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GELFAND’S WORLD - We’re coming up on election day, and for us voters, there are 3 major divisions: the local, the state, and the national. This column has focused mainly on the governor’s race because the debates landed all at once. The summary is pretty simple: Any of the 4 main Democratic candidates is acceptable; all (except Steyer) have experience serving in office, have been vetted, and have defended their positions mostly adequately. Steyer has a lot of experience in pushing various reforms and in opposing the worst excesses of Donald Trump. Of the Republicans, Bianco is a hopeless extremist and Hilton, although educated and experienced (at least in British government) is too attached to the MAGA cult to be considered trustworthy. We just don’t know whether he would be another Pete Wilson or another Ron DeSantis.
For concerned Democratic and liberal-minded independent voters, the tactical choice is Xavier Becerra, with a close second in Steyer, with the caveat that Steyer is definitely going low against Becerra and using his billions to do so. That having been said, Mahan seems to have the fewest ticks in his hide in terms of scandals big or small, and Katie Porter’s reputation for shooting her mouth off would be considered a virtue amongst Republicans. One other caveat: Recent polls are all over the place among Democratic frontrunners, with Steyer way ahead in one poll and Becerra ahead in another. The big fear among some liberals – that Hilton and Bianco would finish one-two and therefore be the candidates in an all-Republican runoff in November, seems to be disappearing, since Bianco has fallen in the polls. Maybe the debates had some value after all.
Now for the race for Mayor of Los Angeles, with the incumbency of Karen Bass on the line. Her main competitors are a newcomer by the name of Spencer Pratt and her liberal Democratic opponent, City Council representative Nithya Raman. I’m going to cut to the chase here and go to the one main issue – the issue that has been communicated so well by CityWatch writer Jack Humphreville. The City Council keeps agreeing to salary increases for municipal employees. When I looked at the overall increase over the past couple of decades, it was pretty close to an annual increase of 5% per year, which is what we mean when we refer to an exponential increase.
The problem with this exponentially increasing cost in salaries is that the city can’t really afford it. What happens in actuality is that unfilled jobs stay unfilled (they call this a hiring freeze) and the city does its best to negotiate some kind of slow-down in paying those wage increases.
And the main deal in terms of you and me, the residents of this city, is that expenditures on supplies, raw materials such as cement and asphalt, and of course contracts with private companies – they all get cut or frozen. This can, by the way, include costs such as the next emergency preparedness budget.
In other words, the elected officials who voted for the salary increases and the mayor who signed that budget are all responsible for the condition that the city is in.
From the liberal Democratic side, that leaves Nithya Raman as the candidate who showed some responsibility.
Of course you also have Spencer Pratt, but that would involve voting for another conservative Republican. Besides all the rest of the baggage that this entails, I’ve got another concern, although at the moment it is just a concern. I missed the debate that took place the other night because I was attending a different event (The View from the Balcony.) But if I understand correctly, Pratt (a Pacific Palisades resident when the fire occurred) said that, as mayor, he wouldn’t leave any reservoir unfilled. Let’s also recall that the reservoir was left empty because it lacked a cover. And why, we might ask, is that important? Mosquitos.
In southern California, we have mosquitos that carry some pretty nasty infections. We even have an entire government agency dedicated to protecting us from these problems. You can read about the Greater Los Angeles County Vector Control District here. I’m going to guess that candidate Pratt does not routinely visit a city neighborhood council, because the Vector Control District regularly visits the councils to talk about its work. By the way, we might remember to ask Pratt whether he accepts the reality of global warming rather than the crazy blither about warming (not to mention the Palisades fire) that comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth. We need to be able to trust that our next mayor will be a rational human being, particularly as it relates to public safety.
As I mentioned above, the remaining candidate, the one who has experience and voted No on a ruinous salary increase is Nithya Raman. So far so good, but we also have to be honest about what some of us will see as negatives. In her remarks at the debate, she supported developing our housing so as to make it denser. My neighborhood council, as well as others, opposed this approach. Part of it involves statewide legislation that comes from a northern California perspective, and which is strenuously opposed by Los Angeles locals. I don’t know what kind of chance Raman has (even to make the runoff election), but if elected she would have to tiptoe through the potential minefield that any such proposal would create.
Raman also has a history of changing her position on the LAPD, in that she supported defunding at one point but seems to have switched more recently.
Interestingly, all three frontrunners are highly educated. Raman has the edge here, having graduated from Harvard and earned a Masters degree at MIT.
If we are ever to get back to a fiscally sound city of Los Angeles, it involves one attribute. I’m going to quote from an old story that goes back a generation. It involves a psychiatrist in training and his mentor, an experienced psychiatrist. The subject involved the question, “How do you know when you are grown up?” The answer: “When you can say No.” That’s what has been missing in L.A. city government these past years – a City Council and a mayor who can say No to the municipal unions when it comes to spending increases that the city cannot afford. This has been a distinct weakness among Democrats. Any Republican would probably say No on fiscal questions, but is there any Republican who can also say No to the social extremism of the party and blind support for the policies of the current president?
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
