What's next for LA under Nithya Raman's leadership?

6-12, welcome back. Of course, the big story this morning remains the new mayor-elect for the city of Los Angeles. So what will Los Angeles look like under Mayor Nithya Raman? Big question we'll be asking our political experts throughout the morning. Joining us now, political analyst Luis Alvarado. Good morning, Luis. Good to see you. Morning. It's a new day. It's a new day. That's right. You know, I think that if you had asked anybody at the beginning of this election campaign if this would be the outcome, I'm not sure anybody could have predicted this. Do you agree with that? Absolutely. I mean, not just throughout the nation, obviously here in Los Angeles, it's been an era of change, which reminds me kind of like 2008. Where there's a lot of optimism and there's a lot of whatevs, but there's a good sense of it. And now the question is, what is it going to look like? Who's going to be in charge? Who's going to be in her cabinet? What are her first priorities? There's a lot of questions Angelina's going to have for her. And she's going to have to figure out how to talk to both Angelinos so that she can set expectations. And then how does she talk to those people in power, city council members, the department heads, to ensure everybody's on lock and step with her. And moving forward, trying to understand what her vision is for Los Angeles. Figure out what step number one is once she, well, obviously she has to get sworn in. But once she gets sworn in, what's that going to look like? I don't know if you saw that press conference yesterday at the farmer's market. Quite extraordinary when you think about it. I mean, she is, was very emotional, understandably. You think about the story that she's had as a child that was brought here, you know, immigrant parents and now becomes the mayor of the second largest city. But at the same time, you have to be thinking because these questions are already being asked. You have 40 days. 40 days to get your department heads together to figure out who you're going to put in all these important positions, get your policy out there. This is a big task. And, you know, a lot of people have wondered in the very beginning whether she had enough experience to do this. This is going to be a big challenge. But she walks in with goodwill. And a lot of effervescency, and that's going to give her a honeymoon stage, right? Everybody gets a honeymoon stage, and everybody's going to want to see her put her best foot forward. But the reality is, and I was putting this on my... Social media yesterday, somebody responded, Luis, you gotta stop being so gray, because I'm talking about policy issues and, you know, first steps and let her be, let her be. And, you know, it got me thinking, you know, we need to let her be for a little bit and give her that honeymoon space. But knowing that the reality is waiting a few steps after that. I mean, public safety is one thing that voters, that was very important to voters going Going into the voting process, it's also something that she has Publicly come out and said that she, one of her first orders have been, at least by 2031, would be to remove LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell. She said that she had talked to him last night during her acceptance speech, during her first public address, had spoken to him. He released a statement this morning saying he cannot wait to work with her and move the city forward. How is she going to, and then you have the, the, um, the union, the LAPD union coming Kind of catastrophizing a bit and saying this is going to be Armageddon for the city of Los Angeles and that you won't need to do any recruitment because people are going to be leaving en masse, police officers. So how is she going to reconcile all of this with public safety and with the LAPD? That's where leadership comes in. That's her having the ability to talk to people. I'm glad to hear she spoke with Jim McDonnell yesterday. And the reality, Jim McDonnell is a consummate professional. She may have had opinions about him individually and some of the policies the department has as a general, but when she understands that that bureaucracy is a giant Bureaucracy that really cannot be moved from one moment to the other. That really takes a long time to move a big ship like that. You know, she's got to also temper the expectations of her base, you know, who put them there. And the base wants her to have action like from one day to the other. And that doesn't happen in government, especially in big organizations that are very compromised with budget issues, with public affairs and making sure that. The machine is moving in the right direction. So there's a lot of moving parts here, and that's where the leadership comes in. It looks like she's going to have the power to it. Hopefully she has good advisors that are going to surround her and give her that advice, people who understand how this machine works. Yeah, you said it, a lot of moving parts, a big bureaucracy there. But she steps into this leadership role now with a council, and some of them don't, necessarily, they don't necessarily have great relationships with her. Marquise Harris-Dawson, the council president, was helping the Bass campaign. You got Tracy Park also there, who was critical of her leading up to this. So, you know, you name it for some policy reasons, but a lot of this is personal. So she did call some of those people yesterday, But how critical is it going to be to try to Try to bring them over to the trough and try to iron out some of those differences. It's gonna be issue by issue and that's where the agenda comes into play, right? She's got to get sworn in and then there has to be an agenda. We're all going to be listening to her acceptance speech and there's going to be a lot of like when the president goes and gets sworn in on the cold January at the steps of the Capitol. There's going to be the same scenario being played out at City Hall and she's going to have to have a very good speechwriter to help her put her vision on words in words that actually coincide with something that people expect. For that machine to be at least, it's like baking a cake at the end of the day and you may have all the right ingredients, but if you miss one step, it may mess up all the other steps behind it. And that's where all of us are gonna be watching you guys in the press and the last political professionals. And we're all hopeful, I think at the end of the day, Los Angeles and Angelina's are hopeful that she actually succeeds it, regardless of one has misconceptions about where she stands ideologically. I think everybody's hoping for her to be successful, that means that Angelenos are gonna be successful, and people are not gonna be suffering. And that's what I think everybody is hopeful, regardless of what happened in the campaign. It's time to leave that behind, and a lot of Angelenos are gonna have to stand up and try to help her, regardless of what her ideological differences are with somebody else. Well, I baked a lot of cakes, so I know exactly what you're talking about, Lewis. But the clock is ticking almost as soon as she's hitting the ground here, because we have the 2028 Olympics coming up. And she's promised to cut homelessness in half in time for the Olympics. Is that even achievable at this point? If she's able to work with other agencies, cuz that's not one job that the city is responsible for. You have the county supervisors, you have the state of California, you have federal federal resources you have to be able to tap into. You know, if you guys remember a few years ago, California raised like a billion dollars in taxes, Los Angeles raised more taxes. And so it's not an issue of putting money and throwing it at the problem when the legislation is not helping you, when it doesn't allow you to help certain members who need, who can't decide for themselves, put them somewhere where they can actually be helped. And without breaking the state constitution, those are the things where a politician has to be able to be nimble and understand who those other people with power positions are going to be so you can sit with them and actually figure out what's going to be the best course of action. And after you figure it out, you have to sell it to the public, right, so you can manage those expectations again. We want to quickly just switch gears here. We'll have a few more minutes here, Louise. But let's talk about going Governor-elect Javier Becerra, now historical victory, right? The first elected Latino governor of California. Thank you very much. What are some of the challenges that he could face? Not much different than what our new mayor in Los Angeles is going to face. You know, I think for him, the difference is that he has a lifelong history of leadership where we kind of know what his style is. We know he's going to be very, not very flashy. He's going to be very quiet. He's going to move parts behind. He's going to, he has a machine that he's going to, you know, just unleash and go out there and talk. I think the best thing that could have happened to him was that blue wave, right? Right, because the biggest challenge For our current governor is that he had Donald Trump in Washington DC and whenever we had disasters or we had economical challenges, there was a confrontation with Washington DC. At least now we're gonna have some allies in the capital that are gonna be able to understand what our governor's new vision is gonna be and how they're gonna help him in that agenda that he's gonna also tell us about when he gets sworn in. So a lot of open ears, a lot of open eyes and understanding that the challenges are great. The promises were very hopeful and now it comes to hard work and actually delivering those promises and managing expectations of the electorate. You keep hearing it, the Becerra era is here. So get ready for it. I'm looking forward to it. We hear a lot of that. Everybody wants him to succeed too. If he succeeds, we are the fourth economy of the world. There. You know, we don't want to mess that up. Of course, yes. Luis, thank you. I always appreciate you, Luis. Thank you for your time early this morning. Thanks for inviting me. Have a good day. Okay, we'll take a short commercial break and we'll be right back.