here? She I think is, she's not being as overt as someone like Zoran Mandani is. But she also, she talks that talk when she appears before progressive groups, she talks like Zoran Mandani. The problem is, is that LA is so big and so diverse that it doesn't work as well as it does in the concentrated New York City. It's a tough argument for Nithya, so she uses it when she can to her advantage. But if she's out in the San Fernando Valley, she's certainly not talking like that. So you talk about ground game, but we live in the age of social media now as well. So we're seeing a lot percolate on social media. One thing that came up has kind of become viral, which could come up tonight in the debate was this recently deleted viral video, Nithya Raman with this influencer. There's the influencer right there. So she was asked to repeat a tagline saying only you can stop fascist liars and she also in the video called said that she would likely fire current LAPD chief Jim McDonnell. She has since said that this would not be one of her priorities. How do you think, do you think that's something that's gonna be playing out today in tonight's debate? It should absolutely play out. She made that remark about the LAPD being fascist. Now, there's also a coincidence that the police union is spending $2 million against her. So there probably is some anger there. But then the other statement that she made about Israel committing genocide, I mean, two of those, that puts her in that radical progressive camp that most Angeleno voters don't fall into. So she wants to gloss over that and talk about how she's going to make change in L.A. Karen Bass has to drive home that extreme record on Nithya's part. So in the meantime, she did issue a statement after this viral video came out. I need my glasses. The creator asked her to repeat the phrase, only you can stop fascist liars, she writes, in which she said, in reference to ICE and the Trump administration's violent kidnappings that continue in our city today. The video was edited by the creator to put Mayor Bass on screen during that moment. But Nithya never used that phrase to describe Mayor Bass, Chief McDonnell, or LAPD officers. There was also a story put out there that she would hire George Gascon, the former DA, to lead the LAPD or be part of police leadership there. She has since issued a statement also saying it's a lie. I will not be hiring George Gascon as police chief, which I told the California Post prior to them publishing the story. But it's still a story. So here she is, sort of like on the defensive here. Well, there's a saying in politics that if you're explaining, you're losing. And Nithya Ramachandran, everybody remembers the first charge. That's the problem, yeah. Nobody remembers the explanation. Right. And she should have known better. If someone asked you to repeat a phrase, well, shame on you for doing it. You shouldn't do it. Use your own words to talk about a situation. and then let the reporter or the blogger then fill in your exact words into their story. Because at that point, you're not using it on your platform. You're trusting this influencer to not chop it down and maybe make you look bad. And bloggers don't have the ethical responsibility that reporters do. They can do whatever they want. And guess what? Social media is geared toward that extreme comment. That's what people on both sides eat up. So that's an unforced error on Nithya Raman's campaign. So you're saying a lot of people still haven't voted yet. People are still, maybe they're just going through that packet still, right? And part of it, you're involved in a lot of the propositions. And so people are trying to figure out what all these propositions are. And some of them are linked together too. There are. So Prop 40, which is the wealth tax. Right. Which would tax billionaires. That's the billionaire's tax, yeah. And then there's Prop 41 and 42, which are the poison pill measures that if they get a higher vote total, they cancel out Prop 40 and most voters are just like, my gosh, my head hurts. Most voters don't know that. No, they can't keep it all straight. And look, it's a failure on the legislature to properly legislate. It costs millions of dollars to put these measures on the ballot. And Prop 40 was put on by a extreme labor union to try to extort more money from state government. And Gavin Newsom said, I'm not gonna back it, I call your bluff. So it stayed on the ballot. And it's likely, even though it's ahead now, it's likely to fail on the- Okay. A lot of the polls can kind of give it an edge of passing, possibly. It sounds like that now- What do you think's gonna change? But historically, late-breaking voters vote no on tax measures. You want a tax measure to start in the mid-60s, because as every week passes, it goes down. So the fact that they're at 50 right now or 51 right now, it makes it unlikely that it's gonna pass. Obviously, homelessness, I mean, the big-time issues facing Los Angeles, homelessness being one of them, and public safety, one of the top priorities for voters. How is that gonna play into what happens on election night? It's gonna be a huge issue, both of them are gonna be huge issues. Nithya Raman will say homelessness is down 49% in my district. I live in her district, it's not down 49%. But regardless, the homeless trends are going again in the wrong direction. Angelenos know we've spent tens of billions of dollars and the homeless problem has gotten worse. know if either candidate has the solution and voters are just frustrated. And then again, with crime, crime is 100% local. If I'm impacted by crime, crime is up. And that's what the LA voters know is to be the case. Even though the statistics say it's down, it's still impacting certain communities. And again, who's going to do a better job? The one who wants a police force of 8500, which is Nithya Raman, or the one who wants a larger police force, which is Karen Bass. So again, that's a point that the mayor needs to make tonight, and she needs to be very direct and forceful about it. Really quickly, let's talk about the governor's race. I mean, the polls- It's been pretty quiet. The polls show that Becerra has a double digit lead over this Republican challenger, Steve Hilton. Where do we stand right now? Javier Becerra is running like a frontrunner, meaning that he's picking and choosing his battles. And Steve Hilton is running like a madman around the state, saying that he has a different solution. When you're looking at a margin like this. I mean, he's got nothing to lose. But Javier, I mean, unless something pretty dramatic comes out in the next three weeks, this is a 15 to 20 point win for Javier Becerra. But the problem with the way he's campaigning, nobody knows what his agenda is when he takes office. So a blank slate in this case is not good. I would want, if I were in his shoes, I would be outlining my agenda. These are the three things I'm going to focus on so that the legislature, which will be Democratic supermajority, has an idea of where he wants to go. The last thing that you want in Sacramento is 120 little people with their own agendas just driving around and Javier Becerra having to reign them all in. Right, right. All right, Matt Klink. Welcome to California politics. Thank you. I know, that's exactly how it goes. Well, he's been in it for a while. Thank you, Matt. Anytime. Three weeks left. Clock is ticking. We'll be right back. It's just been getting more fun. It's a meaty ballot. Oh my God.