city attorney

Just after 11 on election night, Nithya Raman took the stage in a plum-colored dress outshined only by her smile.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass had a narrow lead in early returns. But to Raman and her supporters who packed the plaza in front of the Greek Theatre, they had already won.

A blue deluge had swept across the U.S. to clear out the MAGA status quo that has gaslit Americans for too long. The clueless Republican ruling class’ only defense was that the liberal alternative was worse than the crap President Trump fed Americans while calling it apple pie.

Los Angeles is as blue as the Pacific, yet the same anti-establishment wave, fueled by voters frustrated with the high cost of living and a mayor who face-planted during crisis after crisis, had crashed hard here. Raman, a City Council member, was standing on its crest.

A campaign that started on the last possible day, dismissed by rivals as amateurish and given little chance to succeed against an incumbent with decades of experience and the support of nearly the entire L.A. Democratic establishment, was poised to win. Raman, 45, was expected to pull ahead as more ballots from younger, left-leaning Angelenos were counted.

Standing before Raman was the coalition that made her unlikely rise happen — one that, despite the obvious differences between L.A. and heartland politics, paralleled the one that made the Democratic Party’s takeover of the House and Senate possible.

There were the democratic socialists, who embarrassed mainline Democrats in L.A. once again with a blockbuster night for candidates endorsed by the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter. In addition to Raman’s strong initial showing, Marissa Roy was ahead in the city attorney’s race, and Angela Gonzales-Torres had a substantial lead in her Eastside congressional matchup against incumbent Jimmy Gomez, a scion of the fabled Eastside Latino machine.

There were young people like Arthur Johnson, a 23-year-old Cal State Northridge student who waited in a long line on campus earlier that day to vote in person, “because I wanted that old-school feeling.” Johnson told me that many of his friends were voting for the first time “because they hate Trump, they hate Karen, and they wanted change, however it came.”

There were Latinos like Eloisa Galindo, 45, of East Los Angeles, who showed me a cellphone video of her hanging a handmade pro-Raman manta — a bedsheet sign — on a freeway bridge over the weekend. In Texas and California, Latino voters turned out in huge numbers, helping to make history in each state by electing one of their own as governor for the first time. Galindo and her fellow members of Eastside Padres Contra la Privatización, a group created to help residents affected by the Lineage warehouse fire, felt that Raman represented a new, better way.

“She paid attention to us, and the mayor didn’t,” Galindo said in Spanish. “We felt discriminated against, we felt forgotten — but Nithya did none of that.”

Galindo and her crew were far in the back but cheered so loud that it practically echoed across Griffith Park. The Four Tops’ ”Reach Out (I’ll Be There)” faded out, and Raman beamed.

L.A. mayoral candidate Nithya Raman dances with her campaign chair, Kathleen Murray, at her election night party on the patio in front of the Greek Theater.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

“Do you love Los Angeles?” she exclaimed. “Are you ready for an L.A. that loves you back? Look at the space around you. Look at what we built together.”

Her rousing speech surveyed the course of L.A. history, from its striving immigrants to Cecil B. DeMille to LGBTQ+ history to the creation of San Pedro’s harbor. She tied her campaign to an election year in which voters across America “demanded change” because they were “angry about a broken status quo, and the politicians who failed them over and over again.”

Angelenos, she said, have become convinced “that this is the best that we can do. Our City Hall became a place where we became so used to saying, ‘No,’ we forgot how to say ‘Yes.’”

She decried the “cynicism that started to take over this city, that started to make us believe that L.A.’s problems weren’t just bad, but they were permanent. That L.A.’s best days were behind us.”

Raman praised her supporters for believing in “hope” — for a better city, a better future, but also hope that even the most entrenched longtimer could be brought down by people who were just tired of being told their concerns didn’t matter.

She spoke for about half an hour and apologized for going on so long in the chilly weather — but no forgiveness was needed on a night like this. Supporters cried tears of joy and hugged one another, sharing political news of the city and also the country, as the energy in the crowd further amped up seemingly every half-hour. James Talarico won in Texas! Dr. Abdul El-Sayed took it in Michigan? Mississippi was in play?!

Was the blue wave real? Could it hold against an angry, vengeful Trump? On this night, at least, it would.

“We have shown Los Angeles” that it’s “a city that is worth fighting for every single day of our lives,” Raman said.

She ended her speech by inviting her Indian American family to the stage — parents, brother, husband and twin 10-year-old children. Faces of a new, more progressive America, now likely the First Family of L.A. They descended the stairs together, and then a crush of Raman supporters stopped her for photos and congratulations.

Another Motown classic — “Dancing in the Streets” — blared, a song of freedom and boogie and promise from a previous generation.

Early in Raman’s speech, she asked the crowd for a favor: “Will you all get on the dance floor with me?” Many obliged, joining their leader to shimmy to Selena and other SoCal favorites.

Tomorrow would come the hard part: What to do next. But on this night, Raman and blue America would dance.

A few hours later, with more votes counted, she was ahead of Bass.

Nov. 3, 2026 10:52 AM PT

The 2026 elections in the city of Los Angeles include mayor, City Council, city attorney and eight ballot measures.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and her challenger, Nithya Raman, have spent $13 million on their mayoral campaigns. In the latest poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by The Times, the mayor and City Council member were locked in a dead heat, with 40% of likely L.A. voters supporting each of them. And 19% still undecided.

The race for city attorney has gained outsize attention as California Deputy Atty. Gen. Marissa Roy, with strong support from the left, has campaigned against L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. John McKinney. In late-October polls about 45% of likely voters were undecided.

Voters in the city of Los Angeles also weighed in on ballot measures and City Charter amendments covering everything from taxes and fire resources to governance of airports and the port and the quality of parks.

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Spearheading the campaign in opposition of Proposition 38 is Robert Kaplan, senior scholar at the Clinical Excellence Research Center at Stanford School of Medicine, and David Panush, who served as a senior health policy and budget advisor to five state Senate presidents.

Kaplan stated, “As written, Proposition 38 is deceptive,” because the proposed criteria for awarding the grant funding would appear to create an extremely minuscule pool of qualified recipients.

To qualify, a recipient institution must be established since Jan. 1, 2025, and have at least 200,000 square feet of research space it controls. From that start date, the recipients also must have an affiliation agreement with a UC campus and be affiliated with a UC Health system that records more than 35,000 inpatient admissions and 3.5 million outpatient visits annually. The qualification requirements also include having identified at least $250 million in philanthropic support and securing two $50-million commitments for designated research programs.

Kaplan argues medical research grants should be awarded through a competitive process that gives all applicants equal opportunity. Instead, his campaign states, only the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy, co-founded by billionaire Gary K. Michelson, would qualify under the proposed criteria. In a Cal Matters report, a UCLA spokesperson confirmed that among all nonprofit entities affiliated with the school, “only the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy could satisfy the stipulations of Prop. 38.”

Robin Swanson, spokesperson for the Yes on 38 campaign, said that “lots of institutions would qualify for funds under this measure.”

“But it is very likely that [the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy], which is a research institute affiliated with UCLA, will qualify for half of the funds under the current criteria,” she added during a virtual news conference in mid-September.

Swanson said it was likely that other research institutions from Stanford, Scripps Research, USC and Cedars Sinai would qualify for the other 50% of funds, “and that really is what we wanted to ensure that we had research institutes that were ready to hit the ground running.”

Ultimately, she said, the decision lies with the California Department of Public Health.

Michelson’s institute first became a nonprofit in 2022, and the co-founder has donated at least $120 million to the research organization. The billionaire is the board chair of the institute, which is housed at a research center owned by UCLA, according to the opposition campaign.

The Vote No on Prop. 38 campaign also argues against the financial model of the measure, saying a bond would saddle taxpayers with decades of debt and that any potential future revenue from the research is uncertain.

The proposition creates a down payment loan program, totaling up to $25 billion, for middle-income families looking to buy a new home in California. The program would be run by the California Housing Finance Agency, which already oversees several homeownership assistance programs.

The state would sell bonds to fund the program. It would pay back investors using interest and loan payments from the program — not taxpayer money. The California Housing Finance Agency would administer the program, including setting interest rates for the loans.

To qualify, prospective borrowers would need to buy a newly constructed home or a home that never has sold before, such as a commercial building that was converted into condos. Borrowers wouldn’t need to be first-time homebuyers, but they would need to earn no more than 200% of the median local income; for a family of four in Los Angeles County, that amounts to no more than $216,200 a year.

There also would be limits on the sales prices of homes bought with help from this program. While the exact price would depend on the county, generally the homes would need to sell for between $1 million and $1.5 million. Homebuyers would need to put at least 3% down, and the state finance agency could provide a loan up to 17% of the sales price.

The loans would function like fixed-rate second mortgages.

According to the California Budget and Policy Center, the earnings that would qualify a family for down payment assistance could vary greatly depending on where they planned to buy a home. Per the center’s calculations, a family of four buying a home in Madera County would have to earn no more than $166,800 a year, while a family in Santa Clara County could earn up to $375,800 a year and still qualify.

Other specifics would be worked out if voters pass the measure. That includes the interest rates charged on this second mortgage, which, according to the Budget and Policy Center, likely would be higher than the current rates for conventional mortgages, which have hovered around 7% for a 30-year mortgage.

Because revenue bonds, which would be used to fund this program, are riskier than other bonds, investors might demand a higher return, translating to a higher interest rate.

Following a series of scandals that shook public trust in local government, Los Angeles City Council launched a massive charter reform to boost accountability across city departments. Charter PRT emerged from that reform.

McOsker, who co-sponsored the amendment, said it would offer greater public access and participation into government processes. He believes it is important that those overseeing LAX and Van Nuys understand how neighboring communities are affected by airport decisions.

“The folks that live and work and drive around and experience the impacts of the airport operations should have some say in the future of airport operations,” McOsker said. “They know the best of what the impacts are on the tens of thousands of folks that live around each of those facilities.”

McOsker stressed that the port is on public land and another space that residents should have greater insight into by offering transparency into how leaseholder agreements affect the local economy.

The two sides disagree sharply over what the changes to the law would mean in practice.

Dan Dunmoyer, president and chief executive of the California Building Industry Assn., a trade group supporting the measure, said the state is the slowest in the nation when it comes to reaching a conclusion about whether projects can be built. Per Dunmoyer, it’s one of the top two reasons housing here is so pricey.

Supporters point to accumulating interest on loans, shelling out for litigation and rising costs for materials.

Dunmoyer believes the measure would make the review process faster and easier. He estimated it will reduce the cost of building single family homes by $75,000 a pop.

“We think … it will allow us to provide more housing of all types, not just for sale, but for rent and legally defined affordable housing, even homeless shelters, more quickly than under the current environmental review process,” he said, “and we think that’s beneficial to Californians who very much want a place to call home.”

Proponents of the measure characterize the effort as procedural: It will firm up timelines, but projects still will be reviewed. But those fighting it, as well as some legal experts, say the 41-page proposal essentially guts CEQA for projects that qualify.

Aruna Prabhala, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation group opposing the measure, said it would eliminate the need to analyze a project’s specific impacts, such as how it affects people living nearby. Instead, the process would become a “checklist” to see if the project complies with existing environmental laws.

The measure also states it “should be interpreted and implemented to afford the fullest possible weight to the interest of, and the approval and realization of, essential projects.” Prabhala and others believe it flips the purpose of CEQA to approve projects, rather than protect the environment.

“So much of what’s in the initiative mirrors what we’re seeing from the federal level and the Trump administration from rolling back environmental review, from really limiting public participation,” she said. “For not only failing to enforce protections for our air and water quality, but making it that much harder for agencies to do that.”

It was less than a month before the Nov. 3 election when Los Angeles city attorney front-runner Marissa Roy realized she’d missed her lucky manicure.

A deputy attorney general in the California Department of Justice, she had scarcely slept since her team clinched its historic $17-billion settlement with Meta in August. She’d been canvassing hundreds of voters and sounding out scores of deputy city attorneys in her bid to transform the troubled office where she’d launched her career in 2017 into the “largest public interest law firm” in L.A.

Between filming TikTok spots and prepping for formal debates, Roy has been fine-tuning her plans to avenge exploited tenants and claw back stolen wages, tame runaway civil liability, protect victims of child abuse and domestic violence, and join other elected attorneys in lawsuits against the Trump administration.

Nails didn’t make the cut.

“There’s just been too much to do,” Roy said of the chrome gel ritual she inaugurated as a volunteer for Eunisses Hernandez in 2022.

Marissa Roy outside L.A. City Hall. “I wanted the slogan ‘let’s sue it’ — that was violently nixed,” she said of her campaign.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Seen one way, Roy’s talismanic manicure is an object lesson for her fiercest critics: all flash and no substance, evidence the 34-year-old lacks the “gravitas” to be among the state’s most powerful elected lawyers.

But like the iridescent glitter in her campaign-matched chrome polish, the meaning shifts with the viewer’s perspective.

To supporters on the city’s restive left and the clique of California city attorneys eager to add Roy to their group chat, it’s a winking show of solidarity burnished through years of knocking on doors for fellow up-and-coming progressives. It was metallic blue for Hernandez, silver for Ysabel Jurado and ultraviolet for her own historic primary upset in June. Her backers see fierce loyalty reflected in the polish, a ritual she started while hunting salon wage thieves to sue.

“I wanted the slogan ‘let’s sue it’ — that was violently nixed,” Roy said of her campaign.

With her Democratic Socialists of America sass, bright amethyst blazers and Bollywood needle drops on Instagram, the lifelong Angeleno cuts a stark contrast to her rival, Deputy Dist. Atty. John McKinney, 58, who leapfrogged to a second-place finish in the primaries amid a stoic, law-and-order campaign that sometimes slipped into Spencer Pratt-style dystopian imagery.

McKinney’s boosters point to his extraordinary biography — from penniless orphan to director of special prosecutions in the country’s largest district attorney’s office — and celebrated courtroom prowess as evidence he is better suited to handle the 120,000 violations referred to the city attorney for potential charges every year.

“John has the experience, stature, reputation, and gravitas to do the job and will be both effective and respected,” said former Los Angeles City Atty. Burt Pines. “I do not have the same confidence in her.”

Campaign materials for the Los Angeles city attorney candidate at a canvassing event in Silverlake.

(Gary Coronado / For The Times)

Roy’s allies counter that prosecuting misdemeanors is only a third of the city attorney’s job — and typically the less complex part. Whereas McKinney has never worked a civil case, Roy has managed multicity litigation and shares the credit for legal victories no attorney could secure alone. In the Meta case, Roy and her team had argued that the social media giant had intentionally designed its products to hook young children and repeatedly misled the public about known risks.

“She was one of the original four team members in California that stayed up until 2 a.m. filing the [Meta] complaint,” said California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta. “She helped develop our legal strategy, particularly our deception theory, which was our core theory of legal liability for the case.”

Similarly, while McKinney’s camp paints a lawman of singular personal ability, Roy supporters describe her as brilliant, driven, and eager to lift the best and brightest around her.

“She is tenacious and works around the clock,” said San Francisco City Atty. David Chiu.

She’s also infamously bubbly: When a canvasser door-knocked 9th Circuit Judge Richard Paez, for whom Roy had clerked, he reportedly asked the volunteer to give her a hug.

“She has a natural enthusiasm about her that is infectious,” said Mark Ramos, chair of Los Angeles County Democratic Party. “She’s [always] shown up, and showing up matters.”

Which matters more — individual virtue or collaborative ingenuity — now in effect divides the race for the most abstruse job in local politics: Four of L.A’s former city attorneys have endorsed McKinney, while California’s current top elected lawyers have largely lined up behind Roy.

A head-to-head match with McKinney was not what Roy envisioned last year when she launched her campaign to unseat the incumbent city attorney, Hydee Feldstein Soto. After charming L.A.’s major power brokers, she had hoped to win the primary outright and avoid a runoff so she could focus exclusively on the Meta trial in August.

“I had been planning for things to end in June,” she said.

Feldstein Soto was bogged down by scandal and soaring civil liability costs for the city. She also faced criticism for ducking challenges to President Trump’s policies, including the deployment of military troops to Los Angeles last year, a fight the city joined but did not lead.

By early spring, Roy had racked up endorsements from the state’s legal elites and leftist kingmaker Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). She earned the imprimatur of the city’s powerful Democratic clubs and its influential labor unions, while enjoying widespread support from a democratic socialist base.

Marissa Roy, left, candidate for Los Angeles city attorney, and Alyssa Acevedo, with Service Employees International Union canvass in Silverlake.

(Gary Coronado / For The Times)

L.A. voters want “the transformational leadership that they’re seeing in [New York Mayor Zohran] Mamdani, and also in Mayor [Daniel] Lurie in San Francisco,” said L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, a longtime friend of Roy’s and among her earliest endorsers. “Angelenos are increasingly impatient in wanting to see that change come to their city, too.”

Then, in April, Feldstein Soto slipped from unpopular to politically radioactive after hackers stole thousands of LAPD files from her office. That inspired a late-breaking police union endorsement and a surge of corporate cash for McKinney, boosting him to a second-place finish and knocking out Feldstein Soto in a historic rout.

McKinney touts the city attorney’s prosecutor role as a means to stem quality-of-life crimes and curb homelessness. Roy has promised to keep more Angelenos housed and protect their livelihoods through “affirmative litigation” — suits brought against slumlords and exploitative corporations under the state’s Unfair Competition Law.

“When you file these suits, you have complete discretion,” said Pines, the former city attorney who successfully lobbied the state to extend Los Angeles that power in 1977 and watched in dismay as Feldstein Soto left it to whither.

In recent years, affirmative litigation has become an essential tool for defending against punitive federal policy and recovering public funds, Pines and others said.

Seeing the San Francisco city attorney’s office sue to overturn California’s ban on gay marriage — a law that would have stymied her gay younger brother — inspired Roy to give up her elementary school dream of decoding ancient texts to pursue the law.

“Childhood Marissa spent recesses in the library buried in books about ancient Egypt,” Roy said. “It was San Francisco suing — that was when I began to become aware of the power of lawyers.”

Unlike her opponent, Roy grew up comfortably in Monrovia, largely shielded from the sacrifices her family made to afford her an elite education. The daughter of an Indian immigrant mother and a white American father, she graduated from Flintridge Prep and attended University of Southern California on scholarship.

While studying law at Yale, she interned in the affirmative litigation department in the San Francisco city attorney’s office — a program Chiu lauded as “an essential training ground for the next generation of government lawyers” in a recent law review article.

Roy and her supporters say those early experiences cemented her commitment to teamwork, which is central to the less glamorous, more costly side of the city attorney’s job: serving as general counsel for myriad city agencies and legal advisor to City Hall.

“There’s absolutely more collaboration and it’s more significant given the things we’re up against,” said San Diego City Atty. Heather Ferbert, a close ally of Roy’s.

John McKinney, a Los Angeles County prosecutor running against Marissa Roy to become L.A. city attorney, speaks during a news conference on May 5, 2026.

(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)

Ferbert and others pointed to a surge in lawsuits against municipalities over everything from sidewalk trip-and-falls to police misconduct — cases that can lead to seven- or eight-figure payouts.

“If it’s not extremely unusual, it doesn’t make it to the city attorney’s desk,” said Oakland City Atty. Ryan Richardson, who endorsed Roy.

As a deputy city attorney, Roy spearheaded a trio of major wage-theft suits just a month after she was admitted to the bar. Independent expenditure groups supporting McKinney spent more than $350,000 trying to strip her of that title because she was paid by a nonprofit — an common arrangement employed by government law offices across the U.S. — while the city attorney’s office itself gave her permission to use it, and lists her as such in its court filings.

McKinney has since sought to paint Roy as the second coming of George Gascón, the polarizing district attorney who was drubbed in 2024 — a move that assumes most voters are still thinking about Gascón, or are likely to see the graying “godfather of progressive prosecutors” in a raven-haired deputy attorney general.

“The only way you disprove that is by putting your head down and doing the work 10 times harder,” Roy said. “Voters are smarter than that. People in the coalition see these tactics and are tired of them too.”

Gomez, 51, won a special election to Congress in 2017, replacing Becerra, who stepped down after then-Gov. Jerry Brown nominated him for state attorney general.

On Aug. 17, the House Ethics Committee announced it was investigating Gomez for “inappropriate sexual contact with a House staffer.”

Two days later, attorneys Lisa J. Banks and Sarah E. Nesbitt said in a statement that they represented a woman the committee interviewed. The woman accused Gomez of sexual harassment and assault, according to the attorneys, who declined further comment.

Gomez acknowledged in a statement earlier this year that he made “personal mistakes outside my marriage,” but said that his “actions were consensual in nature and haven’t violated the law or House Ethics rules.”

He declined an interview request and is keeping a low profile during his reelection campaign. He successfully fended off challenges from David Kim, a progressive Democrat targeting him from the left, in 2020, 2022 and 2024. Kim has endorsed Gonzales-Torres.

Since Trump’s immigration crackdown, Gomez has focused on the treatment of immigrants and congressional oversight of federal detention centers. He and 12 other House members successfully sued the Trump administration after he was blocked from entering a detention facility and has said he trained legal observers to document ICE abuses.

His campaign touts his record as chair of the affordability-focused Congressional Renters Caucus and his support for proposed legislation that seeks to lower housing costs, expand supply and strengthen pathways to ownership.

He also backs two hallmark progressive initiatives, the Green New Deal and Medicare for all.

Gonzales-Torres, 31, previously worked as a part-time counselor for formerly incarcerated Pasadena City College students, interned in Mayor Karen Bass’s administration and volunteered on the Metro Public Safety Advisory Committee.

She is backed by the Los Angeles branch of the L.A. chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, as well as Justice Democrats, the influential left-wing PAC known for helping Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) win her first election in 2018.

If elected, Gonzales-Torres would focus on dismantling the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and seek a federal wealth tax on the ultra-rich.

She is calling for a moratorium on new data center construction until federal standards are in place and wants to end federal fossil fuel subsidies.

Gonzales-Torres has not held elected office beyond her two years — one as president — on the Historic Highland Park Neighborhood Council in 2023-25.

Several board members criticized her tenure. One, Caroline Aguirre, filed a police report alleging Gonzales-Torres thrust a finger into her face at a meeting. Aguirre shared the incident report with The Times but said police ultimately took no action.

Darren Gold, who is now board president, said Gonzales-Torres falsely accused him of shaking her, prompting a city investigation. Gold denied the interaction, accused Gonzales-Torres of lying and won reinstatement.

Both Gold and Jens Jonasson, another board member, described Gonzales-Torres’s leadership as chaotic, adding that she used the position to express personal views on gentrification and out-of-neighborhood issues such as Gaza.

“She was not effective at turning priorities into results, working through disagreements and staying with the job when things didn’t go her way,” said Jonasson.

Gonzales-Torres declined to comment on the incidents Aguirre and Gold alleged. She said that she was proud of her work connecting businesses with city services and other achievements.

She said she stepped down as president to volunteer for Kim’s 2024 campaign.

Outside money

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has repeatedly backed Gomez’s re-election campaigns, including this cycle, prompting criticism by both the Justice Democrats and Gonzales-Torres.

Gomez’s campaign points to his call for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s resignation, a push for humanitarian aid in Gaza and a ceasefire.

In July, Gomez voted against an amendment to cut off aid to Israel, even as many other Democrats supported the initiative.

Gomez told Politico the amendment was “overly broad and would also restrict programs that facilitate humanitarian aid for Palestinians and refugee resettlement, peace-building efforts, and our ability to confront terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah.”

“It would empower the Trump administration to determine what gets funded and what does not,” he said.

AI is also an issue in the race, although both candidates support regulation.

Guardrails Alliance, a political action committee seeking stricter regulation of the tech industry, backs Gonzales-Torres.

A PAC affiliated with the AI industry, Leading the Future, supports Gomez, though it has yet to announce spending in his race.

This runoff election for an open seat features two veteran attorneys with extensive experience as public defenders: Justin Allen Clayton and Anna Slotky Reitano.

Clayton is in charge of the Inglewood branch of the public defenders office and has defended three cases with life sentences.

Reitano represented juvenile and adult clients, many of them accused of felonies, before joining the county counsel’s office.

The Los Angeles County Bar Assn. considers both qualified to serve. Here’s more of what you need to know about the candidates.

Justin Allen Clayton, L.A. County deputy public defender

Bar rating: Qualified

Clayton is a Los Angeles native who attended public schools, earned a bachelor’s degree in criminology and passed the bar in 2012. He joined the public defender’s office two years later and since 2023 has served as deputy in charge of the Inglewood branch.

Clayton describes himself as a “working supervisor” who conducts arraignments and represents clients at preliminary and other hearings. He has completed dozens of trials, including three with life sentences, according to his website.

The position involves overseeing and training attorneys, as well as law clerks and summer interns, on misdemeanor and felony case preparation and trial strategy.

Clayton said a priority is improving court efficiency through pretrial preparation and “firm but fair enforcement of deadlines.”

Time as a candidate, he said, has shown him the importance of effective communication within the court system in bridging language and cultural differences. He called that a guiding principle, particularly for clients who lack counsel.

“Sometimes, one additional question, or one additional statement, can make all the difference in resolving an issue,” he said.

Clayton said running a public defender branch office, which brings him in contact with judges, sheriffs, court clerks, interpreters and others, combined with 14 years as a trial attorney, gives him a “comprehensive understanding” of the courtroom.

“That combination of courtroom experience, leadership and daily interaction with the many people who make our justice system work has uniquely prepared me to serve as a Superior Court judge,” he said.

Anna Slotky Reitano, L.A. County deputy county counsel

Bar rating: Qualified

Reitano spent the early part of her career in criminal defense, contract law and other sectors. In 2014, she joined the L.A. County public defender’s office. A decade there included three years in juvenile court, where she primarily handled felony cases, and five years at the San Fernando Courthouse, where she represented indigent clients facing felony charges.

Reitano focused on mental health diversion and treatment, aiming to support rehabilitation when possible. Having a brother with schizophrenia and witnessing how families navigate the legal system when dealing with mental illness has informed her approach.

“This has given me a deeper understanding of both the challenges individuals and families face and the ways in which the system can fall short in addressing those needs,” she said.

This is not her first bid for office. She lost a campaign for a judgeship in 2022 and two years later assumed her position in the county counsel’s justice and safety division, where she supervises litigation and advises county departments.

Reitano, a former child actor, volunteers with local schools and, according to her website, mentors “future lawyers” through moot court competitions.

Campaigning, Reitano said, has shown her that constituents, no matter how different, uniformly want “a judge who is experienced, prepared, fair and willing to listen.”

“My experience across criminal, juvenile, civil, administrative and government law has uniquely prepared me to serve wherever the court needs me,” she said.

This race for an open seat pits a former U.S. assistant attorney who represented President Obama, the FBI and NASA against a seasoned Los Angeles County public defender who has taken more than 100 trials, some with three-strikes implications, to verdict.

David DeJute, who defended Obama against the so-called birther claims, spent a decade as vice president of litigation at Sony Pictures Entertainment. He now works in litigation at a private firm.

Anthony “A.J.” Bayne’s background includes nearly two decades serving in the Compton Courthouse, where he for a time served as deputy in charge. He’s now handling serious felony cases at the Torrance branch.

DeJute is rated “qualified” to serve by the Los Angeles County Bar Assn. Bayne is rated a notch higher, “well qualified.”

Here’s what you need to know about the candidates.

Anthony “A.J.” Bayne, L.A. County deputy public defender

Bar rating: Well qualified

Bayne’s 31-year legal career includes more than a quarter-century as an L.A. County deputy public defender. He has taken more than 100 jury trials to verdict, including murder, special circumstances and three-strikes cases, some of which carried sentences of death or life in prison.

“Even during the [election] primary period, I continued taking cases to trial rather than continuing them, because my clients should not be prejudiced by unnecessary delay,” he said.

He spent 19 years at the Compton Courthouse, where for a time he served as deputy in charge, supervising misdemeanor trial deputies. He now is stationed in the Torrance branch, where he handles serious felonies.

Bayne is an inventor, with patent-pending applications for artificial intelligence tools that automate legal workflows. One helps with closing arguments; another uses court reporter transcripts to generate cross-examination questions.

Using AI to address the county’s heavy caseload is a priority. He argues the technology could modernize court infrastructure, aiding in case management, scheduling and document processing.

Bayne, who trains in jiujitsu and Krav Maga self-defense, said extensive jury trial experience has prepared him to be an effective judge.

“Wherever I go, people want the same things: a judge who is prepared and fair, who will listen to their side of the case, and who treats them with respect,” he said.

David DeJute, law professor/attorney

Bar rating: Qualified

The son of a late judge, DeJute has had a 35-year legal career. After graduating from law school, he clerked for a U.S. district judge and then worked at a boutique litigation firm. He spent nearly a decade as vice president of litigation at Sony Pictures Entertainment.

In 2005, he was appointed as an assistant U.S. attorney. Over more than a decade, he worked on 10 trials, including successfully defending President Obama against “birther” lawsuits that challenged his eligibility to hold office. DeJute represented the FBI and NASA in other cases.

He joined Michelman & Robinson in 2017 and is part of the complex litigation group.

An adjunct professor at Pepperdine’s Caruso School of Law, he’s taught ethics, antitrust, copyright and patent law. After last year’s wildfires, he returned as director of the disaster relief clinic, where he instructed students who provided pro bono legal services to victims of the Palisades and Eaton fires.

“I continue to provide free legal help to wildfire survivors who have asked me to stay involved,” he said, though he no longer runs the clinic.

DeJute said he has experienced discrimination as an openly gay man, which drives his desire to ensure that everyone in the justice system is treated with dignity and respect.

“Justice requires more than achieving certain results,” he said. “It requires a fair process untainted by bias.”

This runoff for a vacant seat on the bench features a longtime public defender running against a veteran alternate public defender. Both boast extensive trial experience.

Donna Tryfman, a deputy public defender, serves in the major cases unit, where she handles homicide and other high-profile defendants. She also has extensive experience in juvenile cases.

David Ross is an alternate in the Torrance branch of the public defenders office and also works in Bellflower and Long Beach. He claims to have represented more than 10,000 clients at hearings and in trials.

The Los Angeles County Bar Assn. rates both attorneys as “qualified” for office. Here’s more of what you need to know about the candidates.

Donna Tryfman, L.A. County deputy public defender

Bar rating: Qualified

Tryfman began with the public defender’s office in 1998, logging more than 100 jury trials. Her experience includes supervising Eastlake Juvenile Court, where she ran a branch with 15 lawyers and represented clients in the collaborative drug court. She is stationed in the major cases unit, focusing on capital homicide litigation.

Tryfman has served as a Superior Court judge pro tem, handling traffic and small claims cases. She has proctored teen courts at Dorsey and Hamilton high schools and last year received the peer-bestowed Gideon felony attorney of the year award.

Conversations on the campaign trail have helped her understand what works and what doesn’t in the justice system.

“It has reinforced for me that experience and knowledge of the law matter enormously, but so does how people are treated when they walk into a courtroom,” she said.

Tryfman said the heavy caseload of a public defender has prepared her for the bench’s rigors. She also cited her life experience as the daughter of immigrants, a single mother and a widow who was faced with the decision of whether to discontinue life support for her husband.

“Experiences like that teach you something about responsibility, compassion and judgment that cannot be learned from a law book,” she said.

Outside the office, Tryfman spent five years as president of the California Public Defenders Assn. and chaired the Rent Stabilization Commission for the city of Beverly Hills. She has served as vice chair of the L.A. County Bar Assn.’s Conference of California Bar Assns., where she helps develop state legislative proposals.

David Ross, L.A. County deputy alternate public defender

Bar rating: Qualified

Ross has more than three decades in the legal field, but it was not his original calling. The Los Angeles native served as a legislative aide to the late U.S. Rep. Floyd Fithian (D-Ind.) on Capitol Hill, then worked as a television journalist and documentary producer in Washington, D.C., Tennessee and Kansas.

“I grew up wanting to be Peter Jennings, not Clarence Darrow,” he told The Times.

Ross passed the bar in 1994, joined the Riverside County public defender’s office the following year and began as a Los Angeles County deputy alternate public defender in 2000. He has litigated 113 jury trials, conducted more than 2,000 preliminary hearings and represented some 10,000 indigent clients. Assigned to the Torrance office since 2018, he also has worked in the Bellflower, Long Beach and Pomona branches, among others.

Ross, who lives in Long Beach, said he has spoken with more than 60 Democratic clubs, unions and other organizations on the campaign trail and frequently has heard a desire for qualified and independent judges who will listen to all sides.

A priority would be ensuring that even if a party loses, they walk out of the courthouse knowing the judge paid attention.

Ross said his mix of legal and life experience and his time as a journalist, in which he “listened to real people, gathered the facts and told objective stories,” provide a unique perspective.

Dozens of groups have lined up behind the proposal, including the Trust for Public Land, TreePeople, Friends of the Los Angeles River and many others. At City Hall, the measure is backed by Rodriguez and several other council members as well as City Controller Kenneth Mejia.

Rodriguez and Mejia signed the ballot argument in favor of Charter Amendment PRK, as did Rev. Gregory Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries, Nicole Chase, president and chief executive of the Boys & Girls Club of the San Fernando Valley, and several others.

Backers of the measure say the parks department provides an essential safety net for the city’s low-income residents, offering summer camps, sports activities and senior programs for free or at reduced prices.

When temperatures soar, the city’s recreation centers welcome residents who lack air conditioning. During emergencies, those facilities are converted into places of refuge from fires, floods or other disasters.

Despite those varied responsibilities, the department has been underfunded for years, said Tori Kjer, executive director of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust, who pushed for the measure to reach the ballot.

“If you talk to many Angelenos, they are unhappy with their local park, and that is because we have not funded it with the resources it needs,” she said.

Kjer said the department never recovered from the 2008 recession, when city leaders cut staffing by more than 25%, leaving it with about 1,500 workers last year. The city also began charging the department for the cost of water, electricity, trash pickup and other city services.

The measure aims to tackle the cost of what it takes to run a campaign and to broaden the pool of people who could run for office without being tethered to any individual, group or special interest.

“The increasing costs of political campaigns can force candidates to rely on large contributions from wealthy donors and special interests, which can give those wealthy donors and special interests disproportionate influence over governmental decisions,” the measure states.

There have been several attempts to allow for public campaign financing in California. Five charter cities, including Los Angeles, and at least 14 other states already allow some version of it.

“This bill will restore control to local governments and the state by giving counties, districts, general law cities, and the state the same option that charter cities currently have to enact public financing of campaigns,” a Senate rules committee analysis states.

Money generated by Proposition 3, like the current tax, would flow to education, with 89% going to K-12 schools and 11% to community colleges.

Then, because the state constitution requires minimum levels of spending on education, more dollars are freed up to pay for services including healthcare and the University of California and California State University systems, said Kayla Kitson, a senior analyst with the California Budget and Policy Center.

Proposition 3, like the current high-earners tax, has the added effect of raising the minimum levels of funding required to flow to K-12 schools and community colleges, because of the complicated formulas California uses to set its budget, Kitson said.

If Proposition 3 fails, the state could expect to lose between $5 billion and $15 billion annually in tax revenue starting in 2031, according to estimates from the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

The California Democratic Party is backing Ma, whose quarter-century in electoral politics includes stints on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, in the State Assembly and on the State Board of Equalization. She was elected treasurer in 2019 and is termed out.

The California Republican Party has endorsed Romero, who has been campaigning with Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton on what the two term a “golden ticket” (though voters elect each office separately).

The Republican designation is relatively new for Romero. She was a Democrat when she served in the Legislature from 1998 to 2010. She became a Republican in 2024, asserting that Democratic party standards no longer aligned with her beliefs.

“I consider myself to be common sense, a new Republican with the values of American exceptionalism that once upon a time the Democratic party stood for, but it’s been overrun by the socialists and the communists that have taken over the party,” she told the Times.

Ma’s parents emigrated from China and eventually settled in New York. Her father started a design and manufacturing firm, and her mother was a high school art teacher. Fiona Ma played sports, was a Girl Scout — “a top cookie seller,” she boasts on her campaign website — and graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology. She moved to San Francisco, started an accounting practice and became a part-time field representative to Assemblymember John Burton. She won her San Francisco supervisor’s seat in 2002 and, four years later, was elected to the Assembly.

Romero grew up in a Catholic household in Barstow, with pictures of the Pope and President Kennedy on the walls. She described her parents, a railroad worker and a mother who once cleaned houses, as “Depression-era Democrats.”

She started in community college and eventually earned a PhD. She was a college professor, an L.A. Community College trustee and a city of L.A. charter reform commissioner before being elected to the state Assembly in 1998. She moved to the Senate in 2001 and became the first female majority leader. Today she lives in El Sereno.

Carlos Dammeier, administrative law judge, California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board
Bar rating: Qualified

Dammeier began in law enforcement, working for a decade as a dispatcher, jailer and police officer. He went to law school and, for a quarter-century, represented police and other public-sector unions, “handling employee rights cases at every level from administrative hearings to the U.S. Supreme Court,” he said in an email.

In 2013, The Times reported, a law firm in which he was a named partner dissolved after two Costa Mesa City Council members sued one of his clients, the city police union, over legal and political tactics the politicians asserted were overly aggressive.

Dammeier recently said his team was the focus of “antiunion attacks by political forces” and said that after multiple investigations, none of the firm’s attorneys faced charges or disciplinary action.

In 2022, Dammeier became an administrative law judge. His campaign website states he has heard and issued decisions in more than 2,000 unemployment, disability and tax appeal cases.

Priorities are addressing case backlogs and making thoughtful, unbiased decisions.

“Win or lose, everyone needs to know they had fair treatment by our courts,” he said.

He ran for Superior Court seats in Merced and San Bernardino counties in March 2024, losing both races, and also ran unsuccessfully in San Bernardino County in 2016.

David Ross, deputy alternate public defender
Bar rating: Qualified

Ross worked as a legislative aide for an Indiana Democrat in Congress and as a TV reporter and documentary producer before becoming a lawyer in 1994, according to his campaign website.

His legal career began in Riverside County, where he served five years as a deputy public defender. In 2000, he became a Los Angeles County deputy alternate public defender in regional branches, including Long Beach and Compton. He has been at the Torrance office since 2018.

Ross, according to his website, has represented more than 10,000 indigent defendants and completed more than 110 jury trials.

A priority would be ensuring people feel recognized in his courtroom.

“My goal is to hear everyone out, so that even if a party ultimately loses, they will walk out of court knowing the judge listened,” he said in an email.

Troy W. Slaten, administrative law judge, state Department of Industrial Relations
Bar rating: Qualified

After roles as a child actor on “Cagney and Lacey” and “Parker Lewis Can’t Lose,” Slaten began a two-decade law career in 2005.

He first worked as a private criminal defense attorney, then spent 11 years at an international firm where he focused on criminal, civil and administrative law and, for a time, managed the criminal defense division. He’s regularly cited as a legal analyst on TV and in The Times.

Slaten volunteered as temporary Superior Court judge from 2016-20 and in 2021 became a full-time administrative law judge presiding over workers’ compensation hearings.

“I have uncovered fraud and have helped when injured workers have been denied healthcare and other benefits,” he said in an email.

He has twice run for Superior Court, falling short in 2020 and 2022.

He would prioritize fairness and efficiency. “I would work to ensure cases move forward in a timely and organized manner while preserving due process,” he said.

Outside the courtroom, Slaten announces and deejays UCLA men’s and women’s water polo games.

Donna Tryfman, L.A. County deputy public defender
Bar rating: Qualified

A deputy public defender since 1998, Tryfman has had assignments countywide. From 2016-19, she supervised 25 attorneys and mentored new hires as deputy in charge of Eastlake Juvenile Court. She’s worked in collaborative drug court, coordinating with prosecutors, judges and others to help individuals dealing with addiction.

Her current assignment is in the Major Crimes Unit, where she exclusively handles homicides with special circumstances.

Tryfman spent five years as president of the Public Defenders Assn., according to her campaign website, and has proctored a high school program on civic duties and constitutional principles. She has served as a Superior Court judge pro tem, handling traffic and small claims cases. She received the peer-decided Gideon Award as felony attorney of the year in 2025, her bio states.

“I would champion further access to justice by exploring and expanding digital access to the courts in underserved communities,” she said.

Under an existing state appropriations restraint, also known as the Gann Limit, lawmakers cannot spend more in the state budget than an amount determined by a formula that takes annual tax proceeds, changes to the population and cost of living into consideration.

Tax revenue above the limit must be divided between schools and refunds to taxpayers. More recent carve-outs in the law also allow leaders to direct excess funds to infrastructure and local government.

The limit applies to most other appropriations of tax revenue, including money that lawmakers tuck away into the “rainy day” fund and other reserves.

California voters also have capped the amount of money lawmakers can set aside in the rainy day fund at 10% of general fund proceeds in a given year.

The proposed changes would exempt deposits into the rainy day fund and a short-term reserve, called the Projected Surplus Temporary Holding Account, from the state appropriations limit. The cap on the rainy day fund would grow from 10% of general fund tax revenue to 20%.

In effect, the measure would allow the governor and the Legislature to put more money into budget reserves, creating another option to avoid triggering rebates.

For example, if the spending limit is $400 billion for the year, and revenue hits $410 billion, the measure would give lawmakers the option to deposit the $10 billion above the spending limit into the rainy day fund, direct the money to infrastructure or give it to local governments, instead of returning the funding to taxpayers and increasing funding for schools.

The LAPD’s legal bills keep piling up.

The city of Los Angeles has shelled out nearly $480 million over the last five and a half years to end legal disputes involving the Police Department, including claims of excessive force, litigation over traffic accidents and cases filed by employees who allegedly faced retaliation after reporting misconduct.

The soaring legal costs have come under greater scrutiny in recent years as Los Angeles’ financial problems have gotten worse. The city faced a $1-billion budget shortfall in 2025 but, after various cost-cutting measures, managed to set aside funding for the LAPD to hire more than 500 new officers in the coming year.

The LAPD’s annual lawsuit costs more than doubled from 2019 to 2025. The payouts peaked in 2024, when the city spent $178.6 million to resolve more than 300 police-related lawsuits and civil claims, before dropping to just over $100 million in 2025, according to a Times analysis of city attorney’s data.

The Times reviewed hundreds of pages of court documents and analyzed data from the city attorney’s office released through a public records request showing nearly 2,000 payouts dating to January 2019.

Through the first six months of this year, the city has paid out $20.3 million in legal settlements and court judgments involving LAPD officers. Several recent big-dollar verdicts aren’t included in that tally because they hadn’t yet been approved by the City Council.

The surging cost of LAPD payouts depriving the cash-strapped city of money for pressing needs such as fixing roads and sidewalks, according to City Controller Kenneth Mejia.

“There’s a reason why your streetlights are out and they’re not fixed for a year, there’s a reason why your sidewalk won’t get fixed or your animal shelters are understaffed or underfunded,” said Mejia, whose office is conducting an audit of the city’s risk management strategies, the results of which will be released this year.

Experts are still untangling the reasons for the explosion of legal payouts involving police — which stretches far beyond L.A.

This year, a legal defense organization found that New York City has paid more than $796 million since 2019 to settle lawsuits involving accusations of police misconduct — including $117 million in 2025. In Chicago, the city is on track to blow past the $252 million spent last year to resolve police lawsuits, mostly involving plaintiffs who went to prison based on faulty evidence, according to local news reports.

In Los Angeles, the surge has come under the watch of City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto, who has blamed the rising costs on the way the office handled litigation of all kinds before her administration — as well as a national legal trend of so-called nuclear verdicts.

“The system is getting inflated in a way that is unhealthy and it creates, I think, incentives to sue and to do pie-in-the-sky settlements,” Feldstein Soto said in interview with The Times earlier this year. She said her office evaluates each claim case by case, deciding when it makes more sense to settle rather than go to trial, at which juries can issue decisions based on emotion or differing perceptions of what occurred. Feldstein Soto has lobbied for years to change state law to limit “non-economic” damages.

Feldstein Soto’s critics contend that she has pursued a hard-line approach in recent years, refusing to settle except in cases where it is clear the city is likely to lose in court.

That tough stance has led to mixed results. The city has lost some jury verdicts that could have been avoided if it had been willing to settle. It has also prevailed in several high-profile cases, including this year when a jury ruled that an officer was not liable for the 2021 death of a 14-year-old girl killed by a wayward bullet fired during a hasty confrontation with a suspect at a North Hollywood department store.

The city attorney’s office said in a statement to The Times that while it is proactively working to curb rising litigation costs “by every means possible,” it could not “control the number, timing or claimed damages of lawsuits filed against the City.”

“Nor does the Office have control over the alleged root causes of these liabilities: the City Attorney’s Office is not responsible for LAPD policies or personnel,” said the statement, adding that the number of lawsuits filed against the city has risen by roughly 20% in each of the last four budget years, straining the office’s resources.

Zachary Powell, an associate professor of criminal justice at Cal State San Bernardino, said that although data suggest that use of force by police has decreased since 2020, the public has become “much more aware of police abuses and conduct than they ever were before.”

“I think people also ask a lot more questions in a jury setting,” he said.

Other explanations, he says, are the passage of statewide police accountability measures and the fact that a backlog of cases from the pandemic years are finally coming due.

The Times’ analysis found that hundreds of legal battles involving officer-involved traffic incidents make up nearly a quarter of all payouts. Since 2019, the city has paid $125 million for the thousands of accident claims, just under a third of which stemmed from cases in which officers were found to have failed to stop or yield at crossings before crashing into another vehicle or a pedestrian. Pursuit-related claims and suits stemming from cases in which officers made improper left turns have also cost the city millions.

Other legal costs date back years — and in some cases decades.

The city is still paying $7,410 a month to Clarence Chance, who in the early 1990s was awarded a large payment over a wrongful arrest that led him to spend 17 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. Nearly $40 million has gone to people whose homes were damaged after the LAPD bomb squad botched the detonation of seized fireworks and leveled part of a city block in 2021.

One of the biggest payout categories was $104.6 million spent since 2019 on claims related to police shootings — more than three-fourths of which involved people who were reported to be under the influence of a substance or in the midst of a mental health crisis, according to The Times’ analysis. Roughly $38.4 million was paid out after police shot someone wielding an edged weapon, such as a knife, the analysis found. Shootings involving gang officers cost the city nearly $4 million in that span.

Dozens of lawsuits remain pending, including claims related to the handling of mass pro-immigration protests since last year, likely putting taxpayers on the hook for more large payouts in the future. Police use of hard foam projectiles, house-mounted officers and other tactics against crowds have already cost the city at least $22 million in the last seven and a half years — just over half of which stemmed from the department’s response to the 2020 mass protests over the murder of George Floyd.

Such totals may not always include lawyer fees that are negotiated after a settlement is reached — or if a case is appealed.

Jonathan Evans, a civil rights attorney who has sued the department, thinks the big payouts show that greater public awareness of mental health issues is a factor. Recognizing this, he said, municipalities are agreeing to higher settlements than in years past.

“The decision to use lethal force is being more heavily scrutinized,” he said.

Tens of millions of city dollars have in recent years gone to disgruntled police officers who sued over workplace injustices such as sexual harassment, racial discrimination and retaliation. Since 2019, at least 27 LAPD employees have won million-dollar-plus jury verdicts or settlements from the city; many more have seen five- or six-figure paydays.

To clamp down on future legal costs, the department last year brought back a former senior official, Arif Alikhan — at a monthly salary of $20,000, paid for by a private donation — to study how to reduce the number of costly lawsuits. Alikhan did not respond to a call requesting comment.

The department maintains an early intervention system that flags officers based on risk factors, such as a relatively high volume of civilian complaints, frequent use force, and involvement in preventable traffic collisions or pursuits. The system is used to determine whether they need additional training or should be reassigned or placed on a performance improvement plan.

Within the LAPD, some officers and the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the rank-and-file union, argue that the city should fight back harder against claims with no credibility, instead of settling. They say officers who are most often sued tend to come from specialized units that do the type of proactive policing that the department and most of of the public wants: targeting gangs, drugs and guns.

Attorneys who represent officers that have sued the department over whistleblower retaliation dismiss the claim by Chief Jim McDonnell and others that some cops are exaggerating their claims in pursuit of a big payday. If anything, they contend, the continued large payouts are a product of entrenched racial and gender bias and inconsistent discipline — and the LAPD’s unwillingness to learn its lessons from past lawsuits.

Greg Yacoubian, a labor attorney, said there is little incentive for the current system to change because the costs of lawsuits are passed on to taxpayers — not the officers involved in misconduct and their bosses.

“The person responsible for the error never feels the pinch,” Yacoubian said.

Times staff writer James Queally contributed to this report.

Business groups such as the California Chamber of Commerce, the California Teachers Assn. and Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California oppose the proposal.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton, who are running to replace Newsom, also have spoken out against it.

Opponents describe the wealth tax as a “flawed experiment” that will harm California’s economy because companies and rich people will flee the state.

“If they leave, it will create a huge hole in our budget, threatening core services like education, healthcare and public safety,” arguments against the proposition say.

Opponents of the measure say the proposal is an ineffective attempt to address the long-term effects of the healthcare cuts and would harm California’s economy and budget.

The state budget in California already is largely dependent on income taxes paid by its highest earners. Because of that, revenues are prone to volatility, hinging on capital gains from investments, bonuses to executives and windfalls from new stock offerings, and are notoriously difficult for the state to predict.

Billionaires such as Palmer Luckey, the co-founder of defense tech startup Anduril Industries, and entrepreneur Mark Cuban have pushed back against the proposal on social media. Some tech executives have been relocating or moving their assets to try to avoid the potential tax. Google co-founder Sergey Brin has been cutting ties to California, relocating to Nevada while funding groups such as Building a Better California that are backing ballot measures that could nullify the billionaire tax.

More than $187 million has been spent opposing the proposition, with the bulk coming from Building a Better California, cryptocurrency company Ripple Labs and its co-founder Chris Larsen, data from the secretary of state show.

Proposition 39 is opposed by leading state Democrats, major civil rights organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union and major labor unions in the state, who say the measure would disenfranchise eligible voters and expose voters to identity theft by forcing them to write personal ID numbers on mail ballot envelopes.

According to campaign finance reports, the ACLU of Northern California has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to defeating the measure. Quinn Delaney, a major Democratic donor and fundraiser for former President Obama, and Patty Quillin, a major philanthropist and wife of Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, both have given $1.5 million.

The Service Employees International Union Local 2015, which represents long-term caregivers, provided $1 million, the SEIU California State Council for Working People gave $500,000, and the California Teachers Assn., through its independent expenditure committee, gave another $500,000.

Arnulfo De La Cruz, president of SEIU California and SEIU Local 2015, said in a statement that the group’s members “know our nation is stronger when working people make their voices heard and have their ballots counted,” and that strict voter ID laws “are part of Trump and MAGA extremists’ agenda to rig the election system so they can cling onto their own power and get richer from corporate corruption.”

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) recently convened a news conference where a slate of Democratic leaders — including state Senate President Pro Tempore Monique Limón (D-Goleta) and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) — called on Californians to vote no on Proposition 39.

The Democrats called the measure a “dirty trick” from “Trump acolytes” akin to historic poll taxes designed to disenfranchise Black voters, and a power grab that would seriously harm millions of eligible voters, especially in Black and Latino communities.

“Proposition 39 is a direct assault on everything California stands for. Our people, our values and our fundamental belief that every eligible voter here in California deserves to have their voice heard and deserves to have their vote counted,” Rivas said.