“Over the three games you’re definitely looking at below-par performances,” said Willie Miller, who played at the 1982 and 1986 World Cups for Scotland.
“I keep looking back on the Denmark game [November’s 4-2 win to seal qualification] with those outstanding goals, but they didn’t get anywhere near those levels.”
The former defender described the lack of a top-class striker as “a major issue” and said he was “uncertain about the logic of a few selections”.
However, he did back Clarke by adding: “He got us there and that’s what the Scotland manager’s job is.
“He has introduced a real togetherness in the squad as well, which wasn’t always the case.”
With 81 matches under his belt, Clarke is Scotland’s longest-serving manager.
Support from the Scottish FA has been emphatic, with their coffers significantly enhanced by participation at three of the past four major finals.
“I’m sure he can go again over the next few years if he wants to,” Miller added of Clarke.
“The new contract was a positive step. I think it was the right thing to do.”
Scotland conceded soft, early goals in defeats by Morocco and Brazil, with former striker James McFadden saying: “The defending was certainly below the standard we’re used to and the errors were costly.
“I just feel the players could have shown more. We could have done better against Morocco in terms of having a go.
“But a lot of people think we should have had two penalties and a red card in that game, which is nothing to do with the manager and players.
The top strategist for Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ reelection bid has left her campaign, just as she is gearing up for a bruising showdown against City Councilmember Nithya Raman in the Nov. 3 runoff.
Douglas Herman, who has worked with Bass since 2021, told The Times on Wednesday that he stepped down from the campaign earlier in the day. He is being replaced by Julie Chávez Rodriguez, who was campaign manager for the Biden and Harris presidential campaigns in 2024, a Bass spokesperson said.
Chávez Rodriguez has spent the past few months running Unidos Con Karen Bass 2026, an independent expenditure campaign that focused on Latino voter turnout during the primary.
Herman, asked about his departure, said he left due to “strategic differences” regarding the direction of the reelection campaign. He did not provide details.
The Bass spokesperson, Alex Stack, declined to discuss Herman’s exit.
“Going into the general election, our campaign is proud to announce that Julie Chávez Rodriguez will be leading the team,” he said in a statement.
The granddaughter of César Chávez, co-founder of the United Farm Workers union, Chávez Rodriguez worked in both the Obama and the Biden administrations. She ran Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign until he dropped out and then ran Kamala Harris’ campaign, losing to President Trump. While working for Harris, she courted Latinos and working-class voters in battleground states.
Herman was a combative messenger for Bass, issuing broadsides against her rivals as she fought for a second four-year term. He had been advising her since her first run for mayor, when she defeated real estate developer Rick Caruso by about 10 percentage points. He also helped her fend off a recall attempt while in office.
Bass was the top vote getter in the June 2 primary election, securing 34% of the vote, compared to 29% for Raman and about 26% for reality TV personality Spencer Pratt. With a majority of voters registering disapproval of her performance, she faces a tough runoff campaign.
Raman, first elected in 2020, is expected to be a formidable opponent, drawing on her support from younger voters, entertainment industry workers and activists in the YIMBY movement, which seeks to tear down regulatory barriers to housing construction.
JUNEAU, Alaska — A man with the same name and party affiliation as Alaska Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan on Monday challenged a decision by a top state elections official to disqualify his candidacy and remove him from the August primary ballot.
A court filing, on behalf of the challenger Sullivan by his attorneys, said the decision by Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher disqualifying him violates state and federal law. It asks that he be placed on the ballot. Sullivan, a retired teacher from the small fishing community of Petersburg, has maintained that he’s a qualified candidate for U.S. Senate and that election officials lacked a legal basis to boot him from the ballot.
The U.S. Constitution lays out three exclusive qualifications for the Senate, addressing age, citizenship and residency, his attorneys wrote.
“Nothing in Alaska law regulates in any way the private motivations that draw individuals to declare or campaign for office,” the filing by attorneys Jeffrey Robinson, Bryn Pallesen and Zoe Eisberg states.
Sullivan’s entrance into the race, days before the June 1 filing deadline, drew condemnation from Sen. Sullivan and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. They called the challenger a sham candidate and alleged he was working with Democrats to boost Democratic former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola’s chances in the race. Peltola’s campaign and state Democrats have denied the allegation, as has the challenger.
Sen. Sullivan and Peltola are the highest-profile contenders in a race with more than a dozen candidates. It’s one of the most prominent U.S. Senate races in this year’s midterm elections — one both parties consider crucial to their efforts to control the chamber.
Steve Kirch, a spokesperson for the division, said the agency had no comment and does not discuss “ongoing reviews, investigations or related proceedings.” Beecher has previously noted that ballots are due to be printed on Sunday.
Alaska Department of Law spokesperson Sam Curtis said the agency will defend the division’s finding and looked forward to a swift ruling from the court.
On June 15, a week after Republican Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom announced an investigation into the challenger Sullivan’s run, Beecher disqualified him. She concluded that his declaration of candidacy “was not filed in order to declare an actual good-faith candidacy for the office of United States Senator, but was instead filed with a purpose to confuse or mislead and to thereby compromise the ballot’s fairness or neutrality.”
In announcing an investigation, Dahlstrom cited “credible allegations” that Sullivan declared his candidacy “in coordination with another candidate and campaign” with an intent to confuse and “manipulate” voters. But in removing the challenger from the ballot, Beecher did not mention finding any evidence of alleged coordination with Peltola or Democratic Party officials.
The challenger Sullivan, when asked in an interview with the Associated Press earlier this month if he’d had any contact with Peltola’s campaign, responded ”zero, none, zilch.”
Beecher said she based her decision on factors including that he had registered to vote as Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. and in conjunction with his candidacy changed his party affiliation to Republican. She cited similarities between his campaign website and the senator’s, and his work with a consultant whose clients have included some Democrats.
The form congressional candidates in Alaska complete asks them how they would like to be referred to on the ballot and their preferred party affiliation.
Beecher said she acted in line with a regulation that says a candidate’s name may not appear on a ballot with academic or professional titles or “in a manner that is confusing or misleading to voters or compromises the fairness or neutrality of the ballot.”
In response to questions from Democratic state Rep. Andrew Gray, legislative attorney Andrew Dunmire last week said the regulation cited by Beecher does not forbid placing Sullivan’s name on the ballot. He said the elections division could comply with it by designing the ballot in a way that allows voters to distinguish between both Sullivans.
It’s a position echoed by the attorneys for the challenger Sullivan.
The challenger initially had been certified and listed on the state’s candidate list as Dan J. Sullivan. The senator was listed as Dan S. Sullivan and denoted as the incumbent.
Alaska has open primaries in which the top four vote-getters, regardless of party affiliation, advance to the ranked-choice general election.
The Walt Disney Co. is rallying public support for ABC as it faces an early Federal Communications Commission review of its TV station licenses and the guest booking policy of its daytime talk show “The View.”
ABC began running spots Monday asking viewers to comment on the FCC’s recent actions that Disney sees as an effort to stifle speech seen as critical of President Trump. The president has repeatedly threatened to pull broadcast licenses of TV outlets that feature journalists and hosts he dislikes.
The licenses for the TV stations, including KABC in Los Angeles, were originally scheduled for renewal between 2028 and 2031. Calling for an early review is highly unusual, but the agency said its related to an inquiry into Disney’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies and whether they violated federal anti-discrimination rules.
The FCC has not declined to renew a TV license since the early 1980s. With court challenges, such a process can take years to enact.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has also taken aim at ABC’s daytime talk show, “The View.” He publicly questioned whether the program should have the status of news programs, which are exempt from having to give equal time to the opponents of political candidates who appear as guests.
“The View” was granted an exemption from the rarely enforced rule in 2002. ABC’s Houston station KTRK filed a petition with the FCC in May asking for a declaration that the program can maintain that status.
“The Commission’s actions threaten to upend decades of settled law and practice and chill critical protected speech, both with respect to The View and more broadly,” KTRK-TV said in the filing.
ABC has maintained that “The View” books politicians based on newsworthiness and not partisanship. The program featured Vice President JD Vance last week, where he received a cordial welcome.
ABC’s message asking consumers to support “The View” amid an FCC investigation.
(ABC)
ABC is airing spots which warn viewers that the FCC wants to control what viewers see on “The View.” The message opens with the voice of legendary broadcaster Barbara Walters giving her introduction to the program she founded — “I had this idea for a show — different women, with different points of view.”
Walters is followed by an announcer who says, “‘The View’ has welcomed your favorite guests and cover the issues you care about for nearly 30 years. Now the FCC wants to control who is allowed to appear on the show.”
The spot says “the FCC is questioning our support to the community.” A QR code shows up on the screen that takes viewers directly to the FCC’s electronic comment filing system where they can submit their comments, which is regularly part of the agency’s review process.
Disney is also airing spots calling for support of its local TV stations, including L.A.’s KABC. The spots are customized for each ABC station market, emphasizing their commitment to local news coverage.
Disney did not comment on the campaign. But an executive not authorized to speak publicly about it said “ABC believes it is important for the public to know what is happening, what’s at stake, and how to engage directly in the process if they want to make their voices heard.”
Disney’s aggressive defense of its stations and “The View” are a stark contrast to its decision to settle a lawsuit filed by Trump over inaccurate statements ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos made about a sexual assault civil suit the president lost in court.
ABC agreed to pay Trump $15 million in Dec. 2024 to end the legal fight — sparking an outcry among free speech advocates, who believed the network would have won the case.
ABC also caved In September, when Kimmel’s program was briefly pulled from the air after two major TV station groups refused to air it following the host’s comments about the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
Disney received major blowback from the Hollywood community, where Kimmel is extremely popular. Data also showed the company experienced cancellations of its Hulu and Disney+ streaming services in protest of the move.
This is widely seen as a throw-me-in-the-briar-patch gift from President Trump, coming as California’s governor edges ever closer toward a 2028 run for the White House. The presumed effort to cut down a political foe could instead boost Newsom’s chances of winning the Democratic nomination, or so it’s being suggested.
After all, look at how Trump’s verbal bludgeoning elevated former Rep. Adam Schiff. The House has typically been a dead end for lawmakers seeking statewide office in California. Today, the former Burbank congressman and Trump tormentor is a United States senator.
In truth, however, it’s far too early to say how the investigation of Newsom and his wife plays out politically, not least because it’s unclear whether there’s merit to the probe or if it’s merely a fruitless search-and-destroy mission by Trump’s Department of Retribution, Vengeance and Settling Old Scores
Beyond that, the first ballots of the 2028 campaign won’t be cast for roughly a year and a half. The Democratic National Convention, where the party will install its nominee, doesn’t begin for another 778 days.
Your friendly political columnist won’t resort to that hoariest of cliches about such-and-such duration being a lifetime in politics. But for some perspective, let’s go back 778 days.
President Joe Biden was running for reelection and about to challenge Trump to a pair of early debates. Trump was sequestered in a New York City courtroom being prosecuted on 34 felony counts.
A lot happened in the weeks and months that followed, including Biden’s self-immolation on the debate stage and Trump’s criminal conviction. A lot more will happen in the weeks and months to come. There’s no telling what. But it’s safe to say the fight for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination will not be decided by anything that’s taken place in June 2026.
With his exquisitely tuned political antennae, the governor jumped out front of the president by announcing last week the feds were targeting him and his wife. (Naturally, Newsom’s revelation was accompanied by a rage-bait email — subject line: “Because I am thinking of running for president” — that denounced the “political witch hunt” and asked for money.)
“After calling for my arrest last year, Donald Trump directed his Department of Justice to investigate me,” Newsom said in a 4 ½-minute, direct-to-camera video that framed the investigation before prosecutors had the chance. “And just in the last week, I’ve learned his campaign has reached my own home: To get me, he’s coming after my wife, Jen.”
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Newsom and his wife both adamantly denied any wrongdoing and, of course, they must be presumed innocent until and unless proven otherwise.
But there was something a bit disingenuous about the governor’s chivalrous defense. Siebel Newsom, a documentary filmmaker who calls herself California’s “First Partner,” is no mere housewife baking cookies and holding teas, in the famous words of Hillary Rodham Clinton. (Hold the outrage, folks, this is not some retrograde criticism of career-seeking women.)
Among her many public-facing activities, Siebel Newsom heads The Representation Project, a nonprofit focused on challenging gender stereotypes. The organization has faced criticism for accepting donations from companies that lobby the governor, so it’s not unreasonable to ask whether those interests have improperly sought to influence Newsom by giving money to Siebel Newsom’s causes.
My Times colleagues reported that an investigation related to Siebel Newsom has been underway for about a year and was launched by federal prosecutors in Sacramento based on whistle-blower information provided in California. It was not, their source said, the result of a directive out of Washington.
“This is a huge problem,” Randall Eliason, former chief of the Public Corruption Section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, told Politico. “In any political corruption prosecution, the defense almost always claims it is a ‘political witch hunt,’ that prosecutors are targeting him or her for some political reason.
“The best defense to that has always been [the Justice Department’s] tradition of independence from politics and long track record of pursuing corruption cases based only on the facts and law, without regard to political considerations,” Eliason said. “The Trump administration has abandoned that independence without even trying to hide it.”
The probe of Newsom and his wife presents more questions than answers.
It’s grody, but not criminal on its face, for lobbyists to curry favor with the governor by throwing cash at his wife’s endeavors — if, in fact, that’s been the case. Special interests spending money to gain access and influence is about as common in Sacramento and other capitals as statues, domed buildings and manicured lawns.
So why then are the feds investigating Newsom? Why now? Is there any fire, or is it all a lot of smoke?
Perhaps most important, where can you turn to get an impartial answer?
ATLANTA — A federal judge who was disciplined after an investigation found she had sex with a police officer in her chambers and attended a partisan event, then lied when confronted with the allegations, has recused herself in a fight over Georgia election records after the U.S. Department of Justice raised questions about her ability to be impartial.
The Justice Department sought to remove U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross from the case, citing her reported attendance at an event for Fulton County Dist. Atty. Fani Willis, who prosecuted President Trump. Ross filed an order Tuesday recusing herself, writing that she was doing so “out of an abundance of caution for the potential perception of bias.”
The Justice Department had sued Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for seeking an unredacted statewide voter list, and Ross was presiding over that case.
“Both the Trump administration’s present and Willis’s past efforts have become heavily polarized,” Ross wrote, explaining that she “cannot discount” that an objective observer might interpret her attendance at an event sponsored by Willis’ campaign as support for the district attorney’s position, even if she only went to see former colleagues.
Ross received a “private reprimand” after a court investigation found that she had sex in the courthouse with a high-ranking uniformed police officer within earshot of staff, attended a partisan event and then initially lied to deny the allegations.
The investigation report says Ross went to an event hosted by a district attorney’s campaign. The judge said the district attorney had been a friend since 1999 and acknowledged having gone to the a private mixer held on the sidelines of the event to visit with former colleagues in the district attorney’s office.
Ross previously worked in the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office and overlapped there with Willis there before Willis was district attorney.
Willis in August 2023 obtained an indictment against Trump and 18 others, accusing them of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results. That case was ultimately dismissed in November.
Deepti Sharma took five wickets, and India bowled out Pakistan for 106 to successfully begin their latest quest for a first Women’s Twenty20 World Cup title with a 64-run win over their archrivals.
Sharma spun out the last three wickets in five balls as India defended 170 on Sunday in front of a heavily partisan sellout crowd at the Edgbaston Cricket Ground in Birmingham, United Kingdom.
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Seven months after Sharma starred in India’s victory in the final of the Women’s ODI World Cup with five wickets and 58 runs, she started this T20 World Cup with another standout performance. Shree Charani supported her with 3-21.
Sharma took the first two wickets of Pakistan’s chase, which actually started strong, but by the 10th over, India were on top.
Pakistan needed Muneeba Ali, dropped twice, to go big, but Sharma ran her out on 41 in the 11th over with a great direct hit on the run from backward point.
When Pakistan captain Fatima Sana fell in the next over at 77-5, her team fell away too.
Sharma’s late burst for 5-10 made her the highest wicket-taker in the women’s T20, with 166.
“I always believe in myself, that whenever the right time comes, I will step up,” the prolific all-rounder said.
Deepti Sharma celebrates after taking the wicket of Aliya Riaz [Darren Staples/AFP]
India laboured through their power play, and it took Smriti Mandhana to be dropped on 27 off 24 balls to be inspired by the reprieve to lash out at the Pakistani bowling. She needed only another 10 balls to reach 50.
The left-handed opener was dropped again on 55 and top-edged onto her own helmet, forcing a concussion check. She passed, smacked her ninth boundary, and was out to a great low grab by Sana.
Mandhana’s wicket started a mini-collapse, including captain Harmanpreet Kaur on 36. India started the 19th over at 132-5, hoping for 150.
That’s when Richa Ghosh exploded with 34 off 17 balls and combined with Sharma to take 23 runs off World Cup debutant Tasmia Rubab.
“If it is in my hands, I would love to send [Ghosh] on the first ball,” Kaur said. “But she has a role to play, and she is doing well.”
Sana conceded 15 in the last over, and a 171 target looked steep, given Pakistan’s history against their neighbours.
India have dominated the World Cup rivalry with Pakistan, having beaten them in all meetings across the 20- and 50-over formats.
Continuing the trend set by their men’s team in last year’s Asia Cup, the Indian team did not shake hands with their Pakistani counterparts for a second World Cup in a row, following their meeting in the 50-over tournament in October.
Pakistan’s players walk off as India celebrate their victory at the end of the match [Darren Staples/AFP]
Ferdous flays the Netherlands
Meanwhile, Bangladesh pulled off a record chase on the same pitch to win against the Netherlands in the European side’s first Women’s T20 World Cup match.
Bangladesh reached 141-4 with five balls remaining after having never scored more than 126 in a successful World Cup chase.
Replying to the Netherlands’ 139-8, the South Asian team were taken to the last over even after a great platform set by opening batter Juairiya Ferdous, who hit her second 50 since her T20 debut in January.
Ferdous had 26 of the first 27 runs, and 33 of the 47 in the power play. But the 20-year-old also had two lives. On 7, the third umpire disputably ruled out a catch at deep midwicket by Sterre Kalis, and on 18, Ferdous was dropped.
Both of her sixes flew over the midwicket rope, and by the time she was out for 50 off 33 balls at 67-1 in the eighth over, Bangladesh were almost halfway home.
Juairiya Ferdous shone for Bangladesh [Philip Brown/Getty Images]
Dutch spinners Silver and Heather Siegers and Caroline de Lange (2-27) slowed down Bangladesh, but they were not persevered with.
An unbeaten partnership of 56 between Sharmin Akhter and Shorna Akter clinched Bangladesh’s fourth win in seven T20 World Cups.
Netherlands captain Babette de Leede won the toss, and the one-down batter held her team together with 50 from 45 balls until the 17th over, when she was run out trying for a second run.
Bangladesh’s attack was led by medium-pacers Marufa Akter, 2-31, and Ritu Moni, 1-17 .
On Tuesday, defending champions New Zealand take on Sri Lanka, and hosts England face Ireland.
It wasn’t my intention, but I played a role in shutting down John McCain’s Straight Talk Express.
It happened on a warm July afternoon as McCain traveled from a West Virginia airport to a rally in Ohio.
I had headed to the back of his bus with a small group of reporters, where as always McCain warmly motioned for us to squeeze in beside him on the couch.
The questions meandered across more than a dozen topics, but I asked if he agreed with his advisor Carly Fiorina’s recent statement that it was unfair for some health insurance companies to cover Viagra but not birth control — because McCain generally opposed those kinds of mandates.
Liberals and late-night comedians would later revel in McCain’s on-camera discomfort — the widening of his eyes, the awkward silence while he clutched his jaw and formulated an answer. But I had come to respect McCain’s frankness and his willingness to admit he didn’t always have an answer. Watching the question morph into an embarrassing “gotcha moment” for cable television, my stomach churned and my cheeks grew hot.
By July, I had covered McCain for almost seven months. I could recite many lines of his stump speech by heart, dreamed about his events at night and spent so much time scrolling through campaign e-mails on my BlackBerry that my fiance joked to our friends about the other man in my life.
Over those months, McCain had artfully created a sense of intimacy with the reporters who traveled with him. He barbecued for us at his Arizona cabin, and opened up about matters as personal as his faith and his son’s girlfriends. On one of my first days covering McCain, another reporter protectively warned me that it was important to be judicious with the material I used from McCain’s bus rides to keep the conversations in context.
Although the relationship was mutually beneficial, McCain offered accessibility and openness that was rare, if not unprecedented, in modern presidential politics. Now, as the presidential campaign plunges into its final days, that intimacy — real or imagined — has evaporated.
—
I joined McCain during the icy December days in New Hampshire when his confidence about a comeback seemed almost delusional. Inside the steamy windows of his campaign bus, the Straight Talk Express, McCain held court on a gray horseshoe-shaped couch at the rear, where we listened with rapt attention.
Back then, his staff often didn’t bother to listen to his rap sessions, which became an education for reporters on his world view. Early on, we learned to detect his disdain for some of his opponents — Mitt Romney and Barack Obama — by the way he lavished praise on others — Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee or Hillary Rodham Clinton — in the same sentence.
He leavened policy discussions with funny stories from his school days when some knew him as “McNasty” or reliving his daredevil exploits as a young naval aviator. He was unguarded and charming, occasionally solicitous about our lives.
One winter afternoon when Cindy McCain joined him and he was stuck with three newly engaged reporters, he gave us a 10-minute treatise on honeymoon spots.
At the top of his list was Costa Rica, where he had done a zip-line canopy tour. Second was Montenegro and Dubrovnik, which he called “one of the really stunningly beautiful places in the world.” Third was Fiji: “The people are extremely friendly; they used to be cannibals, but the British cured them of that bad habit,” he joked. “We’ve gone to Fiji with our kids lots of times.”
In an aside about the Galapagos Islands, he veered into his last encounter there with sea lions: “I’m not making this up — I was swimming, and there was this group of female sea lions, and this one male sea lion, and the next thing I know this guy’s face is right where my hand is. . . . So I swam away and he bit my flipper. I swear to God. . . . He thought I was some kind of competition.”
“Where did you guys go on your honeymoon,” I asked.
“Uhh,” McCain said. “Hawaii,” Cindy interjected.
“Canada?” McCain joked, pretending to fumble. “I get my marriages mixed up.”
Cindy good-naturedly rolled her eyes. “We had a great time,” he said, grinning, before telling us about their honeymoon spot.
For several months, he would often lean in and ask the same question: “Did you set a date yet?”
—
McCain’s energy and sense of fun were most on display when he was surrounded by the regular characters in his entourage.
Before the primaries, there was Tim Pawlenty, the Republican governor of Minnesota, who was so unassuming that McCain’s bus driver once asked me what he did. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) loosened McCain up before debates or big events by subjecting himself to McCain’s unmerciful teasing. McCain loved to tell the story of Graham’s Ambien overdose on an international flight and how he had to be elbowed awake during a subsequent meeting with a head of state.
For the first half of the year, strategist Steve Schmidt and McCain speechwriter Mark Salter were regular fixtures in the press cabin. They offered honest observations about the direction of the campaign off the record, and lots of spin on the record.
We would persuade them to tell their own stories at the bar in the evenings. Salter had colorful tales of his days as a railroad worker in Davenport, Iowa, when he had hair past his shoulders and worked for a foreman known as “one-armed Ronnie.”
Schmidt could do dead-on impressions of his former boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, and had fascinating stories about managing the confirmation process of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. — always off the record.
They would complain about campaign coverage one moment and have drinks with reporters hours later. During a stop in Selma, Ala., I fell while out running and ended up with bleeding palms and scraped knees but no Band-Aids. Schmidt and Salter showed up at the hotel’s dining room with gauze and antiseptic.
—
At the time of that July bus ride with McCain, there was broad disagreement among his staff about whether the endless hours of questions were helping his quest for the White House.
In the driveway of the airport motel on the evening of the Viagra question, McCain’s aides made an argument that would shape their attitude over the next four months: If reporters were going to ask about issues that they deemed irrelevant to voters, why should the campaign give them access to the candidate at all?
Salter told me I had made the case for those who thought McCain should curtail his exposure to the press.
McCain aide Brooke Buchanan sarcastically asked whether contraception was next on my agenda. And Steve Duprey, the candidate’s usually jovial traveling companion who often visited the press cabin bearing Twizzlers and chocolate, twisted my question into what I interpreted as an accusation of bias: “Are you going to ask Obama if he uses Viagra?”
Later that summer, the frequency of McCain’s news conferences dwindled to late-afternoon, end-of-the-week affairs where he began calling more often on reporters he didn’t know.
We now watched from afar at most events — listening for the few sentences that would change each day in his stump speech. We would catch glimpses of him through the window of his SUV from five cars back in the motorcade or watch him get off the plane.
At the height of vice presidential speculation, we rushed the staff cabin of the plane, frustrated that no one was around to address the rumors.
“What do you want, you little jerks?” McCain said, using his former term of affection, before turning away.
—
On a recent Sunday during a brief stop at a Virginia phone bank, I got unusually close to McCain in the line of people waiting to shake his hand.
Tape recorder out and within a foot of him, I asked if he could talk about his new economic plan, which he was to unveil that week. The man who once asked me about my wedding date returned my gaze with a stare, shook the hand of the strangers to the right and left of me and continued out the door.
I remembered Graham’s explanation in January about why McCain spent so much time with reporters. He said that McCain felt too many politicians had become like a guy in a toothpaste commercial — you knew what he was selling but not what was behind the smile.
What McCain didn’t like about other campaigns and wanted to change, Graham continued, was that “nobody gets behind the curtain.”
Whether it was McCain’s fault or ours, the curtain had been drawn tight.
USA beat Paraguay 4-1 in Los Angeles as each of the three World Cup cohosts have now staged a game in the 2026 edition.
Published On 13 Jun 202613 Jun 2026
The United States could scarcely have scripted a better start to their World Cup as a Folarin Balogun brace and a Gio Reyna curler fired the cohosts to a 4-1 drubbing of Paraguay in front of Hollywood royalty in Los Angeles.
The hosts took the lead in the tournament’s first game on US soil within seven minutes thanks to an own goal, and by the end of an utterly dominant half, the home fans were in dreamland, their side up by three.
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Tom Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio and Paris Hilton were among a sold-out 70,492 crowd as the US – cohosting the tournament with Mexico and Canada – piled wave after wave of attacks on the South Americans, with Reyna polishing off the win late in stoppage time after Mauricio had pulled one back.
The win and emphatic scoreline put the US in a favourable position already to progress from Group D, which also contains Australia and Turkiye.
The night’s only potential sour note was the half-time withdrawal of Christian Pulisic, the US attacking talisman who is carrying the hopes of the nation as they attempt a deep run into the World Cup knockouts for the first time since their quarterfinal appearance in 2002.
Paraguay could not have been more obliging guests from kickoff. In the seventh minute, Weston McKennie picked up the ball in the centre circle and drove upfield, finding Pulisic.
Pulisic darted between two defenders and returned the ball to McKennie, whose pass to striker Balogun was bundled into his own net by a hapless Damian Bobadilla.
The stadium erupted, and a US onslaught began.
The hosts oozed confidence. Both McKennie and Tillman played backheel through balls into the area, while captain Tim Ream sprayed out passes from the heart of defence.
USA midfielder Giovanni Reyna scores his team’s fourth goal [Valerie Macon/AFP]
Balogun had a goal ruled out in the 28th minute. He had strayed offside, as had Pulisic in the buildup.
But the Monaco striker had the ball in the net again three minutes later, thanks to a superb ball down the left flank by Antonee Robinson to Pulisic, whose cross to Balogun took a slight fortuitous deflection.
The US added a third on the cusp of half-time. Tillman found Balogun down the right, who evaded Omar Alderete’s challenge, skipped inside Gustavo Gomez and curled his shot perfectly into the top left corner.
It could have been four or five, with Chris Richards – returning from injury – flashing a header barely an inch wide. The US had 75 percent possession in the first half.
Now, without the dangerous Pulisic, the hosts sat back slightly in the second half.
Paraguay finally offered a threat. Their dangerous forward Julio Enciso, who started despite a hamstring injury, picked up the ball on the edge of the area and fed in Brazil-born substitute Mauricio, who pulled one back.
Reyna scored a superb fourth with the outside of his right foot that curled just inside the far post.
The game had been preceded by a Tinseltown-style opening ceremony. Katy Perry delivered the headline performance, accompanied by singers Future, Tyla, Anitta and K-pop singer Lisa.
Performers danced around a giant World Cup trophy beneath enormous “FIFA” letters in the gold favoured by US President Donald Trump – who did not attend, instead wishing the team luck via phone before kickoff.
When Republican Spencer Pratt burst into Los Angeles politics, venting a torrent of online fury against Mayor Karen Bass’ handling of the Palisades fire, he pitched his mayoral campaign as a full-bore challenge to L.A.’s political status quo.
The former reality TV star, who lost his home in the blaze, started as a long shot but emerged as a national story, with the ability to harvest social media attention, rally a base and dominate the news cycle.
But in a city overwhelmingly Democratic, where Republicans make up just 15% of registered voters, even some of his supporters wondered how far he could rise. In the end, voters selected Bass, a Democratic centrist, and democratic socialist City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who ran to Bass’ left, to face off in the runoff.
Still, for many of the 200,000 Angelenos who voted for Pratt, his brash, social media-fueled campaign was not just a long exercise in trolling. Pratt gave voice to their discontent with the system of one-party rule and said things they too often felt uncomfortable saying.
And now, they face a difficult choice of who to support in November.
“I know a lot of people who are disappointed,” said Meghan Daum, an L.A. writer and podcaster and former Los Angeles Times columnist who endorsed Pratt. “They are saying, ‘OK, now what? What can we do?”’
While Pratt did not make the runoff, political experts said his candidacy tapped into Angelenos’ dissatisfaction with the Democratic establishment and resonated with a sizable number of Angelenos who are rarely represented in L.A. politics.
“He identified a previously invisible level of anger and frustration,” said Dan Schnur, a longtime politics professor at USC, UC Berkeley and Pepperdine University, of Pratt. “The question going forward is whether he, or someone else, can shape that raw emotion into a movement.”
Pratt has yet to put out a statement conceding the race or contesting the results. As a stream of Republicans, including President Trump, made unfounded allegations of election fraud in California, the campaign’s most online candidate was conspicuously absent on X and Instagram.
Some Democrats in L.A. urged Pratt to make good on his promise to leave the city if Bass or Raman were elected. Late night TV host Jimmy Kimmel, a prominent Democrat, told Pratt he had rented him a U-Haul.
Despite the snark from Democrats, political observers say Pratt changed the terms of L.A.’s mayoral debate.
“He forced the more conventional candidates to talk about the issues in a way that would not have been the case if he weren’t in the race,” Schnur said.
“For the first time in years, there is a critical mass of citizens who are done pretending that what they see before their eyes isn’t really there,” Daum wrote on her Substack. “The people in charge will have to answer to those citizens.”
In the final weeks of the campaign, Pratt became ubiquitous in the national media. There were profiles in high-end publications, podcast interviews and regular reports from Fox News. But the results show he fell short of persuading enough Angelenos to make the runoff.
“It doesn’t appear that he’s impacted the political underpinnings of a deep blue city like Los Angeles,” Schnur said. “His impact was less ideological than attitudinal. He wasn’t convincing the voters to become more conservative, he was convincing them that it was OK for them to vent their anger in an unconventional way.”
Dissatisfaction is building in L.A. as the city’s cost of living mounts and a new generation of young Angelenos are unable to buy homes. Many are concerned about the lack of visible progress on street homelessness. Some are angry at what they see as city leaders’ poor preparation and response to the Palisades fire.
Ultimately, the momentum for change in Los Angeles was divided. As Pratt challenged Bass from the right, Raman tacked to the left of Bass on homelessness and policing and made affordability a key plank of her campaign.
Whatever their concerns about the status quo in L.A., many Angelenos were unwilling to vote for a Republican.
During the course of the campaign, Daum said she had numerous conversations with Angelenos who said: “I can’t associate with anybody who voted for Trump. I can’t have them in my house. I can’t have a conversation with them. I want nothing to do with them.”
A 42-year-old millennial who became famous on “The Hills” and owns a business selling “healing” crystals, Pratt had no political experience when he entered the mayoral race. He didn’t even appear to have a campaign manager.
“The system in Los Angeles isn’t struggling, it’s fundamentally broken,” Pratt said as he launched his campaign on Jan. 7, the anniversary of the fire. “It is a machine designed to protect the people at the top and the friends they exchange favors with while the rest of us drown in toxic smoke and ash.”
As Pratt talked about homelessness, his message resonated with Marissa Comstock, 36, a stay-at-home mom and former software engineer in Eagle Rock.
“It’s totally obvious to me,” she said. “We need to get these people off the street.”
Last year, Comstock said she and her husband had a negative encounter at Griffith Park as they pushed their daughters around in strollers. Just a few minutes into their hike, she said, they were accosted by an unhoused person who screamed at them and threatened to cut off their daughters’ legs.
Since that incident, Comstock said, she takes her daughters only to places like the Huntington or Descanso Gardens that require membership to be admitted.
“I don’t feel comfortable even being on regular streets,” she said. “If there’s some crazy homeless person, what am I supposed to do?”
Pratt did extraordinarily well in capturing attention and developing a message, said Paul Mitchell, vice president of the Sacramento-based bipartisan firm Political Data Inc. Many Angelenos, he noted, had a better sense of Pratt’s viewpoint than they did of much more deeply funded California gubernatorial candidates, like Matt Mahan or Xavier Becerra.
During his campaign, Pratt did not express support for Trump or the Make America Great Again movement. He insisted he was a nonpartisan candidate running on local issues.
“I’m going to show everybody that I’m their mayor,” Pratt said on election night.
But even if Pratt was not explicitly MAGA, his reality TV theatrics mixed with antiestablishment populism were so MAGA-coded that he struggled to persuade disaffected liberal Angelenos. He referred to the homeless as “fentanyl zombies.” He railed against California’s “socialism.” He called Bass “Basura,” Spanish for trash.
When Trump spoke of Pratt, telling reporters “I heard he’s a big MAGA person,” Raman was quick to share Trump’s remarks on social media, warning Angelenos that Pratt was wildly out of step with their views.
While Pratt impressed some political observers with his performance in a May 6 televised debate with Bass and Raman, others said he alienated a significant portion of Angelenos with some of his social media antics.
“He could have talked about the drug use and the risks and the filth and the fire risks and all that,” said Rob Stutzman, a GOP political strategist, of Pratt’s zombie rhetoric, “but then paired that with, ‘My God, these liberals are leaving these people out here to die,’ and expressed some humanity towards the population that’s on the streets.”
Ultimately, Daum said Pratt was a “terrible candidate.”
“He did a million things wrong,” she said. “The whole time, I was yelling on Twitter about how he’s got to stop it: the AI videos are gonna hurt him, the Basura stuff, the zombie stuff. Like, stop it! Stop it!”
As Pratt’s campaign came to an end, Stutzman said, it is not clear that he represents any kind of lasting political movement.
“The question remains: Did he create a political movement or did he exploit the opportunity to run for mayor to restoke his diminishing fame?” Stutzman said. “He’s in the mold of a Kardashian: He’s just found ways to be famous without ever really doing anything important. I suspect that this was more about him acting out as to what he is as a reality celebrity versus becoming a leader of a political movement in L.A. We’ll see.”
When Angelenos go to the polls in November, there are several paths for Pratt voters.
Some, Mitchell said, will probably sit the election out entirely.
“You’ll get some Republicans who vote for Raman because they’re like, ‘Well, she’s a socialist and I can’t stand her, but I’m just voting no on Bass.’ And then you’ll have a lot of Republicans who are like, ‘OK, Raman’s a socialist.’”
After Raman made it to the runoff, Bass’ campaign slammed the city council member for voting against hiring more police and blocking efforts to keep homeless encampments away from schools. Meanwhile, Raman positioned herself as the anti-status quo candidate.
In a statement celebrating her advance to the general election, Raman did not mention Pratt or his supporters, but railed against “powerful interests” in City Hall.
“Working people pay the price in higher rents, depleted services, and a city that has stopped working for them,” she said. “If you’re as frustrated by the broken status quo as I am, I hope you’ll join our movement to build a city that works for everyone.”
Even as Daum felt depressed that Pratt’s campaign was not continuing, she said she felt more engaged in L.A. politics than she had ever been. She planned to vote in November and would be watching both Bass and Raman to see how they responded to Angelenos’ concerns about street homelessness.
“If Karen Bass said, ‘OK, I get it, “housing first” is not the panacea that I’ve been thinking it is. Seriously, I’m gonna put together a task force of people who are going to actually think this through.’ … I would be following that. I would be very curious,” Daum said. “Same if Nithya said that, too. I’m open to either of them, I guess.”
Comstock said she would probably vote for Bass in the runoff.
“Nithya Raman is just way too far on the socialist scale for me and will likely do more damage, rather than Karen Bass’ ineffectualness,” she said. “I don’t want to go any farther left.”
WASHINGTON — As Bill Clinton struggles with his draft history and President Bush his tax promises, they might look back wistfully at something that happened 40 years ago last week. Richard M. Nixon, in much worse trouble, talked his way out with a single TV appearance that became famous as the “Checkers” speech.
On Sept. 23, 1952, the newly minted vice presidential candidate of the Republican Party faced allegations that threatened to force him off the ballot and end his political career–the disclosure of an $18,000 fund set up for him by rich businessmen.
Nixon, a first-term senator from California, dealt with the crisis dramatically, gambling everything that the public could be won over to his side with a mixture of pathos and candor in a single speech.
He denied any impropriety in using the private fund. But that part is hardly remembered.
“One other thing I probably should tell you, because if I don’t, they will probably be saying this about me, too,” Nixon told a television audience of 60 million. “We did get something, a gift, after the nomination.”
He explained it was a black-and-white cocker spaniel that 6-year-old Tricia Nixon had named Checkers. “I just want to say this, right now,” said Nixon, in a fight to stay on the ticket with Dwight D. Eisenhower, “regardless of what they say about it, we are going to keep it.”
The “Checkers” speech also included Nixon’s famous reference to wife Pat’s “Republican cloth coat” to point out that she didn’t wear mink. He ended it with a defiant vow not to quit. He urged listeners to tell the Republican National Committee “whether you think I should stay on or whether I should get off.”
The outpouring of sympathetic support cemented his spot on the ticket.
The fund had been set up by Dana Smith, a Los Angeles lawyer who had been finance chairman for Nixon’s successful 1950 race for the Senate. Smith intended it to pay for Nixon’s political travel, printing and mailing of speeches and clerical help, which would not be reimbursed by the Senate.
Once the existence of “the millionaire’s club” exploded in headlines, it ballooned and overshadowed everything else in the 1952 campaign. Eisenhower’s advisers urged the general to dump Nixon and find himself a new running mate.
Nixon got scant comfort from Eisenhower, who told him: “I have come to the conclusion that you are the one who has to decide what to do,” Nixon recalled, in his book “Six Crises.” “I think you ought to go on a nationwide television program and tell them everything there is to tell, everything you can remember since the day you entered public life. Tell them about any money you have received.”
To others, Eisenhower insisted that Nixon prove himself “clean as a hound’s tooth.”
The GOP and the Senatorial Congressional Campaign Committee pledged the $75,000 to buy a half-hour in prime time for Nixon’s speech, which was broadcast from the 750-seat El Capitan Theater in Los Angeles–the same hall where the “Colgate Comedy Hour” and “This Is Your Life” originated.
An hour before he left for the theater, came a call from Thomas E. Dewey, a two-time losing candidate for president and then a member of Eisenhower’s inner circle. He insisted that Nixon end his broadcast with his resignation–and even resignation from the Senate.
“If they want to find out they’d better listen to the broadcast,” Nixon shouted at Dewey. “and tell them I know something about politics too.”
Nixon went on the air in the empty theater. “Not one cent of the $18,000 or any other money of that type ever went to my personal use,” he said. “Every penny of it was used to pay for political expenses that I did not think should be charged to the taxpayers of the United States.”
He listed his assets and his debts, in detail, then said of his wife, “Pat doesn’t have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable cloth coat. And I always tell her that she’d look good in anything.”
The next day, Nixon flew to Wheeling, W.Va., to meet with Eisenhower. Just as he was about to leave the plane, Eisenhower came up the steps.
“You didn’t have to come down here to meet me,” said Nixon.
“You’re my boy,” said the general. And Nixon wept.
COLUMBIA, S.C. — After a decade of roiling South Carolina and national politics, Rep. Nancy Mace finished a distant fifth in her state’s Republican primary for governor, leaving an uncertain future for one of the nation’s unabashed politicians.
Her campaign mirrored her whipsaw career. Mace courted the support of President Trump after harshly criticizing him over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. She emphasized her fights with other Republicans to release files from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation.
In the final days before Tuesday’s primary, she called for a law to prevent anyone not born in the U.S. from holding political office or serving as a judge. She suggested that Rom Reddy, another candidate for governor, wasn’t qualified because he was a naturalized citizen whose mother was from India and father from Italy.
“I didn’t come out of a slum in India,” Mace said during an appearance in Greenville County this month. “I am born and made here in America.”
By the end of her campaign she was only making sporadic public appearances. She struggled to raise money and had no presence on television. Mace mostly communicated through social media — a place she has used to her advantage since first being elected to the South Carolina House in 2017.
In a lengthy statement posted after her loss, Mace recounted her achievements in the U.S. House, saying she had “taken on the rich and powerful in both parties” and “voted to release the Epstein files and lost some support for that.”
Four congressional Republicans were part of the initial group pushing for a discharge petition forcing the files’ release. Mace and Rep. Thomas Massie lost their races, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene resigned in January.
Mace didn’t give an indication of her next plans in her concession speech Tuesday night. She is backing Alan Wilson in the runoff for governor, even though just last year she accused Wilson of protecting child sex abuse defendants.
“When children needed him to act, Wilson looked the other way,” she said.
Wilson will face Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette in the runoff on June 23. Evette received Trump’s endorsement, spurring Mace to lash out on social media.
“Pamela Evette is NOT ENDORSED by DONALD TRUMP,” Mace wrote, incorrectly. “Do not believe her LIES.” Mace posted an AI-generated image of posing with Trump herself.
Mace dropped out of high school and worked as a server at the Waffle House before getting her diploma. She later attended The Citadel and became the first woman to graduate from the state’s military academy. And in recent years, she talked about the importance of defending victims of sexual assault and shared stories of being raped as a teen.
After her political career began in the South Carolina House, Mace got wide praise from Republicans in 2020 for winning back a U.S. House seat around Charleston that had flipped to Democrats for one term.
“For those folks that are out there today that maybe weren’t with us yesterday, I’m asking for a chance — a chance to prove to you that I will be a compassionate leader, a good listener, an independent thinker,” Mace said then.
Collins and Kinnard write for the Associated Press. Kinnard reported from Washington. AP writer Bill Barrow contributed from Atlanta.
Californians couldn’t escape billionaire Tom Steyer’s political ads — during newscasts, sitcoms, or sporting events; on streaming services, YouTube, influencers’ social media feeds, or their mailboxes. Even the Puppy Bowl.
Yet despite spending a record-shattering $216 million of his wealth on his run for governor, the Democrat failed to win enough votes in last week’s primary to advance to the November general election to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“Money isn’t everything, even though it obviously helps,” said Andrea Godfrey Flynn, a marketing professor at the University of San Diego. “It boosted Steyer way up. … But there are so many other factors at play that it may not have been enough.”
Steyer, a hedge fund co-founder turned environmental warrior, polled at 1% shortly before he entered the governor’s race in November, according to a survey by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies that was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times.
He climbed in subsequent polls, hitting 19% in the same poll shortly before the June 2 primary, putting Steyer in contention for winning one of the top two spots in the contest that would allow him to advance to the November election. But then he hit a ceiling, and on Tuesday, it became official that he failed to advance.
Steyer emailed supporters Tuesday expressing gratitude for their efforts backing his campaign, endorsements and votes.
“Together, we fought for a California that belongs to the people who keep it running every day, and we insisted that they do not have to settle for a system that protects corporate profits at the expense of working people,” he wrote. “I’m proud of how we never compromised our values or lowered our sights for what California can and should be.”
He pointed with pride at major corporations such as Chevron and Meta spending heavily to oppose his bid, and said their tens of millions of dollars spent attacking him shows the flaws in the electoral system. And he acknowledged that may be part of the reason some voters were skeptical of voting for a billionaire.
“I’m proud of the enemies we made,” Steyer said. “This campaign proved that business-as-usual depends on politics-as-usual, and there is no going back. We must continue to fight for a system where democracy serves Californians, not corporations — and where you do not have to be a billionaire to run on single-payer, or on breaking up monopolies, or on calling out a corrupt system when you see it. Because people are fed up with a system rigged to benefit billionaires and leave them behind.”
As of Tuesday evening, Steyer had received more than 1.9 million votes of the more than 9 million cast, lagging behind the two candidates who will appear on the November ballot: Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator, and Democrat Xavier Becerra, a longtime elected official who most recently served in President Biden’s cabinet. Steyer was trailing Hilton, the second-place finisher, by just over 200,000 votes.
Steyer immediately endorsed Becerra, whom he had relentlessly attacked in the closing weeks of the campaign as beholden to corporations with business in front of the governor.
California has a history of unsuccessful self-funders. Former Northwest Airlines co-chairman Al Checchi spent more than $40 million of his money on an unsuccessful gubernatorial primary campaign in 1998, which broke records at the time.
More than a decade later, former EBay chief Meg Whitman spent $144 million of her wealth on her bid to become California’s governor, setting a new national record for spending on a state election. She won the GOP nomination but lost in the general election.
Sheri Sadler, a veteran Los Angeles-based Democratic media buyer, said Steyer’s 2026 gubernatorial deluge was notable.
“I literally saw his spots ad nauseam,” she said. “They left almost no stone unturned.”
Sadler worked for Steyer in the final weeks of his presidential bid and scheduled $50 million of billionaire Rick Caruso’s money on ads during his unsuccessful 2022 Los Angeles mayoral campaign.
She believes that Steyer hit a ceiling because voters who are bombarded by ads eventually feel that the candidate is trying to purchase their affection.
“It’s one thing to give me a message I can resonate with. If they’re just trying to buy my vote, that feels different to me,” she said, adding that Steyer’s wealth undermined his platform, which included support for raising taxes on billionaires. “That’s my gut. And I feel like that’s what happened to us on Caruso and possibly why he didn’t run” for governor this year.
Steyer, 68, made his fortune founding a hedge fund that included investments in fossil fuels, private prisons and other businesses that are controversial among Democrats. He told voters that he walked away from the firm 14 years ago, leaving an enormous amount of money on the table, because it did not align with his morals. Steyer adds that he and his wife have pledged to give away most of their wealth before they die.
And unlike many wealthy self-funders, Steyer did not leap into a campaign as a political neophyte who assumed their business skills would translate into being an effective elected official.
Steyer and his wife, Kat Taylor, are longtime donors to Democratic candidates, but for well over a decade, they have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on liberal causes such as fighting climate change, mobilizing young voters, urging the impeachment of President Trump, opposing an effort by oil companies to suspend California environmental standards, increasing the state cigarette tax and supporting last year’s redrawing of the state’s congressional districts to counter Trump.
Darry Sragow, a veteran Democratic strategist who advised Checchi, said that Steyer’s focus on such causes had the potential to be meaningful to voters who are often skeptical about the sincerity and motives of rich candidates.
“Tom Steyer has done a good job in that respect, because if you’re going to overcome that skepticism, it’s very helpful for the candidate to show that he or she has actually been involved in the world of public policy and politics for an extended period,” and Steyer has, Sragow said.
Assemblyman Isaac G. Bryan (D-Los Angeles), who endorsed Steyer, argued that he promoted proposals that were against his personal interests, such as the proposed billionaire’s tax that is expected to appear on the November ballot.
“Interestingly enough, Tom Steyer is also the only candidate who’s talked about campaign finance reform and wanting to get money out of politics, including his money, to return power to the people and have publicly financed elections,” Bryan said after a Steyer rally near downtown L.A. on May 31.
Former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond also campaigned on limiting the influence of corporate PAC money in elections, or implementing publicly financed elections in California. Porter often criticized Steyer for running as a “change agent” while spending millions he earned from investments in oil and gas.
“You paid the lowest tax rate on this stage and yet you made the billions that you’re using to fund your campaign off fossil fuels,” she said to Steyer during an April 28 debate in Claremont.
Political experts argue that messages that seem contradictory to a candidate’s background, as well as drowning voters with incessant ads, can be jarring and off-putting to the electorate.
“It can be an overload to voters where they hit that tipping point where they’re no longer interested,” Flynn said.
Despite Steyer’s foundational argument that his wealth meant he was not beholden to anyone, she said voters may be unable to reconcile a billionaire’s ability to understand or empathize about an average Californian’s needs.
“The messaging still is a giant factor,” Flynn said. “I’m curious [about] how believable it came across to voters — can you trust a billionaire to really care about affordability, someone who made money working with business or in business not to care about special interests?”
While Steyer campaigned as a hard-left liberal, he failed to be the top pick for progressives. Steyer had the support of 35% of likely voters who identified as strongly liberal while Becerra was backed by 37%, according to Berkeley’s May poll.
After talking to college Democrats at UCLA on the eve of the primary, Steyer said regardless of what happens in the primary, he will remain politically involved, though he would not run for president in 2028.
“I’m going to keep working on these issues, because I’ve been working full-time on these issues for 14 years,” Steyer said. “There’s no question what I’m going to do. How I do it is a little bit up in the air.”
Times staff writer Dakota Smith contributed to this report.
To learn more about this campaign, we reached out to one of the soldiers leading this effort from the unit that created it. In an exclusive interview, an Unmanned Systems Department Officer for the First Corps Azov of the National Guard of Ukraine offered us unique insights into how the program began, how it’s going, where it is headed and how AI is helping to identify and hit targets deep behind the lines. It’s a capability we described in great detail — about how it was rapidly gestating and would arrive on the battlefield around now. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational details.
Some of the questions and answers have been edited for clarity.
Azov patrols the border areas around Mariupol.
Ukrainian territory must be free of Russian forces. The surest path to achieving this is pushing the “sanitization zone” for enemy logistics closer to Russia itself and occupied Crimea.
— First Corps Azov of the National Guard of Ukraine (@azov_media) May 25, 2026
Q: Walk me through the genesis of the mid-range strike campaign.
A: I will first of all start with answering the question of why. So the reason why we are currently conducting this campaign is to hunt enemy logistics capabilities, and currently we have a lot of quite cheap assets that can strike enemy targets at quite a deep range. So the overall meaning, the overall sense of this campaign is to strike enemy concentrations of cargo in the places where this concentration is the highest and the protection of those enemy logistical assets is at the lowest level.
So, if we’re talking about enemy logistics very close to the front line, to the line of contact, we are mostly talking about a person with a backpack. Then, if we are moving deeper into the enemy controlled area, further from the front line, then we’re talking about cars. Then even deeper we’re talking about trucks. Even deeper we’re talking about long haulers with trailers, so a higher concentration of cargo. Even deeper into the enemy controlled area, we’re talking about the railroads, the trains that are carrying supplies. So the deeper we go from the line of contact, the higher is the concentration of enemy cargo.
Russian rail logistics are now also the target of Midstrike drones, with lines to Crimea being particularly affected. pic.twitter.com/K1BFd0QVov
The other part of answering this question is basically about how the enemy protects their logistical assets. So the deeper we go from the line of contact, not only is the distance larger, but also the areas that the enemy needs to protect. So just simple mathematical calculations show us that the distance of 50 kilometers deep from the line of contact is usually the most concentrated area the enemy has to defend against our strike assets. But if we go to the depths of 300 kilometers, then the areas that the enemy should protect are much larger, and it’s basically impossible to saturate that area with all the necessary protection assets that the enemy needs to strike down our drones.
The point I would like to make is that we conduct those strike operations at deeper ranges with basically the same assets that we use for the tactical depths, for example, at the depths of 50 kilometers. That means we do not increase the cost of our assets. We just introduced some technical modifications, and we can use the same assets to strike in the deep area.
How Ukraine Uses the US-made Hornet AI Strike Drone To Disrupt And Cut Russian Logistics Lines
Q: What drones are you using to carry out these attacks and how are you increasing the ranges?
A: Basically, we’re using fixed-wing kamikaze drones with some modifications in terms of communication systems. We’ve installed Starlink systems on those drones, and we have also introduced a number of modifications in terms of the engine of the drones – in terms of the overall propelling unit. And this allowed us to increase the range of the assets that we used previously for the range up to 50 kilometers, with some modifications for longer distances.
Q: What kinds of drones are you using?
A: Just the simple fixed-wing chemical drones, such as Hornet systems, such as the Darts systems, and also some other assets that, for now, we prefer not to mention.
Darts
Q: Can you provide additional details about the modifications you have made to these drones and what is their maximum range?
A: Well, I would say that these are quite technical things, and I wouldn’t want to disclose those, because I would want to avoid the situation where the enemy is going to do the same modifications.
Q: Are you reaching as far as 100 kilometers?
A: From what we can say now, we can cover distances of up to 250 kilometers, but as you might understand, with time we will cover longer and longer distances.
Q: Can you describe how these attacks work? Do you operate these as first-person view drones through a video feed? Do they have a terminal seeker?
A: The process is really simple. So, for example, we select a section of the road, or the road as a whole and we distribute that road or the sections among our units. And I would like to mention that this is an all Ukrainian operation. It’s not a task for just one single unit, and basically each unit has its own area of responsibility and its own section of the road.
And then we just send drones there in hunting mode, and I cannot disclose how this works from the standpoint of intelligence, but the overall principle is that the intelligence just gives us the priorities for the targets. For example, they say that you need to target this type of vehicle with these types of cargo.
And in terms of the targeting, I remember that you were also asking the question about how the targets are selected. For this we use both the AI tools and also the operator himself, so we’re using both methods for that.
Q: I want to get back to AI in a bit, but what area of operations do you cover?
A: Our area of interest and area of responsibility is related to all the roads that the enemy is using to bring in supplies to the area of operations of our corps, which is roughly in the area of the town of Dobropillia in eastern Ukraine, and for example, this may be the route from Rostov that goes to Mariupol and then goes to Donetsk, and this could be any other route that the enemy might use to bring military cargo to the area of operations of our corps.
First Corps Azov works in and around the area of Dobropillia in the Donetsk region of Eastern Ukraine. (Google Earth)
Q: What were some of the more successful mid-range drone strike missions you carried out?
A: That’s basically an easy principle. When I said that we are hunting the enemy’s logistics, I mean that this is a daily process. This is a continuous process, and this is not about one standalone mission, when we fly somewhere, when we hit a target and the mission is over.
Last night, Ukraine expanded its mid-range strike campaign to the Sea of Azov, hitting at least 5 vessels carrying Russian cargo.
At least two of the cargo vessels were hit at the occupied ports of Berdyansk and Mariupol, as Ukrainian forces seek to cut off Russian logistics. pic.twitter.com/NoXeAO7Ca6
Q: How are these mid-range strikes on Russian logistics affecting their ability to fight?
A: This is causing shortages of fuel for the enemy. This was already commented on by our media, and also the media resources of the enemy, and now we understand that this is true, not only for Crimea, where there is a severe shortage of fuel now, but also this is true about the other Russian-controlled territories. And basically, when we are striking enemy logistical supplies of fuel, this affects the overall situation, because what is fuel? Fuel is basically the blood of war, which is necessary to fuel the generators that the enemy is using for the FPV operations. The fuel is used for the vehicles that basically bring in those FPVs to the combat zone.
I’d like to add an additional explanation of how this works. If we destroy a car that brings fuel to the line of contact, then we’re talking about destroying like two canisters, so that’s approximately 40 liters of fuel. But if we strike a fuel tank and a tank vehicle, which is bringing fuel to the overall area, so then we can talk about several tons of materials.
Gas stations across Russian-occupied Crimea are facing worsening fuel shortages, with long queues, rationing, and voucher-based distribution reported by residents. Some locals say fuel has become so scarce that it is treated as a luxury, while Moscow insists there is no cause for… pic.twitter.com/0LSYWEqiDH
— Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (@RFERL) June 5, 2026
Q: Is this setting the stage for a Ukrainian advance in the east or Zaporizhia?
A: I would say that blocking the logistical supplies to the Zaporizhia Oblast and also to Crimea is a byproduct of our attacks aimed at cutting enemy logistics to our area of operations. Because we’re targeting the roads that go through Mariupol, also to Crimea, to supply the Zaporizhia region, and as well our area of operations. But as for the most strategic aspect of this question of whether this might influence some counter-offensive capabilities of the Ukrainian Defense Forces, I think that is not the question within my scope of responsibility, because I’m an officer responsible for the UAS component of the corps, and I think that this is more of a question that should be directed to the general staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Ukraine 🇺🇦 continues to launch an important number of mid-range strike, targeting Russian 🇷🇺 logistics in occupied territories
Since early may, more than 270 trucks have been hit, together with multiple fuel depots and trains.
Q: Tell me how you came to use the U.S.-made Hornet drones.
A: I would say that this is also a question that should be directed at one level up from my level. We get those drones, we deploy those drones, but the questions of how we get them and what are the specifics of their supply, this is not a question that I can answer.
A U.S.-made Hornet drone. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Thomas Dixon) Spc. Thomas Dixon
Q: When did you start getting them?
A: We have been receiving these drones for almost a year.
Q: When you got the Hornet drones, were you given any instructions on what missions to accomplish with them or what targets to pursue?
A: I think that the principle thing to explain here is that the Hornet drone is a tactical level UAV system. It can be used at the maximum range of 50 kilometers – the maximum range of the basic configuration of this drone. The drones we are currently using are the modification of the Hornet drone, but the basic configuration of this drone is only a tactical-level UAV. This is why our mid-strike operations, which have started only recently, are using modified drones.
I think that it is important to add that these modifications are conducted by the units themselves.
The First Corps Azov of the National Guard of Ukraine maintains control over enemy logistics near Donetsk.
Strike UAV pilots are targeting Russian logistics deep in the operational rear. Drone units maintain constant surveillance and fire control over all supply routes around… pic.twitter.com/i4TYOWJBg4
— First Corps Azov of the National Guard of Ukraine (@azov_media) April 16, 2026
Q: When did you begin to make the modifications and was the mid-range strike concept something that Azov developed?
A: Yeah, I would say that basically that was Azov development. So the first tests of these new modifications started in early winter. After approximately a month of testing, we started combat deployment of those drones approximately in January or February of this year. And we use those new modifications to ensure our middle strike operations. In terms of the tactics, I would also like to say that Azov developed new tactics of the deployment of middle strike drones, because the previous tactics they were mostly concentrated on the use of very expensive assets, which are available in limited numbers, so the targeting cycle was different, which is why we needed to develop new tactics and change this targeting cycle.
Q: What systems were you using before that were so expensive?
A: Well I’m not really talking about some specific assets here. I’m mostly talking about the overall tactics and the targeting cycle. So, the tactics of middle strikes were developed for expensive assets that the Corps didn’t have at the moment. So, this is basically why we started developing our own assets that could ensure that we have those middle strike capabilities, and we can also engage targets at the operational level.
Magyar claims a reduction from 3,800 cargo journeys to 1,100 cargo journey (71.05%) along the E-58 Mariupol -Berdiansk – Melitopol – Simferopol highway in the past two weeks
— Ukraine Control Map (@UAControlMap) June 9, 2026
Q: When you added Starlink, did you have to seek permission from SpaceX to use their system for these weapons?
A: The first thing that I would like to say is that we do not use only Starlink. It is just one of the possible communication systems and communication solutions that we’re using. And the second thing that I would like to add is that all the international issues, international cooperation questions, are the issues that should be dealt with at the level of our ministries and at the level of our central government, so once again, this is not a question that I can answer.
Una parte vital de la efectividad de los drones Hornet con los que Ucrania está atacando las rutas logísticas rusas entre 80 y 120km del frente es la recopilacion de datos para que el algoritmo aprenda. Por eso algunos modelos llevan grandes terminales Starlink. https://t.co/yGePjoPo2Kpic.twitter.com/iWu2bLrwq5
Q: Can you tell me what other communications systems you use?
A: No, this information is still secret, because none of those assets have been taken by the enemy, so the enemy doesn’t know yet that we’re using those. But I think that in some time we will be able to go public with those assets and tell more about what we use, apart from Starlink.
Q: Are you using Starlink and the other systems on the Darts drones as well, or just Hornet?
A: Yes, we are using Darts for those middle strike attacks. So, basically, the overall tactics of those mid-strike attacks with small UAV systems, it can use any fixed wing kamikaze drones with modifications which is why we are using Hornets, we are using Darts and also the other types of drones.
While the Ukrainian “Hornet” strike UAV is receiving a lot of attention recently, the “Darts” UAV remains a workhorse for mid-range strike. It, too, has AI terminal targeting and control capabilities to defeat Russian jamming. https://t.co/cNcQytap1Dpic.twitter.com/C8nYJ20Uer
A: Unfortunately, no. The enemy has not yet got hold of those assets, and if one of them will be shot down, or if one of them will be captured by the enemy, then I think that we will be able to go public with those assets.
Q: Can you talk more about how you are using AI for the Hornets and Darts?
A: The AI is used for the so-called last-mile system. I’m talking about the terminal guidance here, and also the AI can also be used to identify the targets, especially when the drone is flying in the autonomous mode. It can recognize the type of the target and it can automatically engage the target. So all of these processes can happen without the involvement of the operator. This allows us to launch several drones at the same time, and this also allows us to ensure a higher level of coordination for those attacks.
I think that one of the examples of these attacks was captured by one of our videos that you might have seen when one fixed-wing drone is observing the target and the other drone is actually hitting it.
1-й корпус НГУ «Азов» контролює ворожу логістику під Донецьком. Знищення російської техніки
Q: Is there a man in the loop or a man on the loop during the terminal phase of the attack or is it fully autonomous?
A: Since we are trying to control the whole process, usually it is the person who takes the final decision and actually makes this decision to strike the target, because we do not want to over rely on the artificial intelligence. If necessary, this whole process can also happen without human involvement, but as I have already mentioned, our policy is that the decision should be made exclusively by the operator.
Q: So this is man in the loop?
A: Yes, so technically men can be out of this loop, but in our case we involve humans in this system, so that’s man in the loop.
Visual look of Hornet UI. Not much new, can mark soldiers individually. Seems aiming is done by either by lock a target (red) or manually aiming by continusly clicking (green) https://t.co/d2LGtV2aON
Q: Have the Russians developed countermeasures for this effort?
A: Since the overall intent was to go to the massive deployment of those drones against the enemy logistics at once, as for now, the enemy has not yet had enough time to adapt to these tactics of ours. And now they’re desperately trying to find some countermeasures to find some ways to react to this.
Images showing unusually painted Russian trucks have appeared on social media channels in recent days with a paint scheme designed to throw off Ukraine’s AI-assisted mid-range strike drones. (Via X) via X
They are putting on anti-drone nets deep into their controlled territory. They are placing people armed with shotguns every 50 meters of their critical roads, but basically, as for now, there is no Russian tactic that would be effective in protecting their logistics. I do not say that they will not come up with this tactic in a month or so, but as for now, they do not have an effective countermeasure for that.
The only thing that I would like to add is that we approximately know the direction in which the enemy is moving to ensure counter measures to this tactic of ours, and we already have countermeasures for their countermeasures.
The current Ukrainian superiority in mid-range drone warfare is a brilliant advantage that comes with an expiration date.
Failing to prepare for the day Russia matches this capability guarantees a catastrophic collapse of front line logistics for Ukraine.
Q: Is the AI enhancement helping to mitigate Russian jamming and electronic warfare measures?
A: Well, I would like to say that EW is not the only way to counter UAVs. So, in addition to EW assets, there are other counter drone methods. Nets can be used. Air observation posts can be used. The drones can be shot down with enemy interceptor drones, and also there are hundreds and hundreds of people armed with shotguns who can also try to shoot the drones down. So the EW systems are just a small part of this overall system of drone countermeasures, and it is a general misconception that all anti-drone efforts are from the EW system. I would say that EW accounts for approximately 10% of overall counter drone efforts.
The main idea of the use of the AI systems is not only to help operators to counter enemy drone countermeasures, but the AI also helps the operator with navigation, with orientation, with the identification of the targets. So this is a complex system that helps the operator with many tasks.
Here: strike by the Ukrainian-American “Hornet” drone on occupier positions. Two Russians confirmed as “gruz 200” (KIA). Interestingly, the Russians call this drone “Martian-2” because its capabilities seem “out of this world” to them.
Q: What are the lessons that the U.S. can learn from your mid-range drone strike campaign, given the importance of logistics everywhere.
A: Well, I would say that the main lesson that the U.S. can learn from our experience is that drones in their basic configuration, right out of the box, is not something that can work, and this is not something that can bring you the best results at once. This is why every unit should have their own drone laboratory that can reconfigure those drones and modify them, and I’m not only talking about reconfiguring tactical level drones to turn them into middle strike capacities. I’m talking about all warfare in general.
U.S. soldier Sgt. Kevin Tran, assigned to 173rd Airborne Brigade, sets up a one-way attack Hornet drone during a demonstration in the 7th Army Training Command’s Grafenwoehr Training Area, Germany, March 25, 2026. The demonstration provided leaders with insight into how AI-enabled one-way attack systems operate alongside Army fires formations. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Thomas Dixon) Spc. Thomas Dixon
Assets become obsolete very quickly and in three months everything can change, starting from the navigation systems and ending with the control systems. For example, today the GPS signal works, in a month it doesn’t work anymore. Today we use this set of frequency ranges, and in a month all those frequency ranges are jammed by the enemy. So I’m saying this for you to understand that for example, if the U.S. government purchases Hornet drones for their units, then the units are going to have good tactical level drones. But if you want to squeeze all of the possible benefits from those drones, then you will need to modify the structure of your units and include the departments, include the sections that will deal with the modification and reconfiguration of those drones to ensure the most efficient results that can be achieved.
From what I see now, the U.S. is mostly just giving the unit some assets, but they are not thinking about re-configuring or repurposing those drones.
Q: Is there anything I haven’t asked you that you would like to address?
A: I think that we have covered all the topics. The only thing that I would like to add is that I would like your audience to see that Ukraine introduces new innovations that can basically change the battlefield, and this is why trying to forecast the outcome of the war based on the number of tanks or aircraft or bombs that would be incorrect, so the victory will belong to the side capable of adapting faster and not to the side that has more resources.
Supporters of a half-cent sales tax proposed to help fund health services in Los Angeles County declared victory Tuesday after days of steadily gaining ground as more ballots were counted.
The latest results show the “yes” camp ahead by a slim margin, with just more than 50% of the vote. The measure needs a simple majority to win.
“Today, Angelenos sent a clear message: we take care of each other,” said Jim Mangia, chief executive of St. John’s Community Health and a spokesperson for the campaign, in a statement. “For months, we watched Washington make decisions that stripped healthcare away from hundreds of thousands of our neighbors — and today, Los Angeles County answered.”
The campaign said it would be organizing a news conference Wednesday to celebrate the “historic win.”
The proposal, on the ballot as Measure ER, had gained traction since election night, when results showed the tax had failed to gain a majority of support among early voters. Voters have not rejected a sales tax hike in L.A. County since 2012, when a transportation measure fell just short of a needed two-thirds majority with 66.1% support.
Approval of Measure ER would impose a new sales tax of half a penny of every dollar spent in the county, with the proceeds going to local hospitals and clinics that say they’re bleeding funding after federal cuts. Officials anticipate it will bring in $1 billion annually to patch the holes in the health services network.
The tax, which was championed by a coalition of healthcare advocates, takes effect Oct. 1 and will last for five years.
WARNER, N.H. — For Rahm Emanuel, the road to the White House runs through the uphill climbs of rural New Hampshire.
The onetime Democratic congressman, White House chief of staff, Chicago mayor and U.S. ambassador to Japan hasn’t formally announced his ambition to return to power in Washington. But his weekend trip through the state that typically holds the first presidential primary was hardly subtle.
There were the union hall visits and intimate house parties, staples of New Hampshire political rituals. At one event in the backyard of a handsome home in Concord, Emanuel greeted voters and practiced a stump speech that highlighted strains on the middle class and the excesses of the tax system.
And then there was the bike tour.
Over the course of three days, Emanuel pedaled more than 117 miles across New Hampshire from Portsmouth on the coast to Hanover on the Vermont border in what he dubbed the “Spin-Free Tour,” a nod to his blunt demeanor that he sees as an asset for a Democratic Party trying to move beyond its devastating losses in 2024.
“Tough times require a tough leader,” Emanuel told the Associated Press during a break at a coffee shop in Warner. “I don’t think this is just about learning the words to ‘Kumbaya.’”
For someone who has spent the better part of three decades in the highest orbits of political power, the 66-year-old Emanuel is in the unusual position of lacking a natural platform. His likely rivals in a Democratic presidential contest are mostly younger and, as governors, senators or a recently departed vice president, can more easily attract attention.
And despite his thick resume, Emanuel isn’t especially well known outside political circles, as demonstrated by a woman who asked who he was after he left the coffee shop. When informed that it was Emanuel and that he was considering a campaign, she responded, “A campaign for what?”
How Emanuel taps into tenacity to overcome hurdles
Emanuel is tapping into his hard-wired tenacity in hopes of overcoming such challenges.
As many prominent Democrats focus on castigating President Trump, Emanuel has released a flurry of policy proposals addressing everything from social media bans for children to prediction markets and a mandatory retirement age of 75 for those in public office. That would prevent him from seeking a second term if he were elected.
Emanuel is often on the road, talking education in Mississippi and Michigan. He’ll travel to Israel next month to address the U.S.-Israeli relationship as the war in Gaza has spurred new divisions in both political parties, especially among younger voters.
He is a regular guest on podcasts ranging from those hosted by Katie Couric and Kara Swisher to shows focused on fly fishing. He often uses the appearances to knock his own party for overreaching in cultural debates, particularly those involving the rights of transgender people. It’s a message of centrism that has echoes of that of the first president he served, Bill Clinton.
“We did things that were really ridiculous,” he said of Democrats on an episode of Couric’s podcast that posted last week. “Rather than worry about classroom excellence, we were worried about bathroom and locker room access.”
And he hops on the bike.
The tour gives him a chance to both demonstrate his physical fitness at a time of heightened awareness of the nation’s aging political leaders and to introduce himself to the state’s notoriously picky voters before the rest of the field swoops in after the November midterms.
“It is early,” said Rep. Maggie Goodlander, D-N.H., who appeared alongside Emanuel at the Concord house party. “But what I’d say is the people in New Hampshire know how to vet candidates and they’re the most engaged electorate in the country.”
Martha Kruse, a 76-year-old retired special education teacher from Laconia, New Hampshire, is just that type of voter. Active in her local Democratic Party, she traveled to the Concord event to see Emanuel after hearing him in interviews.
“I’m going away really enthused about him,” she said, adding that he was “right on” to prepare a campaign so early.
Riding through the hills of rural New Hampshire
The future of the presidency seemed a world away during a hilly 20-mile stretch of the ride on Saturday, which included an elevation gain of more than 1,300 feet. Along with a cadre of friends and aides, Emanuel cycled past homes where residents were tending to their yards or celebrating a recent graduation on their front patio. He was chatty at times as he rode with the pack and cycled alone at other points, showing little strain in navigating the steep hills.
With summer finally creeping into New England, the humidity was high and the rain was occasionally intense. The group stopped for water and snacks every 10 to 15 miles, huddling under a barn during one rainy stretch. A small group of local activists met up with Emanuel at the coffee shop in Warner, where he held court from a rocking chair.
But the realities of modern politics occasionally asserted themselves. The group cycled past signs praising Trump and denigrating his predecessor, Joe Biden. As the miles dragged on, a chase vehicle crept by periodically with cameras poking out the window to capture scenes that could later be shared on social media, where Emanuel now has an almost daily presence.
And the whir of the midterms wasn’t far away. In neighboring Maine, Graham Platner was contending with a drumbeat of reports about his history with women that has left some Democrats worried that the party’s path to a Senate majority is suddenly imperiled. Emanuel, who helped power Democrats to their sweeping 2006 victories in the U.S. House, said the “jury is still out” on whether Platner can win the Senate race.
“Everybody is holding their breath whether this is the start of something or the end of something,” he said.
Emanuel hopes voices of moderation are prevailing
But as the broader debate over the Democratic Party’s ideological future unfolds, Emanuel said he thought voices of moderation were prevailing. He noted recent wins by Rebecca Bennett, who emerged from a crowded Democratic primary in New Jersey with the nomination for a competitive House seat, along with Josh Turek, the new Democratic Senate nominee in Iowa.
“There’s a bigger character piece to this than ideological,” Emanuel said. “There’s radical moderates and their profile and character speak to kind of fighting a system, which is what’s needed right now.”
The bike tour was certainly not John McCain’s “Straight Talk Express,” the 2000 campaign bus from which the Arizona Republican senator opined on any question that came his way to seize attention and mount a surprise New Hampshire win over front-runner George W. Bush. But some voters said they were open to Emanuel.
Don Daley, a 60-year-old state employee from Concord, watched Emanuel talk from a bench in the backyard of the house party. He said that Emanuel probably “steps on a few toes.”
“But I think that’s what we need right now,” he said. “Some of our Democratic leaders haven’t been strong enough.”
WASHINGTON — Democrats’ path to winning control of the Senate probably runs through Maine — where voters were set to head to the polls Tuesday after several days of growing party anxiety about Graham Platner, who has faced a string of controversies as the likely Democratic candidate.
Democrats not just in Maine but around the country — including in Texas, Iowa and other red states where the party’s mission to flip Senate seats would become more urgent if its prospects in Maine faltered — were closely watching Platner’s performance in Tuesday’s primary.
“They’ve probably become if not less optimistic, at least more nervous over the last 10 days or so,” said Mark Brewer, a political science professor at the University of Maine.
Democrats face a challenging map as they seek to regain control of both chambers of Congress and claw back power in Washington. Unseating Sen. Susan Collins, the veteran Maine Republican, has been viewed as one of the party’s best chances, Brewer said.
Platner’s primary opponent, Maine Gov. Janet Mills, suspended her campaign in late April, clearing his path. He is generally expected to prevail as the Democratic nominee, but what percentage of his party’s vote he captures could help indicate how strong his candidacy will be in the general election, said John Cluverius, director of survey research for the Center for Public Opinion at UMass Lowell, which has conducted polling on the race.
“It’s critical [for Democrats], because without Maine, to win back the Senate you would need to win in states that Donald Trump won overwhelmingly,” Cluverius said.
Platner, an oyster farmer and Marine Corps veteran, emerged as a political outsider and quickly gained popularity.
But apparent scandals followed him. The latest came Thursday, when the New York Times reported that three ex-girlfriends of Platner’s had described his behavior as volatile and, by one account, physically rough. Platner, who denied the latter allegation, had previously addressed controversies related to his texting of women outside his marriage, a Nazi-style tattoo and old Reddit posts.
Over the weekend, Platner projected confidence. He took questions from audience members at a Sunday town hall, and on Friday, the campaign saw its best fundraising day since Mills suspended her bid opposing Platner for the nomination, bringing in $200,000 in 24 hours, a campaign official said.
“Since the beginning, Maine, you had my back,” Platner told supporters at a Friday rally. He drew a standing ovation when he continued: “Now, as every single piece of that past and journey gets dug up, litigated and weaponized, you have my back.”
Platner described the allegations against him as “politically motivated” and false.
The controversies surrounding him could help Collins, who has a track record as a political survivor, Brewer said. In 2020, the last time Collins was reelected, polls predicted she would lose to her Democratic opponent, but she secured reelection, even as the state went for Democrat Joe Biden in the presidential race.
“Her position has probably improved over the last few weeks,” Brewer said. “She has mostly stayed out of the way on this and let the negative stories pile up.
Last week, Democratic leaders largely stood by Platner, as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer indicated the party would continue to back him. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) campaigned with him at the Friday rally. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) recorded a call to prospective voters on his behalf, and Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) appeared at a virtual fundraiser, according to a source familiar with the plans.
The political calculus comes down to whether “they would rather have a Senate majority with Graham Platner in it than a Senate minority without Graham Platner in it,” Culverius said.
Democrats must flip at least four Republican seats to take control of the Senate, a difficult task. The Maine seat is the only possible Democratic flip in a state that went for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in 2024 rather than for President Trump.
Democrats are also looking for victory in Texas, Iowa, Ohio, North Carolina or Alaska, all states that went for Trump in 2024. The party must additionally retain their seats in competitive races in Michigan, New Hampshire and Georgia.
How Platner affects his party’s chances of taking Senate control depends on what happens next, Brewer said.
“What else are we going to see? And I don’t know that anybody knows that at this point,” Brewer said. “I think that’s really what Democrats have to worry about the most. Is this as bad as it gets, or is there other stuff?”
Voters are willing to overlook scandal more readily than in the past, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston. And in these midterm elections, Democratic voters view the stakes as “extremely high.”
“Most voters are looking at the prospect of winning and losing,” he said. “Parties are worried about getting the win.”
AUSTIN, Texas — A lawyer who represented Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton for nearly a decade over accusations of corruption and securities fraud is supporting Democrat James Talarico — and not his former client — in one of the biggest U.S. Senate races.
Talarico on Monday drew attention to his campaign winning the endorsement of Houston attorney Dan Cogdell, who was part of Paxton’s defense team during the Republican’s historic impeachment trial in 2023 that ended in acquittal.
The legal troubles that shadowed Paxton in public office in Texas are a central attack line of Talarico’s campaign, though in his endorsement, Cogdell didn’t cite concerns about his client’s past.
Cogdell said he didn’t dislike Paxton as a person and felt that Texas lawmakers were right to eventually acquit the attorney general. But as a politician, Cogdell said, Paxton is too focused on appeasing President Trump.
“I worked my ass off for the man for nine years,” Cogdell said in an interview with the Associated Press. “But that’s a different inquiry, my obligation to Ken ended at the courthouse steps and my obligation as a citizen is to do what I think is the right thing.”
Cogdell said Texas needs a lot of work, pointing to education and health care, “and to simply bootlick or rubber stamp Trump, that’s not what we need in D.C. right now.” He also recently spoke to Talarico at length on Cogdell’s podcast.ty.
Asked for comment, an aide to Paxton’s campaign said Cogdell is a Democrat and called the endorsement unsurprising.
The lead defense attorney in Paxton’s impeachment trial, Tony Buzbee, reiterated that on X. Buzbee added that he was supporting Paxton in the race.
Cogdell described himself as a registered Democrat, although voters in Texas do not register by political party. He added, however, that he considers himself a moderate who has given more campaign contributions over the years to Republican candidates than Democrats.
Talarico has given Democrats hope of flipping the statewide seat in Texas blue as the party scrambles to retake control of the U.S. Senate in November.
Paxton’s insurgent campaign beat Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican Senate primary runoff last month, helped by a Trump endorsement in the final days of the race.
Veteran Democratic politician Xavier Becerra won one of the top two spots in California’s primary election for governor, according to the Associated Press, a finish that puts him in a prime position to win in November and make history as California’s first elected Latino governor.
“The people of the great state of California, in the greatest nation on earth, have spoken — loudly and proudly,” Xavier Becerra said in a statement Friday. “We will not be bought. We will not be bullied. And we are never backing down. November, here we come.”
Former Fox News host Steve Hilton, a Republican, remains in a close second and appears on the cusp of securing the right to face off with Becerra in the November general election.
Tom Steyer, a hedge fund manager turned climate change activist, may be destined to finish in third place — which would be a disappointing end to a campaign that saturated California’s television screens, social media scrolls and mailboxes thanks to the progressive Democrat spending $216 million of his own wealth.
Becerra’s victory was declared by the Associated Press on Friday evening, three days after the June 2 election — an indication of the competitive race to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom and California’s lengthy process of counting ballots. Still, Becerra and Hilton were within a percentage point of each other, though that could change as the vote tally continues. While his fate is not sealed, Steyer faces long odds to finish in the top two.
Under California’s primary system, only the two candidates who receive the most votes in the primary advance to the November general election, regardless of their party affiliation.
Becerra would enter the general election campaign with a significant edge over Hilton since Democratic voters in California outnumber Republicans by almost a 2-to-1 margin, a telltale reason why no GOP candidate has won a statewide race since 2006.
President Trump’s endorsement of Hilton helped consolidate support from Republican voters, which was pivotal to his success in the primary, but would likely hurt him in a face-off against Becerra. Nearly two-thirds of voters in the state want a governor who will fight Trump’s policies, according to the survey by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies that was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times.
Becerra could make history by becoming the first Latino to be elected governor — and the first to lead the state in more than 150 years. The last time a Latino held the office was in 1875, when then-Lt. Gov. Romualdo Pacheco was elevated to fill a vacancy and served for 10 months.
“California has made history. Xavier Becerra’s advancement to the general election is a defining moment both for the state, and for the millions of Latino families who have been instrumental in shaping the state’s future. … As home to the nation’s largest Latino population, California will once again demonstrate the decisive power of Latino voters,” said Voto Latino Executive Director Beatriz Lopez.
Though Latinos make up about 40% of the state’s population and are California’s largest ethnic group, they historically have lower turnout in elections and are underrepresented in government. Though Becerra often cites his upbringing as a child of working-class Mexican immigrants, he will still need to demonstrate he can deliver for those communities, said Christian Arana, vice president of civic power and policy at the California-based Latino Community Foundation.
“There’s a lot of excitement about the representation side,” Arana said. “You can have Latino representation, but whether or not that will actually lead to tangible outcomes for Latino communities, that’s what people want to know.”
Once stuck in the single-digits in public opinion polls with a handful of other Democratic candidates, Becerra rose quickly and unexpectedly following the political demise of former Rep. Eric Swalwell.
Becerra’s rise began days after Swalwell dropped out in April following allegations of sexual assault and misconduct, which he denies. Becerra quickly consolidated support from elected officials including Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and influential groups like Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California and the California Medical Assn.
But both supporters and critics of Becerra struggle to explain exactly how or why he became the main beneficiary of Swalwell’s downfall.
Becerra’s campaign credits the timing of a major television and digital advertising push. The political ads began running just before the allegations against Swalwell came out and depicted Becerra as a calm, experienced leader with a record pushing back against Trump and support from Young Democrat groups.
Steyer’s campaign hired an intelligence firm to look into the online surge favoring Becerra and found thousands of bot accounts had amplified Becerra on various social media platforms. Becerra’s campaign denied any involvement and dismissed the influence of the fake accounts.
Political experts describe it as the stars aligning for the longtime Democratic politician. In the aftermath of the scandal, voters were apparently drawn to Becerra’s long resume and calm, thoughtful demeanor.
“He just never overreacted. Even when attacked [during debates], he was calm,” said Fernando Guerra, professor of Chicano Studies at Loyola Marymount University. That “gave the sense of being a moderate, while he’s really a liberal, so he was able to appeal not only to Latinos, but to liberals and to moderates.”
After Swalwell’s campaign crumbled, members of the political brain trust — many with ties to Newsom — that had been advising the former congressman began working for Becerra, including digital strategist Alf LaMont and veteran consultants Courtni Pugh and Lindsey Cobia.
“There was nothing going for him for a long, long time,” said Jason McDaniel, associate professor of political science at San Francisco State University. “I do think it was just people looking for someone who had a lot of experience who could win.”
Becerra’s first election victory was to the state Assembly in 1990. He served one term before successfully running for a Los Angeles congressional seat, which he held for 24 years.
Then-Gov. Jerry Brown appointed Becerra as state attorney general in 2017, a post he used to challenge Trump administration policies in the courts more than a 100 times — with great success. Becerra helped craft the Affordable Care Act in Congress and defended it as attorney general, and Joe Biden nominated him to serve as Health and Human Services secretary.
The 68-year-old veteran elected official has faced criticism on the campaign trail for his record leading the massive federal agency, particularly over a New York Times investigation that found thousands of unaccompanied migrant children ended up working in dangerous jobs after they were released to sponsors.
Some former Biden administration officials, many of them anonymous, have also criticized Becerra’s leadership of the agency.
Still, Becerra’s supporters said the candidate’s experience, particularly when it comes to fighting the Trump administration, qualifies him for California’s top job.
“He’s had some very important positions in government,” labor leader Dolores Huerta said at Becerra’s election night party in downtown Los Angeles. “He is qualified. He doesn’t have to go into a learning mode.”
“He’s a legal scholar,” said David Dixon, a political science professor at Cal State Dominguez Hills and brother to a longtime Becerra aide. “When our Constitution is threatened, we need people like him to be in positions of power to reclaim things we are losing now.”
Times staff writers Seema Mehta, Dakota Smith and Andrew Khouri contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — The last time Washington, D.C., residents chose a new delegate to Congress and a new mayor in the same election, gas was $1.33 a gallon and George H.W. Bush was president.
This fall they will do it again — under starkly different circumstances.
As the city heads toward pivotal primaries this month to pick candidates for those roles, President Trump’s influence on the nation’s capital is shaping up as a major campaign issue. The fresh slate of candidates is weighing how best to approach Trump’s Republican administration and congressional control over the heavily Democratic city’s affairs.
“It’s going to be a big sea change in city politics, no matter how the elections shake out,” said Amanda Huron, a professor at the University of the District of Columbia who teaches courses on D.C. history and politics. But Washington’s lack of full autonomy brings “all sorts of peculiarities around the city’s governance.”
Since Trump returned to office last year, the National Guard is on an open-ended deployment as part of what he calls a crime-fighting mission. He is putting his personal imprint on the city’s storied landmarks. And major cuts to the federal workforce have compounded economic pressures on the capital, which has one of the country’s highest unemployment rates.
The city has long had a unique, if fraught, relationship with the federal government: While residents can vote for their local leaders, they are limited by Washington’s status as a federal district in how much influence they can actually have on the city’s affairs. That limited autonomy has been further squeezed under Trump and his federal law enforcement takeover, launched last year.
This fall, current council members Janeese Lewis George and Kenyan McDuffie are the frontrunners vying to replace Mayor Muriel Bowser, elected in 2014. The leading candidates in the race to succeed long-serving congressional Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton are Robert White Jr. and Brooke Pinto, also D.C. council members.
On June 16, primaries will be held for those roles, which in an overwhelmingly Democratic city usually dictate who will take the top spot come November.
Washington, and its elected officials, have limited autonomy
Washington, unlike other cities, does not control its fate.
What choices voters have is through a limited home rule agreement passed by Congress in 1973 that allowed residents to elect their local government leaders.
But Congress retains control over local affairs, including the approval of the budget and laws passed by the city council. Congressional members elected by voters from thousands of miles away routinely introduce measures to impact city affairs.
That has meant local leaders must balance pressures from their constituents with the demands of Congress and the administration — an act Bowser was forced to perform repeatedly.
During Trump’s first term, she ordered the painting and naming of Black Lives Matter Plaza, just north of the White House, in 2020. Just months after Trump’s inauguration to his second term, she agreed to remove it in response to pressure from congressional Republicans.
That act, the decimation of the federal workforce by the Department of Government Efficiency and the surge by federal law enforcement and the National Guard into the city have emerged as central themes in the election season. Right now, about 3,500 troops are in the city — a number authorities say will climb to 5,000 as the country’s 250th anniversary celebrations approach.
Trump has routinely said his intervention has made Washington “one of the safest” and most beautiful cities in the country, enjoying a historic drop in crime.
Candidates campaign on promise of resistance to Trump
George told The Associated Press that her top priority is addressing “the affordability crisis here in D.C., which the Trump administration has only made worse by unjustly firing federal employees en masse and militarizing our streets.”
McDuffie said his top priority is public safety as crime continues to be an issue. He has said he would add 1,000 police officers over four years, fully staff the 911 call center after years of chronic staffing shortages and take a public health approach to violence reduction.
“We cannot have an affordable city,” he said, “without public safety as its foundation.”
Both said they would bolster the city’s legal defenses against federal overreach and said Bowser should have been less cooperative with federal authorities as they targeted members of the city’s immigrant communities.
Alex Dodd, co-founder of Free DC, an activist group supporting city independence, said the organization endorsed George because of her willingness to be more aggressive in opposing Trump and congressional Republicans.
“When our leaders comply with this administration before being forced, they are giving this regime an enormous advantage,” he said.
Pat Wheeler, a native Washingtonian and communications consultant who served as a department head at Morgan State University, applauded Bowser for cooperating with the Trump administration on some aspects. She noted failure to do so could have sparked retribution and a loss of what little control city officials have.
“Trump can snap his finger and the whole Republican Congress will say, ‘Let’s put a federal control board over the mayor,’” she said.
Affordability and social issues also concerns
The D.C. delegate position is a nonvoting one, but it grants the nearly 700,000 people of the district, who have no other representation in Congress, a voice through speechmaking on the House floor and bill introduction.
But critics said the 88-year-old Norton was diminished during the second Trump administration and not visible enough in the fight against administration and congressional overreach on the city’s autonomy. She filed paperwork to end her campaign for reelection in January.
Norton, who has served 18 terms, has had a storied career. She and her predecessor, Walter Fauntroy Jr., both had national standing coming out of the civil rights era.
“Eleanor Holmes Norton is maybe one of the last major political figures who comes out of the civil rights movement,” said Matt Dallek, a political historian at The George Washington University. “It’s a real passing of the torch.”
The campaigns of candidates running to replace her have centered on local control, Trump and affordability. Frontrunners and council members Pinto and White have also engaged in personal skirmishes questioning the origins of campaign contributions and connections to Republicans.
Pinto told the AP her top priority for the city is self-governance, something that has “never been a true reality for the people of D.C.”
She said affordability for the middle-class and working families is another concern.
White’s campaign has said he’s “not willing to continue to see our tax dollars used to allow DC police to cooperate and conspire with federal agents to trample our constitutional rights and to terrorize our communities.”
Brenda Manley, a longtime resident of Ward 7, an area with a storied Black history across the Anacostia River, said the city was well managed despite the tensions with Trump. But she said she hoped all the candidates would spend more time on the campaign focusing on programs that are beneficial to all residents, like a tuition grant program championed by Norton or major strides made in education during Bowser’s tenure.
PORTLAND, Maine — Graham Platner, the insurgent Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Maine, will hold his first major campaign rally Friday night as reports continue emerging about his history with women.
Last weekend, his campaign wrestled with stories about sexually explicit messages that Platner sent to several women while he was married. Then on Thursday, The New York Times reported about his relationships with previous girlfriends. Some viewed him positively but others described him as volatile and insulting.
One woman said Platner twisted her arm during an argument and locked her in a room. Platner called that allegation untrue.
But with Maine’s primary around the corner Tuesday and Democrats desperate to rally behind a candidate who can defeat Republican Sen. Susan Collins in November, there’s been little sign of voters or political allies backing away from Platner, who has pitched himself as an imperfect person who has redeemed himself.
Some dismissed news of the text messages as a private matter, one that should be addressed solely by the married couple. Others argue that the need for Democrats to take back control of the U.S. Senate from Republicans is too important to cast aside imperfect candidates.
Yet they’re also wrestling with the question of whether more controversial information surrounding Platner could come out ahead of the November election.
“I think a lot of people are afraid,” said Deb Dagnan, chair of Maine’s Piscataquis County Democrats. “They’re waiting for the other shoe to drop after he gets the nomination. Then what do we do?”
Key to the Senate
Platner is key to Democrats hopes’ to take back the U.S. Senate this year. Yet he’s been bedeviled by near-constant controversies involving his disclosure of a since-covered tattoo of a Nazi symbol, his history of inflammatory online comments and the texting revelations.
Nevertheless, Platner’s most prominent supporters have continued to back the candidate, including Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Ruben Gallego. Platner is scheduled to appear in Bar Harbor Friday evening with progressive Rep. Ro Khanna of California, as well as Democratic candidates for U.S. House and governor, as a part of a “get out the vote” rally in the coastal resort town.
The event is taking place just days ahead of the state’s June 9 primary election, where Platner is expected to secure the Democratic nomination. His top opponent, Gov. Janet Mills, suspended her campaign in late April.
He’ll do so under reignited scrutiny amid reports that he and his wife, Amy Gertner, have had marital difficulties and sought counseling after he allegedly sent sexually explicit text messages to other women.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Gertner had told the campaign in August about the messages, which she had discovered on his phone last year, to make sure they weren’t a liability to the campaign. Platner’s campaign team reportedly decided that the texts were private and being handled by the couple, who were married in 2023.
Genevieve McDonald, a former campaign staffer for Platner, told The Associated Press that the candidate was “sexting multiple women while married” and that “the campaign tried to assess that as an election vulnerability.”
Shortly after the news came out, Platner posted a five-minute video taken by Gertner, who avoided speaking directly about her husband’s reported texts but dubbed the broader coverage as “gossip” and said “being married is hard.”
Voters worry that more scandals lurk
Gertner’s emotional comments about working on her marriage have resonated with some women, who say they are shocked that a former campaign aide would betray someone’s trust and the issue should remain between the couple.
“It’s none of my business as far as I’m concerned,” said Joanne Mason, a local Democratic leader from south-central Maine. “And I would hope that people wouldn’t judge any one person on their own private marriage.”
Valerie Tate, a Democrat from Belfast, described Gertner’s honesty about trying to work on their mental health and marriage as admirable.
“That is not a scandal,” Tate wrote in an email. “That is integrity. Personal growth is not a disqualification from public life. For many of us, it is precisely what made us worthy of it.”
However, Tate conceded that her mind wasn’t fully at ease. With the public still learning about Platner’s past, there is a chance something could emerge as a dealbreaker for voters.
“Of course, there is that concern as there would be in any race with somebody we don’t know all the dramas and the journeys they’ve been on,” she wrote. “Something could come out that would be disqualifying.”
Past controversies simmer
This isn’t the first time Platner has faced questions about his past. He had a tattoo recognized as a Nazi symbol, which he had covered up after starting his campaign.
Platner has said he didn’t realize the meaning of the tattoo. However, a former girlfriend told the Times he joked about it being a Nazi symbol and called it “my Totenkopf.”
There’s also been much attention on Platner’s former Reddit posts, which were dismissive of military sexual assaults and used homophobic slurs, for which he has apologized.
Platner has never held elected office and has fashioned a straight-talking, progressive, populist-style campaign focusing on issues such as income inequality, lack of health care accessibility and the rising cost of housing. In return, he’s attracted thousands at his rallies and campaign events and collected millions in campaign funds to further boost his messaging.
“People want somebody new,” said Paige Zeigler, a former Maine Democratic lawmaker and head of the Waldo County Democrats, on why Platner’s staying power has remained strong. “They want somebody that they feel that they can embrace. And Platner is riding that wave.”
Whittle and Kruesi write for the Associated Press. Kruesi reported from Providence, R.I.
A huge, waning moon glimmered over Los Angeles on election night, a metaphor for a trend that emerged in early returns.
The city’s political establishment seemed to be on the retreat in favor of populist insurgents from both the left and the right.
Mayor Karen Bass held a cushy lead in her bid for a second term, and the Associated Press declared that she had made it into the November runoff election. But the underwhelming amount of support she got thus far showed that many voters in a super-blue city didn’t have enough confidence in a Democratic stalwart to return her to office. Instead, many chose self-proclaimed upstarts from opposite ends of the political spectrum: Republican reality TV star Spencer Pratt and democratic socialist City Councilmember Nithya Raman.
Raman launched her campaign at the last moment, just weeks after endorsing her longtime ally Bass, figuring that enough Angelenos were tired of the incumbent and would join her message of change from inside City Hall.
Raman’s instincts were half right. Voters did want change. But they didn’t view her as a challenge to the status quo — to many, she is the status quo.
The mayoral hopeful didn’t articulate a platform that radically departed from Bass’, and voter antipathy to her muddled messaging showed: she ended the night in third place. If the current results hold, Bass would face Pratt in the runoff.
At Raman’s election-night party at Boomtown Brewery on the outskirts of Little Tokyo, I saw why her chances of becoming L.A.’s next mayor were slim from the start. The gathering felt like happy hour at a Silver Lake bar: far whiter than the city overall, with few Latinos. Her address to a packed house was a grab bag of platitudes mixed with a broadside against MAGA, which is a political nothing in L.A. politics. It was an uninspiring cri de coeur and reflective of a campaign that wasn’t apocalyptic enough for those, such as Pratt’s people, who want radical change, while offering nothing new for Bass supporters.
Yet Raman still insisted she had unlocked something transformative.
“Together, we built something extraordinary,” she said to cheers. “And it gives me so much inspiration to be a part of it, a movement powered not by cynicism or political insiders, but by ordinary people who still believe Los Angeles is worth fighting for.”
Raman then went on the dance floor to greet well-wishers, pumping her fist while a DJ blasted Daft Punk’s “Lose Yourself to Dance.”
A billboard for L.A. mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt near MacArthur Park on June 2, 2026.
(Ronaldo Bolanos / Los Angeles Times)
Across town in West Los Angeles, Pratt reveled in his second-place position, enjoying a Mexican dinner with friends and family. It was a peaceful conclusion to a spring of fulminations against Bass (“Karen Basura”), nonprofits, homeless people (“zombies”) and anything that reeked of Democratic pieties, even as the Republican swore he was campaigning for all ideologies in a nonpartisan race.
Long dismissed as a has-been joke, Pratt correctly judged that Angelenos are angry and don’t want to be polite about it anymore. He and his supporters will take his unlikely rise as a mandate to double down against liberal L.A.
But if Pratt, who lost his house in the Palisades fire, does move on to the general election and is serious about winning, he needs to learn from the political revolution successfully pursued by his polar opposites, the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Six years ago this spring, L.A.’s political establishment wrote off DSA-LA as wokoso upstarts in their long-shot quest to get a political novice named Nithya Raman elected to the city council. Even as Raman and three other DSA members joined the council, skeptics dismissed them and their progressive policies as anomalies that didn’t reflect how Angelenos actually wanted the city to work.
Tuesday night, four of the six DSA-endorsed candidates in L.A. city elections were in first place by large margins and another was comfortably in second, reflecting DSA’s multicultural, citywide reach. In a telling sign of its newfound king-making status, the local chapter declined to endorse Raman or any other mayoral candidate. Without that powerful backing, their trailblazer, along with DSA member Rae Huang, withered on their L.A. revolutionary vine.
Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez and L.A. Unified school board member Rocío Rivas looked to be coasting to outright victories. Marissa Roy was on her way to a runoff that would exclude the incumbent city attorney, Hydee Feldstein Soto, who was a distant third in the early returns. In District 9, where Curren Price is terming out, Estuardo Mazariegos stood comfortably in second place and looked to headed to a runoff against a fellow Latino candidate in a race that will see South Los Angeles elect its first non-Black council member in 63 years.
The most surprising outcome involved Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who became a punching bag, along with Bass, for people who thought L.A. had transformed into a hellhole. So-called dark money groups, which don’t have to reveal where their funding comes from, poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into negative mailers. Opponents vying for her seat cast federal raids against drug dealers and gangs in the MacArthur Park area as an indictment of her leadership, berating her during debates and on social media.
Even Hernandez’s supporters were fretting about what might happen on election night. But by the time I arrived at her raucous soirée in Highland Park, early returns showed her way ahead of the field and perhaps avoiding a runoff.
“It’s reassuring to see [DSA’s success],” she said as jubilant supporters lined up beside her to get tattoos — real ink, not temporary — of hummingbirds, her campaign’s logo. “That means people see us. That means people want more.”
Hernandez pointed to her fellow DSA member, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
“What happened with DSA over there didn’t happen overnight,” she said. “In L.A., we’re getting there.”
A table filled with campaign buttons for Council Memer Hugo Soto-Martinez, who ran for reelection this year and is expected to win outright.
But anyone who wants to win in Los Angeles needs to realize that antiestablishment sentiment is in the air.
At the same time, I would remind the victorious populists to look up in the sky and remember their Shakespeare.
“O, swear not by the moon, th’ inconstant moon / That monthly changes in her circle orb / Lest that thy love prove likewise variable,” Juliet warned Romeo.
Politics, like la luna, waxes and wanes whether we like it or not, and anyone who bets on a permanent transformation at City Hall will probably lose.
Angelenos have declared that they want dramatic change. But how will they feel in November?
