campaign

Nithya Raman began her political career by defeating a well-funded incumbent with deep ties to the Democratic Party establishment.

Raman, an urban planner who was running to shake up the status quo, became the first person to oust a sitting councilmember in 17 years, stunning the Los Angeles political establishment with her defeat of David Ryu in 2020.

Now, with her surprise, last-minute entry into the mayor’s race, the 44-year-old Silver Lake resident is hoping to defeat another incumbent, Karen Bass, by expanding on the formula that led to her first upset victory.

“I was an outsider when I first ran, and I think I’ll be an outsider in this race,” Raman said after filing her candidate paperwork on Feb. 7, hours before the deadline.

But after six years at City Hall, Raman is no longer an outsider. She has her own record, which is in many ways intertwined with the mayor’s, particularly on homelessness, an issue the onetime allies have worked closely together to remedy.

As a City Council member, Raman, whose previous campaigns were backed by Democratic Socialists of America Los Angeles, has sometimes walked a political tightrope, exasperating her progressive base on issues like policing. Last week, she said that the LAPD must not shrink further — a substantial evolution from her “defund the police” declaration during her first run for council.

She has also frustrated some on the left by calling for changes to the city’s “mansion tax,” which she backed in 2022 but which she now says is getting in the way of much-needed development.

Raman shook up a mayoral race that was devoid of high-powered challengers after former L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner dropped out and L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath and billionaire developer Rick Caruso decided not to run.

“Nithya has shown that she can get votes. She’s going to be competitive,” said Bill Carrick, a longtime Democratic political consultant who worked on campaigns for former Mayors Eric Garcetti, James Hahn and Richard Riordan.

But her late entry will make it more difficult to get endorsements and raise money. With three months before ballots are mailed for the June 2 primary, she will have to work at double speed to build a campaign infrastructure and tap into bases that have helped her win before, from Hollywood supporters to DSA members and pro-housing advocates from the YIMBY — Yes in My Backyard — movement.

She has already missed DSA’s endorsement season. And last week, nine of her 14 City Council colleagues reiterated their endorsements of Bass, including another progressive council member, Hugo Soto-Martínez, who said he was “caught off-guard” by Raman’s “last-minute maneuver.”

Raman, who had also endorsed Bass, will have to combat hard feelings among some L.A. politicos who feel that her entry into the race is a betrayal of a mayor who helped her win reelection in 2024.

Raman has said that her decision to run was driven in part by her frustration with city leaders’ inability to get the basics right, such as fixing streetlights and paving streets.

Since launching her campaign, Raman has also joined a chorus of Angelenos criticizing Bass’ handling of the catastrophic Palisades fire, saying the city must be better prepared for major emergencies.

As the dust settles on her unexpected candidacy, political observers are assessing Raman’s prospects — both her strengths and the obstacles that stand between her and the mayor’s office.

Bass campaign spokesperson Douglas Herman declined to comment. A Raman campaign spokesperson, Jeff Millman, also declined to comment.

Ryu, who lost to Raman in 2020, said Bass should be “nervous” about her newest opponent.

To win, Ryu said, Raman must tap into the strengths that helped propel her to victory in the past, including her prowess with social media.

“She couldn’t speak in front of crowds at the beginning. She was super nervous,” Ryu said. “But oh my God, her social media team, the production value of her videos. It’s a science.”

Raman’s 2020 campaign will be hard to replicate. That year, the council race focused not just on local policy but also on national issues such as #MeToo and the police murder of George Floyd, Ryu said. Big-name politicians weighed in, with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders endorsing Raman and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton endorsing Ryu.

The most important difference, Ryu said, is that Raman can no longer plausibly position herself as an outsider.

“Now there’s a record. It’s easy when you’re the activist fighting the system. But when you’re in there, you realize it’s a zero-sum game,” he said. “Do you want to trim trees and fix potholes or build housing? Sometimes that is the brutal reality.”

In the coming months, Raman will have to reach beyond her district, which stretches from Silver Lake to Reseda, introducing herself and her record to voters across the city. She began a media blitz in her first week as a candidate, doing interviews with NBC4, KNX News and The Times.

Her main goal should be to make it to the November runoff, said Mike Trujillo, a Democratic political consultant.

If no candidate among the roughly 40 running for mayor wins more than 50% of the vote in the June 2 primary, the top two finishers will move to the runoff.

A runoff would allow Raman a fresh start, with each candidate starting a new round of fundraising and pitching themselves to voters in a one-on-one contest.

“If it’s Nithya and Mayor Bass, they would both start at zero,” Trujillo said. “For a challenger, that is a godsend.”

That leaves political watchers doing the math of how the mayor and the councilmember could get to the runoff, and which candidates might block their way.

After Bass and Raman, the three biggest figures in the race are Spencer Pratt, Rae Huang and Adam Miller.

Pratt is a registered Republican whose house burned down in the Palisades fire. He has been sharply critical of the mayor’s handling of the fire and has gained traction with national Republicans, including allies of President Trump.

Of the more than 2 million registered voters in the city of Los Angeles, just under 15% were Republicans as of December 2025.

Mike Murphy, a Republican political consultant, thinks Pratt could get 19% to 21% of the vote, with a ceiling in the mid to high 20s.

“Not liking Karen does not make you a Republican,” Murphy said.

On the other side of the spectrum, community organizer Rae Huang has been running an unabashedly leftist campaign, calling for free buses and the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Huang has not been endorsed by DSA’s Los Angeles chapter, but she is a member of the organization.

In 2022, leftist Gina Viola won nearly 7% of the vote in the primary.

Trujillo, the Democratic consultant, said the other wild card is Adam Miller, the tech entrepreneur who has waded into the fight against homelessness. Miller could spend a significant amount of his own fortune in the race — as Caruso did against Bass in 2022.

If Pratt and Huang combine to take 25% and Miller can take somewhere in the 20% range, then Raman and Bass would have to worry about not making the runoff.

“Suddenly, you have a three-way jump ball,” Trujillo said.

Despite having more name recognition than some of her opponents, Raman will need to raise significant funds in a short time.

“My hope is that money will flow,” said Dave Rand, a land use attorney active on housing issues who supports Raman.

Rand said that developers and people in the YIMBY movement will support Raman, who has been a strong advocate for building more housing in Los Angeles.

Mott Smith, a developer and Raman supporter, said he believes fellow developers who know Raman will “gladly” contribute to her campaign.

Smith said he is concerned about Angelenos associating Raman with DSA, which could turn off more moderate voters.

“She will win if Los Angeles gets to know the pragmatic, solutions-oriented Nithya, as opposed to the cartoon image that one paints when they hear she is the latest of the DSA candidates to run for office here,” he said.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a child of Southern segregation who rose to national prominence as a powerful voice for Black economic and racial equality, has died.

Jackson, who had battled the neurodegenerative condition progressive supranuclear palsy for more than a decade, died at home surrounded by family. His daughter, Santita Jackson, confirmed his death with the Associated Press. He was 84. Jackson was originally diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2017 before the PSP diagnosis was confirmed in April.

Handsome and dynamic, an orator with a flair for memorable rhyme, Jackson was the first Black candidate for president to attract a major following, declaring in 1984 that “our time has come” and drawing about 3.5 million votes in Democratic primaries — roughly 1 in 5 of those cast.

Four years later, using the slogan “Keep hope alive,” he ran again, winning 7 million votes, second only to the eventual nominee, Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis. His hourlong speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention brought many delegates to tears and provided the gathering’s emotional high point.

Rev. Jesse Jackson and his wife, Jacqueline, acknowledge the cheers of delegates and supporters before his emotional speech to the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta on July 20, 1988.

(John Duricka / Associated Press)

“Every one of these funny labels they put on you, those of you who are watching this broadcast tonight in the projects, on the corners — I understand,” he said. “Call you outcast, low down, you can’t make it, you’re nothing, you’re from nobody, subclass, underclass; when you see Jesse Jackson, when my name goes in nomination, your name goes in nomination.”

For nearly a generation, from the 1970s into the 1990s, that ability to absorb the insults and rejection suffered by Black Americans and transmute them into a defiant rhetoric of success made Jackson the most prominent Black figure in the country. Both beneficiary and victim of white America’s longstanding insistence on having one media-anointed leader serve as the spokesman for tens of millions of Black citizens, he drew adulation and jeers but consistently held the spotlight.

Supporters greeted his speeches with chants of “Run, Jesse, run.” Opponents tracked every misstep, from audits of his grants in the 1970s to his use of the anti-Jewish slur “Hymietown” to refer to New York City during the 1984 campaign, to the disclosure, in 2001, that he had fathered a daughter in an extramarital affair.

As he dominated center stage, the thundering chorus of his speeches — “I am … somebody” — inspired his followers even as it sometimes sounded like a painful plea.

Jackson’s thirst for attention began in childhood. Born out of wedlock on Oct. 8, 1941, he often stood at the gate of his father’s home in Greenville, S.C., watching with envy as his half-brothers played, before returning to the home he shared with his mother, Helen Burns, and grandmother, Mathilda.

During high school, his father, Noah Robinson, a former professional boxer, would sometimes go to the football field to watch Jesse play. If he played well, Noah would sometimes tell others, “That’s one of mine.” For the most part, however, until Jesse was famous, he shunned his son, who was later adopted by the man his mother married, Charles Jackson.

It was his grandmother, known as Tibby, who encouraged Jackson’s ambition. A domestic in stringently segregated Greenville, Tibby brought home books and magazines, such as National Geographic, that her white employers’ children had discarded.

“Couldn’t read a word herself but she’d bring them back for me, you know, these cultural things used by the wealthy and refined,” Jackson once said. “All she knew was, their sons read those books. So I ought to read them too. She never stopped dreaming for me.”

Her dreams propelled Jackson toward college — as did a need to avenge the childhood taunts that echoed in his head. An honors student, he turned down a contract to pitch for the Chicago White Sox to accept a football scholarship to the University of Illinois.

At Christmas break, he came home with a list of books. A librarian at the McBee Avenue Colored Branch referred him to the white library downtown and called ahead to clear the way. When he entered the main library, two police officers stood at the loan desk. A librarian told him it would take at least six days to get the books from the shelves. When he offered to get them himself, the officers told him to leave.

“I just stared up at that ‘Greenville Public Library’ and tears came to my eyes,” Jackson told a biographer, Marshall Frady.

That summer, 1960, Jackson came home and led a sit-in at the library, his arrest a first taste of civil disobedience. In the fall, he transferred to North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro. There he became the star quarterback and participated in the beginnings of the sit-ins that became a signature part of the civil rights movement led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

“It wasn’t a matter of Gandhi or Dr. King then,” he said of the library sit-in, “it was just my own private pride and self-respect.”

With his height and his oratorical flourishes, Jackson was a charismatic figure who led protests in Greensboro. Once, during a demonstration outside a cafeteria, as police were about to arrest the demonstrators, Jackson suggested they kneel and recite the Lord’s Prayer.

“Police all took off their caps and bowed their heads,” he said. “Can’t arrest folks prayin’.”

Then he led the demonstrators in “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

“They stopped, put their hands over their heart,” Jackson said. “Can’t arrest folks singing the national anthem.”

After half an hour, he recalled, “we got tired and let ’em arrest us.”

Elected student body president, Jackson graduated in 1963. A grant from the Rockefeller Fund for Theological Education brought him to the Chicago Theological Seminary, where he hoped to find a venue for social activism.

That summer, Jackson traveled to Washington, where he heard King deliver his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Two years later, he and a group of college buddies piled into vans to drive south for King’s Selma-to-Montgomery march. He met King there, and early the next year, King asked Jackson to head his Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Operation Breadbasket in Chicago. The goal was to win economic gains for Black people with a combination of consumer boycotts and negotiated settlements.

At 24, Jackson was the youngest of King’s aides. Operating out of a hole-in-the-wall office at SCLC’s South Side headquarters, he began by organizing preachers, arranging for them to urge their congregations on Easter to boycott products made by a local dairy that employed no Black workers.

During the following week, Country Delight lost more than half a million dollars in revenue. Within days, the company offered a deal: 44 jobs for Black workers. Without waiting for a boycott, other dairy companies called with offers, too.

King soon asked Jackson to be the national director of Operation Breadbasket. Jackson hesitated — the job required him to leave the seminary six months short of graduation. Jackson recounted in his autobiography that King told him, “Come with me full time and you’ll learn more theology in six months than you would in six years at the seminary.” He earned his ordination several years later.

In 1968, Jesse Jackson stands to the left of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., where King was assassinated the next day.

(Charles Kelly / Associated Press )

In April 1968, Jackson joined King in Memphis, where the civil rights leader had decided to stand with striking Black sanitation workers. Few of King’s staff supported the effort, worrying that the strike — and the planned Poor People’s Campaign in Washington — distracted from the main goal of attaining voting and political rights for Black Americans.

During a planning meeting, King blew up at his aides, including Jackson. “If you’re so interested in doing your own thing, that you can’t do what this organization is structured to do, if you want to carve out your own niche in society, go ahead,” King yelled at Jackson, according to the latter’s account. “But for God’s sake, don’t bother me!”

The next day, standing below the balcony of the Lorraine Motel where the team was staying in Memphis, King yelled down at Jackson in joviality, as if to mitigate the outburst, inviting him to dinner.

Within moments, shots rang out. Jackson later said he ran upstairs and caught King’s head as he lay dying. Andrew Young, a King aide who later became U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told Frady that he doubted Jackson had cradled King’s head, but that they all had rushed to the scene and all had gotten blood on their clothes.

But if all of them were touched by King’s blood, only Jackson wore his gore-stained olive turtleneck for days, sleeping and grieving in it, wearing it on NBC’s “Today Show” and before the Chicago City Council. In dramatizing the moment to his own benefit, Jackson provoked hostility from King’s widow and others in the movement’s leadership that lasted decades.

Richard Hatcher, the first Black mayor of Gary, Ind., and a Jackson supporter, recalled that once Jackson decided to run for president, the campaign thought it had the backing of the Black leadership.

“Big mistake. Big mistake,” Hatcher said. “Over the following months, every time things seemed to get going, here would come a statement from Atlanta, from Andy [Young] or Joe Lowery or Mrs. King, ‘We don’t think this is a good idea at all.’“

As Jackson’s media prominence grew — including a cover photo on Time magazine in 1970 — tensions erupted between Jackson and SCLC, in part because of the sloppy bookkeeping that became a Jackson characteristic. In late 1971, SCLC’s board suspended Jackson for “administrative impropriety” and “repeated violation of organization discipline.” Jackson resigned, saying, “I need air. I must have room to grow.”

Rev. Jesse Jackson raises a clenched fist from a police van after he and 11 others from Operation Breadbasket were arrested during a sit-in at the Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co., offices in New York City on Feb. 2, 1971. The organization, part of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, has been protesting A&P’s alleged discrimination against blacks.

(MARTY LEDERHANDLER / Associated Press)

Calling a dozen Black celebrities to New York’s Commodore Hotel, Jackson formed his own organization. Originally called People United to Save Humanity — the presumptuous title was soon changed to People United to Serve Humanity — PUSH became his pulpit. Like Operation Breadbasket, its goal was to boost minority employment and ownership.

Jackson traveled the country preaching self-esteem and self-discipline. Thousands of youngsters took pledges to say no to drugs, turn off their television sets, study. They became the core of his voter registration drives, the inspiration for the “I am somebody” chant that would define his public ministry.

As with Operation Breadbasket, Jackson used PUSH to hold corporate America to account. In 1982, for example, he launched a boycott of Anheuser-Busch with the slogan “this Bud’s a dud.”

“We spend approximately $800 million with them [annually]. Yet, out of 950 wholesale distributorships, only one is Black-owned,” Jackson said.

Shortly thereafter, Anheuser-Busch contributed $10,000 to Jackson’s Citizenship Education Fund, contributed more than $500,000 to the Rainbow PUSH coalition, and established a $10-million fund to help minorities buy distributorships.

In 1998, 16 years later, the River North beer distributorship in Chicago was purchased by two of Jackson’s sons, Yusef and Jonathan. (Jackson’s eldest son, Jesse Jackson Jr., won election to Congress from Chicago in 1995, but resigned and was convicted of fraud in 2013 for misuse of campaign funds. Jackson and his wife, Jacqueline, also had two daughters, Jacqueline and Santita. A third daughter, Ashley Laverne Jackson, was the child of his relationship with a PUSH staff member, Karin Stanford.)

Critics called the PUSH campaigns elaborate shakedowns. Others, like Jeffrey Campbell, president of Burger King when Jackson opened negotiations in 1983, found the encounter with Jackson and his rhetoric of economic empowerment inspiring.

“Before they came in, my view was that we ought to fight them, that this guy Jackson was a monster, and I had the backing of my bosses to walk out if necessary,” Campbell told the Los Angeles Times in 1987. But Campbell said he quickly changed his mind.

“He got to me very quickly, without me realizing it, when he started talking about fairness. He would say: What is fair? Blacks give you 15% of your business — isn’t it fair that you give 15% of your business, your jobs, your purchases back to the Black community, the Black businesses?

“That little seed began to grow in the back of my mind,” Campbell said. “It was the right question to ask me.”

How Jackson handled money gave critics additional openings. Between 1972 and 1988, PUSH and its affiliates attracted more than $17 million in federal grants and private contributions. After many audits, the Justice Department sought $1.2 million in repayments, citing poor recordkeeping and a lack of documentation.

Jackson gave little thought to such issues. “I am a tree-shaker, not a jelly-maker,” he would often say.

Management held little interest for him. But politics was a different matter.

From the moment he began urging and registering Black Americans to vote, Jackson found his milieu. He used PUSH resources to staff get-out-the-vote drives that helped elect Hatcher in Gary, Kenneth Gibson in Newark, N.J., and Carl Stokes in Cleveland.

In those days, he also advocated participating in both parties, what he called “a balance of power.” In 1972, he claimed he had registered 40,000 Black voters to support Illinois’ white Republican senator, Charles Percy.

That same year, at the Democratic convention in Miami, Jackson unseated Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s 58-member Illinois delegation and replaced it with a “rainbow” of his own, even though he had never voted in a Democratic primary. Liberal Democrats who despised Daley as a corrupt big-city boss hailed Jackson as a hero.

In the decade to come, Jackson basked in celebrity and international travel, including a controversial meeting with Yasser Arafat. Jackson met the then-leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1979 when he traveled to Syria to free U.S. pilot Robert Goodman, who’d been shot down while on a bombing mission. By the time Jackson declared his 1984 presidential campaign, he had burnished his foreign policy credentials.

At the convention that year in San Francisco, he predicted that in an era of Reaganomics, a Rainbow Coalition of ethnic and religious identities could retake the White House.

“We must leave the racial battleground and come to economic common ground and moral higher ground,” he said in a memorable speech.

“America, our time has come. We come from disgrace to amazing grace. Our time has come,” he said. “Give me your tired, give me your poor, your huddled masses who yearn to breathe free and come November, there will be a change, because our time has come.” Delegates roared to their feet.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a candidate for the democratic nomination for President, works the crowd from onstage following a speech at the Cincinnati Convention center, Friday, April 13, 1984.

(Al Behrman / Associated Press)

But they did not nominate him. Nor did the convention of 1988. Addressing Black ministers in Los Angeles in 1995, the hurt still showed as Jackson railed at the injustice of beating Al Gore in the presidential primaries, only to watch as he was tapped by Bill Clinton to be his running mate in 1992.

“In 1988, I beat him in Iowa, a state 98% white; he said it was ’cause of liberals and farmers. So I beat him in New Hampshire; he said it was ’cause he was off campaigning in the South. So I beat him in the South on Super Tuesday; he said Dukakis had split his support. I beat him then in Illinois, in Michigan; he said he wasn’t really trying. I beat him then in New York; said he ran out of money. But now, here I am this afternoon, talking to y’all in this church in South Central L.A. — and he’s vice president of the United States.”

To many of his Democratic opponents, however, Jackson’s “rainbow coalition” symbolized not common ground, but the party’s devolution into a collection of identity caucuses whose narrow causes doomed them to defeat. In 1992, many of those critics gathered around Clinton as he formulated his “New Democrat” campaign. Clinton soon used Jackson as a foil.

The occasion came when Jackson invited rap singer and activist Sister Souljah to a political event featuring the Arkansas governor. In an interview, Souljah had wondered why after all the animus of white people toward Black people, it was unacceptable for Black people to kill whites. Clinton, instead of delivering the usual liberal-candidate-seeks-Black-votes hominy, lashed out at her words.

The moment bought Clinton a priceless image of willingness to speak truth to the party’s interest groups but came at the price of Jackson’s rage.

“I can maybe work with him, but I know now who he is, what he is. There’s nothin’ he won’t do,” Jackson said to Frady. “He’s immune to shame.”

By then, however, Jackson’s prominence had already begun to wane. Indeed, the role of race leader, itself, had started to disappear. The civil rights revolution in which Jackson had figured so prominently had allowed a new and more diverse generation of Black elected officials, corporate executives and public figures to flourish. Their success eroded his singular platform.

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., right, laughs after saying goodbye to Rev. Jesse Jackson, reflected left, after Obama addressed the Rainbow PUSH Coalition’s annual conference breakfast in Rosemont, Ill. on June 4, 2007

(harles Rex Arbogast / Associated Press)

Jackson continued to travel, agitate, protest, but the spotlight had moved on. He dreamed that Jesse Jr. might one day win the office he had pursued. When, instead, another Black Democrat from Chicago, Barack Obama, headed toward the Democratic nomination in 2008, Jackson’s frustration spilled into public with a vulgar criticism of Obama caught on microphone.

In Obama’s White House, he suffered what for him might have been the severest penalty — being ignored.

Yet to those who had seen him in his prime, his image remained indelible.

“When they write the history of this campaign,” then-New York Gov. Mario Cuomo said after the 1984 contest, “the longest chapter will be on Jackson. The man didn’t have two cents. He didn’t have one television or radio ad. And look what he did.”

Jackson is survived by his wife, Jacqueline, and six children, Jesse Jr., Yusef, Jonathan, Jacqueline, Santita and Ashley.

the Rev. Jesse Jackson speaks at the League of United Latin American Citizens convention Friday, June 30, 2006, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)

(Morry Gash / Associated Press)

Lauter and Neuman are former Times staff writers.

CHICAGO — Before she had toppled the moneyed and the mighty, back when perhaps a dozen people thought she had a chance to be a U.S. senator, Carol Moseley Braun went to Washington to drum up support for her ragtag campaign.

Waiting in the drafty outer hallways of power, she was treated like a poor relation. And the results were pathetic.

The official gatekeepers of money and political advice simply dismissed Braun and her candidacy for the Democratic Senate nomination from Illinois, recalls Tony Podesta, a college friend who is now is a Washington political consultant. He walked her through receptions, and she got nothing more than a few polite hellos. And although established women’s groups said, “Right on, keep going,” they kept their pocketbooks closed.

“Talk about your underdogs,” Podesta says, laughing. “I couldn’t even find a professional fund-raiser who she could pay to work for her.”

But with no organization, little money and a quintessentially Chicago political title as the Cook County Recorder of Deeds, Braun knocked out a three-term senator, Alan J. Dixon, in the March 17 Democratic primary.

This week, Braun went back to Washington for money and backing. And this time, it was the difference between the Prince and the Pauper.

With the head of the Illinois State Democratic Party in tow, she met with party powerbrokers, including Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell of Maine and Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. All are members of the white man’s club she ran against, but the reception was ecstatic.

Such is the nature of power in Washington. Braun had just eliminated one of their entrenched cohorts, “Al the Pal” Dixon, 64, who has been winning elections for 42 years. But now she stands a fair chance of making history as a double outsider: If she wins against Republican nominee Richard Williamson in November, she’ll be the first black woman in the Senate and only the fourth black to serve in that august chamber.

Although she dismisses political post-mortems that credit anything but her determination, there is evidence she was also buoyed by luck, timing and a third candidate, Al Hofeld, a 55-year-old personal-injury attorney who spent $4.5 million of his own personally injuring Dixon in negative TV advertisements.

“I think it’s fair to say that if this were hockey, Hofeld would get an assist,” quips Hofeld’s media consultant, David Axelrod.

Braun may have had one other unlikely man on her team: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In fact, without him she might never have entered the race.

Last autumn she was so disgusted by the tone and substance of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Thomas’ nomination to the high court–before and after the allegations of sexual harassment by Prof. Anita Hill–that she decided it was time to break into the men’s club on Capitol Hill.

“I was completely focused on how badly the process had failed,” she says. “If the Senate had done its job right from the start, we all would have been spared the mess. And who were these guys anyway? Where were the women, the minorities and the regular working people?”

She said as much, twice, on a public television talk show and was overwhelmed with letters, phone calls and friends urging her to take on Dixon, who had voted for Thomas. After several meetings, Chicago women activists identified three potential female candidates to challenge Dixon; it was decided that Braun, a University of Chicago Law School graduate who had served 10 years in the state Legislature, had the best qualifications and the best shot.

But she was not a shrinking violet thrust forward into the limelight. Now 44, she has been in the cut and thrust of Chicago politics since her early 20s, and she knew the risks. When a friend warned her that she could be a sacrificial lamb, she reportedly retorted: “If the best my party can do for me is recorder of deeds, then I don’t care about the future.”

With the backing of a coalition of women activists, suburban liberals and her most critical base, blacks throughout Chicago, Braun garnered 38% of the vote compared to Dixon’s 35% and Hofeld’s 28%. Less than two weeks before the upset, Braun had been 12 percentage points behind Dixon.

Hers was a last-minute sprint that came together through a confluence of events, including a television debate in which Hofeld hammered Dixon for his conservative voting record. For the first time, a broader spectrum of the public saw Braun demonstrate her speaking savvy and natural warmth.

In addition, Gloria Steinem came twice to Chicago on Braun’s behalf, attracting attention and contributions to the campaign. And the network of liberals in the suburbs–mostly white women–mounted a word-of-mouth effort to turn Braun into a winner.

In fact, women did well up and down the ballot in the Illinois primary. “I think women, more than men, are convincing elements of change,” says Axelrod. “That will give Carol an edge in November.”

But the “women’s vote” has never materialized consistently in past elections, and it’s still too early to tell whether Braun can make a convincing argument in November that she is a “change agent,” as Washington insiders are fond of saying.

“She’s got to broaden her base beyond blacks and some women and focus, focus, focus, on economic issues,” advise Axelrod and others.

Both Braun and Williamson are positioning themselves as outraged outsiders and setting each other up as a symbol of what catapulted America into an economic morass.

“The fundamental difference between my opponent and myself is that she has made her living for the past 14 years as a career politician and voted 13 times to raise taxes,” says Williamson, 42, a partner in a Chicago law firm who serves on President Bush’s General Advisory Committee on Arms Control.

Speaking from a car phone as he made an eight-city campaign swing last weekend, he added: “I’m not saying it’s always evil to be a career politician–George Bush certainly is. It’s just among the elements that makes differences between my opponent and myself so stark.”

Although exhausted from her sudden status as a political phenomenon–already she’s done “Nightline” and the “Today” show–Braun last week offered her assessment of those differences:

“He’s a typical Reaganite and will have to answer for the policies of the new federalism that screwed up this country. He was part of it.”

Braun doesn’t expect this race to be more challenging than the primary seemed last November–but she does see land mines.

“It’ll be a tough race only to the extent that Williamson (who is white) plays the racial card, directly or subtly, by manipulating symbols like talking about my views on welfare reform,” she says.

Illinois has elected blacks statewide, but many more have been defeated. “If the election was held next week, she’d probably win because of the post-primary euphoria around her,” says Don Rose, a Chicago political consultant. “But we have a way to go, and we don’t know how the wild card–race–plays, and we don’t know how the national ticket plays.”

Williamson insists that he’ll fire anyone in his campaign who uses racism to attack his opponent.

“I won’t hold my opponent accountable for the race of her parents if she doesn’t hold me accountable for the race of mine,” says Williamson, who grew up and lives with his wife and three children on Chicago’s wealthy North Shore.

As he describes it, Williamson has spent most of his career in “public service,” although he has never run for office. He was an aide to the most conservative congressman in the Illinois delegation, Rep. Philip Crane, and later worked for the Reagan Administration as intergovernmental affairs director and for the Bush campaign in 1988.

A fiscal conservative who has etched out more moderate positions on social issues, Williamson is known as an intellectual who reads Hermann Hesse and gives windy speeches on public policy.

So far, he says, his status as a novice campaigner has created the biggest hurdles for him in formulating positions on the spot. For example, while the former Princeton University religion major personally opposes abortion, he decided after consulting “with my wife and others” that he was pro-choice–although he does not support federal funding for abortion. If Roe vs. Wade is overturned, Williamson would support legalizing abortion. But when asked how that law should be defined, on a state or federal level, he bristled: “I’m not going to say any more; I think (reporters) are more interested in this subject than the public.”

The Braun-Williamson competition is as much a horse race for the locals made blase by the oddities of Chicago politics as it is for the national touts who haven’t seen its like since Shirley Chisholm ran for President in the 1970s.

Already, local pundits are joking on the radio that for the first time the Bridgeport neighborhood, home to the late Mayor Richard J. Daley and his son Richard M., the current mayor, may support a black candidate.

“Carol will get the vote,” says the radio announcer, “because Daley wants her out of town and safe in Washington, where she can’t run for mayor.”

The daughter of a policeman and a medical worker, Braun grew up in Hyde Park, an integrated neighborhood near the University of Chicago, admiring such women as Amelia Earhart and Bessie Coleman, a black aviator. After graduating from law school, Braun married a classmate and joined a Republican-controlled federal prosecutor’s office.

Her initiation into politics came in 1977, when she was pushing her young son in his stroller on Hyde Park Boulevard and ran into Kay Clement, a neighbor. Clement was on a search committee to find a replacement for Robert Mann, a well-known liberal state legislator who was among a group that called itself the “Kosher Nostra” and prided itself on being a constant burr in the elder Daley’s side. Clement asked Braun if she’d run.

“She was well-spoken, congenial, and I thought she had the character to continue on in the tradition of us Young Turks,” recalls Mann, now retired.

Braun served 10 years in the Illinois House, eventually becoming assistant majority leader and Chicago Mayor Harold Washington’s floor leader in the mid-1980s.

In the Legislature, she dealt with Democratic politics skillfully but not always defiantly, which angered some of her radical black supporters. Similarly, she riled her white liberal cohorts at times and had problems with Mayor Washington when she formed alliances with his enemies and attempted to run without his approval for lieutenant governor.

“Carol is an ambitious woman, and that’s a sin in our society,” says Mann. “It’s OK for everybody else to be trading horses, making deals, being rainmakers–but not her.”

Braun left the Legislature to be the Chicago recorder of deeds in part to spend more time closer to home; she had been divorced and had a young son and an ill mother to care for.

As an administrator, she updated the deeds system with modern technology and created committees to eliminate patronage. Speaking of the deeds office, a Realtors association spokesman recently told the Chicago Tribune: “It’s not a dungeon anymore. You don’t have to carry your own candle.”

But the administration of Braun’s grass-roots primary campaign did not win as much praise; several members of her staff quit amid reports of conflict over the leadership of campaign manager Kgosie Matthews. And although Braun is likely to draw on the Chicago Establishment, organization is considered her weak point.

Kay Clement, who is on Braun’s committee, says the candidate has confidence in Matthews but plans to bring in more professionals once the money starts rolling in–which is expected at any moment.

Emily’s List, a fund-raising group for women Democratic candidates, gave $5,000 to Braun in the last weeks of the primary campaign and has vowed to support her further. “We will be in the mail for her in the next two weeks and plan to raise an incredible amount of money for her,” vows Ellen Malcolm, the group’s president.

And Chicago women such as Susan P. Kezio are determined that this time around, Braun will get the full respect due her in her hometown.

Kezio, 37, founder of the company Women in Franchising, says she tried during the primary to get Braun as a lunchtime speaker at the city’s Rotary One, the first Rotary Club in America.

“After Dixon spoke to us, I ran up to our director and proudly said, ‘Hey, I can get Carol Moseley Braun to speak,’ ” Kezio recalls. The director suggested they wait until after the primary. Then, a few weeks later, Hofeld came to speak.

Kezio was furious. She complained to the director, who said Hofeld had asked to address the Rotarians and Braun hadn’t. Apparently, Kezio’s request for Braun hadn’t registered.

But this week, according to Kezio, the Rotary director hunted down Braun and eagerly invited her to be a speaker. She said she’d be honored.

“Believe me,” Kezio says, “this time nobody is going to ignore Carol Moseley Braun.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders, a political hero among liberals and populists, next week will formally kick off the campaign to place a new tax on billionaires on California’s November ballot.

The controversial proposal, which would impose a one-time 5% tax on the assets of the state’s wealthiest residents, is critical to backfilling federal funding cuts to healthcare enacted by the Trump administration, Sanders said in a statement.

“This initiative would provide the necessary funding to prevent over 3 million working-class Californians from losing the healthcare they currently have — and would help prevent the closures of California hospitals and emergency rooms,” he said. “It should be common sense that the billionaires pay just slightly more so that entire communities can preserve access to life-saving medical care. Our country needs access to hospitals and emergency rooms, not more tax breaks for billionaires.”

The independent senator from Vermont, who caucuses with Democrats in the nation’s Capitol, will appear Feb. 18 at the Wiltern in Los Angeles alongside prominent musical acts. Sanders has a deep base of support among California Democrats, winning the state’s 2020 presidential primary over Joe Biden by eight points, and narrowly losing the 2016 primary to Hillary Clinton. In both elections, he won the votes of more than 2 million Californians, who were also a major source of the small-dollar donations that fueled his insurgent campaigns.

The tax proposal, which Sanders previously endorsed on social media, is proposed by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West. The supporters need to gather the signatures of nearly 875,000 registered voters and submit them to county elections officials by June 24 for the measure to qualify for the November ballot. They began gathering signatures in January.

Supporters of the tax argue it is one of the few ways the state can backfill major federal cuts to healthcare services for California’s most vulnerable residents. Opponents warn it would kill the innovation that has made the state rich and prompt an exodus of wealthy entrepreneurs.

More than 200 billionaires in Californians would be affected if the proposal qualifies for the ballot and is approved. Some prominent billionaires have already left the state, notably PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and venture capitalist David Sacks.

Both men were major supporters of President Trump.

Democrats are divided about the issue. Notably, Gov. Gavin Newsom and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who is among a dozen candidates running in November to replace the termed-out governor, oppose the proposal.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman is running for mayor, shaking up the field of candidates one final time.

Raman said she will challenge Mayor Karen Bass, her onetime ally, campaigning on issues of housing and homelessness, transparency and “safety in our streets.”

In an interview, Raman called Bass “an icon” and someone she deeply admires. But she said the city needs a change agent to address its problems.

“I have deep respect for Mayor Bass. We’ve worked closely together on my biggest priorities and her biggest priorities, and there’s significant alignment there,” said Raman, who lives in Silver Lake. “But over the last few months in particular, I’ve really begun to feel like unless we have some big changes in how we do things in Los Angeles, that the things we count on are not going to function anymore.”

Saturday’s announcement — hours before the noon filing deadline for the June 2 primary election — capped a chaotic week in L.A. politics, with candidates and would-be candidates dropping in and out of the race to challenge Bass, who is seeking a second four-year term.

Raman would immediately pose a formidable challenge to Bass. She was the first council member to be elected with support from the Democratic Socialists of America, which scored an enormous victory last fall with the election of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Councilmember Nithya Raman jumps in the race for mayor, challenging former ally Karen Bass in the June primary.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

At the same time, Raman has deep ties to leaders in the YIMBY movement, who have pushed for the city to boost housing production by upzoning single-family neighborhoods and rewriting Measure ULA, the so-called mansion tax, which applies to property sales of $5.3 million or more.

Raman’s eleventh-hour announcement caps what has been the most turbulent candidate filing period for an L.A. mayoral election in at least a generation. She launched her bid less than a day after another political heavyweight, L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, decided against a run.

Until Raman’s surprise entry, the field had seemed to be clear of big-name challengers. Former L.A. schools superintendent Austin Beutner ended his campaign on Thursday, citing the death of his 22-year-old daughter. That same day, real estate developer Rick Caruso reaffirmed his decision not to run.

Bass campaign spokesperson Douglas Herman did not immediately provide comment.

Raman’s announcement comes as Bass continues to face sharp criticism over the city’s handling of the Palisades fire, which killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes. Unlike some of the candidates, Raman has not publicly criticized Bass about the city’s preparation for, or response to, the disaster.

Bass, 72, faces more than two dozen opponents from across the political spectrum.

Reality TV star Spencer Pratt, a Republican, has received praise from an array of Trump supporters, including Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, of Florida. Pratt has focused heavily on the city’s handling of the fire, which destroyed his home.

Spencer Pratt poses for a portrait in Pacific Palisades.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

Democratic socialist Rae Huang is running against the mayor from her political left. Huang has called for more public housing and for a reduction in the number of police officers, with the cost savings poured into other city services.

Brentwood tech entrepreneur Adam Miller, who has described himself as a lifelong Democrat, said the city is on a downward trajectory and needs stronger management. The 56-year-old nonprofit executive plans to tap his personal wealth to jump-start his campaign.

Also in the race is Asaad Alnajjar, an employee of the Bureau of Street Lighting who sits on the Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council. Alnajjar has already lent his campaign $80,000.

At City Hall, Raman’s entrance into the mayor’s race is a bombshell, particularly given her relationship with Bass.

Mayor Karen Bass addresses the crowd at the Shine LA event at Hansen Dam Recreation Area in Lake View Terrace, Calif., on Saturday.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

In December 2022, not long after taking office, Bass launched her Inside Safe program, which moves homeless people indoors, in Raman’s district.

Two years later, while running for reelection, Raman prominently featured Bass on at least a dozen of her campaign mailers and door hangers. Raman’s campaign produced a video ad that heavily excerpted Bass’ remarks endorsing her at a Sherman Oaks get-out-the-vote rally.

Raman, whose district stretches from Silver Lake to Reseda, ultimately won reelection with 50.7% of the vote. In the years that followed, she continued to praise Bass’ leadership.

In November, while appearing at a DSA election night watch party for Mamdani, Raman told The Times that Bass is “the most progressive mayor we’ve ever had in L.A.”

Last month, Bass formally announced that she had secured Raman’s endorsement, featuring her in a list of a dozen San Fernando Valley political leaders who backed her reelection campaign.

Raman ran for office in 2020, promising to put in place stronger tenant protections and provide a more effective, humane approach to combating homelessness. On her campaign platform, she called for the transformation of the LAPD into a “much smaller, specialized armed force” — but never specified what exactly that would mean.

A woman takes a photo with her phone at the C. Erwin Piper Technical Center on Saturday.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Since then, the LAPD has lost about 1,300 officers — a decrease of about 13%. The City Council has put in place new eviction protections for tenants, while also capping the size of rent increases in the city’s “rent stabilized” apartments, which were mostly built before October 1978.

Raman does not face the same political risks as Horvath, who had already been running for reelection in her Westside and San Fernando Valley district. Horvath, had she run for mayor, would have had to forfeit her seat on the county Board of Supervisors.

If Raman loses, she would still hold her council seat, since she does not face reelection until 2028.

SACRAMENTO — Only one of the candidates for California governor will appear in a splashy Super Bowl ad on Sunday, though a rival has locked in a valuable spot on Animal Planet’s lighthearted, cuddly “Puppy Bowl” before the big game.

A Silicon Valley-backed independent expenditure committee booked $1.4 million in airtime on NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service, which will feature the big game along with NBC, and on other broadcast networks on Sunday to introduce Matt Mahan, the mayor of San José who entered the governor’s race in late January.

A 30-second ad depicts Mahan, a moderate Democrat, as a “fixer of problems” in a big city “just miles from the big game” and touts his record reducing homelessness, building housing and reducing crime.

The ad was produced by a committee run independently of Mahan’s campaign and funded mostly by Silicon Valley executives, including $1 million from Michael Seibel of Y Combinator and $500,000 each from Riot Games co-founder Marc Merrill and his wife, Ashley.

“This Super Bowl ad kicks off our support for Matt Mahan’s run for governor,” said committee spokesman Matt Rodriguez. “His unmatched record on tackling crime, homelessness and housing in San José while focusing on the basics that Californians care about is very different than the old playbook of toxic politics.”

The committee has so far raised more than $3.2 million, according to Rodriguez, who provided the information about the contributors.

Other financial backers include Neil Mehta and Brian Singerman, two Bay Area venture capitalists, along with Paul Wachter, an investor who has advised former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and celebrity figures such as LeBron James and Dr. Dre on their business ventures.

As an independent committee, the group is barred from coordinating with Mahan and his campaign. A spokesperson for Mahan declined to comment on the committee or its game day ad.

Mahan, a moderate Democrat, has broken with Gov. Gavin Newsom on crime and other issues and is pitching himself as a pragmatist who would prioritize results over party politics or fighting with the Trump administration as Newsom has. Mahan’s campaign is not yet required to disclose donations but said it has raised more than $7 million since he entered the race, more than any candidate besides Tom Steyer, a progressive billionaire whose campaign is primarily self-funded.

Steyer, an investor turned climate activist, has already spent more than $27 million on his campaign. Most of that money went to producing and airing ads in which Steyer touts his wins supporting various ballot measures and pledges to break up utility monopolies to lower costs.

His latest ad debuts during Animal Planet’s “Puppy Bowl,” a pregame show that features two teams of adoptable dogs tussling over toys in a model football stadium. In the spot, a Realtor tells a couple that in order to afford a home, they might need to go back in time to 1980, “when the average home in California cost $100,000.”

With a burst of sparks, Steyer appears inside the time-traveling DeLorean from the 1985 film “Back to the Future” and says, “You shouldn’t have to go back in time to afford a home in California.” He then pledges to stop “Wall Street speculators from buying up homes” and pricing out “regular Californians.”

To have a legitimate shot at winning a governor’s race in a state as vast as California, home to some of the nation’s most costly media markets, candidates must raise millions of dollars to air ad campaigns robust enough to introduce themselves to voters or undercut their competitors.

According to campaign finance disclosures, former Rep. Katie Porter raised $6.1 million in 2025, the most of any candidate besides Steyer. But Mahan’s entry into the race has excited the tech and business interests that have until now avoided giving.

“The race is now kicked into gear,” and some candidates who have been fundraising for months — or years — “may find themselves lapped by the Mahan machine,” said Andrew Acosta, a Democratic strategist.

Though tech funders appear to be coalescing around the Silicon Valley mayor, he is “not going to come out of the gate lighting the campaign on fire because no one knows him,” Acosta said. With three months until primary ballots start hitting mailboxes, it’s a challenge for Mahan — though one that could be solved with enough money.

Steyer’s campaign criticized the wave of tech figures flocking to Mahan, saying business titans don’t spend their money without expecting something in return.

“This isn’t charity — it’s an investment so they get richer while everyone else gets priced out of California,” Steyer spokesman Kevin Liao said. “While San José remains the least affordable housing market in the world, Tom Steyer is ready to take on powerful special interests, make billionaires and corporations pay their fair share, and make California affordable for working people.”

With the threat of a proposed billionaire’s tax on California’s November ballot, new restrictions on AI and social media simmering in the Legislature and the impending exit of Gov. Gavin Newsom — who has been a reliable tech ally during his tenure — Silicon Valley leaders have made moves in recent weeks to boost their influence in California politics.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin and a handful of other CEOs recently loaded $35 million into a ballot measure committee and spent some of it on two separate efforts to lower housing costs.

Meta and Google have also ramped up spending on lobbying and super PACs in an effort to elect tech-friendly candidates and fight against AI regulation in statehouses both in California and around the country.

The latest nauseant from MAGA types pretending to care about children was dished up last week, but amid the internment of kindergartners, the slashing of funds to catch child predators and a measles outbreak at a detention center, you are forgiven for missing it.

I am talking about a coordinated campaign launched by the religious right to overturn gay marriage, arguing it harms children. The effort is a direct attack on the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell vs. Hodges decision making same-sex marriage a fundamental right of equality under the 14th Amendment, but also seeks to engage churches on the issue and change public opinion.

Good luck with that last part. Most Americans support marriage equality. But the Supreme Court? That’s much iffier these days.

But what disturbs me the most, while we wait for litigation, is that the campaign is yet another disingenuous ploy by MAGA to use children as an excuse for attacking civil rights, and attempting, Christian nationalist-style, to impose religious values on general society.

MAGA frames so much hate — especially around immigrants and diversity — as protection of children, and through decades’ worth of conspiracy theory has attempted to paint LGBTQ+ parents as deviant and predatory. (QAnon, for example, was all about saving kids from gay and Democratic predators.)

In reality, it’s the MAGA folks who are traumatizing children.

“Our children are afraid. They’re terrorized,” Chauntyll Allen told me. She’s the St. Paul, Minn., school board member who was arrested recently for her part in the church protest of a pastor who is also an ICE official.

“And we’re not just talking about immigrants,” she continued. All kids “are watching this, they’re experiencing this, and they’re carrying the terror in their body. What is this going to do for our society in 20 years?”

This campaign to undo marriage equality, far from protecting kids, is just another injury inflicted on them for political gain. It features two California cases that are meant to show how terrible any form of same-sex parenting is, but mischaracterizes the facts for maximum outrage.

The campaign also specifically targets in vitro fertilization and surrogacy as dangerous gateways to promoting LGBTQ+ families, an increasingly common position in far-right religious circles that would like to see more white women having babies through sex with white husbands.

Attacking marriage equality isn’t about protecting children any more than deporting immigrants is about stopping crime. Allowing it to be framed that way actually puts in danger the stability of the approximately 300,000 kids nationwide who are being raised by about 832,000 couples in same-sex marriages.

It endangers the physical and mental health of LGBTQ+ kids in any family who are growing up in a world that is increasingly hostile to them — with gender and identity hate crimes on the rise.

And it endangers everyone who values a free and fair democracy that separates church and state by eroding the rights of the vulnerable as precedent for eroding the rights of whomever ticks them off next. If LGBTQ+ marriages aren’t legally protected, how long before racists come for the Loving decision, which legalized interracial marriage?

If you doubt the MAGA agenda extends that far, when Second Lady Usha Vance recently announced her fourth pregnancy, one lovely fellow on social media wrote, “There is nothing exciting about this. We will never vote for your race traitor husband.”

Hate is a virus that spreads how it pleases.

Those behind the effort to undo marriage equality say that by legalizing the ability for LGBTQ+ folks to tie the knot, America put “adult desires” ahead of children’s well-being, which is dependent on being raised in a home that includes a married man and woman.

Never mind the millions of kids being raised by single parents, grandparents (looking at you, JD Vance) or other guardians who aren’t the biological John-and-Jane mommy and daddy of conservative lore. Never mind the many same-sex marriages that don’t include kids.

“Americans need to understand the threat that gay marriage poses to children and that natural marriage is directly connected to children protection,” Katy Faust, the leader of the campaign, said in an interview with a Christian news website.

Of course, the campaign also makes no mention of the hundreds of children currently held in detention camps around the country — on some days, the number of children locked up just by ICE (not Border Patrol or in the care of other agencies) has skyrocketed to 400 under Trump, according to the Marshall Project.

Outside of lockup, Black and brown children are being traumatized daily by the fear that they or their parents will be taken or even killed by federal agents. Thousands of kids across the country, including in California, have stopped going to school and other public places for fear of endangering themselves or their families. Don’t expect to see these folks campaigning to protect those kids.

The campaign also ignores the fact that U.S. Department of Justice funding to combat sex crimes against children was just slashed, leaving victims and prosecutors without crucial resources to fight that real and undoubtedly harmful exploitation of our youth by sex traffickers.

And Epstein. I cannot even start on save-the-children folks who seemingly ignore the victims of the sex crimes detailed in those files — many of them children at the time — while wringing their hands over families who don’t look like their own. It is a mind-blowing amount of hypocrisy.

But of course, none of this is about saving children — yours, mine or anyone’s.

But framing it around protecting children is a powerful manipulation — a last-ditch effort as same sex marriage does in fact become more accepted. Because who doesn’t want to save our kids? From whatever.

Don’t be surprised if this effort gains traction in coming months. As we head into elections, the MAGA machine will attempt to turn the lens away from immigration and back to old-school issues such as feminism, abortion and same-sex marriage, which time and again its base has been willing to vote on regardless of what else is happening.

Because they actually don’t care about kids. They care about power, and they’re perfectly willing to exploit kids to get it.

A tech executive who made a fortune developing education software, then waded into the fight against homelessness, is now entering the race for Los Angeles mayor.

Adam Miller, co-founder of Better Angels, a nonprofit focused on preventing homelessness and building affordable housing, filed paperwork on Wednesday to run against Mayor Karen Bass in the June 2 primary election.

Miller, in an interview, said the city is on a downward trajectory and beset with problems — and needs someone with strong leadership skills at City Hall.

“A lot of the issues we face in the city are management problems, and I know how to manage,” he said. “I’ve managed effectively teams that are big and small. I’ve managed teams that are domestic and international. And I’ve managed programs at every stage, so I know how to scale things up and make them operate at scale for a big system.”

The 56-year-old entrepreneur and nonprofit executive is making his move at a moment when the candidate lineup remains unsettled. Even with Saturday’s deadline for filing candidate paperwork fast approaching, some are still undecided on whether to run.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath has spent several days hinting that she may jump into the race, while also taking shots at Bass on CNN and elsewhere.

Maryam Zar, who founded the Palisades Recovery Coalition in the wake of the Palisades fire, is also weighing a run. Even real estate developer Rick Caruso, who publicly ruled out a mayoral bid last month, told KNX on Wednesday that he may reconsider.

Former L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner, who launched his campaign in October, has been out of the public eye since the death of his 22-year-old daughter on Jan. 6. Reality TV star Spencer Pratt has spent the last several weeks promoting his book “The Guy You Loved to Hate,” and emerged earlier this week to file his candidate paperwork.

Community organizer Rae Huang has been courting the city’s left-leaning voters, appearing with podcaster Hasan Piker in a conversation about housing policy.

Meanwhile, Bass has been using the trappings of her office to promote her work, scheduling two State of the City speeches in a three-month span. The first of those, delivered Monday, sounded in many ways like a campaign stump speech, except longer.

After Miller filed his paperwork, Bass spokesperson Douglas Herman immediately derided him, describing Miller as a “wealthy venture capitalist” who sold software that helped large companies “systematically lay off workers.”

“The last thing Los Angeles needs now is another self-funder who doesn’t understand the crisis of affordability in our city,” Herman said. “Mayor Karen Bass will continue working to solve the biggest problems facing our city with groundbreaking efforts on housing affordability, reductions in street homelessness and public safety stats sitting at 60-year lows.”

Miller pushed back on the mayor’s statement, saying his company’s software was used for training and helping employees build their skills. He said that, although he will provide a loan to his campaign to get things started, he will be raising money like any other campaign.

Miller is the former chief executive of Cornerstone OnDemand, the global training and development company that he built over more than two decades, growing it to more than 3,000 employees. The publicly traded company was sold in 2021 to a private equity firm for $5.2 billion, he said.

The Brentwood resident has been heavily focused on philanthropy, serving as chair of the nonprofit 1P.org, which is a charitable foundation that provides funding to other nonprofit groups.

Miller said he and his wife, Staci, while mapping out their philanthropic work, chose to focus on intractable problems at the local, state, national and global level. Locally, he said, homelessness was the issue they identified as the most intractable.

1P.org has been providing funding to Better Angels, which has been working to build affordable housing while also distributing micro-loans to families facing eviction. In addition, the nonprofit has developed an app to help homeless outreach workers stay connected.

Sara Reyes, executive director of SELAH Neighborhood Homeless Coalition, said its 700 volunteers use Better Angels’ outreach app to maintain relationships with one another and their clients in neighborhoods stretching from Hollywood to Atwater Village.

The app is not integrated with the homeless database maintained by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, a city-county partnership, and would be more effective if it was, Reyes said.

Miller said the city needs help with issues that go well beyond homelessness. For example, he said, city leaders have made L.A. “one of the least developer friendly cities in the country,” hindering the construction of new homes.

“We have a major housing shortage,” he said. “We have an unacceptable number of people who are unhoused. We have affordability issues. I’d say city cleanliness is on the decline. We are not well prepared for disasters, as was clearly seen last year.”

Writer Neil Gaiman denied sexual misconduct allegations first brought forth against him over a year and a half ago in a statement released Monday.

Gaiman, the bestselling fantasy author behind “The Sandman” comic books, and novels and shows “American Gods” and “Good Omens,” called the allegations, which emerged in the summer of 2024, a “smear campaign” that are “simply and completely untrue.”

“These allegations, especially the really salacious ones, have been spread and amplified by people who seemed a lot more interested in outrage and getting clicks on headlines rather than whether things had actually happened or not,” Gaiman wrote.

Five women first accused the 65-year-old British author of sexual misconduct in the summer of 2024, appearing in the Tortoise Media podcast “Master: The Allegations Against Neil Gaiman.” The women claimed Gaiman had them call him “master” during their alleged sexual encounters.

Eight women then accused the author of assault, abuse and coercion in an article published by New York magazine just over a year ago.

Scarlett Pavlovich, Gaiman’s former nanny, filed a lawsuit against the author and his estranged wife Amanda Palmer, almost exactly a year ago, accusing the couple of human trafficking. She alleged that she was brutally and repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted by Gaiman while working for the couple without pay.

“Gaiman repeatedly physically and emotionally abused Scarlett, raping her vaginally and anally, humiliating her, forcing her into sexual conduct in front of Gaiman’s child, and forcing her to touch and lick feces and urine,” the complaint states. Gaiman called Pavlovich “slave” and ordered her to call him “master,” the complaint states.

The abuse took place while Pavlovich was providing babysitting services for the couple in New Zealand in 2022, according to the suit.

All other allegations against the author stemmed from the 1990s to 2022, when he was living in the United States, Britain and New Zealand.

The author has sold more than 50 million copies of his books worldwide, and many have received film and television adaptations over the years. His work drew a large female readership, typically uncommon for comic-book writers. The allegations clashed with the self-proclaimed feminist writer’s public persona.

Gaiman has spent the last year out of the spotlight, after publishing company Dark Horse Comics cut ties with him shortly after the New York magazine article was published. Gaiman was also dropped from various film and TV adaptations of his work, including the final season of Amazon’s “Good Omens” and the streamer’s new “Anansi Boys” TV series.

He was also left out of press for the final season of Netflix’s “The Sandman” last year and Disney halted development of “The Graveyard Book” months after the initial allegations.

The author last publicly addressed the allegations a day after the New York magazine article was released, and wrote he had stayed quiet “both out of respect for the people who were sharing their stories and out of a desire not to draw even more attention to a lot of misinformation.”

At the time, Gaiman wrote that he “could have and should have done so much better,” admitting that he “was obviously careless with people’s hearts and feelings, and that’s something that I really, deeply regret. It was selfish of me. I was caught up in my own story and I ignored other people’s.”

Gaiman’s most recent statement comes just days after an unidentified Substack user who goes by TechnoPathology posted the latest in a series of articles over the last year defending the fantasy author.

Gaiman claimed he hasn’t been in contact with the anonymous poster but would “like to thank them personally for actually looking at the evidence and reporting what they found, which is not what anyone else had done.”

He said “the actual evidence was dismissed or ignored” by most reporting, including “mountains” of “emails, text messages and video evidence that flatly contradict” the claims.

The author also announced in the statement that he’s been working on a book throughout the “strange, turbulent and occasionally nightmarish year and a half.” The project is his longest since the 450-plus-page “American Gods,” he said.

“It’s a rough time for the world,” Gaiman wrote. “I look at what’s happening on the home front and internationally, and I worry; and I am still convinced there are more good people out there than the other kind.”

In a state that’s home to nearly 40 million people and the fourth largest economy in the world, the race for California governor has been lost in the shadow of President Trump’s combustible return to office and, thus far, the absence of a candidate charismatic enough to break out of the pack.

For the first time in recent history, there is no clear front-runner with less than five months before the June primary election.

“This is the most wide-open governor’s race we’ve seen in California in more than a quarter of a century,” said Dan Schnur, a political communications professor who teaches at USC, Pepperdine and UC Berkeley. “We’ve never seen a multicandidate field with so little clarity and such an absence of anything even resembling a front-runner.

“There’s no precedent in the modern political era for a campaign that’s this crowded,” Schnur said.

Opinion polls bear this out, with more voters saying they are undecided or coalescing behind any of the dozen prominent candidates who have announced bids.

Former Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine) led the field with the support of 21% of respondents in a survey of likely voters by the Public Policy Institute of California released in December. Former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, also a Democrat, and former Fox News commentator Steve Hilton, a Republican, won the support of 14% of poll respondents. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, also a member of the GOP, won the backing of 10%, while everyone else in the field was in the single digits, though some Democratic candidates who recently entered the race were not included.

Recent gubernatorial campaigns have been dominated by larger-than-life personalities — global superstar Arnold Schwarzenegger, eBay billionaire Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown, the scion of a storied California political family.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, who vaulted into the national spotlight after championing same-sex marriage while he was mayor of San Francisco, has become a national force in Democratic politics and is pondering a 2028 presidential run. Newsom won handily in the 2018 and 2022 races for California governor, and easily defeated a recall attempt during the COVID-19 pandemic. He is barred from running again due to term limits.

Porter cheekily alluded to California’s political power dynamic at a labor forum earlier this month.

“Look, we’ve had celebrity governors. We’ve had governors who are kids of other governors, and we’ve had governors who look hot with slicked back hair and barn jackets. You know what?” Porter said at an SEIU forum in January. “We haven’t had a governor in a skirt. I think it’s just about … time.”

Gubernatorial contests in the state routinely attract national attention. But the 2026 contest has not.

Despite California being at the center of many policies emanating from the Trump administration, notably the detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants, this year’s gubernatorial race has been overshadowed. Deadly wildfires, immigration raids, and an esoteric yet expensive battle about redrawing congressional districts are among the topics that dominated headlines in the state last year.

Additionally, the race was frozen as former Vice President Kamala Harris, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso weighed entering the contest. All opted against running for governor, leaving the field in flux. San José Mayor Matt Mahan’s entry into the race on Thursday — relatively late to mount a gubernatorial campaign — exemplifies the unsettled nature of the race.

“We’ve made a lot of progress in San José, but getting to the next level requires bold leadership in Sacramento that’s going to take on the status quo,” Mahan said in an interview before he announced his campaign. ”I have not heard anyone in the current field explain how they’re going to help us in San José and other cities across the state end unsheltered homelessness, implement Prop. 36 [a 2024 ballot measure that increased penalties for certain drug and theft crimes], get people into treatment, bring down the cost of housing, the cost of energy.”

A critical question is who donors decide to back in a state that is home to the most expensive media markets in the nation. Candidates have to file fundraising reports on Feb. 2, data that will indicate who is viable.

“I know from first-hand experience that there comes a day when a candidacy is no longer sustainable because of a lack of resources,” said Garry South, a veteran Democratic strategist who has worked on national and state campaigns.

“You have to pay the bills to keep the lights on, let alone having enough cash to communicate with our more than 23 million registered voters,” he added. “They don’t have much time to do it. The primary is just months away.”

The state Democratic and Republican conventions are quickly approaching. A Republican may be able to win the GOP endorsement, but it’s unlikely a Democrat will be able to secure their party’s nod because of the large number of candidates in the race.

Political observers expect some Democratic candidates who have meager financial resources and little name identification among the electorate to be pressured to drop out of the race by party leaders so that the party can consolidate support behind a viable candidate.

But others buck the orthodoxy, arguing that the candidates need to show they have a message that resonates with Californians.

“There’s a lack of excitement,” Democratic strategist Hilda Delgado said. “Right now is really about the core issues that will unify Californians and that’s why it’s important to choose a leader that is going to … give people hope. Because there’s a lot of, I don’t want to say depression, but hopelessness.”

SACRAMENTO — Two of the top Democratic candidates in the race for California governor are taking heat for their past votes to fund and support federal immigration enforcement as the backlash against the Trump administration’s actions in Minnesota intensifies after the shooting death of Alex Pretti.

Fellow Democratic candidates are criticizing Rep. Eric Swalwell and former Rep. Katie Porter for voting — in Swalwell’s case, as recently as June — to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and support its agents’ work.

Swalwell (D-Dublin) last year voted in favor of a Republican-sponsored resolution condemning an attack that injured at least eight people demonstrating in support of Israeli hostages, one of whom later died, in Boulder, Colo., and expressing “gratitude to law enforcement officers, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel, for protecting the homeland.”

He was one of 75 Democrats, including nine from California, to cross the aisle and vote in favor of the resolution.

“The fact that Eric Swalwell stood with MAGA Republicans in Washington to thank ICE while in California masked ICE agents terrorized our communities — despite Swalwell’s notorious and chronic record of absenteeism from Congress, is shamefully hypocritical,” former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a rival Democrat running for governor, said in a statement.

Swalwell’s campaign dismissed the attack as a “political ploy” by “a desperate campaign” polling in single-digits.

“What Eric voted for was a resolution to condemn a horrific antisemitic attack in Boulder, CO that killed Karen Diamond, an 82-year old grandmother,” a campaign spokesman said in a statement. “The truth is no one has been more critical of ICE than Eric Swalwell.”

The exchange comes as Villaraigosa, Swalwell and other Democrats running to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is serving his final year in office, struggle to differentiate themselves in a tight race that lacks a clear front-runner.

In a poll released in December by the Public Policy Institute of California, Porter led the field with support from 21% of likely California voters. She was slightly ahead of former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra and conservative commentator Steve Hilton but had far from a commanding lead.

With the June 2 primary election fast approaching, the sparring among the candidates — especially in the crowded field of Democrats — is expected to intensify, with those leading in the polls fielding the brunt of the attacks.

The Trump administration’s immigration tactics face mounting political scrutiny after federal agents fatally shot Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse from Minneapolis, during a protest over the weekend.

Pretti was the second U.S. citizen in Minneapolis to be killed by immigration officers in recent weeks. Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother, was shot in the head by an ICE officer Jan. 7. Federal officials have alleged it was an act of self-defense when Good drove her vehicle toward an officer — an assertion under dispute.

In recent days, Swalwell said that if elected, he would revoke the driver licenses of ICE agents who mask their faces, block them from state employment and aggressively prosecute agents for crimes such as kidnapping, assault and murder.

Tony Thurmond, another Democrat currently serving as California’s top education official, in an online political ad criticized Swalwell’s vote as well as several by Porter for bills to fund ICE and Trump’s border wall during the president’s first term.

Porter and Swalwell joined majorities of Democratic House members to support various spending packages in Congress, which included billions for a border wall and in at least one case, avoided a government shutdown.

“When others have stayed quiet, Katie has boldly spoken out against ICE’s lawlessness and demanded accountability,” said Porter campaign spokesman Peter Opitz.

Thurmond’s video touted his own background as a child of immigrants and support for a new law that attempts to keep federal immigration agents out of schools, hospitals and other spaces.

Tom Steyer, a billionaire Democrat also running for governor, said Tuesday that he supports abolishing ICE “as it exists today” and replacing it with a “lawful, accountable immigration system rooted in due process and public safety.”

Republicans blame Democrats and protesters

The two most formidable Republicans running for governor have generally supported Trump’s immigration strategy but have not commented directly on Pretti’s killing over the weekend.

Hilton, a former Fox News host, wrote in an email that “every sane person is horrified by the scenes of chaos and lawlessness in Minneapolis, and most of all that people are getting killed.”

But he linked violence to sanctuary policies in Democratic-run states and cities, including California, which prohibit local law enforcement from coordinating or assisting with federal immigration enforcement.

“The only places we’ve seen this kind of chaos are ‘sanctuary’ cities and states, where Democrat politicians are whipping people up into a frenzy of anti-law enforcement hate, and directly putting their constituents in harm’s way by telling them — from behind the safety of their own security details — to disrupt the enforcement of federal law,” Hilton said.

The conservative pundit said the “worst offender” is Newsom, whom Hilton accused of using “disgustingly inflammatory language designed to rile up his base in pursuit of his presidential ambitions.”

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco’s campaign did not respond to questions about events in Minnesota. Bianco has repeatedly criticized California’s sanctuary state policy but affirmed last year that his department would not assist with federal immigration raids.

On Sunday, Bianco posted on X that “Celebrities and talking heads think they understand what it’s like to put on a uniform and make life or death decisions,” an apparent reference to the encounter that resulted in Pretti’s death.

SAN FRANCISCO — Katie Porter’s still standing, which is saying something.

The last time a significant number of people tuned into California‘s low-frequency race for governor was in October, when Porter’s political obituary was being written in bold type.

Immediately after a snappish and off-putting TV interview, Porter showed up in a years-old video profanely reaming a staff member for — the humanity! — straying into the video frame during her meeting with a Biden Cabinet member.

Not a good look for a candidate already facing questions about her temperament and emotional regulation. (Hang on, gentle reader, we’ll get to that whole gendered double-standard thing in a moment.)

The former Orange County congresswoman had played to the worst stereotypes and that was that. Her campaign was supposedly kaput.

But, lo, these several months later, Porter remains positioned exactly where she’d been before, as one of the handful of top contenders in a race that remains stubbornly formless and utterly wide open.

Did she ever think of exiting the contest, as some urged, and others plainly hoped to see? (The surfacing of that surly 2021 video, with the timing and intentionality of a one-two punch, was clearly not a coincidence.)

No, she said, not for a moment.

“Anyone who thinks that you can just push over Katie Porter has never tried to do it,” she said.

Porter apologized and expressed remorse for her tetchy behavior. She promised to do better.

“You definitely learn from your mistakes,” the Democrat said this week over a cup of chai in San Francisco’s Financial District. “I really have and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how do I show Californians who I am and that I really care about people who work for me. I need to earn back their trust and that’s what campaigns are literally about.”

She makes no excuse for acting churlish and wouldn’t bite when asked about that double standard — though she did allow as how Democratic leader John Burton, who died not long before people got busy digging Porter’s grave, was celebrated for his gruff manner and lavish detonation of f-bombs.

“It was a reminder,” she said, pivoting to the governor’s race, “that there have been other politicians who come on hot, come on strong and fight for what’s right and righteous and California has embraced them.”

Voters, she said, “want someone who will not back down.”

Porter warmed to the subject.

“If you are never gonna hurt anyone’s feelings, you are never gonna take [JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive] Jamie Dimon to task for not thinking about how his workers can’t afford to make ends meet. If you want everyone to love you, you are never gonna say to a big pharma CEO, ‘You didn’t make this cancer drug anymore. You just got richer, right?’ That is a feistiness that I’m proud of.”

At the same, Porter suggested, she wants to show there’s more to her persona than the whiteboard-wielding avenger that turned her into a viral sensation. The inquisitorial stance was, she said, her role as a congressional overseer charged with holding people accountable. Being governor is different. More collaborative. Less confrontational.

Her campaign approach has been to “call everyone, go everywhere” — even places Porter may not be welcomed — to listen and learn, build relationships and show “my ability to craft a compromise, my ability to learn and to change my mind.”

“All of that is really hard to convey,” she said, “in those whiteboard moments.”

The rap on this year’s pack of gubernatorial hopefuls is they’re a collective bore, as though the lack of A-list sizzle and failure to throw off sparks is some kind of mortal sin.

Porter doesn’t buy that.

“When we say boring, I think what we’re really saying is ‘I’m not 100% sure how all this is going to work out.’ People are waiting for some thing to happen, some coronation of our next governor. We’re not gonna have that.”

Gavin Newsom, she noted, was a high-profile former San Francisco mayor who spent eight years as lieutenant governor before winning the state’s top job. His predecessor was the dynastic Jerry Brown.

None of those running this time have that political pedigree, or the Sacramento backgrounds of Newsom or Brown, which, Porter suggested, is not a bad thing.

“I actually think this race has the potential to be really, really exciting for California,” she said. “… I think everyone in this race comes in with a little bit of a fresh energy, and I think that’s really good and healthy.”

Crowding into the conversation was, inevitably, Donald Trump, the sun around which today’s entire political universe turns.

Of course, Porter said, as governor she would stand up to the president. His administration’s actions in Minneapolis have been awful. His stalling on disaster relief for California is grotesque.

But, she said, Trump didn’t cause last year’s firestorm. He didn’t make housing in California obscenely expensive for the last many decades.

“When my children say ‘I don’t know if I want to go to college in California because we don’t have enough dorm housing,’ Trump has done plenty of horrible attacks on higher ed,” Porter said. “But that’s a homegrown problem that we need to tackle.”

Indeed, she’s “very leery of anyone who does not acknowledge that we had problems and policy challenges long before Donald Trump ever raised his orange head on the political horizon.”

Although California needs “someone who’s going to [buffer] us against Trump,” Porter said, “you can’t make that an excuse for why you are not tackling these policy changes that need to be.”

She hadn’t finished her tea, but it was time to go. Porter gathered her things.

She’d just spoken at an Urban League forum in San Francisco and was heading across the Bay Bridge to address union workers in Oakland.

The June 2 primary is some ways off. But Porter remains in the fight.

Jan. 26 (UPI) — With one week to go before presidential elections scheduled for Sunday, Feb. 1, Costa Rica closed its campaign season amid a polarized political climate and with the ruling party leading most opinion polls.

In recent weeks, multiple surveys have shown Laura Fernández Delgado, candidate of the ruling Partido Pueblo Soberano, holding first place with support levels close to 40%. That figure would be enough for the former cabinet minister to secure a first-round victory.

However, polls also point to high voter indecision, estimated at around 45%, in a context marked by political fragmentation and an unusually large field of candidates, local newspaper El Observador reported.

A recent survey by the Centro de Investigación y Estudios Políticos (CIEP) of the Universidad de Costa Rica places Fernández at 30% support, still well ahead of the remaining 19 candidates competing for the presidency.

Second place is held by Álvaro Ramos of the Partido Liberación Nacional, who polls below 8%. Most other candidates register less than 2.3% support.

Fernández, 39, has campaigned on a continuity platform, seeking to capitalize on the popularity of President Rodrigo Chaves, who is expected to leave office with approval ratings near 60%. His support has been driven in part by a confrontational style and rhetoric against traditional politics and established elites.

Chaves, who is constitutionally barred from seeking re-election, has governed amid persistent political tension and frequent institutional clashes. His administration has been characterized by sharp rhetoric, public disputes with other branches of government and a governing style that emphasizes direct communication and political confrontation.

The elections follow a dispute with the Tribunal Supremo Electoral, which in October 2025 asked the Legislative Assembly to lift the president’s immunity to investigate alleged violations of electoral rules, including his participation in campaign activities.

Public security has emerged as one of the dominant themes throughout the campaign, reflecting growing concern among voters over rising violent crime and the expanding influence of organized crime in several regions of the country, according to daily La Nación.

During debates organized by media outlets and universities, candidates broadly agreed that addressing insecurity requires more than law enforcement alone. Proposals have emphasized criminal intelligence, increased police presence, improved coordination among state institutions and the recovery of territories affected by organized crime.

According to CIEP, two out of three Costa Ricans believe the country’s security situation is worse than a year ago. Long viewed as one of Central America’s safest nations, Costa Rica is facing an unprecedented security crisis.

Organized crime, fueled largely by drug trafficking, has expanded its presence in neighborhoods in southern San Jose, as well as in the provinces of Limón and Puntarenas. In 2024, Costa Rica recorded a homicide rate of 16.6 per 100,000 inhabitants, ranking eighth highest in Latin America, surpassing Guatemala and approaching levels reported in Mexico.

WASHINGTON — Eleanor Holmes Norton, the 18-term delegate for the District of Columbia in Congress and a veteran of the Civil Rights Movement, has filed paperwork to end her campaign for reelection, likely closing out a decades-long career in public service.

Norton, 88, has been the sole representative of the residents of the nation’s capital in Congress since 1991, but she faced increasing questions about her effectiveness after the Trump administration began its sweeping intervention into the city last year.

Mayor Muriel Bowser congratulated Norton on her retirement.

“For 35 years, Congresswoman Norton has been our Warrior on the Hill,” Bowser wrote on social media. “Her work embodies the unwavering resolve of a city that refuses to yield in its fight for equal representation.”

Norton’s campaign filed a termination report with the Federal Election Commission on Sunday. Her office has not released an official statement about the delegate’s intentions.

The filing was first reported by NOTUS.

Her retirement opens up a likely competitive primary to succeed her in an overwhelmingly Democratic city. Several local lawmakers had already announced their intentions to run in the Democratic primary.

An institution in Washington politics for decades, Norton is the oldest member in the House. She was a personal friend to civil rights icons such as Medgar Evers and a contemporary of other activists turned congressional stalwarts, including Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) and the late Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and John Lewis (D-Ga.).

But Norton has faced calls to step aside in recent months as residents and local lawmakers questioned her ability to effectively advocate for the city in Congress amid the Republican administration’s aggressive moves toward the city.

The White House federalized Washington’s police force, deployed National Guard troops from six states and the federal district across the capital’s streets and surged federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security into neighborhoods. The moves prompted outcry and protests from residents and a lawsuit from the district’s attorney general.

Norton’s retirement comes as a historically high number of lawmakers announce they will either seek another public office or retire from official duties altogether. More than 1 in 10 members of the House are not seeking reelection this year.

Norton’s staunch advocacy for her city

As the district’s delegate, Norton does not have a formal vote in the House. But she has found other ways to advocate for the city’s interests. Called the “Warrior on the Hill” by her supporters, Norton was a staunch advocate for D.C. statehood and for the labor rights of the federal workers who called Washington and its surrounding region home.

She also secured bipartisan wins for district residents. Norton was the driving force behind the passage of a law that provides up to $10,000 per year for students who attend public colleges outside the district. It also provides up to $2,500 per year for students who attend select private historically Black colleges and universities across the country and nonprofit colleges in the D.C. metropolitan area.

In the 1990s, Norton played a key role in ending the city’s financial crisis by brokering a deal to transfer billions of dollars in unfunded pension liabilities to the federal government in exchange for changes to the district’s budget. She twice played a leading role in House passage of a D.C. statehood bill.

Steeped in the civil rights movement

Norton was born and raised in Washington, and her life spans the arc of the district’s trials and triumphs. She was educated at Dunbar High School as part of the school’s last segregated class.

“Growing up black in Washington gave a special advantage. This whole community of blacks was very race conscious, very civil rights conscious,” she said in her 2003 biography, “Fire in My Soul.”

She attended Antioch College in Ohio and in 1963 split her time between Yale Law School and Mississippi, where she worked as an organizer during the Freedom Summer of the Civil Rights Movement.

One day that summer, Evers picked her up at the airport. He was assassinated that night.

Norton also helped organize and attended the 1963 March on Washington.

In an interview with the Associated Press in 2023, Norton said the march was still “the single most extraordinary experience of my lifetime.”

She went on to become the first woman to lead the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which helps enforce anti-discrimination laws in the workplace. She ran for office when her predecessor retired to run for Washington mayor.

Brown writes for the Associated Press.