Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s David Zahniser, giving you the latest on city and county government.
We’ve got a month left before the June 2 primary election, with mail-in ballots already heading to voters’ mailboxes.
As if on cue, the big campaign money is pouring in from an array of well-funded interests: business groups, labor unions, hotels, taxicab companies and even one candidate’s mother.
To get around the city’s strict fundraising limits, those donors are putting much larger sums into “independent expenditure” campaigns that operate separately from their favored candidates.
Let’s take a look at some of the outsized spending to emerge in recent weeks.
Police union targets Raman
Things had been pretty sleepy in the L.A. mayor’s race, even with Mayor Karen Bass facing challenges from Councilmember Nithya Raman, reality TV personality Spencer Pratt and 11 other opponents.
That all changed after the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union representing rank-and-file officers, dropped more than $400,000 on ads targeting Raman, who was elected to the council twice with support from Democratic Socialists of America, which isn’t endorsing in the mayoral primary.
Bass has been aligned with the union on a number of issues, supporting the hiring of more cops, signing off on higher police salaries and vetoing a ballot proposal to let Police Chief Jim McDonnell fire officers.
Raman, on the other hand, has been campaigning on her opposition to a package of police pay increases, saying the decision by Bass and the council to approve them was “politically motivated.”
Bass and others said the increases were needed to keep police from leaving a department that has lost 14% of its officers since 2020.
The league tried and failed to unseat Raman two years ago. This time around, the union is texting voters a campaign video highlighting her opposition to a city law barring homeless people from setting up encampments within 500 feet of a school.
The ad, which appears on YouTube, Hulu and other platforms, cites Raman’s recent vote against a new “no-camping” zone in Venice, in an area plagued by assaults and other crimes.
“Raman has voted over 75 times to allow homeless camps next to schools, daycares, parks and other sensitive locations, undermining public safety,” the ad’s narrator says.
Raman responded with her own campaign video saying Bass gave the union “more money than the city could even afford,” forcing city leaders to cut other services “to the bone.”
“This is what happens when a city governs for powerful interests rather than working people,” she said.
The league is planning to spend more than $1 million opposing Raman, and it’s already gotten some help. For example, office building owner Kilroy Realty Group has given $100,000 to the anti-Raman campaign.
A mother of a campaign
Real estate executive Zach Sokoloff has a not-so-secret weapon as he seeks to unseat City Controller Kenneth Mejia: his mom.
Sheryl Sokoloff is the spouse of Jonathan Sokoloff, managing partner of the Los Angeles-based private equity investment firm Leonard Green & Partners. She recently dropped $2.5 million into a committee promoting her son, which has produced digital ads accusing Mejia of performing too few audits.
“Zach Sokoloff will actually do the job as controller,” the ad’s narrator says in one 30-second spot.
Mejia, in an email, called the attacks “baseless” and accused Sokoloff’s family of “using their extraordinary wealth to try to buy the Controller’s position.”
“Unlike my opponent, I do not have any millionaire family members who can bankroll my campaign,” he said. “Just like last time we ran, we’re relying on small dollar donations from LA residents who are inspired by our record of providing unprecedented transparency and accountability on their tax dollars.”
Spending surge in the 11th
We already knew the race for the 11th District, which covers L.A.’s coastal neighborhoods, had gotten outrageously expensive.
Last week, Councilmember Traci Park reported raising nearly $1.3 million. Human rights attorney Faizah Malik, Park’s lone challenger, took in her own impressive haul of $454,000.
Turns out the independent expenditure campaigns in the race are nearly as costly.
Two city employee unions — the Police Protective League and United Firefighters of Los Angeles City Local 112 — have spent nearly $900,000 on efforts to get Park reelected. And they’re getting help.
The firefighters, a Park ally since her 2022 campaign, collected $150,000 for their pro-Park effort from Western States Regional Council of Carpenters, a construction trade union. The police union picked up $150,000 from restaurateur Jerry Greenberg and $200,000 from real estate company Douglas Emmett Properties, which gained notoriety for its push to evict tenants from West L.A.’s Barrington Plaza.
Malik, backed by Democratic Socialists of America, accused Park of doing the bidding of her donors at the expense of “everyday working Angelenos,” by supporting police raises and fighting stronger renter protections.
Hotel workers take aim at Park
Meanwhile, a different union is doing its own sizable spend.
Unite Here Local 11, which represents hotel workers, has put nearly $340,000 so far on efforts to promote Malik and tear down Park. The union’s leadership has been furious with Park, who voted against a hike in the minimum wage for tourism workers to $30 per hour.
Park said the wage hike would harm the city’s hospitality industry, costing hotel workers their jobs.
Like the police and the firefighters, Unite Here is not going it alone. The union picked up $50,000 from United Teachers Los Angeles and another $50,000 from Smart Justice California, a group focused on less punitive public safety strategies.
Unite Here has attempted to portray Park, a Democrat, as a Trump sympathizer, highlighting remarks she made to the president when he visited Pacific Palisades in the wake of the Palisades fire. The union also pointed out that she voted against making L.A. a sanctuary city for undocumented immigrants.
Park told news radio station KNX in 2024 that the state already has a sanctuary law, and that she considered the ordinance to be an act of “symbolic resistance” — one that would jeopardize federal funding.
On Thursday, Park accused Unite Here of using a picture of her with personnel from the Army Corps of Engineers to falsely imply that she was standing alongside ICE. The Army Corps removed debris from thousands of burned-out properties in the Palisades.
Park, in a statement, called the mail pieces “dishonest and disgusting.”
Unite Here didn’t directly address Park’s allegation, but told The Times that “Local 11 believes that our local elected officials should not collaborate with the Trump administration in any way.”
Speaking of the hotel wage
Unite Here isn’t the only player in the hotel wage fight to leap into this year’s council races.
Two L.A.-based hotels, working with the California Hotel and Lodging Assn., have put a combined $300,000 into a political action committee supporting Maria Lou Calanche, who is seeking to unseat Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez; political aide Jose Ugarte, who is running to replace Councilmember Curren Price; and Park in the 11th.
The group, which goes by the name Fix Los Angles PAC, doesn’t seem to be sweating all the details. Its phone script to voters, which was filed recently with the Ethics Commission, got Calanche’s name wrong, referring to her as Mary instead of Maria.
State of play
— EXPANDING THE VOTE: L.A. voters could be asked in November to take the first step toward giving noncitizens the right to vote in city and school board elections. City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, now running for reelection, wants voters to give the council the authority to let noncitizens vote in elections for mayor, council and other city offices, as well as the school board.
— HOME SHARING HOLDOUTS: Bass is looking to relax the city’s rules on home-sharing, by letting residents rent their second homes on a short-term basis through Airbnb and other platforms. Some council members were cool to the idea, saying this week that they fear such a move would shrink the city’s housing supply.
— EYE IN THE SKY: The LAPD deployed drones more than 3,000 times last year, using them mostly for emergency calls or officers’ requests for help, according to a report submitted to the Police Commission. The 3-foot-wide surveillance devices are being used by a department already known for its sizable fleet of helicopters.
— SEIZING CONTROL: Bass and Councilmembers Tim McOsker and Ysabel Jurado want the city of L.A. to obtain majority control over the embattled Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, a city-county agency that delivers services to the region’s unhoused population. That proposal comes a year after the county’s Board of Supervisors voted to pull more than $300 million out of LAHSA.
— A GLOOMY OUTLOOK: L.A. voters lack confidence in the ability of city, county and state officials to make housing more affordable, according to a survey conducted by the Los Angeles Business Council.
— READY FOR OUR CLOSE-UP: L.A. plans to install 125 speed cameras by the end of July, in the hope of catching misbehaving drivers. But there are already some takeaways from San Francisco, where the technology is being credited with getting drivers to slow down.
QUICK HITS
- Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to combat homelessness returned to South Los Angeles, sending outreach workers to areas around 23rd and Broadway, Adams Boulevard at Main Street, and Washington Boulevard at Main Street.
- On the docket next week: The major candidates for mayor are set to square off Wednesday at a forum sponsored by NBC4 and Telemundo 52, in partnership with Loyola Marymount University and the Skirball Cultural Center.
Stay in touch
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