activist

“Suffs,” Shaina Taub’s musical about how women finally secured the right to vote in America, won Tony Awards for its book and score. It lost the best musical race to “The Outsiders,” but the respect it earned when it opened last spring on Broadway made it an unequivocal winner.

The show is having its Los Angeles premiere at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre in a touring production that is smooth and smart. Taub’s work deserves nothing less than an A. The cast is excellent, the staging is graceful and the political message could not be more timely.

The show might not have the crackling vitality of “Hamilton” or the bluesy poignancy of “The Scottsboro Boys.” It’s a good deal more earnest than either of these history-laden musicals. There’s an educational imperative at the heart of “Suffs,” which deals with a subject that has been marginalized in schools and in the collective consciousness.

The 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, was ratified in 1920, a little more than a century ago. The history isn’t so distant yet I’m sure I wasn’t the only one at Wednesday’s opening who was learning about the forceful tactics that helped Alice Paul and her fellow suffragists push their movement over the finish line.

“Suffs,” a musical for the public square, is as informative as it is uplifting. It is above all a moving testament to the power of sisterhood. The struggle for equality continues to face crushing setbacks today, but Taub wants us to remember what can happen when people stand united for a just cause.

Alice (a winning Maya Keleher) doesn’t seem like a rabble-rouser. A bright, well-educated woman with a polite demeanor, she looks like a future teacher of the year more than a radical organizer. But she has an activist’s most essential quality: She won’t take no for an answer. (Keleher lends alluring warmth to the role Taub made her Broadway debut in.)

Marya Grandy and the company of the national tour of “Suffs.”

(Joan Marcus)

She’s rebuffed by Carrie Chapman Catt (Marya Grandy), the president of the National American Woman Suffrage Assn., whose motto (“Let your all-American mother vote”) is the basis for the show’s opening number, “Let Mother Vote” — a distillation of the old-guard approach that has yet to yield women the vote.

Alice wants to organize a march in Washington, D.C., to force the president’s reluctant hand, but Carrie prefers a more genteel strategy. “Miss Paul, if my late great mentor Susan B. Anthony taught me anything, it’s that men are only willing to consider our cause if we present it in a lady-like fashion.

“State by state, slow and steady, until the country’s ready” is, after all, NAWSA’s fundamental creed. But Alice points out that if they continue at this glacial pace they’ll be dead before they can ever cast a vote.

Swinging into action, Alice teams up with her friend Lucy Burns (Gwynne Wood), who worries that they haven’t the experience to take on such a momentous mission. “We’ve never planned a national action before,” she objects at the start of their duet “Find a Way.” But undaunted Alice has the bold idea of recruiting Inez Milholland (played at the opening night performance by Amanda K. Lopez), and a way forward miraculously materializes.

Inez has just the right glamorous public image that Alice thinks will give their march the publicity boost it needs. Studying for the bar exam, Inez is initially reluctant but agrees if she can lead the march on horseback.

This image of Inez on a steed becomes central both to the movement and to director Leigh Silverman’s production, which finds simple yet striking ways of bringing revolutionary change to life. A chorus line of activists wearing suffragist white (kudos to the luminous tact of costume designer Paul Tazewell) eloquently communicates what solidarity can pull off.

Brandi Porter, left, and Jenny Ashman as President Woodrow Wilson in “Suffs.”

(Joan Marcus)

An all-female and nonbinary cast dramatizes this inspiring American story. Taub takes some fictional license with the characters but largely sticks to the record.

Notable allies in Alice’s organization include Ruza Wenclawska (Joyce Meimei Zheng) a Polish-born trade union organizer with a no-nonsense grassroots style, and Doris Stevens (Livvy Marcus), a shy yet undeterred student from Nebraska who becomes the group’s secret weapon secretary.

Ida B. Wells (Danyel Fulton), an early leader in the civil rights movement, takes part in the march but resists being used as a prop in what she calls NAWSA’s “white women convention.” Mary Church Terrell (Trisha Jeffrey), a fellow Black activist, by contrast believes that it’s only through participation that representation can move forward.

President Woodrow Wilson (Jenny Ashman), who makes promises to the suffragists he is hesitant to keep, is a crucial target of Alice’s pressure campaign. Her group’s access to him is aided by Dudley Malone (Brandi Porter), Wilson’s right-hand man, who becomes smitten with Doris.

The score marches ahead in a manner that makes progress seem, if not inevitable, relentless in its pursuit of justice. The songs combine the patriotic exuberance of John Philip Sousa and the American breadth of Broadway composer Stephen Flaherty (“Ragtime”). The note of pop accessibility in Taub’s music and the satiric humor of her lyrics add to the buoyancy. You won’t leave humming a tune, but the overall effect (while ephemeral) is pleasing in the theater.

With the history already determined, the book can’t help resembling at times a civics exhibition. Dramatic tension is hard to come by. Alice and her cohorts suffer grave disappointments and indignities (including a harrowing stint in prison), but the eventual outcome of their struggles is known.

“Suffs” sometimes feels like a history lesson neatly compartmentalized into Important Episodes. There’s a whiff of PBS to the way the musical unfolds. This is cultural programming that’s good for you.

But the teamwork of the performers honors the messy yet undeniably effective cooperation of Alice and her freedom fighters — women who changed the world by not staying silent in their prescribed place.

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s Noah Goldberg, with an assist from David Zahniser and Doug Smith, giving you the latest on city and county government.

Could L.A.’s Zohran Mamdani moment be here?

It’s definitely a long shot. But Rae Huang, a 43-year-old community organizer, minister and dues-paying member of the Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, is making her move, throwing her hat into the ring for mayor of Los Angeles.

The virtually unknown candidate is the deputy director of Housing Now California, a coalition that fights displacement of tenants at the state and local levels.

Huang, who is planning a campaign launch on Sunday, is shying away from comparisons to Mamdani, a democratic socialist who was elected mayor of New York City last week. She has not been endorsed by DSA-LA, though she hopes to be. Nevertheless, she sees next year’s election as a “moment for change.”

“We are in a place in our country and in our political environment where folks feel stuck and afraid,” Huang said in an interview. “They feel like nothing is going to change, and the things that are changing are making things even worse.”

Huang, a Sawtelle resident, has never run for elected office. She faces an extremely uphill battle against Mayor Karen Bass, a veteran politician with close ties to the Democratic Party who has spent much of the year denouncing President Trump’s immigration crackdown in L.A.

Still, Huang could complicate Bass’ reelection bid by playing a spoiler role, pulling away left-of-center voters in a year when the incumbent is facing criticism over her handling of the Palisades fire, a struggling city budget and less-than-optimal public services.

Bass already has a challenger in former Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Austin Beutner, who has assailed her record in each of those areas. And it’s still not clear whether billionaire developer Rick Caruso, who lost to Bass in 2022, will jump in the race.

The larger the pool of candidates, the more work Bass will have to do in the June primary to secure an outright victory. If she falls below 50% of the vote, she would need to wage an expensive runoff campaign in the November 2026 election.

Doug Herman, a spokesperson for Bass’ campaign, said that under her leadership, “there has been unprecedented progress on the issues that matter most to Angelenos.”

“Homelessness has declined for the first time in two consecutive years, neighborhoods are safer with significant drops in crime, and the Palisades fire recovery continues far ahead of pace with the fastest recovery and rebuilding in California history,” Herman said in a statement. “In addition, there was no better defender of Los Angeles than Mayor Karen Bass when Trump’s ICE raids started and we won a court ruling to help stop the illegal raids and unconstitutional arrests.”

Sara Sadhwani, a politics professor at Pomona College, said the upcoming mayoral election differs from recent L.A. contests that were won by DSA-aligned candidates. In many of those races, DSA-backed challengers ousted incumbents who were already struggling politically, she said.

The same goes for New York City, where former Gov. Andrew Cuomo — Mamdani’s main opponent — was trying to emerge from scandal and stage a comeback, Sadhwani added.

The Democratic incumbent, Eric Adams, was so weakened by his own legal issues that he ended up running as an independent and then withdrawing from the race.

“Bass has her detractors,” Sadhwani said, “but is not in such an embattled position as Eric Adams or even Cuomo, who had stepped down from the governorship amid sexual harassment claims.”

Huang said she is in it to win — and hopes to highlight important issues for people on the left. She wants to expand public housing, make buses free for Angelenos and invest more in unarmed crisis responders.

Sound familiar? Those would pretty much be Mamdani’s talking points.

Huang said she was “hopeful” when Bass was elected. Now, she lobs plenty of criticism at Bass.

She thinks the mayor’s Inside Safe program is allowing too many people to slip back into homelessness. She believes Bass should explicitly support the Venice Dell affordable housing project. And she doesn’t feel the mayor did enough to curb police violence during the summer’s chaotic protests over federal immigration raids.

Huang is not the first to run from Bass’ left. In 2022, late-arriving mayoral hopeful Gina Viola won nearly 7% of the vote, scooping up more than 44,000 votes in the primary after positioning herself as the self-proclaimed “infamous defund-the-police candidate.”

Viola said she is glad to see Huang get into the race, and with much more time to campaign. Viola ran in 2022 with just three and a half months left before the primary. Huang has nearly seven months.

“What she needs to do is [win over] those voters that are so terribly disenfranchised that they don’t have anything to vote for,” Viola said.

Part of getting those potential voters out to the polls is having a strong ground game, knocking on doors and raising money. An endorsement from the local DSA chapter could help Huang get her name out to more Angelenos, Sadhwani said.

DSA members have petitioned to endorse Huang. She needs to receive 50 signatures, which would trigger a vote of chapter members, with 60% required to capture the endorsement.

“It’s certainly exciting to see a left challenger to a status-quo Democrat. That always pushes the conversation in a good direction,” said Claire Palmer, an organizer with DSA-LA.

There has been “enthusiasm” among members about Huang, Palmer said.

As for the DSA-backed members of the City Council?

“I haven’t sat down with them yet,” Huang said.

While four DSA-backed L.A. City Council members celebrated Mamdani’s win with a party at a Highland Park bar on election night, it’s not clear that they have any interest in getting behind a candidate other than Bass.

“Karen Bass is the most progressive mayor we’ve ever had in L.A.,” Councilmember Nithya Raman told The Times at the party.

Bass “has been doing a good job at least in handling this crisis,” Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez said in June, referring to Bass’ handling of the federal immigration raids.

Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez has already endorsed Bass.

State of play

— THE RENT IS TOO DAMN CAPPED: The City Council voted Wednesday to lower the annual cap on rent increases for rent-stabilized apartments to 4%. Many landlords and developers opposed the move, saying it would eat into their bottom line and drive away investment. Council members argued that the changes are needed to keep Angelenos from falling into homelessness.

— WILDFIRE PROBE: Los Angeles County has opened an investigation into State Farm General’s treatment of January wildfire victims following complaints that claims were delayed, denied and underpaid. The state’s largest home insurer received notice of the probe in a letter demanding records and data showing whether the company violated the state’s Unfair Competition Law.

— MISSING INFO: At least one official in the Los Angeles Fire Department was aware of concerns that its firefighters were ordered to stop mop-up operations for a Jan. 1 brush fire that later reignited into the massive Palisades fire. Yet the department’s 70-page after-action report on the Palisades fire didn’t include that information — or any detailed examination of the reignition, The Times reported this week.

— FAREWELL TO A WATCHDOG: One of L.A. County’s most prominent citizen watchdogs is dead at 62. Eric Preven, a resident of Studio City, advocated for increased public access to city and county meetings, filed countless public information requests and regularly offered his views on CityWatch. “It wasn’t just like [he was] shooting from the hip,” said Supervisor Kathryn Barger. “He would do his research.”

— MEMORIES OF MARQUEZ: Environmentalists are mourning the death of Wilmington clean air advocate Jesse Marquez, who battled the Port of Los Angeles for years over emissions from trucks, trains and ships. Marquez, 74, died Nov. 3 from health complications that developed after he was struck by a vehicle while in a crosswalk in January.

— A NEW ROADBLOCK: The proposal from Frank McCourt for a gondola between Union Station and Dodger Stadium faced yet another setback this week, with the City Council urging Metro to kill the project. “This resolution tells Metro that the city of Los Angeles refuses to be bought by shiny renderings and empty promises,” said Hernandez, who represents Chinatown and the stadium area.

— PROTEST POWERS: The council’s Public Safety Committee endorsed legislation this week that would bar the LAPD from using crowd control weapons against peaceful protesters and journalists. The proposal, which now heads to the full council, would prohibit the department from using “kinetic energy projectiles” or “chemical agents” unless officers are threatened with physical violence.

— POLICING THE POLICE: The LAPD took more than a year to begin fully disclosing domestic abuse allegations against its officers, as required by a state law passed in 2021. The revelation came out during a recent hearing regarding an officer who was fired after being accused of time card fraud and physically assaulting her former romantic partner, a fellow cop.

— CHIEF IN CHARGE: The council voted Friday to make Deputy Chief Jaime Moore the city’s newest fire chief. Moore, a 30-year department veteran, said one of his top priorities will be improving morale in a department that has faced heavy criticism for its handling of the Palisades fire. He also plans to seek an outside investigation into missteps by fire officials in the days leading up to that disaster.

— GRILLING GIBSON DUNN: U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter pressed attorneys from Gibson Dunn this week on the fees they’ve been charging the city in the landmark LA Alliance homelessness case. At one point, the firm had 15 lawyers billing the city $1,295 per hour, regardless of their titles or experience.

Carter also voiced his anger over reports that a South L.A. homeless facility had only 44 beds, not the 88 spelled out in a contract awarded to a nonprofit group. The judge set a hearing for Wednesday on whether to hold the city in contempt over what he described as delaying tactics in complying with an order he issued earlier this year.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature initiative to combat homelessness did not launch any new operations this week. The program did move about a dozen people indoors from Skid Row, according to Bass’ team.
• On the docket next week: The council heads out on recess next week, with members taking part in the National League of Cities conference in Salt Lake City. Meetings are also canceled the following week for the Thanksgiving holiday. They’ll be back Dec. 2.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to [email protected]. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

SEATTLE — First-term Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell conceded his reelection fight to progressive activist Katie Wilson on Thursday, handing another victory to leftist Democrats around the country frustrated with unaffordability, homelessness, public safety and the actions of President Trump’s administration.

Harrell, a centrist Democrat who previously served three terms on the City Council, led in early results. But Washington conducts all-mail elections, with ballots postmarked by Election Day. Later-arriving votes, which historically trend more liberal, broke heavily in Wilson’s favor, adding to a progressive shift to the left nationally.

In a concession speech at City Hall on Thursday afternoon, Harrell said he had congratulated Wilson in a “delightful” call.

“I feel very good about the future of this country and this city still,” he said.

Wilson, 43, is a democratic socialist who has never held elected office. She told a news conference later Thursday that it was hard for her to believe she had been elected mayor, considering that at the beginning of this year she had no intention of running, and she acknowledged concerns about her lack of experience: “No one saw this coming.”

But she also spoke to the resonance of her volunteer-driven campaign among voters concerned about affordability and public safety in a city where the cost of living has soared as Amazon and other tech companies proliferated. Universal child care, better mass transit, better public safety and stable, affordable housing are among her priorities, and she said she would take office with a strong mandate to pursue them, though she acknowledged the city also faces a significant budget shortfall.

Wilson called herself a coalition builder and community organizer, and said she would also work with those who questioned her qualifications to lead a city with more than 13,000 employees and a budget of nearly $9 billion: “This is your city too.”

“When I say this is your city, that means you have a right to be here and to live a dignified life — whatever your background, whatever your income,” Wilson said. “But it also means that we all have a collective responsibility for this city and for each other. … We cannot tackle the major challenges facing our city unless we do it together.”

She will be working with a relatively new City Council: Only two of the seven council members have served more than one term.

Harrell was elected mayor in 2021 following the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic and racial justice protests over George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police. With crime falling, more police being hired, less visible drug use and many homeless encampments removed from city parks, the business-backed Harrell once seemed likely to cruise to reelection.

But Trump’s return to office — and his efforts to send in federal agents or cut funding for blue cities — helped reawaken Seattle’s progressive voters. The lesser-known Wilson, a democratic socialist, ran a campaign that echoed some of the themes of progressive mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani in New York. She trounced Harrell by nearly 10 percentage points in the August primary and quickly became favored to win the mayor’s office.

Wilson studied at an Oxford University college in England but did not graduate. She founded the small nonprofit Transit Riders Union in 2011 and has led campaigns for better public transportation, higher minimum wages, stronger renter protections and more affordable housing. She herself is a renter, living in a one-bedroom apartment in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, and says that has shaped her understanding of Seattle’s affordability crisis.

Wilson criticized Harrell as doing too little to provide more shelter and said his encampment sweeps have been cosmetic, merely pushing unhoused people around the city. Wilson also painted him as a City Hall fixture who bore responsibility for the status quo.

Harrell, 67, played on the Rose Bowl champion University of Washington football team in 1978 before going to law school. His father, who was Black, came to Seattle from the segregated Jim Crow South, and his mother, a Japanese American, was incarcerated at an internment camp in Minidoka, Idaho, during World War II after officials seized her family’s Seattle flower shop — experiences that fostered his understanding of the importance of civil rights and inclusivity.

Both candidates touted plans for affordable housing, combating crime and attempting to Trump-proof the city, which receives about $150 million a year in federal funding. Both want to protect Seattle’s sanctuary city status.

Wilson has proposed a city-level capital gains tax to help offset federal funding the city might lose and to pay for housing. Harrell says that idea is ineffective because a city capital gains tax could easily be avoided by those who would be required to pay it.

Johnson writes for the Associated Press.

NEW YORK — With the Pentagon’s press room largely cleared of mainstream reporters, conservative activist and presidential ally Laura Loomer says she has been granted a credential to work there.

Loomer has an influential social media presence and the ear of President Trump, frequently campaigning for the firings of government officials she deems insufficiently loyal to his administration. Some targets have been in the field of national security, including Dan Driscoll, secretary of the Army.

Pentagon officials did not immediately return a message seeking comment on Tuesday. The Washington Post first reported the news of her attaining credentials.

Virtually all Pentagon reporters for legacy media outlets walked out last month rather than agree to a new policy they say would restrict their ability to report news not given approval for release by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Several right-wing outlets have taken their place, although the banned journalists are continuing to work on stories related to the Pentagon.

“I’m excited to announce that after a year of breaking the most impactful stories that pertain to our national security and rooting out deceptive and disloyal bad actors” from the Defense Department, she was ready to join the press corps, Loomer said on X, formerly Twitter. She did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Earlier this year, she criticized Driscoll for publicly honoring a Medal of Honor recipient who had previously spoken at a Democratic National Convention. Separately, Driscoll rescinded the appointment of a former Biden administration official to teach at West Point after Loomer attacked him for it.

Although Trump later downplayed Loomer’s influence, the president last spring fired a handful of National Security Council officials after she had presented him with evidence of their supposed disloyalty.

Still, she’s been a polarizing force among some in the administration, wary of her influence, which has included riding on Air Force One with Trump. Although granted space in the Pentagon press room, Loomer has not received reporting credentials at the White House. Loomer has also been criticized for entertaining conspiracy theories and making anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim posts.

“There is no denying that my investigative reporting has had a massive impact on the landscape of personnel decisions within the Executive Branch, our intelligence agencies and the Pentagon,” Loomer wrote on X. “I look forward to covering the Pentagon and breaking more stories that impact our country and our national security.”

In her social media post, she also reached out to people to alert her to news through “the Loomered Tip Line, the most influential Tip Line in all of DC.”

Phil Stewart, a national security reporter for Reuters, noted on a social media post Tuesday that Hegseth’s new media policy would make reporters subject to having their access revoked for seeking out information from Defense Department personnel that had not been authorized for release.

However, Loomer’s appeal for tips did not explicitly target people who work at the Defense Department.

Bauder writes for the Associated Press.