Public Safety, Housing and What Could Decide the Los Angeles Mayor's Race | Matt Klink

LA mayoral race is heating up again, especially after the primary race where he had three candidates and that race got national attention. There are key issues involving this race such as homelessness, crime, housing affordability, and the budget issues. The top priority for local government is public safety. Most Angelenos, whether you're a liberal democrat or the small number of republicans that do exist, public safety is a top priority. At the same time, this race has a bigger implication within the Democratic Party nationally. Today we sit down with Matt Klink, political strategist from LA, to find out which faction of the LA society and community are supporting which candidates and why. This is the most important civic responsibility that we as American citizens have. Get educated and make sure you vote your choice because you may not like what the other person is pushing forward. I'm Siamak. Welcome to Californian Insider. Matt, it's great to have you back on. Welcome back. Thank you for having me again. We want to talk to you about LA and the elections in LA. There's a lot happening. Now there's two candidates. Spencer Pratt is out and now Nitya Raman and Karen Bass are competing for the mayoral race in LA. What are you seeing there right now? I think that right now people are just starting to pay attention again on the mayor's race. Let's not forget that in June, when we had the primary, there was a lot of interest in the race. In a large part because Spencer Pratt ran this very unconventional campaign and went from someone who was an afterthought when he announced his candidacy to someone who, according to some polls, was in the running to potentially finish first or second. Obviously that didn't happen. He got 25% of the vote, which was a heck of a lot more than I think he expected to receive at the beginning, but not enough to defeat Karen Bass and Nitya Raman. So people are now starting to pay attention as to what does Karen Bass stand for? What's her record been for four years? And Nitya Raman, who is she? What has she done on the city council? And what's she going to do differently than Karen Bass? So we want to hear from you about the politics of LA and how does coalitions work? Who's for which candidate and what is happening there? Can you tell us about that? What's behind the elections? Are there certain forces in LA that when it comes to election time, they come out? Sure. Well, look, some basics. Obviously the city of Los Angeles, roughly 3.8 to 4 million people, the second largest city in the United States, the largest city in California, a 15 member city council, one mayor, city attorney as well, that we have what's known as a weak mayor, strong council system, meaning that the city council in the city of Los Angeles has a lot of power compared to other big cities like New York and Chicago. And in fact, when the city of Los Angeles was designed way, way back when, it was purposely designed with a weak mayor, strong council system to fight some of the corruption that existed in big East Coast cities. So each of the council members or say little districts, now they're quite large, they're little fiefdoms and they control, they have a lot of control that they exert in their district. However, because the mayor is the one elected official who really sits over the top of it and is the highest ranking one, in this case, the mayor of Los Angeles, because she sits over the top of the city as the highest elected official, she has a lot of power. She can appoint the heads of city departments. So if you want to get something built in the city of Los Angeles, it's very important that you work with the city-wide departments for planning and transportation and things of that nature. When we look at elections, so the mayor is on the ballot every four years. And historically, mayors who seek reelection tend to get reelected regularly. The two examples of when that doesn't happen were Sam Yorty in 1973, when he lost to Tom Bradley. And then more recently in the 21st century, when James K. Hahn was defeated by Antonio Villaraigosa. The bottom line is that incumbent mayors get reelected. And the answer to that is, so why? The answer to that question is because the mayor has appointed the heads of every department. So when funders look to contribute to the election cycle, they're like, okay, what do I want to get done for the next four years? They know what the current mayor has done. So the mayor has a huge fundraising advantage, the incumbent mayor, that is. The donors that want to do business with the city or whoever that has a business or anything to do with the city, they look at the heads of all these departments and knows that their mayor has assigned them. So they would rather, they would donate to the mayor. It's the double you know, versus the double you don't know. And then you add some other wrinkles into this that are, I think, interesting to this election. So, for example, Nithya Raman at one time talked about defunding the police when she, six years ago, when she was first elected to the city council, which is a pretty standard democratic socialist position. She has subsequently voted against budgets that fund the police force. Now, her logic is that the city couldn't afford that budget, that it gave the police raises that the city couldn't afford. So the Los Angeles Police Officers Association, the police union, they're campaigning heavily and spending heavily to defeat Nithya Raman. Then you have organized labor and all of the most of organized labor, they support the incumbent mayor. And then you have the city council. So even though Los Angeles has several democratic socialist members of the city council, all of them have endorsed Mayor Bass. And the answer to say, well, why did that happen? Why wouldn't other DSA members endorse Nithya Raman? Because they're, look, they're playing the odds game. The incumbent mayors are overwhelmingly reelected. Therefore, if I side against the mayor and endorse her opponent, if she loses, I'm going to be on the outs. So it's a political calculation that they're making. And how much influence does this being a mayor of LA has in the Democratic Party? Is there, is this a big position for the national politics or state level politics? It certainly can be. Antonio Villaraigosa went from being speaker of the California State Assembly to mayor of the city of Los Angeles. He also then was a co-chair for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, was on the Democratic National Committee. You have Eric Garcetti, who used the platform and he was considering running for president of the United States himself. You have Mayor Karen Bass, who was speaker of the California Assembly. She was a member of Congress and now she's the mayor. So it's arguably next to the governor of the state of California, whomever the mayor of the city of Los Angeles is, it's the highest profile position in the state, or the second highest in this case. And it automatically gives you a national stature just because of the number of people that you represent. Now, in terms of Nithya Raman and Democratic Socialist Movement in LA, is that movement getting a lot of momentum? So interesting question about Nithya Raman and the Democratic Socialists of America. So she admits that she was a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. She ran for election council the first time and defeated an incumbent in the fourth council district and advocated some of its priorities. Foremost among them would be defunding the police. However, over time, she has kind of moved away from the mainstay of the Democratic Socialists of America platform. So much so, as I said earlier, that the other DSA members on the city council didn't endorse her or haven't endorsed her. And I think that the Democratic Socialists of America Los Angeles chapter, I think they recently agreed to support her for mayor, but it was a divided vote. So they don't think she's Democratic Socialist enough. And again, this is what happens when you're a politician, is it's very easy to subscribe to a particular ideology until you have to compromise to get things done. And in local government, compromise is the name of the game because people expect police on the streets, they expect their potholes to be filled, their trees to be planted, the homeless to be taken off the streets. So again, you start making compromises and then to the ideological purists, you're never quite conservative or in this case, socialist enough for them. What about the voters? What do the voters want? Are they voting with ideology or are they voting on issues? Well, we'll know come November, but I can tell you what the polling says right now. So it's fascinating and we should talk about what each candidate is trying to do also to get elected or reelected. So the voters, Los Angeles is overwhelmingly a Democratic city. There are about 13% of LA, city of LA's population is Republicans. So 87% Democrat or non-party. Yeah, or no party preference. But even the no party preference, they're overwhelmingly left. So the challenge though, is that in that swath of decline to state or no party preference in Democrat, there are some that are very, very far left. There are some that are moderate. And the challenge is Los Angeles has always been a city that leans to the left. Well, always since the 1930s and 1940s. It's just a progressive city. And if you look at both Mayor Bass and Nithya Raman, both of them would consider themselves progressive. So the challenge though, is that if you look at where the votes are that decide the election, it's going to be, and they're the voters that largely voted for Spencer Pratt, it's going to be the San Fernando Valley and parts of the West Side. They're more centrist or moderate Democrats. And the challenge is, is how can Nithya Raman and or Mayor Bass appeal to these groups? So here's how they're campaigning. You have Karen Bass who says, my opponent is extreme. Her positions are radical, talking about defunding the police, positions on Nithya's refusal to remove homeless people from the streets until there's a bed for everybody, which is a political impracticality. Versus Nithya Raman who says, Mayor Bass has been the mayor for the last four years. She's failed. We need to move on and do better. It's the typical, remember the Ronald Reagan question that he asked of Jimmy Carter, are you better off now than you were four years ago? That's what Nithya Raman is trying. She's trying to make it a referendum on Karen Bass. Karen Bass is trying to make it a choice between two candidates. Whomever is more successful will be the one that wins. And then the wild card is, where do the Spencer Pratt voters go? 25% of the electorate. Spencer Pratt has no love loss for Karen Bass. He holds Karen Bass responsible for his home burning down on the Palisades fire. But is Spencer Pratt going to say, Karen Bass is so bad that we should vote for a He's already alluded to the fact that Nithya Raman would be a disaster. Those are his words, not mine. If she were to be elected mayor, which leaves his supporters kind of going, wait, what? What's going on here? So that's where the campaign is going to focus in the next, you know, the next roughly two months is where do those 25% go? Is there a chance they would stay home? Especially some of them might be disappointed because the way the election results came out, the way it was presented, it looked like things didn't, were going really well for him and they changed the last minute. Can you tell us about that? And is there a chance they will stay home? That's the, I think that's the, that's the biggest fear that Karen Bass has. Nithya Raman, I don't think would mind if the Spencer Pratt voters stayed home because that would then mean the votes in East Los Angeles, like the Silver Lake and Los Feliz area, some parts of the San Fernando Valley that she did well in, it would mean that those votes matter more. They would compose a greater share of the electorate. And that's always been a concern is, you know, do the Spencer Pratt voters say, my candidate's not in the race. Nobody is speaking to my issues. I'll pox on you all. I'm just going to stay home. Now I can make a compelling case that they shouldn't do that, that they should definitely vote because let's not forget, there's a whole bunch of other things that are on the ballot. You know, there's a competitive city attorney's race, which by the way, there's also a democratic socialist candidate running for city attorney, which I think is, could be more harmful to neighborhoods in the business community than the mayor could because the council may pass the laws, but the council or the city attorney has to write the resolution. She fights for the city in court. So I think that's a big deal, but that's the challenge right now is that how do you reach these Spencer Pratt voters? And I don't think that anyone has the answer yet. You mentioned the democratic socialist candidates. Are they really getting momentum? They are. I mean, look, so Nithya Raman in the fourth council district was the first democratic socialist council member in the modern era to get elected. She was followed closely behind by two more, Hugo Soto Martinez, who represents the Hollywood area, and then Eunice Hernandez in the first council district, who represents East Los Angeles. They're avowed democratic socialists. And then Isabel Jurado, she won Kevin de Leon's old seat, which is also on the other side of East Los Angeles. So you have at least four members of the city council right now. There's another DSA candidate running for the ninth council district, also on the ballot in November. And what do they want? They want greater access to labor unions, higher taxes. They favor a very lax policy on homelessness, meaning a housing first policy where you couldn't take anyone off the street unless you could guarantee a bed for everyone. They want to prioritize less money for the Los Angeles Police Department. The top priority for local government is public safety. And most Angelenos, whether you're a liberal Democrat or the small number of Republicans that do exist, public safety is a top priority. You want safe neighborhoods. You want a place where your kids can play or you can walk in the neighborhood with your family in the evening. And democratic socialists, frankly, they threaten that in the city of Los Angeles. More protection for renters and tenants over landlords. Then the national stuff, like abolishing ICE and all that part of the platform. I mean, it's the extreme left in the Democratic Party. And the only reason why nationally they don't run as democratic socialists is because socialist has a negative connotation. In Los Angeles, it doesn't have a negative connotation in certain districts. Is there a big divide inside the Democratic Party in L.A.? How do they look at each other when you look at the democratic socialists versus the Democrats? It falls into a couple of different camps. There are some who argue the Democratic Party must have a big tent. We have to welcome everyone. Well, it's interesting that the democratic socialist candidates are essentially using the Democratic Party apparatus to help get elected. There are others in the Democratic Party who say the Democratic Party should be for people who are Democrats first. The democratic socialist candidates aren't Democrats first, they're socialists first. So there's that rub. And then the other divide is between the people who are the activists, meaning the ones that go to party conventions. They're the most progressive of all. And the moderates, people who say, my father was a Democrat, I'm going to vote a Democrat, who live in certain communities, who won't vote Republican, but they have nothing in common with the far left base of the Democratic Party. So yeah, the Democratic Party is very divided. They're lucky in the sense that they so outnumber the Republicans in the city of Los Angeles that even with defections, the Democrats still get whomever they want. That's why 14 members of Los Angeles City Council are Democrat and the one who is not is a decline to state independent. Did Spencer Pratt reach the Republicans or did he reach a portion of these Democrats or a big portion of them? Spencer Pratt did very well with Republican voters. He also did really well with what I would call disaffected Democrats. The Democrats in, I mean, obviously in the 11th council district where the fire ravaged the Pacific Palisades. I don't think there's anything you could have done to get them to support Mayor Karen Bass. They lost their homes and they hold her responsible for it or most hold her responsible for it. So Spencer Pratt pulled in those groups. And I will tell you though, you know, in the 11th council district, Tracy Park, who was a moderate Democrat, she won, which we had her on the show. She's fantastic. She won like 65% of the vote in her June primary and destroyed the competition. So it had more to do with the personality than less with the label behind the name. So Spencer Pratt was able to convince people that are frustrated. They basically say the professionals at City Hall have failed us. The system's not working. You need to elect someone like me just because I'm different. He admitted he didn't have all the answers. He would just do things differently. I mean, if you look at Nithya Raman and Karen Bass, they're both City Hall insiders. Nithya Raman's been in city government for six years. Karen Bass has been in city government for decades. And they're arguing over who can make the existing system work better. That's not really exciting for someone who thinks that the existing system is broken. Now, in terms of the issues, what does that look like? What would homelessness be very different under Bass or Nithya Raman? Yeah. So I think there are three main issues that separate the candidates. The first is public safety funding. Mayor Bass, the mayor proposes a budget. The city council approves that budget. The mayor proposed a budget to hire more police. It passed the city council. Nithya Raman was one of the votes against that budget. So they're using that as an example of her not supporting more police officers. And our police force is reduced in numbers. The second was, is that the recent city council debate, Nithya Raman was pretty clear that she probably would not support Chief McDonald's reappointment. Largely because of his, he didn't resist enough during the ICE raids. Okay. So that's one area. The mayor can say, look, I support the police. I voted to increase their funding to hire more officers to make communities safer. So that's one area. The second area is homelessness. And it's, Mayor Bass is vulnerable. Homelessness has gone, well, it's gone down within the last year, but it's up significantly over the last four years. No one in the city of Los Angeles is satisfied. The city has spent billions of dollars and largely the problem has gotten worse. Nithya Raman says, ah, this homelessness went up in the city. It went down in my district by 49%. You know, I have the secret sauce to make it work. Well, the mayor can claim credit for that reduction too. And as a resident in Nithya Raman's fourth district, I think that the statistics are bogus. Homelessness hasn't gone down in her council district. I live there every day, but the mayor's approach is get people off the street first and then fix the problem. And Nithya's response is no one comes off the street until we can guarantee a bed for everyone, which with 60,000 homeless people on the street at any one given moment, the likelihood of us having 60,000 beds for everybody, it's never going to happen. The third one is really interesting. So, you know, Los Angeles is a city of single family homes. Nithya Raman supports legislation in Sacramento, SB 79, that allows Sacramento to override the city of Los Angeles and plan for what they call more density in communities. So I own my single family home. If my next door neighbor puts his house up for sale, they could take that house and put up four small homes on it. They call it density. Or a high rise. Well, high rises as much as they can, but just more people living in a neighborhood, you pack more people in, you have more walkable communities. The mayor says, no, the city of Los Angeles needs to control its own fortune. We're the second largest city in the United States, the largest city in California. We are going to control our own destiny. Nithya says we're not doing enough, therefore we need to densify. And it's a big rub. And Nithya says, well, I'm an urban planner, I know that this is the right thing to do. She hasn't sold huge swaths of Los Angeles, who single family home ownership is part of the American dream that everyone aspires to. So those are the three main issues where the candidates disagree. There is also kind of, I wouldn't say a battle, but the standoff between the tenants and the landlords. Do you see that coming into the politics of LA? Is that much of a thing? The fight between landlord and tenant is always one that creates controversy in the city of Los Angeles. The city of Los Angeles has tenant friendly protections as it is right now. It's hard to evict someone. It's very, very, you know, the city offers free legal counsel to tenants. I mean, it's tough to be a landlord in the city of Los Angeles. And the hard part is, is that the tenants rights advocates, they think that every landlord owns like 75, 100 apartment units. The average apartment owner has two to four units and they probably live in one of the units themselves. So they're fighting two different battles. Karen Bass, again, she skews left of center because there are more tenants than there are homeowners in the city of Los Angeles. So she will be more progressive on that. Nithya Raman takes that to the extreme. Rent control, capping rents, which it would be a dismal failure in the city of Los Angeles. You wouldn't get any improvements in, there'd be no incentive for people to improve their housing stock because it's already difficult to make money. Los Angeles is a left, is a progressive city. The challenge is, is how progressive do we want to get? Knowing that we've got the Superbowl coming next year. We've got the Olympics coming in 2028. We still have a massive population here that, you know, public safety and housing and affordability are all concerns. The one thing that neither candidate mentioned in their debate was taxes. Both of them, they have no problem raising taxes. And for homeowners or even for renters, because a lot of the taxes get passed on through, affordability is a big problem in Los Angeles. Do you think there will be more taxes under either one of them or both? Or what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, the biggest challenge with the city of Los Angeles right now is that the city has a structural budget deficit, meaning that they spend more than they take in every year. So they play games with the budget and move money around so that the budget appears to be balanced. But I mean, look, we saw even in the county of Los Angeles, there was a five-year tax for health care. There was no campaign against that tax measure. It lost by a tenth of a percentage point. Wow. So the people in Southern California, they're strapped. They can't afford more. So when government comes out with its hand out, they're more likely to get smacked down than to have somebody drop a quarter or a nickel into it. There was a potential fake poll. Can you tell us about this poll? Yeah, it was fascinating. So I received this fake poll the week before it was made public. And a reporter from a local paper wrote a very extensive article. And basically, the firm that did it said that they wanted to see how fast fake polling results could get out into the news. Well, duh. I mean, fake news spreads quickly. First of all, it wasn't a poll. They literally made it up. And second of all, they made up everything. They didn't survey anybody. They knew what a polling document looked like. And they just emailed it out. And what was shocking is it showed Mayor Bass with a lead over Nithya Raman, which, okay, that's probably not news, but it showed 85% of Spencer Pratt voters supporting Mayor Karen Bass. The friend who sent me that poll the week before, I was talking to her and I said, I go, I don't believe it. Do you believe that 85% of Spencer Pratt voters support Karen Bass? And she said, no. And I said, well, why? And she goes, why do you think? And I said, because nobody has campaigned yet. There's been no outreach by the Bass camp to bring these Pratt voters into the fold. And Spencer Pratt hasn't done anything to move them. Well, then can we come to find out that this group, and I don't want to get the name wrong, they came out and not only did they do a fake poll in Los Angeles, but they released a fake poll in the state of Wisconsin. And it says two things, you know, oh, polling can't be trusted. This wasn't polling. This was fake news. And it was the media then taking the fake news and saying, I got the story first without looking to say, who's this company? Who did they survey? What have they done before? I mean, basically nobody questioned the validity of it. They just flipped the result. Mayor Bass even highlighted the poll on social media to show you how quickly just, you know, Winston Churchill said a lie spreads halfway around the world before the truth can put its boots on. That's what happened here. And then a reporter covers it and exposes it. And then everybody's outraged at how it could garner so much attention with the desire of anybody, whether it's social media or the news media to be first without verifying any facts. I mean, thankfully it happened early enough that it didn't change the face of the race, but it had an impact for 48 hours. It was the most talked about thing in the mayor's race. Does this race have a big national implication or a statewide implication? This race will be an early testing ground, not so much for the Republicans because Republican votes are really not going to determine the next mayor. It's going to showcase somewhat of the divide in the Democratic party because you have a candidate who has DSA ties, Democratic Socialist ties, who is running as a progressive. Mayor Karen Bass is progressive, but she's more of a traditional old school Democrat. And I think that what you're going to see is old Democratic party versus new Democratic party and how the two fight each other without tearing themselves apart. And you're going to get presidential candidates across the United States looking at this race, knowing that LA has its own unique characteristics, but they will still look at how the fight takes place, how they counter each other's arguments. And I think it will provide people with a good tell for what the Democratic primaries are going to look like in 27 and 28. Another interesting fact about LA is a lot of people don't participate. It's the second largest city in the country. And a lot of people don't participate in the elections. The participation last cycle was 44%, right? And Mayor Bass got 55%. She got elected with 25% of the votes, roughly, right? And meanwhile, Rick Caruso spent $100 million, right? Or more. Was that more? 107, I think. Yes. From what you're saying, it sounds like Mayor Bass is going to win this. And do you think something could happen here that changes that? A couple things. I think, well, one, turnout in November will be higher than turnout in June. So the more voters that turn out, if they're younger voters, that helps Nithya Raman. Because younger voters, they're overwhelmingly Democrat, but they're also more progressive. I think, two, Nithya Raman made an interesting hire of a campaign consulting firm that worked for Zoran Mondani in New York called the Fight Agency. They will be very clever and they will make her ads more aggressive. And I think that, look, half the battle in a city like Los Angeles, just like New York, is it's the battle for eyeballs. You're struggling to get people to pay attention. So the challenge that both Mayor Bass and Council Member Raman have is convince more voters that the election is important. Spencer Pratt did that. He brought people to the polls that may not have turned out because he was interesting. He said things that people felt. You need to get Mayor Bass and Nithya Raman doing that thing to try to build that enthusiasm again. But big cities, generally speaking, they tend to turn out at lower rates than other non-big cities, in part because people are busy. People have more important things to do. I would argue what's more important than voting, but they feel that way. They're not enthusiastic about the candidates. That could definitely be a problem here. This is the most important civic responsibility that we as American citizens have. And I know that people get turned off by negative campaigning. That being said, get educated and make sure you vote your choice because you may not like what the other person is pushing forward. Now, in terms of negative campaigning, is that causing a lot of candidates to stay away from politics, people that could be qualified to come? Well, it attracts a certain type of person who wants to run for office, but it also deters some people who worry about being criticized in public. And here's the challenge that I have. So my friend Dan Schnur says, just because you're my opponent doesn't make you my enemy. And I think that too often now, we see the demonization of people who don't believe what you believe. And what that does is it chills conversation. And that's the challenge more than anything, is that people say, oh, he doesn't agree with me and they tune him out. That's not how democracy is supposed to work. Democracy is supposed to be the best idea wins. And I love to hear from people that I don't agree with because I can, I might learn something for one, but I'm cocky enough to say, I can convince them why they're wrong and show them why I'm right. Those are the type of people that traditionally have run for political campaigns. Now it's people that have some money and they can scream and yell the loudest. And they say, don't listen to him or her. He's a bozo. She's an idiot. That's the lowest, that's the lowest common denominator way of dividing society. I mean, look, people, emotions are powerful. They determine what people do. And anger is the most powerful emotion. Just because you can do something, meaning if you can go out and get a crowd rip roaring angry, it doesn't mean you should do it. And I think that's what a lot of politicians have a problem with. That's not going to be a problem in the city of Los Angeles because well, the two candidates for mayor, they don't, they don't agree with each other. They're being relatively civil in the grand scheme of things, but national politics and some state politics, it's devolved into a food fight that's fought out on TV and on social media. And some voters just say, this is disgusting. I want no part of this. And that breaks my heart as someone who does this for a living. Can it go back to what it used to be? It can always go back. It's perfectly fair for me to talk about our disagreement on issue positions. If it's public that you were divorced because you had an affair, perfectly relevant for me to bring that up. But for me to, you know, get overtly personal on things that are frankly not public, that's where you have to draw a line. How is that relevant to like, so if you're divorced and you had an affair and you're running on a family values platform, completely relevant. But if you're running for city attorney and they're talking about something that in college, you know, you did, you wrote a speech about something who cares. I mean, make it relevant to the office that you're seeking. I think that we need to get back to more Marcus of Queensbury rules where there's a little bit more structure and less of a, you know, my goal is, is, you know, I win by wearing you down to absolutely nothing. All that does is it makes the, a lot of voters just say, I tuned you out 45 minutes ago. I'm not even listening. That's not how democracy thrives. Look, when we get good candidates and well-run races, we get a high turnout. So good candidates yield good turnouts. So selecting the right candidates is really important. Which gets the public to care. Totally. And commit to. Yeah. Talk about things that are going to make my life better and compare and contrast is fine, but because someone is a dictator or you think that they're a dictator or a communist or a socialist or a bad person or whatever, choose your pejorative term. That's not a reason to vote for or against someone that's the, that's a weak mind at work who is trying to break humans down to their lowest basest emotions. That's not what a good leader does. Good leaders raise you up. They make your life better. Matt Klink, political strategist from LA. It was great to have you on California Insider. Thank you. Tell us what you think about this conversation with Matt. What are your thoughts in the mayoral race in Los Angeles right now? You can always leave us a comment or email us at siamak at californiasider.com. We read all of your emails and comments. I'm Siamak Kourami, this is California Insider. We'll see you next time.