council

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

Deputy Atty. Gen. Marissa Roy did big numbers in the June 2 primary election, coming in first place in the race for city attorney and knocking City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto out of the running entirely.

Roy secured 43% of the vote in round one. Now that she’s in a head-to-head contest against Deputy Dist. Atty. John McKinney, she’s well ahead in fundraising as well.

Campaign spending reports for the Nov. 3 runoff, filed over the last few days, show that Roy’s campaign collected nearly $74,000 during the fundraising period that ended June 30. By comparison, McKinney collected just $3,000, according to his own contribution report.

“I plan to be a City Attorney for the people, and I’m proud to have a campaign supported by the people. If your campaign isn’t, then I think it’s fair to ask who it is for,” Roy said in a statement.

The race is one of three downballot contests where the candidate who came in first on June 2 is also well ahead in the scramble for campaign contributions. Things were similarly lopsided in council races in South L.A. and the San Fernando Valley.

McKinney, who received nearly 29% of the vote in the primary, said his campaign will have plenty of resources to “educate voters that Marissa Roy is a bad fit for Los Angeles.”

“The recent financial disclosure reflects just one week of activity,” he said in a statement. “Since the June 30th [fundraising] deadline, we’ve raised more than $65,000 from more than 80 individual donors and have nearly 15 fundraising events scheduled.”

Several of the donors who gave to Roy occupy the left end of the political spectrum, such as Loraine Lundquist, who ran for City Council twice in the San Fernando Valley, losing both times to Councilmember John Lee. Roy also picked up a donation from airport commissioner Victor Narro, project director for the UCLA Labor Center.

Roy received $1,800 from attorney Carol Sobel, who has sued the city many times on behalf of various clients over policing and its treatment of the homeless population. Another $1,800 came from Genie Harrison, who is representing former fire chief Kristin Crowley in her lawsuit over her ouster.

McKinney, who works for Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman, is likely to have his own big-money support in the coming weeks. During the primary, an array of well-financed allies, including Airbnb, spent a combined $3.2 million on efforts to elect him.

In South L.A., Ugarte ramps up his fundraising

The fundraising was also lopsided in the race to replace City Councilmember Curren Price, a veteran lawmaker who is stepping down after 13 years in a district stretching from the Convention Center south to 95th Street.

Former Price aide Jose Ugarte collected about $35,000 for the runoff, much of it from other city workers, particularly council aides, records show.

Community organizer Estuardo Mazariegos took in about $5,400, pulling in donations from the progressive L.A. Forward Action Fund and from Lundquist, the former council candidate.

A number of elected officials have lined up behind Ugarte, who garnered 39% of the vote in the primary. He received $1,000 apiece from State Assemblymembers Mark Gonzalez (D-Los Angeles), Mike Fong (D-Alhambra) and José Luis Solache (D-Lynwood), according to his filing. Ugarte also received $1,000 each from former Councilmember David Ryu and from the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.

Records show that Ugarte received $1,000 from the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union that represents rank-and-file police officers, but then returned the contribution. Ugarte does not accept donations from the police union, his campaign strategist said.

“I support Mayor Bass’s efforts to increase staffing, strengthen community policing, and improve transparency and accountability. I also want to see more officers on foot patrols and bike patrols in our neighborhoods,” Ugarte said in a statement. “Returning this contribution does not change or influence my views on these priorities.”

In the Valley, Gaspar pulls in a big haul

In the race to replace Councilmember Bob Blumenfield in the west San Fernando Valley, businessman Tim Gaspar is proving to be a fundraising powerhouse.

Gaspar reported more than $180,000 in donations to his runoff campaign through June 30, compared with about $31,000 for Barri Worth Girvan, an aide to County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, according to her filing.

“After finishing with the most votes in the primary, our campaign is grateful for the outpouring of support from business owners, neighbors, and friends across the West Valley,” Gaspar said in a statement.

Gaspar received 46% of the vote in the primary, compared with more than 42% for Worth Girvan.

In an interview, Worth Girvan said she’s not troubled by the fundraising gap. During the primary, backers of Gaspar spent about $1.4 million on independent expenditures supporting his election bid.

“We still came within 4 percentage points,” she said. “To me, it’s always been about the voters, so that’s what I’m focused on.”

Worth Girvan picked up donations from longtime Democrats, including Gonzlaez, the state Assembly member, former state Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon and Ryu, the former City Council member. She told The Times her fundraising picked up significantly after the June 30 fundraising deadline, bringing her total haul to more than $100,000.

Gaspar picked up donations from several public safety unions, including $1,000 from the Police Protective League and $500 from a political action committee set up by the city’s port police. He received $1,000 from real estate developer Rick Caruso, who ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 2022.

State of play

— WINDS OF CHANGE: For the first time since 1963, L.A.’s 9th Council District will not have a Black representative. The race to represent that South L.A. district features two Latino candidates who immigrated to the U.S. as children, both of them undocumented at the time. Ugarte, the former council aide, was born in Oaxaca and is Mazateco, an Indigenous group native to the Mexican state. Mazariegos, a community organizer, was born in Guatemala.

— DISAPPEARING ACT: Records dealing with the activities of the Los Angeles Police Department — emails, text messages, audio recordings — have vanished from a city website devoted to the release of public information. Although the removal of such records does not violate any laws, “it’s certainly not a best practice,” one expert said.

— PERMIT PROBLEMS: A representative of Lineage, whose massive cold storage facility burned down in Boyle Heights two months ago, filed a permit this week to rebuild the company’s 491,000-square-foot warehouse to its original pre-fire condition. Bass called the filing a “slap in the face” to families in Boyle Heights and ordered her department heads to put the application on hold until the site receives extensive study.

— SCHOOLS AND SAFETY: Meanwhile, with less than two weeks left before the start of school, families in Boyle Heights and East L.A. are worried about health and safety at eight campuses located within a mile of the Lineage site, which has been beset with the stench of rotting food, rats and swarms of flies.

— ZOO COUP: Feldstein Soto may have lost her bid for a second term, but she did rack up a key court victory in the city’s battle over money for the Los Angeles Zoo. The city has been trying to claw back about $50 million raised for the facility by the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Assn., the nonprofit that helped run it until recently. GLAZA filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in June, citing “incessant litigation” from the city. This week, at the city’s request, a judge dismissed the bankruptcy filing.

— TAKING IT TO THE STREETS: L.A. is on track to repeal a city law prohibiting kids from playing baseball, basketball, soccer or other ball games out in the street. The law was passed in 1936 out of a fear that children would be struck by cars. Councilmember Bob Blumenfield says it’s time the ordinance was erased from the books.

— FIXING THEIR MISTAKE: L.A. County’s Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to send voters a charter amendment that would reverse the repeal of Measure J, which was approved six years ago and sets aside money for alternatives to incarceration. Measure J, through a series of errors, was supplanted in 2024 by Measure G, which will increase the number of supervisors. The new measure would restore Measure J to the county charter.

— SPEAKING OF ERRORS: Last week, we mentioned a proposal to reduce the number of required council meetings from three per week down to one, saying that the idea failed to make the ballot. That was wrong! The measure will in fact go before voters in the Nov. 3 election as part of Charter Amendment EE.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to bring homeless people indoors went to Skid Row, bringing 23 people inside, according to the mayor’s team. The area is represented by Councilmember Ysabel Jurado.
• On the docket next week: After a month off, the City Council resumes its business on Tuesday.

Stay in touch

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

Estuardo Mazariegos and Jose Ugarte, running against each other for a city council seat representing part of South Los Angeles, are immigrants from Latin America who arrived undocumented as children.

Both 40 years old, they grew up in the area and established themselves as community organizers.

And no matter which of them wins election on Nov. 3, it will be a historic change for Council District 9, which has been represented by a Black council member since 1963, even as its demographics shifted to a Latino majority.

Mazariegos and Ugarte both said they are committed to representing all their constituents equally, including Black residents who have expressed concerns about the change.

Jose Ugarte is the front-runner for City Council District 9 after getting 39% of the vote in the June primary.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Ugarte, who was until recently a deputy chief of staff to the current council member, Curren Price, got about 39% of the vote in the June primary to 26% for Mazariegos, in a six-candidate field.

Ugarte was born in Oaxaca and is Mazateco — an Indigenous group native to the Mexican state. He has spent most of his life in South L.A., where he was embraced by his Black neighbors and schoolmates. He wants to model himself after Price, who he said is known in the community as the most “pro-Latino Black councilman.”

“I want to be a voice for Black residents in my district,” Ugarte said at his campaign headquarters on Avalon Boulevard. “I want to be called the most pro-Black Latino council member that the city really has.”

Last year, Ugarte agreed to pay a $17,500 fine to the city’s Ethics Commission, later increased to $25,000, for repeatedly failing to disclose outside income he made from his lobbying and consulting firm while also working as a council staffer. He said the issue stemmed from “an unintentional clerical reporting error on my part.”

Mazariegos is the L.A. co-director of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, a statewide nonprofit that organizes lower-income Black and brown communities for progressive change. Born in Guatemala and brought to the U.S. by his parents, he also was shaped by growing up in racially diverse parts of South L.A. He said he’s reaching out to different sectors of the community, including Black organizations and churches.

Organizing is about “always having open ears to the community,” Mazariegos said while sitting outside Mercado La Paloma, a food hall in the district. “It’s fighting for, honoring the Black legacy and fighting for a Black future, and you do that by building together.”

In his early 20s, Mazariegos pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of carrying a concealed weapon in a vehicle. He said he was holding on to the gun for a friend and that the conviction makes him a better candidate because he can relate to people in the district who have had run-ins with law enforcement.

Council District 9 encompasses the Convention Center, USC and neighborhoods along the Harbor Freeway, including Vermont Square, South Park and Florence-Graham. In a district with the highest poverty rate in the city, residents are concerned about issues including illegal dumping, public safety, a dearth of grocery stores and a sense of being neglected by City Hall.

Price, who has represented the district since 2013, is terming out. He has been fighting corruption charges, with a judge deciding in January that there was enough evidence to move to trial on four counts of voting on matters in which Price had a conflict of interest, five counts of embezzlement and three counts of perjury.

Price said he never intended to do anything wrong and questioned the fairness of a prosecution over what he said was essentially a paperwork error.

The growth of the Latino population in a district that is now nearly 80% Latino has created political tensions for decades, said Manuel Pastor, a USC professor and author of “South Central Dreams: Finding Home and Building Community in South L.A.”

Four years ago, those tensions resurfaced after a recording emerged of a conversation among three Latino city council members and a labor leader that featured racist and disparaging remarks about Black people, Oaxacans and others. The revelations tested a fragile alliance of Black and Latino coalitions that organizers have sought to maintain.

More recently, some Black community leaders expressed concern that a proposal to allow noncitizens to vote in local elections would diminish Black political power. The City Council ended up sending the proposal to a committee for more study.

Pastor noted that Price made an effort to focus on Latino residents, who have grown up alongside Black residents and suffered the same disinvestment in their neighborhoods.

This election, Pastor said, will pit the strength of L.A.’s political establishment against the rising power of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Ugarte’s endorsements include Price and the L.A. County Democratic Party, while Mazariegos has been endorsed by Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, City Controller Kenneth Mejia and the Democratic Socialists of America’s L.A. chapter, among others.

Through May 27, Ugarte had raised $510,000 in campaign contributions and Mazariegos had raised $254,000.

Ugarte has benefited from nearly $1 million in independent expenditures, which differ from campaign contributions, with Airbnb contributing $302,000 to support his candidacy and the California Apartment Assn. Housing Solutions Committee spending $230,000.

Mazariegos has received support from the political arms of United Teachers Los Angeles as well as his employer, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Action, which together spent about $118,000.

Jose Ugarte says, “I want to be called the most pro-Black Latino council member that the city really has.”

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

On a recent Sunday morning, Ugarte stopped by services at two predominantly Black churches. At McCoy Memorial Baptist Church in South Park, he accepted a warm hug from longtime Pastor R.A. Williams Jr., who endorsed his candidacy. Ugarte then traveled a few blocks to Experience Christian Ministries, where Pastor Shep Crawford also has endorsed him.

“I met him years ago, boots on the ground, in the streets making changes,” Crawford told the congregation.

That same day, about three miles north at Audio Graph Beer Co., Mazariegos was cheering at a World Cup final watch party that doubled as a fundraiser. He posed for photos with supporters, who wore buttons declaring him “the people’s candidate.” He credited making the runoff election to his years in the community advocating for anti-displacement measures for tenants and lowering the rent cap.

Angie Gonzalez, 22, said Mazariegos earned her support because of his work advocating for tenant rights.

“I like how Estuardo is trying to empower us,” she said.

Odilia Romero, a resident of District 9 and executive director of CIELO, an advocacy group for Indigenous people, said she is not endorsing in the race. But she acknowledged the importance of an Indigenous candidate, four years after the audio leak scandal.

After The Times broke that story, Ugarte said, he secured permits for a march from L.A. Trade Tech to City Hall, where Oaxacans and others rallied.

Ugarte said if he is elected, he’d become the first Indigenous Oaxacan council member. He wants to show anyone critical of immigration — including the Trump administration — that “immigrants are here to build things to make the country better.”

“I want to be a council member that came from another country, that came as an immigrant, that came from an Indigenous state, and that made a name for himself, that [improved] his community,” he said.

Organizing is about “always having open ears to the community,” Estuardo Mazariegos says. “It’s fighting for, honoring the Black legacy and fighting for a Black future, and you do that by building together.”

(Arwen Clemans / Los Angeles Times)

Mazariegos said that while he may not be a political insider, he makes up for it as a “community insider.”

“There’s a lot of mistrust for the status quo right now,” he said. His goal is “making sure that the 9th district has representation that actually fights for it.”

These days, he said, campaigning has turned into an all-day affair, meeting people as he walks with his family around the district.

Mazariegos has in recent months appeared at City Hall to advocate for charter reform, including increasing police accountability, expanding the size of the City Council and advocating for noncitizen voting. None of those measures made the November ballot.

Organizers in the district said that no matter who wins, they intend to hold the new council member accountable.

“We hope that whoever wins this race keeps working-class people and their issues on the forefront,” said Ron Gochez, a longtime district resident and organizer with Union del Barrio, which advocates for immigrants. “We will pressure whoever wins to do the right thing.”

US accused France of “condescending” rhetoric over its human rights stances

United States diplomats walked out of a United Nations Security Council meeting on Russia’s war against Ukraine as France’s delegation took the floor.

The walkout on Monday came two days after an online exchange between US and French officials over Washington voting against renewing the four-year term of UN human rights chief Volker Turk.

France’s UN Mission in Geneva wrote on Saturday that the US was no longer a “beacon of human rights” and stood isolated alongside North Korea, Nicaragua, Mali and Russia.

US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz replied on X that France had voted for a rights chief who “has been lecturing free, sovereign democracies like the United States, the UK, and Israel, while cozying up to the world’s worst oppressors”.

After the walkout, Dan Negrea, an alternate US representative, told the council that his delegation would keep walking out until France renounced its “condescending and disrespectful rhetoric”.

France’s ambassador, Jerome Bonnafont, did not mention the walkout when he spoke, saying France was working to preserve the UN’s independence and its capacity to act.

Turk, who has criticised violations of international law by Israel and the US in Palestine and Iran, was reappointed by a UN General Assembly vote of 144 in favour, 10 against and 13 abstentions.

The administration of US President Donald Trump has cut funding to UN agencies and withdrawn from dozens of UN entities since 2025. It had also threatened to reassess its engagement over Turk’s mandate.

Washington and Paris have also clashed over NATO spending, trade policy and Trump’s threats to occupy Greenland, a territory of NATO member Denmark.

France, along with other European states, has also drawn Trump’s ire for refusing direct participation in the US-Israel war on Iran.

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s Noah Goldberg giving you the latest on city and county government.

There’s no exact way to measure the effectiveness of Los Angeles City Council members.

But we analyzed three basic elements — meeting attendance, committee assignments and amount of legislation drafted — to give readers a sense of what their local electeds are up to.

Meeting attendance

As part of charter reform efforts, the City Council considered reducing the number of council meetings from three per week to just one.

The proposal failed earlier this month after receiving stiff pushback from at least one councilmember, Monica Rodriguez.

“Meeting less for a city of 4 million people I think sends the wrong message. Particularly when you have the best-paid council in the country,” said Rodriguez in an interview on Fox 11 earlier this year (each councilmember makes an annual salary of more than $244,000). “This idea that we would be meeting less I believe runs contrary to what the public is demanding form their council.”

Yet Rodriguez isn’t a stickler for showing up to meetings herself, ranking near the bottom of her colleagues for attendance. Since the start of 2025, Rodriguez has attended about 86% of meetings, missing 25 out of 177 meetings, according to a Times analysis.

Gabriel Avalos, a spokesperson for Rodriguez, implied that other work-related matters kept her from the meetings.

“There’s no distinction for absences related to city business, but she certainly wasn’t absent due to dishes and laundry,” Avalos said.

Only two other councilmembers missed more meetings than Rodriguez — mayoral candidate Nithya Raman, who missed 30 meetings, and Curren Price, who missed 34 while dealing with illnesses.

On the other end of the spectrum, Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who runs the meetings, missed the fewest — just four of the 177 meetings from January 2025 until this month.

Eunisses Hernandez and Ysabel Jurado each attended 169 meetings, or about 96%.

Stella Stahl, a spokesperson for Raman, said that most of the councilmember’s absences were due to her position as the city’s representative on the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

The remaining absences, Stahl said in a statement, “were tied to a small number of previously scheduled conferences and speaking engagements relevant to her committee work and district priorities, along with occasional sick days and travel for a funeral.”

Committee assignments

Council members are appointed to committees by the council president. They can sit on additional committees if the president lets them.

These small groups of council members are responsible for reviewing the first drafts of legislation. Committee chairs have the power to move legislation forward — or stall it — by either putting it on the agenda, or not.

The busiest councilmembers are Hugo Soto-Martínez and Adrin Nazarian, who each sit on nine committees, including some temporary “ad-hoc” ones. Councilmember Tim McOsker follows with seven committee assignments.

But the number of committee assignments isn’t necessarily the clearest indication of power. Katy Yaroslavsky serves on only five committees, but she chairs the Budget and Finance Committee, which edits and approves the mayor’s proposed budget before sending it to the full council for one of its most important annual votes.

At the bottom of the list is Price again, who sits on four committees, including as chair of the Committee on Economic Development.

Legislation

Another easy marker is the amount of legislation a council member authors.

At each meeting, dozens of pieces of legislation go before the council — some high-profile, others just to keep the lights on at City Hall (literally).

Rodriguez, despite her relatively low attendance, was at the top of the legislative list over the last year and a half, drafting 199 motions.

A good chunk were motions on whether to support or oppose bills at the state and federal level. Rodriguez also had the most ceremonial street namings of any council member, with 13.

Rodriguez pointed to more significant legislation, like an ordinance banning city workers from taking on additional gigs for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as her proudest achievements.

After Rodriguez, McOsker was the second-most prolific author, with 178 pieces of legislation, followed by Traci Park with 163.

At the bottom were Price with 84 and Harris-Dawson with 90.

State of play

— HOMELESSNESS RISING: Homelessness, including those living in shelters and other temporary facilities, went up by 3.4% across the city compared with 2025. Unsheltered homelessness — those living outdoors or in their vehicles — was up 7.9% after two consecutive years of decreases, dealing a fresh blow to Mayor Karen Bass as she runs for reelection.

— DISAPPEARING ACT: Bass’ press relations office communicates through WhatsApp messages that auto-delete every 24 hours, potentially shielding the messages from public records requests, according to three sources familiar with the office.

— PLAY BALL: In 1936, Los Angeles made it a misdemeanor to play baseball, basketball, soccer or any other ball game on a street or sidewalk. Nearly a century later, when kids spend half as much time outside as their parents did, City Councilmember Bob Blumenfield wants to cut the obscure law from the books.

— THE ICE EFFECT: A new study from the UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute found that businesses within half a mile of nine ICE enforcement sites had 46,000 fewer customer visits and an estimated $3.16 million in accumulated revenue losses during the two weeks after enforcement activity.

— NEW HONCHO: Los Angeles schools Supt. Andrés E. Chait made a calm official entry into his new job Tuesday, emphasizing rising test scores and “a sense of belonging” that binds school communities.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program was at San Pedro Street Elementary School in Ysabel Jurado’s district, bringing 34 people indoors.
• On the docket next week: The Los Angeles City Council remains on recess next week.

Stay in touch

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

In 1936, there were no video games keeping children inside. Most households didn’t have televisions.

Amid concern that kids playing in the streets would get hit by cars, Los Angeles made it a misdemeanor to play baseball, basketball, soccer or any other ball game on a street or sidewalk.

Nearly a century later, when kids spend half as much time outside as their parents did, City Councilmember Bob Blumenfield wants to cut the obscure law from the books.

Blumenfield, who authored a motion to start the process, called the law, along with its punishments of a $1,000 fine and up to six months in jail, “uncommonly silly.”

It’s illegal for a parent to play catch on the sidewalk with a child in front of their home, said Blumenfield, who represents the southwest San Fernando Valley. Nor can a group of children kick a soccer ball on a quiet residential street without violating the law.

The law also prohibits throwing a “stone, pellet, bullet, arrow or any other missile, in, over, across, along or upon any street or sidewalk or in any public park.” It prohibits playing ball games in public parks, except on designated courts or fields.

“Let kids play,” said Olsen Ebright, who is on the Los Feliz Neighborhood Council. “Why in God’s name would we be having the city try to curb playing soccer or throwing a football? “

The benefits of exercising on public land, when done safely and under supervision, outweigh the risks of injury or property damage, such as a baseball going through a neighbor’s window, Ebright said.

Blumenfield’s motion, introduced last August, was supported unanimously by the City Council in a January vote, for which only Blumenfield was absent, as well as by the Los Feliz Neighborhood Council. For it to move forward, the city attorney’s office needs to draft language codifying the change.

Blumenfield’s staff unearthed the 1936 law while researching public rights of way, said Kristine Cajulis, a communications deputy for the council member. Cajulis said she is unaware of anyone who has been penalized under the law.

One instance of enforcement occurred in 2006, when a former city council field deputy reported her Sherman Oaks neighbors for having basketball hoops near their curbs, according to the Los Angeles Daily News.

In addition to the anti-ball playing ordinance, the neighbors were accused of violating an ordinance prohibiting structures on sidewalks or grassy strips next to curbs.

Nate Brogin had set up a basketball hoop that drew neighborhood kids for pickup games and helped his then-18-year-old son lose 30 pounds.

Brogin, who said at the time that the law was akin to fascism, fought the city, unsuccessfully. He said he never paid his fine — he doesn’t remember how much it was — but he eventually pulled the hoop down.

“That’s a long time to let something so backwards go on,” Brogin, now 77, said of the law.

In newspaper stories from the 1930s, local officials warned parents to keep their children from playing in the streets to avoid being struck by cars.

Children should be allowed play in vacant yards or empty spaces but should not be permitted “to risk injury by playing their games in the path of moving vehicles,” said George Hjelte, then-superintendent of Los Angeles playgrounds, in a Feb. 3, 1936 Daily Breeze article.

In today’s L.A., the road safety groups Streets For All and Streets Are For Everyone see Blumenfield’s proposal as a positive step. Safety starts with drivers paying attention to people in the streets, whether biking, walking or playing, they said.

Some drivers in Los Angeles believe the road belongs to them, said Michael Schneider, founder and chief executive of Streets For All.

“Changing that takes a lot more than repealing a law,” he said.

Kids still play in the streets in Brogin’s Sherman Oaks neighborhood. He said that fewer than 10 cars pass through in a typical hour, and drivers stop for children to pause their games and move out of the way — just as he did when he was a boy.

“It’s a great social exercise,” Brogin said. “I don’t see any negative to it.”

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

As Los Angeles city officials deal with the fallout from last month’s Lineage warehouse fire, one powerful lobbying firm has been at the center of the efforts.

M Strategic Communications took on Lineage as a client two days after the fire ignited at the company’s cold storage facility in Boyle Heights, spewing toxic smoke for miles. A putrid odor from 85 million pounds of rotting food remains a concern.

The company said in a filing to the city’s Ethics Commission that it would be lobbying the mayor and other city officials and would also handle “crisis communications and work related to impact of facility fire.”

Shortly after the fire started, Lineage CEO Greg Lehmkuhl got on the phone with Mayor Karen Bass, and the mayor suggested that Lineage give money to the nonprofit California Community Foundation to disburse to local organizations, according to Jeff Rivera, the company’s chief operating officer.

California Community Foundation has also hired M Strategic Communications to lobby the mayor and other city officials related to reforms to the city’s mansion tax.

After Bass’ suggestion, M Strategic Communications put its two clients, Lineage and CCF, in touch. By that point, according to M Strategic, CCF had already created a fund to help with the emergency.

The lobbying firm also has close ties to Bass. One of its two principals is Shannon Murphy, who was a deputy chief of staff to Bass when Bass was speaker of the State Assembly more than a decade ago. Murphy remains a close confidant of Bass, according to a source with knowledge of the mayor’s office.

M Strategic Communications subcontracted some of the work in its June 19 contract with Lineage to Yusef Robb, who was an unpaid advisor and spokesperson to the mayor until early June.

Robb initially continued to serve as an unpaid, unofficial advisor to the mayor, though no longer as a spokesperson. After The Times and other outlets reported on his work for Lineage last Saturday, Robb said he would no longer serve as an unpaid advisor.

CCF has been paying out the $2 million in funds to more than 20 groups to provide relief to Boyle Heights residents.

During a raucous town hall in Boyle Heights last week, where residents booed the officials who spoke, Bass noted that Airbnb was providing short-term rental assistance for people who live close to the fire.

As it turns out, Airbnb is also a client of M Strategic Communications, which was brought on to help legalize vacation home rentals in the city.

Airbnb has provided more than 1,000 nights of free housing to local residents since the fire, the company said.

“We are grateful that so many of those we work with step up when Los Angeles is in need,” said Chris Modrzejewski, a principal at M Strategic Communications.

Whither auditors?

L.A. City Controller Kenneth Mejia investigates inefficiencies, fraud and other issues in the city’s more than 40 departments, whose budgets add up to more than $46 billion per year.

He employs eight auditors and five fraud, waste and abuse investigators, which he says is far from enough. He has requested more staff, to no avail.

On Thursday, Mejia endorsed Councilmember Nithya Raman for mayor, arguing that she would better fund his department and would be more open and transparent with information than Bass’ office has been.

“Nithya believes in the power of transparency and accountability as a tool,” Mejia said during a press conference with Raman.

Raman did not provide specific numbers on how many people she would hire for Mejia’s team.

“I’ve committed to ensuring that we’re fully funding that fraud, waste and audit team,” she said. “The other piece is not standing in the way, but actually opening the door when the controller asks for information about various programs and departments.”

Bass did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Fire funds

Local leaders aren’t happy that Congress still hasn’t appropriated supplemental funding to assist with recovery from the Palisades and Eaton fires.

The catastrophic fires were extinguished more than a year-and-a-half ago, but federal lawmakers have yet to fund a combined request for $15.7 billion from the L.A. city and county governments.

That’s different from what happened after past disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy, when Congress appropriated large portions of the amounts that were requested.

The federal money would go toward projects like restoring and rebuilding infrastructure, parks, schools and senior centers, as well as housing and residential support.

The delays have slowed the recovery process and hamstrung reconstruction efforts, according to Bass and L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger.

This week, the pair sent joint letters to congressional leaders and members of the county’s congressional delegation, calling on them to fund the requests.

They also lamented the fact that the Trump administration’s recent $87.6 supplemental funding request did not detail support for fire victims.

Bass and Barger called on Congress to appropriate supplemental funds “to cover the infrastructure and rebuilding needs associated with the Eaton and Palisades fires.”

State of play

— ROBB JOBS: While serving as a top informal advisor to Bass, Yusef Robb was also working as a crisis communications consultant for Lineage, the company whose cold storage warehouse in Boyle Heights erupted in flames last month. Robb stepped down as an advisor to the mayor following The Times and other outlets’ reporting.

— FREE AND FOR SALE: Robb worked for the mayor as an unpaid spokesperson and advisor for months earlier this year, at the same time that he had a $587,500 contract with Los Angeles World Airports.

— ANOTHER ONE GONE: A top spokesperson for Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass departed Monday after a brief tenure, joining a growing list of communications aides who have left over the last nine months. Kolby Lee, who started as Bass’ director of communications in February, said he was resigning to spend time with family and loved ones.

— AIRING GRIEVANCES: The contractor for Los Angeles International Airport’s long-awaited automatic people mover train filed a lawsuit against the city, amid ongoing disputes over project delays.

— PROJECT NIXED: The state has rescinded a $73.4-million grant for a new mental health and drug treatment facility in San Pedro, putting the future of the controversial project in jeopardy. Neighbors had picketed outside the property at 2100 S. Western Ave. and packed a town hall in April to oppose the project, with some expressing fears about drug users coming to the area.

—TO FLOCK OR NOT TO FLOCK: Less than a week after the Los Angeles Police Department halted its relationship with Flock Safety over concerns about how the company shares data from automated license plate readers, police officials said they are working out a new agreement — this time with more protections.

— HEAT WAVE: The Bass administration has appointed a new chief heat officer. Daniela Simunovic took on the role on May 31 after the administration discreetly fired Marta Segura, the first person to hold the position. Simunovic served as Bass’ senior director of climate and sustainability for three years.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? This week, the mayor’s signature homelessness program went to Chatsworth in City Councilmember John Lee‘s district, bringing 22 people inside.
• On the docket next week: The L.A. City Council remains on recess next week.

Stay in touch

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

The L.A. Zoo’s elephants are now in Tulsa, and the zoo’s longtime nonprofit partner is now in bankruptcy court.

The litany of woes at the L.A. Zoo grew longer last month as the city’s nonprofit partner, the Greater Los Angeles Zoological Association, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, citing “incessant litigation” from the city of Los Angeles as the cause.

The city sued GLAZA — its partner for more than half a century — in 2024 over a $50 million endowment that each side argued was theirs to steward.

The city won a preliminary injunction in Los Angeles Superior Court that barred GLAZA from keeping the money when its contract with the zoo ended last year. Following the split and lawsuit, GLAZA dwindled in size from 42 full-time employees to just four part-time employees.

Now GLAZA says it owes its creditors, including more than $300,000 that it needs to pay a law firm that has represented the nonprofit in its legal battle with the city.

“The City has designated an army of eight attorneys to overwhelm GLAZA with endless discovery, depositions, and court filings all to run up GLAZA’s legal fees,” the nonprofit said in a statement shared with The Times. “As a result, GLAZA has been left with no options other than to seek protection from the bankruptcy court to ensure the survival of GLAZA and the protection of its donors.”

Following its separation from the city, GLAZA executives hope the nonprofit can work in the animal conservation efforts in Southern California.

On July 1, the City Council approved $250,000 in outside lawyers related to the bankruptcy case.

The zoo is facing headwinds as membership has declined precipitously and facilities have deteriorated, according to an Los Angeles County civil grand jury report.

The city attorney’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment on GLAZA’s bankruptcy.

Pratt’s new frontier

Former mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt was far from Los Angeles as he took a meeting with President Trump in Washington, D.C., a few days ago.

Pratt, who came up short of the Nov. 2 runoff by a few percentage points, met with the president in the Oval Office, posting a photo of the rendezvous to social media Tuesday.

“I will never stop fighting for my community,” he wrote.

Pratt paired the visit with an announcement of a new media endeavor he plans to launch called “WAR.” He said the foundation will fight against political corruption, advocate for transparency in government and “restore common sense.”

The website for the foundation doesn’t have additional details, just a link to contribute and a link to a website selling Pratt merch.

The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Pratt also posted a 9-minute video Wednesday calling out California’s election system, claiming that the results of the June 2 primary were skewed by fraud.

Representatives for Pratt’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Phoning it in

After the flag salute and brief comments, L.A. City Council meetings kick off with a public comment period, during which crusading citizens often let loose on city officials as the council members quietly listen, leave the room or chat among themselves.

It’s not always L.A.’s finest hour, as certain commenters often resort to slurs and ad hominem attacks about the council members’ race, ethnicity and even physical appearance.

On July 1, public comment expanded as new state law, SB 707, went into effect, requiring the council to take telephonic public comment.

The council also had to verbally state the amendments they make to motions due to the new law, Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson noted. Historically, the council has affixed amendments to a bulletin board in council chambers.

After frequent speaker Armando Herman used the N-word at the July 1 meeting, Harris-Dawson noted that the state legislature had done nothing about offensive comments at public meetings.

“Our friends in the state legislature made the decision to require us to have telephonic public comment. They did nothing, zero, about what we just heard. Since they want to intervene in our meetings, I’d call on them to do something about what they just heard,” he said.

The council did ban commenters from using the N-word and C-word last year. Speakers who use those words receive a warning and are booted from the meeting if they do it again.

Harris-Dawson said the new state law was “problematic” and noted another issue.

“We can’t verify if calls are bots or foreign agents, which poses a security risk,” he said in a statement to The Times.

State of play

— BOYLE-ING OVER: Mayor Karen Bass, Councilmember Ysabel Jurado and County Supervisor Hilda Solis were roundly booed and heckled by Boyle Heights residents during a town hall Thursday about the Boyle Heights fire. The three officials struggled to speak over the irate audience.

— SOLAR FLARE: Before the Boyle Heights warehouse fire, Lineage representatives lobbied City Hall over the rooftop solar array. The company says it was seeking a safer alternative to rapid shutdown devices.

— FISCAL EDUCATION: The Los Angeles Unified School District is facing “severe” indications it could be insolvent as soon as next year and has 45 days to fix its budget or risk an outside takeover. The Los Angeles County Office of Education has projected a $231 million cash shortfall by 2027.

— HIT THE STREETS: The LAPD is considering shutting down its police academy for part of 2028 to allow hundreds of officers to hit the streets for the Olympics, according to department sources. The move could lead to a drop in police hiring.

— LEGEND GONE: Billy G. Mills, one of the first Black men elected to L.A.’s City Council, died June 27. Mills was a civil rights leader before being elected to the legislative body in 1963, the same year Tom Bradley was elected to be a council member.

— IT TAKES A VILLAGE: Billionaire developer Rick Caruso’s Palisades Village will reopen in August after more than $100 million in renovations following the January 2025 wildfire.

— EVICTION BENEDICTION: Thousands of formerly homeless people whose housing subsidies will expire in December are no longer at risk of eviction, local housing officials announced Thursday. An infusion of new funds approved by Congress this year and a waiver of eligibility procedures have staved off a potential crisis that would have left 4,200 back on the street.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program had no operations this week.
• On the docket next week: The City Council remains on recess until Aug. 4.

Stay in touch

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

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s Noah Goldberg, David Zahniser and Melissa Gomez, giving you the latest on city and county government.

Los Angeles voters won’t get a chance to increase the size of the City Council. They won’t take up a plan to give noncitizens the right to vote, either.

These and other proposed ballot measures got put on the back burner, delayed for a future year as the council scrambled to finish its work before its summer break.

One proposal did survive the sometimes blunt vetting process: decreasing the number of council meetings.

On Tuesday, council members sent voters a measure for the Nov. 3 ballot that would only require a single council meeting per week. The City Charter currently mandates a minimum of three.

Councilmember Tim McOsker was among those pushing for the change, saying it will make the council more efficient and effective.

“It will also allow council members to take care of more business in their districts,” said McOsker, who represents neighborhoods stretching from Watts to the Port of Los Angeles.

The council, which voted 12-0 to place the measure on the ballot, has been thinking about cutting back on the number of meetings for a few years.

In 2024, McOsker and Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky tried to place a measure before voters that would have made the same change. But other council members were not prepared to put it on the ballot.

Yaroslavsky said at the time that much of the city’s public comment period was occupied by “15 people screaming racist, misogynistic, antisemitic epithets.”

Any change to the City Charter would not preclude the council from scheduling additional special meetings.

The proposal drew sharp criticism from Rob Quan, an organizer with Unrig LA, who spent much of the past year tracking the effort to rewrite the charter. He fears that a reduction in meetings will also lead to a decrease in opportunities for Angelenos to address their council representatives.

One of the reasons council members, who each make $244,727 a year, don’t get as much business done is that they frequently use their Friday meetings for ceremonial activities — honoring civic leaders, community groups, youth sports teams, Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani and beloved bands from the 80s.

“Do we really need that? Not necessarily,” Quan said.

Quan said the proposal to cut the number of meetings received zero vetting from the council. The 13-member Charter Reform Commission, which spent nearly a year examining various changes to city government, took up the idea and rejected it.

If voters approve the change, council meetings could end up resembling those of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, which meets most Tuesdays at 9:30 a.m. The supervisors frequently don’t finish their business until well after 5 p.m.

Former prosecutor will stay away from Lee case

We told you last week that Councilmember John Lee is suing the city Ethics Commission over a $138,000 fine he received for allegedly violating city gift laws — a case that stems largely from a notorious 2017 trip to Las Vegas. The council responded to that lawsuit by voting to retain the law firm Hecker Fink to defend the Ethics Commission, at a cost of $120,000.

As it turns out, at least one Hecker Fink lawyer knows plenty about that Vegas trip.

Mack Jenkins, who heads the firm’s L.A. office, was one of the federal prosecutors who brought the criminal case against Lee’s onetime boss, Councilmember Mitchell Englander, in 2020. That case stems from the duo’s trip to Sin City in 2017.

Federal prosecutors said Englander and Lee, listed in court filings as Staffer B, were plied with fancy meals, expensive alcohol and other freebies by people seeking to do business with the city. Englander went a step further, walking into a casino bathroom and picking up $10,000 cash in an envelope from a Los Angeles-area businessman. He later pleaded guilty to providing false information to investigators.

The city’s lawyers say they cannot represent the Ethics Commission because Lee is one of their clients. But does Jenkins’ history with the case create any type of conflict for Hecker Fink?

Nancy Jackson, a spokesperson for the Ethics Commission, says no. In an email, she said Jenkins will be walled off from Hecker Fink’s work on the matter.

“That former prosecutor is recused from the case and will have no involvement in the case,” she said.

What went wrong with the lighting assessment?

Property owners resoundingly rejected a recent request to pay more to fund streetlight repairs. One of the reasons might have been the wording on their ballot.

The city mailed letters asking if they would like to increase the yearly assessment, using language that didn’t offer a lot of explanation.

In the section where property owners had the option to vote yes, the ballot read: “Yes I am in favor of the proposed maximum assessment for Fiscal Year 2026/2017 and the proposed annual cost of living increases as described in the attached notice beginning Fiscal Year 2026/2027.”

Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who chairs the council’s Public Works Committee, said the phrasing could have been a lot more persuasive — and better explained the need for additional money.

“Some of the language that was put out was not written in a way for us to be clear about what we were doing, and instead used language that really turned people off,” she said.

The assessment, which has not changed since 1996, currently generates about $45 million a year. For the average single-family home, the current payment is $58 annually.

The increase would have brought the average annual bill to $117, generating an additional $80 million a year as the city faces a backlog of broken streetlights due to stagnant funding and a rise in vandalism and theft.

After the vote failed to pass, the council approved a motion directing city staff to identify $6.6 million for the Bureau of Street Lighting. Without that money, the city will face “an immediate threat to public safety and our infrastructure at large,” the motion said.

“There will be a 15% cut in field workforces by the end of July 2026, making the timeline for streetlight repair to reach 2 years when the City had previously been able to do this work within 7 days,” said the motion authored by Hernandez and Yaroslavsky.

Hernandez voiced frustration over the defeat of the assessment. She took aim at Proposition 218, the state law that restricts how local governments can raise money, saying it disenfranchises renters who have to “live with the conditions that property owners choose for them.”

She added that the ballot measure’s wording, which she said was crafted by the City Attorney’s Office, failed to capture the reason for the increase.

“People really think that the main reason our lights are out is copper wire theft,” she said. “But the fact is that over 60% of our street lights are out because of lack of maintenance, because we just do not have the money to do that work.”

Hernandez said that next time, she would push for more community engagement so voters understand why the increased funding is needed. She also raised the possibility of reforming Proposition 218.

“No matter what, I’m going to get these streetlights on, and if that’s figuring different things out until we can get a significant effort to do another assessment, then we will do that,” she said.

State of play

— COLD FEET: The L.A. City Council decided against putting two major measures on the Nov. 3 ballot. One measure would have provided a pathway for noncitizens to vote in local elections, while the other would have given the council more authority over the LAPD.

— COSTLY COLLISION: The city of Los Angeles will pay $20 million to settle a lawsuit brought on behalf of a teen who lost his leg in a 2023 hit-and-run in Boyle Heights. The lawsuit blamed the city for an intersection lacking signage, lighting and other traffic controls.

— LAHSuit: The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, also known as LAHSA, sued the Trump administration Monday to stop it from suspending the agency from receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in funding. LAHSA argued that the decision would put thousands of people at risk of losing their government funded housing.

— FORWARDING ADDRESS: The only post office in Skid Row abruptly closed in January due to repeated break-ins and damage to employee property, according to the U.S. Postal Service. The closure has frustrated residents and business owners.

— BUILDING BLITZ: Senate Bill 79, the historic housing bill, took effect across the state on Wednesday. The law could bring townhomes, row houses and other developments to 57 neighborhoods across the city.

— AIRBORNE TOXIC EVENT: A preliminary analysis showed that the recent inferno at a Boyle Heights warehouse contaminated the air with high levels of smoke and soot, rivaling the pollution that filled the region during the 2025 wildfires.

— MORE MEGA PROJECTS: Two large scale developments grabbed the attention of downtown Los Angeles this week. One, approved by the council, is slated to add 1,500 residences to Skid Row. The second, proposed this week, would transform the World Trade Center building into a 512-unit affordable housing complex.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to combat homelesssness went to the area near Olympic Boulevard and Menlo Avenue in Pico Union on Friday in Hernandez’s district, bringing 24 people indoors.
• On the docket next week: The City Council will be on summer recess until Aug. 4.

Stay in touch

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

It was a traumatic moment for much of Southern California, as federal immigration agents snatched undocumented workers from car washes, garment factories and Home Depot parking lots.

Angelica Salas, who heads one of Los Angeles’ most influential immigrant rights groups, met regularly last summer with City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez — himself the son of Mexican immigrants — as they formulated a response. The two kept circling back to a singular issue: the lack of political power wielded by noncitizens.

“A lot of this is happening because immigrants don’t have the right to vote,” said Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights.

Those conversations helped fuel Soto-Martínez’s decision in late April to push for a ballot proposal aimed at giving noncitizens the right to vote in city and school district elections. The proposal quickly gained momentum, with two-thirds of the council voting in mid-June to draft a measure for the Nov. 3 ballot.

Los Angeles City Council member Hugo Soto-Martínez attends a City Council meeting following elections at City Hall June 3.

(Etienne Laurent / For the Times)

But the effort collapsed on Tuesday, with the council reversing course and sending the proposal to a committee for more study. Before the vote, Soto-Martínez acknowledged that he had not performed sufficient outreach, particularly to the city’s Black community leaders.

By then, critics were accusing the council of failing to do its homework, leaving voters to fill in the blanks on such questions as whether undocumented immigrants would be covered by the expanded franchise. Some worried the proposal would endanger the very people it was designed to help, making them a fresh target for the Trump administration.

Even community leaders who have worked on civil rights issues were urging the council to slow down.

Mobilizing Preachers and Communities, a national nonprofit that represents clergy and civil rights advocates, asked for a delay, citing concerns about President Trump. Rev. K.W. Tulloss, the group’s western regional director, said he was also hearing concerns from Black residents and their religious leaders about the potential for weakening Black voting representation.

That, in turn, could reduce the overall number of Black elected officials in Los Angeles, he said.

“That’s a major concern among our community,” Tulloss said. “And we can’t be afraid to have that dialogue.”

In L.A., Black residents make up about 8% of registered voters, according to the Sacramento-based firm Political Data, Inc. That figure has been gradually declining over the past few decades. An influx of noncitizen voters — Latinos, Asians and others — could cause it to shrink even more.

At the end of the year, L.A.’s 15-member City Council will have two Black representatives, down from three, all in South L.A.-based districts. Two Latinos are running in this year’s election to replace Councilmember Curren Price, who is Black and retiring after serving the maximum three terms.

The county’s five-member Board of Supervisors has one Black member. Voters have given the go-ahead to add four more members, which some fear could leave the board with one Black member out of nine.

Tulloss said his organization supports creating a pathway to citizenship for the city’s undocumented immigrants. At the same time, he worried that Soto-Martínez’s proposal could in the short term divide Black and brown residents, who share a common struggle on a wide range of issues.

“At the end of the day, we don’t want any type of deal that will be divisive in the community,” he said.

Soto-Martínez, who represents an Echo Park-to-Hollywood district, said in an interview Wednesday that noncitizen voting was part of his platform when he first ran for City Council in 2022. He said he first thought about the issue seriously a decade ago, when San Francisco voters passed a measure allowing noncitizen parents to cast ballots in school board elections.

Since its formation, the United States has repeatedly redefined the right to vote, broadening it to include women, Black people and other groups, he said.

“To me, it just seemed very natural to expand it,” he said. “It’s part of our history.”

The idea of noncitizen voting has been circulating in L.A. for years. School board member Kelly Gonez persuaded her colleagues to begin exploring it in 2019. But the effort was set aside after the onset of COVID-19, which caused massive disruptions across the Los Angeles Unified School District, said Michael Trujillo, a political strategist for Gonez.

Last summer, as the Trump administration was launching immigration raids across Southern California, the city was convening a 13-member citizens commission to come up with proposals for rewriting the City Charter, L.A.’s governing document.

The commission took up noncitizen voting in March, narrowly rejecting it. Several commissioners said they were worried about unintended consequences, like the Trump administration taking aim at newly registered voters, said Raymond Meza, who served as the commission’s chair.

“I thought those concerns were not fully addressed,” Meza said, “so I actually switched my vote” and opposed the proposal.

A month later, with the deadline for placing items on the Nov. 3 ballot fast approaching, Soto-Martínez introduced a motion calling for a two-step process for expanding voting rights. First, voters would be asked to give the City Council the authority to grant noncitizens the right to vote.

The council would then examine the details surrounding the change before passing an ordinance expanding those voting rights.

Soto-Martínez said his motion was based on a simple idea: Those who live in the city, raise their families there and pay taxes “deserve to have a voice” in local decision-making. He did not offer many specifics, saying those would be worked out at a later date.

Critics, and even some supporters, said Soto-Martínez was making his move at the wrong time. Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, who voted against the proposal in mid-June, voiced fears that the list of noncitizen voters would immediately be seized by federal immigration authorities.

Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said he opposes noncitizen voting in city elections. He does favor it for L.A. Unified — but only for parents of children attending those schools.

Villaraigosa, who led the city from 2005-13 and recently ran for governor, argued that this is not the right time to make even that change.

“With Trump ferreting through every record he can find looking for undocumented people, I just think it’s the wrong time,” he said. “I think these people would be exposing themselves to deportation, and the well-intentioned would be exposing them as well.”

Soto-Martínez portrayed such arguments as “fear mongering,” saying undocumented immigrants take risks every day in their quest to create a better future for their families.

Salas, the head of CHIRLA, echoed that idea.

“At end of day, we are already targets,” she said. “This is not going to make it worse. Don’t tell me voting against this was for the protection of immigrants.”

The Trump threat was not the only reason council members hesitated.

Rodriguez, who has expressed some interest in the proposal, said city leaders had not determined how county election officials would issue separate ballots for voters who would be barred from state and national contests. They also had not determined the cost of such a service, she said.

Twenty-two local jurisdictions across the country have approved and implemented noncitizen voting, according to Megan Dias, who is co-author of “Immigrant Voting and the Movement for Inclusion in San Francisco,” a report examining that city’s push to allow immigrants to vote in school board elections.

Dias said that backers of noncitizen voting need to build a broad coalition — grassroots organizations, election officials, lawyers for the city — before taking the proposal to voters.

Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson said he is confident that noncitizen voting will get a much more extensive review in the coming months, and make the ballot in 2028. First, he said, the council will need to provide voters with specifics on how the changes would work.

Harris-Dawson said he heard from people who wanted more time to understand the proposal, to “make sure that it was done in a way that protected Black voting districts in particular.”

During the deliberations on the proposal, it also was not clear whether the change would apply to green card holders, recipients of Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals or other categories of noncitizens.

“When something goes to the ballot, we need the details to be figured out — like how much something is going to cost, exactly how it’s going to work, and what the parameters are,” Harris-Dawson said. “All of that needs to be defined.”

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

The city of Los Angeles will shell out $120,000 for outside lawyers to fight a lawsuit filed by a councilmember challenging an ethics fine.

On Wednesday, the City Council voted unanimously to hire the law firm Hecker Fink LLP to represent the city’s Ethics Commission as it defends its decision to fine Councilmember John Lee $138,000 for allegedly violating city gift laws during a notorious 2017 trip to Las Vegas. Lee recused himself from the vote.

The city attorney’s office has said it can’t represent the Ethics Commission in Lee’s lawsuit because of a conflict of interest.

Lee was chief of staff to then-Councilmember Mitchell Englander when the two were plied with meals and alcohol, as well as hotel stays and gambling chips, by people seeking business with the city.

Lee, who represents the northwest San Fernando Valley, has claimed that he made a good faith effort to pay his own way. At a nearly $2,500 dinner that included Kobe beef, Maine lobster, Peking duck and sea bass, the only thing he ate was a spoonful of bird’s nest soup, he said at a hearing in his ethics case.

In 2020, Englander pleaded guilty to a single count of providing false information to the FBI and was sentenced to 14 months in prison. Three years later, he agreed to pay $79,830 to settle an Ethics Commission case focused on his own gift law violations.

The commission levied the fine against Lee in December, finding that he committed two counts of violating the city’s law against accepting gifts above a certain value, three counts of violating a law requiring that such gifts be disclosed to the public and five counts of misusing his city position.

David Tristan, the Ethics Commission’s executive director, had asked the council to provide at least $120,000 to defend against Lee’s lawsuit.

Lee declined to comment on the vote. In his lawsuit, he claimed that the statute of limitations had expired on the matters that were investigated by the Ethics Commission. He also accused the commission of overvaluing the share of gifts he partook in.

Lee is seeking to get the fine overturned.

More churn in the Karen Bass campaign

Turns out the shakeup in Mayor Karen Bass’ campaign did not end with the departure of Douglas Herman, her top strategist.

Herman told The Times on Wednesday that he stepped down due to “strategic differences” over the Nov. 3 runoff campaign against City Councilmember Nithya Raman. Bass’ team said on the same day that they had replaced him with Julie Chávez Rodriguez, who was campaign manager for the Joe Biden and Kamala Harris presidential campaigns in 2024.

A day later, political consultant Larry Grisolano confirmed that he too is no longer with the Bass reelection effort. His company, Thematic Campaigns, had been providing media and digital strategy.

On Friday, Berkeley-based research consultant Mike Rice told The Times that his firm, VR Research, had also left the Bass campaign, effective Wednesday. He declined to comment further.

Bass campaign spokesperson Alex Stack declined to discuss the departures. Asked if the campaign is in disarray, he said no, adding that Chávez Rodriguez’s hiring “is a really big get for us.”

“We’re getting a lot of positive feedback,” Stack said.

Still waiting on eviction defense contracts

In March, it appeared that a battle between City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto and the nonprofit running L.A.’s eviction defense program was over.

At the time, Feldstein Soto said she had concerns over awarding funds to the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, which has sued the city successfully over homelessness issues on multiple occasions. Feldstein Soto argued that contracts should not be awarded without rigorous reports and invoice review from Legal Aid and other nonprofits.

The City Council awarded the contracts anyway, funding the initial portion of a three-year, $177-million deal for Legal Aid and three other nonprofits to provide eviction defense, short-term rental assistance, tenant outreach and more as part of the city’s Stay Housed L.A. program.

But months later, Feldstein Soto’s office still hasn’t executed the contracts, frustrating tenants rights advocates and the nonprofits, which are struggling to pay their staff without the funds from the city.

“We’ve been really in a state of purgatory for over a year,” said Mike Dennis, senior director of housing justice at the Liberty Hill Foundation, which does tenant outreach as part of the city’s program.

Dennis said the failure to execute the contracts has created planning and operational uncertainty for the community-based organizations that Liberty Hill works with. Soon, some of them may face serious issues.

“We’re quickly approaching a point where the organizations are not going to keep being able to pay staff and absorb those costs,” he said. “The longer this goes on, the more likely we are to see contractions in the work.”

Earlier this month, Councilmember Ysabel Jurado put forward a motion asking the city attorney to explain why the contracts have not been executed. Jurado said the delay has left $17 million in funds unused.

“At the same time, the selected contractors struggle to maintain staffing without this funding, placing services for those at risk of homelessness in jeopardy,” she wrote in the June 2 motion.

Feldstein Soto argued in a June 15 response that Legal Aid has failed to agree to the “accountability and reporting requirements” needed to execute the contracts. She said those requirements were designed to make sure that taxpayer funds are spent properly.

“This office will continue to work with proposed contractors until the concerns are sufficiently addressed,” she said in a statement.

State of play

— UNHAPPY MEMORIES: Bass was out of town when the Boyle Heights warehouse fire erupted, which is giving voters a fresh reminder of her absence at the start of the Palisades fire. The situation could have an impact on her reelection campaign against Raman.

— HEADING TO THE BALLOT: A half-cent sales tax hike that would generate $345 million annually for the Los Angeles Fire Department will go before voters in the Nov. 3 election. The measure has been spearheaded by the city’s firefighter union, which gathered the signatures to qualify it for the ballot.

— D.A. DENIED: A judge has rejected Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman’s request to freeze payments in the $4-billion sex abuse settlement approved by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. The ruling boots Hochman from his brief stint in a civil courtroom as he moves forward with his criminal investigation into lawyers, recruiters and medical practitioners who may have submitted fraudulent claims.

— SOCIALIST SURGE: L.A.’s democratic socialists are looking to expand their power at City Hall yet again, setting their sights on the races for mayor and city attorney. Raman and city attorney hopeful Marissa Roy, both members of the L.A. chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, are heading into the runoff after strong showings in the June 2 primary. (DSA-LA endorsed Roy but not Raman in the primary.)

— A BLOWOUT ELECTION: Property owners across the city voted overwhelmingly against increasing the assessment they pay to maintain streetlights. City leaders had hoped to use the funds — an additional $80 million a year — to speed up repairs and upgrade the city’s 225,000 streetlights.

— CLEARING THE LAND: Overgrown lots razed by the Eaton and Palisades fires pose an increasing wildfire threat to surrounding properties. The county Board of Supervisors recently passed a motion calling on county departments to develop a plan to clear vegetation in Altadena and Sunset Mesa.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to combat homelessness went to the area around the Wiltern Theatre in Koreatown this week. The area is represented by Councilmember Heather Hutt.
• On the docket next week: On Tuesday, the council takes up a package of ballot measures that would rewrite the City Charter. The changes cover topics such as voting rights for noncitizens, expanded park funding and City Council oversight of policies at the Los Angeles Police Department.

Stay in touch

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

Bob Blumenfield would like to see Angelenos’ old banana peels and moldy bread stay local.

On Tuesday morning, the City Council member told a small crowd of waste advocates in front of city hall that he was introducing a motion to reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions by strengthening local composting infrastructure and decreasing reliance on distant facilities.

Currently, when city residents separate their food waste and yard clippings, chances are it’s being trucked to faraway processing facilities in Bakersfield or Lancaster.

The motion would help the city meet targets set by California’s Short-Lived Climate Pollutant Reduction Strategy, or Senate Bill 1383, which phases out sending green waste to the landfill, because it is a major source of the powerful climate pollutant methane.

It also would help meet Mayor Bass’ Climate Action Plan, which aims to use at least 50% of locally produced compost and mulch within Los Angeles by 2030. Currently, only 25% to 30% of the city’s material is applied to land locally.

The city produces approximately 350,000 tons of organic material a year, Blumenfield told the crowd, which he said equates to roughly 1.2 to 1.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.

“That’s a big number, and when you do the math,” he said, that’s roughly the same amount of carbon dioxide released by the entire country of Belize, the entirety of Humboldt County or the equivalent of burning 1.6 billion pounds of coal per year.

As the announcement was underway, in the background a fire burned for a sixth day in a Boyle Heights warehouse, where 85 million pounds of frozen food was thawing and beginning to rot.

Signed into law in 2016, the state’s composting bill mandated a gradual increase in the amount of organic waste that must be diverted away from landfills. It required 50% of all green and food waste be diverted by 2020; by 2025, that number was supposed to hit 75%.

But it hasn’t. Although Los Angeles has pushed to get a residential curbside bin program in place — recall the “Great Green Bin Apocalypse of 2025” — it has struggled to get people to comply.

According to reports for the recycLA program, a commercial and multifamily waste collection franchise program, only about half of households and business are separating their compostable waste.

Alex Helou, assistant general manager of L.A. Sanitation & Environment, provided a much brighter picture of the city’s food waste situation. L.A. is the first major city to provide green bins to 750,000 residential customers, he said. The city has “exceeded expectations” in food recovery, he said, saving 80 million meals that would have been thrown out and redirecting them to people in need.

Helou said Blumenfield’s motion completes the loop by keeping food waste close to home, creating more local composting and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transporting waste outside of the city. It doesn’t directly affect the city’s compliance with SB 1383, but that isn’t necessary, he said. “We’re meeting that and exceeding that at multiple fronts.”

Blumenfield’s initiative directs the Bureau of Sanitation to develop a plan for expanding local composting across the city. It would also increase the use of locally produced compost and mulch.

For instance, the motion would encourage using the compost on urban farms and at community gardens and city parks. It also would be used to replace artificial grass and turf.

It will support a “citywide transition away from artificial turf and towards nature-based solutions, such as California native plants and natural grass plant fields, and ensure everyone has access to safer, cooler, and sustainable parks, schools, and communities,” said Terry Saucier, a Tarzana resident and member of the Neighborhood Council Sustainability Alliance and the Tarzana Neighborhood Council.

The state’s composting law has proved challenging on several fronts.

The Antelope Valley has become a dumping site for many of the city’s haulers looking to cut transport and facility costs — causing concern among environmentalists and others who say the material is destroying fragile ecosystems.

Complying has been particularly difficult for Los Angeles and much of coastal Southern California, where there are few large composters and low demand for compost. Unlike areas to the north, there is little agricultural demand for compost and mulch.

Experts say dumping in the desert has always been a problem, but the law made it worse by making it more expensive and difficult to deal with.

In addition, composters are struggling with the amount of plastic and other debris that people and businesses put in the food waste bins.

According to a report by Closed Loop Partners, which partners with companies such as Pepsico and McDonald’s, nearly 4% of food waste is contaminated with other materials — most of it plastic. State law requires that finished compost contains no more than 0.5% by dry weight of physical contaminants.

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

It’s long been the Holy Grail for the reform crowd that tracks L.A. city government: expanding the size of the City Council.

The idea of giving L.A. more council members was endorsed by the city’s redistricting commission in 2021. Two years later, the concept was debated at length by a council committee focused on reform. After that panel failed to reach a decision, the idea was assigned to the city’s Charter Reform Commission, which endorsed the change, saying the council should have 25 members, up from 15.

Yet even after that five-year journey, the council voted Wednesday to push a proposed ballot measure on that topic off to the future, sending the idea to a new reform committee for more deliberations.

So what happened this time around?

For one thing, the 13-member citizens commission that recommended the idea didn’t offer a lot of specifics on how the change would work.

The commission recommended 10 additional council members, a move that would cause each district to shed more than 100,000 residents, leaving each member with about 159,000 constituents.

But it never explained whether that decrease should be accompanied by a similar reduction in a council member’s salary, now nearly $245,000 a year.

“That’s one of the reasons why [council expansion] is slated for further study,” Councilmember Bob Blumenfield said in an interview. “While the commission might have had a nice discussion and a negotiation among themselves, what we need to have in front of us to vote responsibly is context and information.”

A councilmember’s pay could be a major sticking point for voters during a campaign over council expansion — especially if an opposition campaign arose to defeat it.

Blumenfield said the commission failed to vet other issues, including the number of council aides needed for each district if a district is smaller.

Councilmember Tim McOsker expressed a similar view.

“I think there were gaps in what the commission proposed — substantive gaps,” he said.

Backers of council expansion have argued that an increase in the number of districts would make the council more responsive and more diverse. Opponents said bigger does not necessarily mean better representation.

Raymond Meza, who chaired the Charter Reform Commission, acknowledged that pay, staffing and the cost of each council office didn’t come up during his panel’s deliberations. Those questions should have fallen to the council, which reviews and approves the city budget each year, he said.

“They would need to figure this out through the budget process, like they figure out most other things in the city,” he said.

Meza said he believes that, in the end, council members didn’t want to dilute their own power. Former City Councilmember Mike Bonin offered a similar take, saying elected officials generally don’t want to risk changing the system that got them into office.

“They are in power because of the way the system is structured,” said Bonin, who now runs the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State LA.

Before sidelining the expansion proposal, Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson said a larger council would shift the balance of power at City Hall, giving the mayor greater authority and the council less of it.

In the end, none of these delays may end up mattering. No one at City Hall expected council expansion to happen until 2032 anyway, since the change would require a new round of redistricting — the process of drawing new boundaries for each council district. Redistricting won’t happen until after the release of results from the 2030 U.S. Census.

In other words, there’s still time for voters to act.

What happened to the City Hall misconduct measure?

Here’s another proposal that got shunted to the sidelines during the council’s eight-hour marathon meeting: what to do about city elected officials who are charged with serious crimes.

Charter reform was, in part, a reaction to a string of corruption scandals. Among them: three sitting council members who were charged with felonies between 2020 and 2023.

In each case, council members had to decide whether to use their power, spelled out in the City Charter, to suspend colleagues accused of wrongdoing — stripping away their duties until their criminal cases were resolved.

The council moved swiftly to suspend then-Councilmember Jose Huizar in 2020, taking action the day he was arrested, before he even pleaded “not guilty” to racketeering and other charges. The council suspended then-Councilmember Mark Ridley-Thomas in 2021 after a lengthy floor debate, with some saying he was being denied his due process rights. (Ridley-Thomas, who was found guilty of seven felonies, is fighting his conviction.)

A few years later, the council decided not to suspend Councilmember Curren Price, allowing him to step off of his council committees but preserving his other council duties as he contests charges of embezzlement, perjury and conflict-of-interest violations.

Although the case is still ongoing, Price is back on various city committees.

Each of those cases put the council in a bind. Voting in favor of suspension can mean depriving a council member’s constituents of representation. It also runs counter to the idea that a colleague is innocent until proven guilty.

Voting against suspension has its own set of dangers, such as undermining trust in city government. It could also allow an elected official accused of wrongdoing to continue taking part in decisions about contracts, real estate development and other matters where the potential for corruption exists.

Under the current system, a council member can be suspended with just eight votes. Harris-Dawson, who supported the suspension of Huizar but opposed it for Ridley-Thomas, said early on that he wanted the Charter Reform Commission to look at the process for disciplining elected officials accused of wrongdoing.

The Charter Reform Commission offered its answer two months ago, recommending that the council retain the power to suspend, but only with a three-fourths vote — 12 out of 15. That safeguard was meant to guard against potential abuses of power, said Meza, the former commission chair.

The council declined to put that idea on the ballot, saying it needs more study.

Asked about that decision, Harris-Dawson said he has long had serious problems with the idea that “one set of elected officials could suspend another set of elected officials.” He suggested that a third party in another branch of government — not the council — determine whether a member merits suspension.

Under that arrangement, the council could initiate the process but leave it to a judge or other party to make the final call, he said.

“I personally think that we have checks and balances in government that should be respected,” Harris-Dawson said.

A last-minute union threat

One ballot proposal that did survive this week’s gauntlet of votes was a plan to increase, not decrease, the council’s power. That proposal, backed by Councilmember Hugo Soto–Martínez, would give the council the authority to set policy at the Los Angeles Police Department.

But even that proposal may be in danger, thanks to a dispute that has erupted between the city’s labor negotiators and the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union representing rank-and-file officers.

Union leadership said this week that the league was not formally asked by management to meet and confer over various charter proposals dealing with the LAPD, including the one focused on policy. That step is legally required before such measures can be sent to voters, the union said.

City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo, the city’s chief labor negotiator, told council members on Monday that his office sent three emails to various employee units asking if they wanted to confer over the charter changes. He said his office received no response from the police union.

A day later, after learning of Szabo’s remarks, the league fired back.

In a letter to council members, the union said it only received emails about charter reform that had nothing to do with policing. Those emails did not constitute a formal invitation to meet and confer about potential changes at the LAPD, the union said.

The city “did not follow the law and did not formally contact us,” union President Ricky Mendoza said in a statement.

The council voted to draft the change in LAPD policy making, pending a confidential report from the city attorney on whether the city first has to bargain with the police union. Council members cast that vote even after the union demanded that they suspend any further consideration of the proposal for the Nov. 3 ballot.

If the city attorney concludes that the LAPD ballot proposal does not require further talks, the Police Protective League will file a lawsuit to protect its members’ legal rights, union officials said.

On Wednesday, Szabo said the proposal to give the council power over LAPD policy decisions doesn’t require collective bargaining.

The proposal to give council say over policy at the LAPD wasn’t the only one focused on that department. Another measure discussed by the council would have given the police chief power to terminate alleged problem officers.

The council sent it to a committee for more study. The union said that proposal also would have required a meet and confer process.

State of play

— CITY CHARTER GRAB BAG: As noted earlier, the council voted to draft an assortment of charter amendments for the Nov. 3 ballot, including one to allow the council to give noncitizen residents the right to vote in local elections. The council also ordered up a measure doubling the amount of money allocated for the Department of Recreation and Parks, discarding an alternative plan that would have increased it by 50%. Other measures would switch the city to a two-year budget process and require a five-year plan for maintaining and upgrading city infrastructure.

— KNOWING ME, KNOWING ULA: Looking to boost apartment construction, the council backed a surprise plan to rewrite Measure ULA, the tax on high-end property sales passed by voters in 2022 and sometimes called the mansion tax. The council voted 9-5 to instruct the city’s lawyers to draft a measure exempting apartment buildings sold within 10 years of construction from having to pay the tax. Another vote will be needed to get it on the ballot.

— ZOO STORY: Membership at the Los Angeles Zoo has fallen by 23% over the past year, dropping from 36,914 in April 2025 to 28,440 in February, according to a report issued by the Los Angeles County civil grand jury. That report urged the city to create a new public-private partnership to run the facility, saying such a move will be critical for the zoo’s long-term survival.

— SHERIFF SUBPOENAS: L.A. County’s Civilian Oversight Commission is suing the Sheriff’s Department, asking a judge to order the release of records on three use-of-force incidents involving its deputies. The commission issued three subpoenas to the agency in February 2025, but according to the suit, the department has declined to fully comply.

— UNION DUES AND DON’TS: A former high-level officer with L.A.’s firefighter union has been accused of stealing more than $82,000 from a charity for injured firefighters to pay for his online gambling, his mortgage and other personal expenses. Adam Walker, former secretary of United Firefighters of Los Angeles City Local 112, was charged with one count each of grand theft and forgery, prosecutors announced Wednesday.

— DOG DISASTER: The Los Angeles Police Department is facing a public outcry after its officers shot and killed the dog of a woman celebrating the New York Knicks’ NBA championship in Canoga Park. Video on social media showed the dog’s owner sobbing and hugging her dog, who was wearing a Knicks T-shirt, as several LAPD officers stood nearby.

— BASS WEIGHS IN: The Canoga Park incident prompted Mayor Karen Bass to issue a statement promising a thorough and transparent investigation into the death of Jameson, the dog killed by the LAPD. “Every life lost to violence is a tragedy, and we know that the devastating loss of Jameson will be felt by his family forever,” she said. “I have spoken directly to the Chief to ensure a full investigation and accountability for any wrongdoing.”

— OFFICE FIRE: A fire broke out at a building in Pacific Palisades where former mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt maintained an office for his crystals company. Pratt, whose home burned in the 2025 Palisades fire, called the latest blaze “very suspicious.” The fire department said it’s investigating.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to address homelessness went to a stretch of Silver Lake Boulevard that passes under the 101 Freeway. That area is represented by Soto-Martínez.
• On the docket next week: The council meets Wednesday to take up the massive 4th & Central project, which calls for offices, retail space and nearly 1,600 units of housing on a 7.6-acre site in downtown.

Stay in touch

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

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

Los Angeles voters have finally gotten some closure on the outstanding contests in the June 2 primary election, with City Councilmember Nithya Raman qualifying for the runoff against Mayor Karen Bass, and Measure ER, the countywide sales tax hike, prevailing after a week of ballot counting.

With nearly all the votes counted, Angelenos are now getting a more granular understanding of the strongholds built up by each of the top three mayoral candidates.

Districts that went big for Bass, Raman and Pratt

Early on in the vote-counting process, it looked like Raman might not win her Hollywood Hills-based district, which stretches from Silver Lake to Reseda. In the end, she pulled out a first-place finish, securing nearly 34% of the vote compared to Bass’ 31%, according to Paul Mitchell, vice president of the voter data firm Political Data Inc, who aggregated county precinct data into council districts. Spencer Pratt, the former reality TV personality, trailed at 27%.

Still, Raman’s strongest support came from three districts on the eastern end of the city.

Mitchell’s analysis showed Raman with 45% of the vote in Council District 13, which includes all or parts of Echo Park, Hollywood and Atwater Village. She got nearly 40% in Council District 1, which takes in parts of Highland Park, Mt. Washington and Angeleno Heights. And she scored nearly 38% of the vote in Council District 14, which includes downtown, Boyle Heights and El Sereno.

Those districts are represented by Hugo Soto–Martínez, Eunisses Hernandez and Ysabel Jurado, respectively — all members of Democratic Socialists of America, who all endorsed Bass instead of Raman, a DSA member herself. Raman placed first in all three.

Bass found her greatest strength in the three districts that cover South L.A., coming in first in all three. Her best performance was in District 8, represented by Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, where she led with nearly 62% of the vote.

The mayor received 45% of the vote in Council District 10, which stretches from Koreatown to the Crenshaw Corridor, and 42% in Council District 9, which stretches from the southern edge of downtown south to 95th Street.

Pratt performed the strongest in the west San Fernando Valley. He was the top vote-getter in District 12, which is represented by Councilmember John Lee and includes Chatsworth, Granada Hills and Porter Ranch. In that district, he received 39% of the vote, Mitchell’s assessment showed.

Pratt got nearly 37% of the vote in District 3, which is represented by Councilmember Bob Blumenfield and includes Woodland Hills, Warner Center and Canoga Park.

Pratt also led the pack in the 5th District, which takes up much of the Westside and is represented by Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky. He had 30.7% of the vote, compared to Raman’s 30.6%, according to Mitchell’s analysis.

Nithya Raman attacks the L.A. ‘political machine’

It was one of tougher attacks of the mayoral primary: Raman accused Bass of engaging in “pay to play” — making decisions that benefited certain interest groups, who then spent big on her reeelection.

At her first post-election press conference Wednesday, Raman revisited that line of attack, criticizing Bass over her push to upgrade the city’s Convention Center. That $2.6 billion project was approved in the middle of the city’s financial crisis, when the council was contemplating major job cuts, Raman said.

“Downtown business groups then spent over a million dollars supporting her in her reelection. Meanwhile, the city went back to voters asking them to pay more to fix their streetlights. That is the political machine at work,” she said.

Pay to play was a potent issue in the 2005 election, when Mayor James Hahn was defeated by Councilmember Antonio Villaraigosa. At the time, federal agencies had opened corruption investigations into decisions at the city’s harbor and airports, as well as the Department of Water and Power. That year, the phrase “pay to play” was synonymous with criminal wrongdoing.

In a video acknowledging his primary defeat, Pratt said he got into the mayor’s race to “expose this corrupt machine.”

Raman stopped short of such a framing.

“It’s not corruption,” Raman told reporters at Vista Hermosa Park. “But it is evidence that the system, and how it works, particularly the influence of money in politics, has led to some very broken priorities here in the city.”

Last year, policy analysts warned the Convention Center project would be a financial drag from the moment it opens, consuming more than $100 million per year throughout the 2030s. Business groups and labor organizations pushed back, saying the project would help revitalize downtown while creating much needed construction jobs.

The Central City Assn., a downtown-based business group that supported the Convention Center upgrade, spent about $1.6 million on efforts to reelect Bass.

“Nithya Raman doesn’t think we need more jobs or visitors to our hotels and restaurants that produce the tax revenues downtown generates for the entire city, so it’s hard to support her,” said Central City Assn. President and Chief Executive Officer Nella McOsker in a statement.

Bass spokesperson Alex Stack also pushed back on Raman’s criticism, saying the mayor has been with “every group and industry to deliver results for Angelenos.”

“Nithya Raman can’t get anything done and then attacks the same groups she sought to endorse her campaign,” he said.

Pratt trailed Trump among L.A. voters

As a mayoral candidate, Pratt was dogged by questions about whether he was MAGA — shorthand for the movement that first powered President Trump into office in 2016. The Republican had received fulsome praise from Trump-aligned figures, including podcast host Joe Rogan and Greg Gutfield of Fox News.

Pratt downplayed his GOP ties. Still, there’s one area where he definitely had some similarity with Trump: His performance with L.A. voters.

Trump and Pratt both picked up roughly one out of every four votes in L.A. during their respective campaigns.

Pratt, former star of MTV’s “The Hills,” had 25.5% of the vote in L.A., according to results posted Friday. In November 2024, Trump did a little better, receiving 26.5%, county election results show.

Trump had 369,319 votes in L.A. two years ago, compared to 976,781 for then-Vice President Kamala Harris. By Friday, Pratt had 217,638 votes, compared to 247,242 for Raman and 292,115 for Bass.

It might not be fair to compare Pratt and Trump, given that there were key differences between the elections. Pratt was competing in a primary campaign, while Trump was in a general election. The candidate pool was different as well.

Trump was running in a six-way contest where Harris was his main rival. Pratt, on the other hand, was in a race featuring 13 other candidates.

Although two-thirds of those candidates were complete unknowns, four of Pratt’s rivals ran serious campaigns, amassing endorsements and spending significant amounts of money.

State of play

— TRUMP VS. LAHSA: The Trump Administration moved Thursday to block the embattled Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority from receiving federal funds, saying the agency was badly managed and engaged in fraud. Elected officials across the city denounced the move, while nonprofit groups also voiced alarm. “This is intended to create chaos,” said Jerry Jones, the head of the Greater LA Coalition on Homelessness, which represents groups that serve the region’s unhoused.

— PAYOUT PROBE: Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman said Wednesday that he believes four out of every five claims in the largest sex abuse settlement in U.S. history — one that resulted in a $4 billion payout by Los Angeles County— may be fake. Hochman has asked a judge to pause the sex abuse payments while he continues his criminal investigation into the plaintiffs, lawyers and therapists involved in filing the claims.

— GET READY TO RUMBLE: The showdown between Bass and Raman is going to get ugly, political experts said this week, in part because they agree on a number of big-picture political issues. Both will need to court at least some of the disaffected voters who picked Pratt in the primary.

— A SCATHING SENDOFF: As we mentioned higher up, Pratt released a video Friday that was both an acknowledgment of his primary election defeat and a vitriolic screed against Bass and Raman, his former rivals. Pratt called them “morons,” “commie animals” and “corrupt communists,” and made clear he intends to ramp up his attacks in the coming months. “I don’t have campaign laws hamstringing me now. It’s war,” he said.

— WOOING LATINOS: Bass carried far more Latino-majority neighborhoods than her rivals in last week’s primary, a Times analysis found. She carried 35 Latino-majority neighborhoods, including Boyle Heights, Pacoima and Historic South-Central. That was a 46% increase from 2022, when she won 24 Latino-majority neighborhoods in her primary against Rick Caruso and Kevin de León, the analysis found.

— EKING OUT A WIN: The countywide sales tax hike known as Measure ER prevailed this week, with late-arriving ballots pushing the number of ‘yes’ votes just above 50%. “It’s a lifesaver to carry us through the storm we’re all in,” said County Supervisor Holly Mitchell, who led the push among her colleagues to get the measure on the ballot.

— AN EXPENSIVE FEE-FA: Bass was set to attend the U.S. opening game of the World Cup Friday at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood after being invited by FIFA, her office said. Still, Bass wasn’t exempt from the high ticket prices she criticized earlier this year. She paid $2,735 out of pocket for her ticket, a spokesperson said. On a related note, the mayor announced more than 100 “Kick it in the Park” events where Angelenos can watch World Cup games for free.

— MORE OF THE SAME: In a break with recent history, every council member who ran for reelection this year won their race. “People see what we’re doing, and they want us to keep fighting for them,” said Councilmember Tim McOsker, who won nearly three out of every four votes in his San Pedro-to-Watts district.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to address homelessness went to the area around 54th Street and Western Avenue, in the South L.A. district represented by Harris-Dawson.
• On the docket next week: The City Council meets Wednesday to take up a sprawling package of charter reform proposals, including a move to ranked-choice voting and a larger number of council members. Will the council send those ideas to voters or punt them for another two years? Stay tuned!

Stay in touch

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

ED Sheeran has been dealt another blow in his ongoing struggle to build a rehearsal space near his mega estate “Sheeranville”.

The Shape of You singer faces painfully slow construction on his new rehearsal studio due to eco-rules.

Builders having to begin construction by hand because of the prescence of endangered newts.

And they will be given special “toolbox talks” on what to do if they come across the tiny 15cm critters.

Planning bosses say the tiny 15cm critters could be disturbed by his plans to knock down a historic but dilapidated barn and turn it into a personal rehearsal space.

Council chiefs said the measures were normal for any countryside development – and not “unreasonable”.

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Ed’s builders will have to use hand tools instead of machinery, remove all debris by hand.

The popstar’s problems with amphibians date back as far as 2018 0 when protected great crested newts were found near his Suffolk estate.

Planning permission for the project was granted, but with a string of conditions to protect the species.

Sheeran bought the £1million farm in 20245 – which included a 19th century dilapidated piggery.

The brick and wood debris will also be entirely removed by hand to stop the newts from accessing it.

The ‘Great Crested Newt Method Statement’ filed with Mid-Suffolk District Council states: “The removal of any debris e.g. rubble, wood, will be undertaken by hand as far as possible, and with care, checking beneath all removed items for newts.

“Careful use of machinery will be necessary to lift large debris and to remove the existing concrete building base, with the area beneath checked for the presence of GCN as each section is lifted.”

The method statement also gives a time limit restricting project work to March, April and May when most newts will be in ponds away from construction.

Other eco measures Ed’s having to put in place include creating a “species rich, flowering lawn” with 19 different species of flowers.

Plus he’s got to plant 12 fruit trees, two bat boxes and a triple-house sparrow tower.

A spokesperson for Mid-Suffolk District Council told The Sun: “This is certainly NOT a case of any unreasonable ‘eco-friendly measures’ being demanded by our council – simply normal requirements that would be expected of any countryside developers.”

They explained there had been no conflict between Ed Sheeran and the council at any stage and that he had not complained about the restrictions.


Proud boy expelled from Pratt’s party

Spencer Pratt’s election night party at Don Antonio’s Mexican restaurant in West Los Angeles included a few uninvited guests, and it wasn’t just members of the news media.

As Pratt spoke to reporters relegated to the sidewalk, a Virginia man convicted of joining in the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol hovered behind him, trying to horn his way into the candidate’s frame as Pratt spoke to the news cameras.

A member of Pratt’s security team grabbed the man, Jon Mellis, by the shoulders, dragged him past the TV cameras and pushed him down onto the pavement of Pico Boulevard as cars whizzed by.

Mellis — a member of the far-right Proud Boys who was pardoned by President Trump along with the other Jan. 6 rioters — wasn’t thrilled. He attempted to interrupt multiple news broadcasts to air his grievances.

“They can’t assault me like that,” Mellis said.

“They hate MAGA,” someone else in his group chimed in.

Earlier Tuesday evening, Mellis had happily mugged for one news camera after another, expressing his fealty for Pratt.

Mellis described himself as “ultra-MAGA” to The Times and, pre-shove, said he didn’t mind that Pratt was distancing himself from the MAGA movement as he campaigns for votes in the Democratic stronghold of Los Angeles.

Recent polling showed most Democrats were less likely to vote for Pratt when perceiving the candidate as tied to MAGA and Trump. Given that, it’s hardly surprising that Pratt’s security team gave Mellis and his friends the bum’s rush.

“Those guys are paid ops,” a member of Pratt’s campaign wrote on X. “They crash every single event.”

Airbnb’s election night sweep

It was a good election night for short-term rental giant Airbnb, which infused numerous city races with cash and didn’t take a single loss.

The company teamed up with the Central City Assn., a group representing downtown Los Angeles businesses, to fund ads in support of Karen Bass, city attorney candidate John McKinney and five City Council candidates.

The business group said its PAC, which received funding from Airbnb and the Los Angeles Police Protective League, spent nearly $5 million during the primary election cycle, up from $1 million during the 2024 primary and general elections.

“We have been intentional about supporting candidates and causes focused on building more housing; investing in public safety, transportation, and infrastructure; and supporting the diverse businesses that provide jobs and put paychecks in Angelenos’ pockets,” said Nella McOsker, president of the Central City Assn.

“The results speak for themselves,” said Justin Wesson, Airbnb senior manager of public policy in California. “Airbnb has arrived in L.A. politics — not as a guest, but as a permanent resident.”

In council, CCA and Airbnb supported Traci Park, who declared victory and had a big lead over her opponent; Jose Ugarte, who will probably advance to a November runoff; and Timothy Gaspar, who was leading in his primary as well, though votes are still being tallied and it wasn’t clear if he would make the majority threshold needed for an outright victory. CCA also supported Monica Rodriguez, who ran unopposed and Tim McOsker (Nella McOsker’s father), who coasted to a big lead in the primary.

Betting on whims and vibes

This is Los Angeles’ first mayoral election in the age of prediction markets, and two giants of the field, Kalshi and Polymarket, have been actively promoting betting on who will be the next mayor — and even sub-bets within the election, such as which candidate will come in second place in the primary or which two candidates will advance to the runoff.

On election night, as Spencer Pratt led Nithya Raman for second place by about 9 percentage points, both Kalshi and Polymarket had Pratt favored to move on to the runoff.

But overnight, the market shifted, with a Bass versus Raman runoff now considered more likely by bettors, probably due to a widely held belief that the remaining votes to be counted will lean more Democratic as the county tallies late-arriving vote-by-mail ballots.

Although Kalshi promotes its markets as the “odds” that a certain candidate will win, experts warn it merely represents the beliefs of bettors, who are not always the best-informed.

“This is people’s whims and vibes. You might have better luck in Vegas; at least when you bet in Vegas there’s math involved,” said Democratic consultant Mike Trujillo.

A spokesperson for Kalshi said “sharp traders on Kalshi are experts at pricing likelihoods in real time.”

Eric Zitzewitz, a professor of economics and expert on prediction markets at Dartmouth College, said that sites such as Kalshi and Polymarket are pretty accurate, and that smart money usually corrects the market.

“Historically that movement in Pratt’s price would reflect a movement in his odds,” Zitzewitz said.

As of Friday, Polymarket had a Bass-Raman runoff at 80%, and a Bass-Pratt runoff around 22%. Kalshi gave Bass and Raman a 78% chance of advancing and Bass and Pratt 22%.

Pratt currently leads Raman, but Los Angeles County is still tallying ballots and Raman has gained some ground following initial results Tuesday.

State of play

— BASS VERSUS?: Mayor Bass will advance to a runoff against either Pratt or Raman after a bruising primary campaign during which the incumbent was attacked from the left and the right.

— COALITION KAREN: A broad coalition of supporters assembled by the mayor helped her secure a spot in the Nov. 3 runoff. On her side was organized labor, including the powerful police officers’ union; business leaders, working closely with Airbnb; the Los Angeles County Democratic Party, including key elected officials; and immigrant rights groups that applauded Bass for her condemnation of federal ICE raids.

— COMEBACK COUNCILMEMBER?: Raman is still running behind Pratt, but experts say the remaining ballots to be counted should favor Democrats. “Don’t count [Councilmember] Nithya Raman out yet,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin.

— INCUMBENTS IN CONTROL: The mood was celebratory in Los Angeles City Council chambers Wednesday, as incumbents up for reelection held wide leads over their challengers as vote counting from Tuesday’s primary continued.

— FELDSTEIN SOTO OUT, MEJIA IN: Los Angeles City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto all but conceded that her reelection bid had failed Wednesday morning, as she lagged far behind her two well-funded challengers based on early returns. Her incumbent colleague, City Controller Kenneth Mejia, appeared to be faring better in his bid to stay in office, holding a double-digit lead over finance executive Zach Sokoloff.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program moved 20 people inside from Skid Row in Council District 14.
• On the docket next week: Proposals from the Charter Reform Commission are still being reviewed by the Rules, Elections, and Intergovernmental Relations Committee, with the next meeting scheduled for June 12.

Stay in touch

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

Los Angeles City Councilmember Traci Park opened up a commanding lead over public interest attorney Faizah Malik in the race to represent the city’s coastal neighborhoods, according to early election returns Tuesday night.

Park has been a close ally of the police and fire unions in the city, calling for more cops and firefighters. Malik has been endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America and also is backed by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and Unite Here Local 11, which represents hotel and airport workers.

L.A. City Council candidate Faizah Malik, left, and incumbent Traci Park.

(Eric Thayer and Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

Park reported raising $1.3 million in campaign contributions, according to the latest campaign finance reports filed with the city, compared with about $540,000 for Malik.

Park said she felt good about the early returns.

“It confirms that we have been right on the priorities and the results have spoken for themselves,” she said. “I have been writing a comeback story for the Westside for the last three years, and I’m super excited to finish it.”

In a speech to supporters at the Lincoln, a bar on the Westside, Malik remained upbeat.

“This campaign has demonstrated that we can chart a new course for a sustainable future and we can lead the way here on the Westside,” Malik said.

Los Angeles voters cast ballots for eight of the 15 City Council seats in Tuesday’s election, including races in two districts where the incumbents are leaving because of term limits.

In races with more than two candidates, the top two vote-getters will compete in a Nov. 3 runoff unless a candidate gets a majority vote in the primary.

Jose Ugarte was leading Estuardo Mazariegos in the field of six candidates in the District 9 race held by termed-out Councilmember Curren Price.

District 9 candidates Jose Ugarte, left and Estuardo Mazariegos.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Ugarte is a former deputy chief of staff for Price, and Mazariegos is co-director of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Los Angeles and is backed by the Democratic Socialists of America.

Mazariegos said he felt confident he would make it into the Nov. 3 runoff against Ugarte.

“I feel a sense of relief and accomplishment,” he said.

The other candidates in the race were trailing Ugarte and Mazariegos in early returns. They are Elmer Roldan, executive director of Communities in Schools of Los Angeles; Martha Sánchez, a therapist; Jorge Nuño, an entrepreneur; and Jorge Hernandez Rosas, an educator.

The district includes the Convention Center, USC and communities along the Harbor Freeway.

In the San Fernando Valley’s District 3, Tim Gaspar and Barri Worth Girvan were leading the field of three candidates vying for the seat being vacated by Bob Blumenfield.

Christopher “C.R.” Celona, left, Barri Worth Girvan, center, and Tim Gaspar are running for L.A. City Council District 3.

(Stephanie Lorens, Yauma Olstead and Tim Sullens)

Gaspar is the founder of an insurance company, and Worth Girvan is a district director for Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath.

Worth Girvan said she was confident she would face Gaspar in a runoff in November.

“[The campaign] has been about ensuring the West Valley gets its fair share of resources,” Worth Girvan said.

In a statement, Gaspar said he was feeling “incredibly optimistic” about the coalition of business owners and community leaders he built during his campaign.

“They are showing they want a fresh perspective in City Hall,” he said.

The third candidate, tech entrepreneur Christopher Robert “C.R.” Celona, trailed behind.

In District 13, Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez was leading three challengers — Dylan Kendall, who runs Grow Hollywood, an economic development corporation; Rich Sarian, vice president of strategic initiatives for downtown’s South Park Social District; and Colter Carlisle, vice president of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council.

City Council District 13 candidates, clockwise from top left: Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez; Colter Carlisle; Rich Sarian; and Dylan Kendall.

(Los Angeles Times)

Soto-Martínez also was backed by the Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America for the district that includes Atwater Village, Glassell Park, Elysian Valley, Echo Park, Silver Lake and Hollywood and East Hollywood.

Soto-Martínez said in a statement he was feeling optimistic about the early returns.

In District 1, which covers Highland Park in the northeast to University Park in the southwest, Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez was leading a pack of four challengers in the race, according to early returns.

Maria Lou Calanche, executive director of the nonprofit Expanded Learning Alliance, trailed Hernandez, according to early returns. They were followed by Raul Claros, chief executive of UNO Partners; Nelson Grande, president of Grande Enterprises; and Sylvia Robledo, who worked as an aide to several elected L.A. officials and who has fallen into last place.

Hernandez was grateful for the support that put her far ahead on the first night of results.

“I just feel reassured that all these fights we’ve been taking on for the last 3½ years have been worth it and people have been watching,” Hernandez said.

In other races, Councilmember Tim McOsker had a wide lead over Green Party member Jordan Rivers for the 15th District seat, which includes Harbor City, San Pedro, Watts and Wilmington. But the incumbent said while the early returns were encouraging, it was too early to declare victory before 9:30 p.m.

“I’ll be back in City Hall early tomorrow morning to get back to work,” McOsker said from his campaign party at the Dalmatian-American Club in San Pedro.

His campaign, he said, was focused on moving forward projects “past the point of no return” to make real change in the district that encompasses Watts, Wilmington, Harbor Gateway, Harbor City and San Pedro.

In the 5th District, which includes Bel-Air, Westwood, Cheviot Hills and Hancock Park, Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky declared victory in her race around 9 p.m. after early ballots pushed her far ahead of the two challengers.

“Across the spectrum, people are looking for lights to be fixed and sidewalks to be usable,” she said.

In the north San Fernando Valley’s 7th District, Monica Rodriguez was running unopposed.

Elections in the city of Los Angeles include mayor, City Council, three ballot measures and Los Angeles Unified School District board seats and, if you live in the city, you’ve maybe seen an ad about them.

The high-profile competition between incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, City Councilmember Nithya Raman and conservative reality star Spencer Pratt has been tumultuous. And that is to say nothing of Rae Huang, Adam Miller and the nine others contenders.

With leaked files, millions in campaign fundraising donated by a candidate’s mother, and a multi-campaign effort by L.A.’s chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, the race for mayor isn’t the only one making headlines this primary.

A candidate can win by getting a majority of the vote. If no one receives 50% + 1 vote, the top two advance to the November election.

Mayor

The Associated Press, which surveys the numbers posted by local election officials and projects the winner using vote returns and other data, will call a winner (or a runoff) for L.A. mayor.

City Council

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

Los Angeles City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez has had some pretty tough words over the years for Mayor Karen Bass and her administration.

Rodriguez, who is running unopposed in Tuesday’s election, repeatedly criticized Bass’ Inside Safe program, which moves homeless people indoors, saying it lacked financial oversight. She voted against the mayor’s budget last year, saying too much was going to Inside Safe. She was especially harsh in the wake of the Palisades fire, saying that Bass’ team botched the first few months of the recovery.

That might make her an ideal person to endorse Councilmember Nithya Raman, who is running to unseat Bass in Tuesday’s primary and has leveled similar critiques. Instead, Rodriguez has emerged as an unexpected ally of the incumbent.

During the campaign, Rodriguez has appeared with Bass at events in Eagle Rock, Pacoima and even Sherman Oaks, located in Raman’s district. She popped up in a campaign flier from Latinos Por Karen Bass. And she’s been dinging Raman over everything from economic development to policies around outdoor barbecues.

Rodriguez explained her decision to support Bass in an interview, saying she views the incumbent as being far more willing to entertain opposing views than Raman — and understands that “not everyone thinks the same way.” Bass also is more consistent on the issues, Rodriguez said.

Raman, by contrast, has shifted her positions on police spending, the tax hike known as Measure ULA and even who should be the next mayor, jumping into the race after she endorsed Bass, Rodriguez said.

“I don’t know what she stands for,” she said.

Raman’s campaign declined to comment on Rodriguez’s remarks. But former former Deputy Mayor Rick Cole, a Raman supporter, said he is surprised to see Rodriguez line up behind Bass, given how critical she has been over the years.

“Monica is a self-described maverick, so it’s ironic that she’s thrown in with the establishment on this. But sometimes personalities play a role,” he said.

Rodriguez had been talked up at one point as a possible opponent of Bass in this year’s election. If Bass wins a second and final term, the mayor’s race would be wide open in 2030.

Pratt accuses Bass of electioneering

It was a small yet upbeat event staged by Bass’ reelection campaign: The mayor, accompanied by supporters chanting “four more years,” walking up to an official drop box and putting in her ballot.

That miniature rally, staged last weekend near the city’s Memorial Branch Library, was captured on video and circulated by Bass’ campaign. But it has drawn a complaint from mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt, who accused the mayor of violating a state law prohibiting electioneering near a polling place or voter drop box.

In a complaint filed with the city clerk, Pratt attorney Peter McNulty said Bass and her supporters improperly solicited votes, waved campaigns signs and “engaged in blatant electioneering” near a voting location.

“Such clear violations of electioneering restrictions show a reckless disregard for the rule of law and an apparent belief that she need not comply with relevant restrictions that apply to all other candidates,” he wrote.

The Bass campaign pushed back on those allegations, saying the video features footage from two locations near the drop box. The portion that featured the Bass campaign signs was filmed 200 feet away — twice the distance required by law, said Alex Stack, a Bass spokesperson.

“Spencer is just mad that his supporters are AI cartoons and we have real Angelenos,” he said. “We follow the rules.”

Pratt’s lawyer said in his letter that he wants the city to investigate. He also filed a complaint with the state, citing the state election law that prohibits the dissemination of “visible or audible electioneering information” near a polling place or drop box.

Feldstein Soto flames Airbnb

City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto has been getting hit from both directions over the last few weeks.

On one side, a committee with at least $450,000 in funding from the Consumer Attorneys of California has been pumping out campaign ads promoting her opponent, Deputy Atty. Gen. Marissa Roy. On the other, a campaign committee heavily bankrolled by Airbnb is running ads for Deputy Dist. Atty. John McKinney, another opponent in the race.

Feldstein Soto has countered with a television ad that highlights her office’s lawsuit against Airbnb, which accuses the company of engaging in price gouging after the Palisades fire. Staring into the camera, Feldstein Soto said Airbnb and other special interests “are spending millions to try and get rid of me.”

“They think L.A. belongs to them,” she says. “I know it belongs to you.”

Feldstein Soto had raised about $860,000 for her campaign through May 16, compared with about $680,000 for Roy and about $122,000 for McKinney. But those fundraising efforts, which face strict limits under the city’s ethics laws, have been overshadowed by the unlimited spending from Airbnb and the others.

Angelenos for Progress, a pro-McKinney committee sponsored by the Central City Assn., received at least $2.1 million from Airbnb over the last month, pouring that money into campaign videos and television ads.

Justin Wesson, senior public policy manager for Airbnb in California, said in a statement that McKinney’s campaign platform is “focused on keeping Los Angeles communities safe and vibrant, including for Angelenos who share their home and their guests that contribute to the local economy.”

In recent weeks, Airbnb has been pushing the city’s elected officials to loosen L.A.’s home-sharing regulations, by allowing owners of second homes to lease their properties on short-term rental platforms.

Airbnb has put big money into other committees, including those that support Tim Gaspar, who is running to replace Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, and Jose Ugarte, who is running to replace Councilmember Curren Price.

Team Raman woos Huang, without success

We mentioned a few weeks back that Raman supporters have been noisily demanding that mayoral candidate Rae Huang drop out of the race, saying she was siphoning left-of-center votes away Raman. Turns out Raman’s campaign was trying to persuade her to pull the plug as well.

Raman campaign strategist Jeff Millman reached out to Huang advisor Bill Przylucki earlier this month about getting the community organizer to drop her mayoral bid, according to Huang spokesperson Emel Shaikh.

The overture from the Raman camp, first reported by LA Material, took place after the May 6 NBC LA debate but before a Fox debate planned for the next week, Shaikh said.

“She never really entertained the idea,” Shaikh said.

Raman, speaking with reporters on Friday, said she knew that people from both campaigns were conferring.

“I’m sure [Huang] was aware of it as well,” she said. “And I think we were really talking about how to achieve a bold, progressive vision for Los Angeles. Both of us got into this race because we felt a deep sense of dissatisfaction with the status quo.”

Millman, a veteran of L.A. politics, worked for former Mayor Eric Garcetti and was a spokesperson for Austin Beutner’s mayoral bid before his campaign ended in January. After Beutner dropped out, he moved to the Raman campaign. Przylucki is the former executive director of the progressive nonprofit Ground Game LA.

Supporters of Raman contend that Huang doesn’t have a path to victory — and could deprive Raman of a chance to compete in the Nov. 3 runoff. Asked whether she feels the same way, Raman said she is focused on getting her voters to the polls.

At this point, Raman is neck and neck with Bass and slightly ahead of Pratt, according to a poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, which was co-sponsored by The Times.

State of play

— A THREE-WAY RACE: Bass, Raman and Pratt are locked in a tight three-way contest, with the mayor holding a statistically insignificant lead in the run-up to Tuesday, the latest UC Berkeley-L.A. Times poll found. Bass had 26% support from likely voters, followed by Raman with 25% support and Pratt at 22%.

Bass, appearing at City Hall Thursday, said she’s not worried about failing to make the top two, telling an audience there are many polls that show different results. “I feel confident about Tuesday,” she said.

— AN EMBATTLED MAYOR: The Times took a look at Bass’ first term and the events that have put her political future in peril. Although some point to the city’s handling of the massively destructive Palisades fire, others say her troubles go much deeper.

— READING THE ROOM: While Bass has had difficulty managing the city, Raman faces a different issue: her struggle to forge working relationships with colleagues and allies. No one on the council, including those backed by the DSA, have endorsed her. Raman allies downplayed the issue, saying her strength is her independence.

— CUTTING CRIME: Even with L.A. experiencing fewer murders than at any point in 60 years, crime remains a potent issue in the mayor’s race. Pratt has been portraying the city as a lethal hellscape. Meanwhile, even some of Bass’ supporters have been shocked by how “aggressively pro-police she has been,” said former Councilmember Mike Bonin, who heads the Pat Brown Institute at Cal State, LA.

— DOWNTOWN IN THE DUMPS: Meanwhile, downtown business owners say they are struggling with crime, homelessness and aging infrastructure — all issues that have become central to the mayor’s race.

— LOVE, MOM: The mother of city controller candidate Zach Sokoloff has pumped at least $7.5 million into an independent expenditure campaign supporting him as he seeks to unseat City Controller Kenneth Mejia. The incumbent has accused the Sokoloff family of trying to buy the seat. Sheryl Sokoloff has declined to comment.

— SHERIFF SHOWDOWN: Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna is in a rematch against former Sheriff Alex Villanueva, while also facing six other opponents. (Villanueva was unseated by Luna in 2022.) The top two vote getters will head to the Nov. 3 runoff.

— WAITING FOR THE WAGE: The council finalized its plan to delay a series of minimum wage hikes for hotel and airport workers this week, ensuring that the wage won’t reach $30 until January 2030 instead of July 2028.

— D&D AND DSA: Democratic Socialists of America, whose L.A. chapter is campaigning for five candidates in the city election, took in $30,000 at a Dungeons & Dragons-themed fundraiser. The candidates took part in the action, playing fantasy characters who still keep one foot in the political world.

— CALLING THE COPS: Looking to prevent copper wire theft, the Department of Water and Power is seeking to create its own police force.

— OUT OF THE FRYING PAN: The council on Wednesday confirmed Gabrielle Amster as the latest general manager for the animal services department, which oversees the city’s network of animal shelters. Amster had been serving as vice president of shelter engagement for DocuPet, a national pet registration business, according to her resume.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? Bass’ signature initiative to tackle homelessness did not launch any new encampment operations this week.
• On the docket next week: The election, obviously! If you haven’t cast a ballot by mail, make sure you show up at a voting center!

Stay in touch

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

Los Angeles voters will cast ballots in eight City Council district elections next week, including for two open seats where incumbents are leaving because of term limits.

The contests for the seats being vacated by Councilmembers Bob Blumenfield and Curren Price have drawn large fields of candidates, but the biggest spending has been in the Westside’s District 11, where incumbent Traci Park is facing challenger Faizah Malik, a public interest attorney and one of four council candidates backed by the local chapter of Democratic Socialists of America.

Park has raised $1.3 million, according to the latest campaign finance reports filed Friday, while challenger Faizah Malik reported about $520,000 in contributions. In addition, more than $3 million has been spent in the race by so-called independent expenditure committees that spend money to elect or defeat candidates but which are barred from coordinating their activities with the campaigns.

The district includes Venice, Mar Vista, Brentwood and Pacific Palisades, which was devastated by wildfire in January 2025.

Malik said Friday she is confident heading into the primary election, saying most of her donations are under $100 each, and that she hasn’t taken money from corporations.

Los Angeles City Council candidate Faizah Malik attends a canvassing event March 15 in Westchester.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

“This is what it means to be a grassroots candidate, and it is just more evidence that the people of CD11 believe in our vision for a Westside that is affordable for everyday people,” Malik said.

A Park campaign aide said Park’s haul is indicative of the councilmember’s record of getting results.

“But no one is taking anything for granted,” the aide said in a statement. “We’re working until the final vote is cast because this election will determine whether the Westside keeps moving forward or gets pulled backward into the same failed ideological politics Angelenos are exhausted by.”

Los Angeles City Councilmember Traci Park, center, with members of United Firefighters of Los Angeles City on May 12.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Park has emphasized her advocacy for fire recovery efforts, including pushing for permit fee waivers for residents wanting to rebuild. Malik has said Park has been too focused on single-family homeowners and said she would focus more energy on renters.

They have contrasting views on policing: Malik said she opposes expanding the size of the Los Angeles Police Department and instead supports shifting more resources to the city’s unarmed crisis response program. Park said the Police Department should have about 10,000 sworn officers, up from about 8,700 currently. She voted in favor of a 2023 LAPD contract that gave raises to officers and increased salaries to new hires.

They stand in contrast of each other on the Venice Dell housing development project, which would turn a city lot into 120 housing units for low-income and homeless people. Park opposed the completion and instead wants to turn it into a “mobility hub” and move the housing project to an adjacent lot. Malik, who represented the developer that filed a suit against the city claiming Park and others sought to kill the project, said the project was a motivating factor for her campaign.

District 9

Six candidates are vying to replace Councilman Curren Price, who hit the 12-year limit, in District 9. The district includes the Convention Center, USC and communities along the Harbor Freeway.

The candidates vary on key issues, including policing and housing. Estuardo Mazariegos, co-director of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Los Angeles, is backed by the Democratic Socialists of America. He has called for reducing the LAPD budget and redirecting funds to other city departments.

Two other candidates — Jorge Hernandez Rosas, an educator, and Jose Ugarte, who previously worked for Price — said they support hiring more police officers. Another hopeful, Elmer Roldan, executive director of Communities in Schools of Los Angeles, said he believes in keeping the LAPD at its current size.

Ugarte, Roldan, Rosas and Martha Sánchez, a therapist, all support enforcing Municipal Code 41.18, which bars homeless encampments near schools and daycare centers. Mazariegos and Jorge Nuño, an entrepreneur, say the code doesn’t solve homelessness and instead just moves people around.

Ugarte has raised the most in contributions of any candidate and has been endorsed by the Los Angeles County Democratic Party in the nonpartisan race.

District 3

Three candidates are competing for an open seat in District 3, where Councilmember Bob Blumenfield has termed out of office. The district encompasses Woodland Hills, Canoga Park, Reseda, Winnetka and Tarzana.

The candidates are Tim Gaspar, who founded an insurance company, Barri Worth Girvan, district director for Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, and Christopher Robert “C.R.” Celona, a tech entrepreneur.

The three candidates are similarly positioned on public safety, backing Mayor Karen Bass’ long-term goal to increase the LAPD ranks to at least 9,500 officers. All three also support enforcing Municipal Code section 41.18.

Gaspar and Worth Girvan have both scored key endorsements. Gaspar is backed by Blumenfield, billionaire developer Rick Caruso and Councilmembers Monica Rodriguez, Tim McOsker and John Lee and billionaire developer Rick Caruso. Worth Girvan has endorsements from a long list of state Democratic lawmakers, the county Democratic Party, the Sierra Club and labor unions.

Gaspar leads in campaign contributions, followed by Worth Girvan. Celona, who has promised to resuscitate the city’s entertainment industry by fast-tracking film permits and cutting red tape, trails far behind.

District 1

Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez faces four challengers in District 1, which stretches from Highland Park on the northeast to University Park on the southwest. She is backed by the local Democratic Socialists of America, and her challengers claim the district has suffered under under her leadership, pointing to MacArthur Park as emblematic of the homelessness and drug addiction crisis plaguing the city.

Hernandez counters with a list of accomplishments, including helping secure a $6.3-million state grant to house homeless individuals near the Arroyo Seco riverbed and advocating for a citywide network of unarmed crisis response teams.

She faces challenges from Maria Lou Calanche, a former Los Angeles police commissioner and founder of the nonprofit Legacy LA; Nelson Grande, an executive consultant and former president of Avenida Entertainment Group; Raul Claros, founder of California Rising; and Sylvia Robledo, a small-business owner and former council aide.

Hernandez’s campaign has also faced an onslaught of accusations of “dark money” spending. A group called Neighbors First has sent mail pieces critical of Hernandez and other leftist City Council candidates.

District 5

Incumbent Katy Yaroslavsky faces two challengers for her District 5 seat, both of whom oppose her stance on housing and public safety spending. The district includes some of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods, including Bel-Air, Westwood, Cheviot Hills and Hancock Park.

Challengers Henry Mantel, a tenants’ rights lawyer, and Morgan Oyler, an accountant, say Yaroslavsky hasn’t done enough to increase the district’s housing supply. Yaroslavsky, who holds a wide lead in fundraising, has said she supports increasing housing density near transit centers but cautioned against building more than the city can sustain.

District 13

Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, who is also backed by the Democratic Socialists of America’s L.A. chapter, faces three challengers in District 13, which includes Atwater Village, Glassell Park, Elysian Valley, Echo Park, Silver Lake and East Hollywood.

The list of challengers includes Colter Carlisle, vice president of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council, Dylan Kendall, who runs Grow Hollywood, and Rich Sarian, vice president of strategic initiatives for downtown’s South Park Social District.

While Soto-Martínez supports expanding the city’s unarmed personnel program, Carlisle and Kendall would like to expand the police force. Sarian has said he supports the unarmed personnel program and wants to examine the LAPD’s current size and resources.

District 15

Incumbent Tim McOsker is facing off against community organizer Jordan River in District 15, which covers Harbor City, Harbor Gateway, San Pedro, Watts and Wilmington. McOsker has decades of experience in the political world, having worked in the mayor’s office, and the city attorney’s office before joining the City Council in 2022. Rivers, who is unemployed, is a member of the Green Party.

District 7

Monica Rodriguez is running unopposed for the District 7 seat in the northeast San Fernando Valley.

Times staff writers David Zahniser, Noah Goldberg and Sandra McDonald contributed to this report.

We’re really almost there.

There is just over one week remaining before the June 2 primary for Los Angeles mayor, city attorney, city controller and eight of the 15 City Council seats.

As of Friday morning, 333,000 mail-in ballots had been cast in the race, up from 321,000 at the same time in 2022, according to the L.A. County Registrar/Recorder.

The Trump card

Spencer Pratt’s foes in the Los Angeles mayor’s race like to say that the former reality television star lacks the experience needed to run a big city.

But Pratt might have an even bigger liability — any sense that he may be aligned with President Trump.

Cygnal, a national polling group that has worked for Republican candidates, found that tying Pratt to Trump and the MAGA movement is a bigger turnoff to Democrats than his reality television past.

According to its poll of 500 likely Los Angeles voters, Pratt’s reality TV resume made 59% of overall Democrats less likely to vote for him. By comparison, tying Pratt to MAGA and Trump made 65% of Democrats less likely to vote for him, Cygnal said.

Pratt is a registered Republican and on Wednesday, Trump signaled support for Pratt in the mayoral race. On Thursday, former Trump advisor Steve Bannon said the president didn’t formally endorse Pratt out of fears it would hurt Pratt’s chances in Democrat-dominant Los Angeles.

Spencer Pratt at a recent campaign block party in South Los Angeles.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Overall, including Democrats and Republicans, 24% of voters said tying Pratt to Trump made them more likely to vote for him while 50% of voters were less likely to vote for him because of it.

“Karen Bass is a fairly reserved individual, but you have to believe that backstage she was doing a happy dance after she heard Donald Trump’s comments,” said Dan Schnur, a professor of politics at USC, UC Berkeley and Pepperdine University.

The strongest pro-Pratt argument is a public safety argument that Pratt will reject “defund the police” policies and hold repeat offenders accountable.

The poll showed Bass at 25% support, Pratt at 22% and Councilmember Nithya Raman at 18%.

Big money for Blumenfield seat

It hasn’t had the same sizzle as the mayor’s race, or been as pricey as the acrimonious campaign for city controller. But the battle to replace City Councilmember Bob Blumenfield in the west San Fernando Valley is turning into yet another high-stakes, big-money contest.

In that three-way race, a handful of special interests have now put more than $1 million into various efforts to elect businessman Tim Gaspar.

The Central City Assn., a downtown-based business group, has spent the most so far, pouring more than $400,000 into mail pieces, web videos and other campaign expenses, according to Ethics Commission filings. Most of its money has been coming from Airbnb, which is looking to loosen the city’s rules on homesharing platforms, by allowing second homes to be used as short-term rentals in the run-up to the 2028 Olympic Games.

Political aide Barri Worth Girvan, who is running to replace Blumenfield, criticized Gaspar over the influx of money, saying the “West Valley is not for sale.”

“Airbnb has destroyed countless neighborhoods around Los Angeles, and they clearly believe that my opponent will allow them to do that in the San Fernando Valley,” said Worth Girvan, who works for county Supervisor Lindsey Horvath. “Let me be clear — I will not allow that in our neighborhoods.”

Gaspar, in a statement, said he’s proud of the coalition supporting him.

“Like so many Angelenos, they are ready for change and new ideas that will actually get something done. Barri is offering nothing but the same tired excuses, empty promises, and failed ideas,” he said.

Under the city’s campaign finance rules, donors cannot give more than $1,000 to the campaign of a council candidate. However, independent expenditure groups can spend unlimited amounts, as long as they do not coordinate with the campaigns of their favored candidate.

Some of the other Gaspar backers who are spending large sums include the California Alliance of Family Owned Businesses, which represents McDonald’s franchisees, the California Apartment Assn. and Working Californians, a committee sponsored by International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Union 18, which represents employees of the Department of Water and Power.

That committee is also partly funded by Airbnb, according to the Ethics Commission website.

Ethical supes

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted this week to establish its first ethics commission.

The creation of the new body aimed at preventing and eliminating corruption in county government was mandated by Measure G, which voters approved about 18 months ago.

That measure overhauled the county charter to create an elected county executive position and increase the number of supervisors from five to nine.

It also stipulated the establishment of an ethics commission and an office of ethics compliance, helmed by an ethics compliance officer.

Polling shows the effort has broad public support, according to Sara Sadhwani, a political science professor at Pomona College who served on a task force that made recommendations to the supervisors.

But there was still controversy before the Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 Tuesday to support to approve the plan.

Supervisor Janice Hahn said the ethics commission was intended to be an independent body whose members were not directly selected and appointed by elected officials.

She proposed an amendment that would have made it so commissioners were chosen from a list of qualified and interested people via a lottery system.

Hahn lost that battle and the county approved the plan without the change. The county assessor, the chair of the Board of Supervisors and starting in 2028, the newly minted county executive, will each appoint one ethics commissioner.

Those three commissioners will then select the other four members of the commission, who are subject to the approval of the supervisors.

State of play

— “THE HILLS” ARE ALIVE: The Times dived deep on Spencer Pratt’s history as well as his campaign, showing how he rose from reality television villain on “The Hills” to become a leading contender for L.A. mayor.

— TRUMP BUMP?: President Trump signaled support for Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt on Wednesday, wading into the local election less than two weeks before the primary.

— FRESH PRINCE: Spencer Pratt’s campaign for Los Angeles mayor has paid the Hotel Bel-Air more than $15,000 since April 7, according to Pratt’s latest campaign finance filings.

— PROGRESSIVE BLOCK: Three members of the L.A. City Council’s progressive bloc endorsed Mayor Bass for reelection, snubbing fellow progressive Nithya Raman in the June 2 primary. The endorsements from Eunisses Hernandez, Ysabel Jurado and Hugo Soto-Martínez underscore fractures on L.A.’s left. All three are members of the Democratic Socialists of America, as is Raman.

— HOLLYWOOD HOPEFULS: In campaign ads, interviews and the recent televised debate, the top three contenders: incumbent Mayor Bass, former reality TV villain Spencer Pratt and Raman, have made the ongoing production slump a pivotal topic, highlighting their plans to revitalize the industry while deploying the issue to undercut one another.

— WHITHER LATINOS?: Latinos make up nearly 37% of the L.A. electorate, making their votes crucial for anyone with mayoral ambitions. That has campaigns putting out ads and social media posts in Spanish, hitting the ground in Latino majority neighborhoods and rallying for key endorsements.

— HUNGRY FOR MORE: It’s the biggest slate of democratic socialists Los Angeles has ever seen. The L.A. chapter of Democratic Socialists of America is looking to push City Hall further left by backing candidates for city attorney and four City Council seats in the June 2 primary.

— OH, AND A BUDGET: The Los Angeles City Council signed off on a $15-billion budget for 2026-27 on Thursday, preserving Mayor Karen Bass’ police hiring plan while socking away more money for potential emergencies.

— AIRPORT DELAYS?: A $30 minimum wage for hotel and airport workers will be delayed after Los Angeles elected officials persuaded a group of business leaders to drop a ballot measure that would have devastated the city budget.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program moved 69 people indoors near Chinatown this week in Jurado and Hernandez’s council districts.
• On the docket next week: The City Council will vote to approve a formal letter to remove the gross tax repeal from the November ballot.

Stay in touch

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

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

We’ve reached the point in L.A.’s city election season where a juicy piece of news is popping off every day.

With a little over two weeks until the June 2 election, the campaigns’ remarks are getting more scathing, the spending more expensive and the scramble by supporters to get their chosen candidates into the top two more intense.

Like everyone else, we’re struggling to keep track of it all. In the meantime, here are a few of the more unusual moments from the past week:

The police union targets fifth-place candidate Rae Huang

You’ve probably heard about the digital attack ads put out by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor warning voters that reality TV personality Spencer Pratt is “the LAST thing Los Angeles needs.”

Savvy political players said it wasn’t an attack ad at all, but rather a thinly veiled bid by the County Fed, a group that supports Mayor Karen Bass, to boost Pratt’s chances of making the Nov. 3 runoff election. Those observers say the mayor and her allies would rather run against Pratt, a Republican in a heavily Democratic city, than Raman during the campaign’s second round.

Now, another ad is up. But this time it’s from the Los Angeles Police Protective League, another union that is backing Bass’ reelection.

The league reported Wednesday that it’s spending about $100,000 on digital ads against mayoral candiate Rae Huang, who has been polling in the single digits.

Like the County Fed ad focused on Pratt, it’s not so much a lacerating attack as it is a list of the candidate’s beliefs.

“She supports the anti-business Green New Deal to increase taxes on corporations to provide free public transportation,” the digital ad says.

Once again, political sophisticates see a ruse, saying the police union is trying to lift Huang’s profile among voters, helping her pull support away from one of Bass’ top rivals, Councilmember Nithya Raman. Such a scheme, if successful, would ensure that Pratt ends up in the top two.

Asked about its new ad, league spokesperson Tom Saggau said the union is alerting voters that Huang “hates cops, corporations and real estate developers and voters should be aware.”

“It’s extremely important for voters to know about Rae Huang’s reckless plans to dismantle the police department and blow the city budget with free public transportation and other giveaways,” he said.

Huang said on social media that the police union is going after her because “they know change is possible.” At the same time, she acknowledged the ads were somewhat flattering.

“I think LAPD’s a little scared of me because they just spent over $100,000 in attack ads against me,” she said in a campaign video. “But they’re making me look good, so … thank you!”

Rob Quan, who is part of the advocacy group Unrig LA, replied to Huang at one point on X.

“They aren’t trying to stop you they are trying to boost you,” he wrote.

Raman backers really want Huang to drop out

With the primary campaign nearly over, impatient Raman supporters have been taking matters into their own hands, calling on Huang to drop out and ensure that Bass faces an opponent to her left.

Evan Goodrich, a Raman voter who lives in Echo Park, said he wants Raman in the top two. Voters shouldn’t squander their chance at getting a progressive mayor and creating change at City Hall, he told The Times.

Goodrich, 31, was more blunt on social media.

“Your campaign is broke, you have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning, and you’re costing us the most progressive viable candidate we have. It’s time to drop out!!!” he wrote, in a response to a Huang post.

Huang, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, said she’s not going anywhere.

During a Q-and-A posted on Reddit, she pushed back at the idea that her campaign is splintering the progressive vote, arguing that she views Raman as “neoliberal,” not progressive.

Raman has shifted her positions on police hiring, anti-encampment laws and Measure ULA, the tax on high-end real estate sales, Huang’s campaign said.

“I would not consider Nithya to be a progressive candidate, full stop. I do see her as being continuing to be a part of the establishment,” Huang said.

Huang did acknowledge that she sees Raman as being to the left of Bass.

Raman accuses Bass of ‘pay-to-play’ politics

As she battles to get into the top two, Raman launched a broadside against Bass this week, accusing her of engaging in multiple “pay-to-play” deals.

In a burst of social media posts, she accused Bass of negotiating “a sweetheart LAPD Union contract that bankrupted the city and a convention center expansion that will cost us over $4 billion after debt payments.” Special interests that supported those deals are now reciprocating, Raman said, by campaigning for the mayor.

Raman offered what she said is a fresh example of pay-to-play politics: the mayor’s push to allow owners of second homes to rent those places out on Airbnb or other short-term platforms, a practice currently prohibited by city law.

The Central City Assn., which supports the move, announced plans this week to spend $1 million on a campaign supporting Bass. A large part of its funding is coming from Airbnb, which also favors the idea. The downtown-based business group also supported Bass on the Convention Center.

“This is what pay-to-play politics looks like,” Raman said.

Bass has been defending her policy moves, saying the police raises were needed to keep officers from taking more lucrative jobs in other cities. The Convention Center expansion will boost tourism and a struggling downtown, Bass said.

The mayor also reiterated her support for the vacation rental policy, saying it would only be temporary, generating additional taxes for the city while ensuring more beds are available for the 2028 Olympic Games.

Bass campaign spokesperson Alex Stack called the allegations “another conspiracy theory from a failing candidate who is grasping at straws after her debate disasters and polling showing she won’t make the runoff.”

“The City should absolutely be exploring every way to maximize the economic benefit from the Olympics and to generate revenues paid by visitors, not Angelenos,” he said in a statement.

Nella McOsker, who heads the CCA, struck a similar note, praising Bass for supporting pro-business policies and calling Raman’s assertions “ridiculous.”

Wait, there’s a sheriff’s race?

If the mayor’s race has been blowing up, the contest for Los Angeles County Sheriff has been downright sleepy.

Sheriff Robert Luna, now seeking a second 4-year term, holds a substantial financial edge over the rest of the field, according to the most recent batch of fundraising reports.

In mid-April, Luna had more than $738,000 cash on hand, compared to about $114,000 for former Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who is attempting a comeback. Each of the other challengers had less than $50,000, spending reports show.

Sheriff’s Capt. Mike Bornman, one of the eight candidates running to unseat Luna, said the campaign had a single candidate forum in Compton, and that neither Luna nor Villanueva took part.

State of play

— BERN NOTICE: U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders announced Friday he is endorsing a handful of council candidates: Eunisses Hernandez on the Eastside, Hugo Soto–Martínez in Hollywood, Faizah Malik on the Westside and Estuardo Mazariegos in South L.A. Sanders is also backing Deputy Atty. Gen. Marissa Roy in her bid for city attorney.

— HITTING THE MOTHERLODE: You can’t put a price on a mother’s love. Or can you? The independent expenditure committee working to elect city controller candidate Zach Sokoloff, bankrolled by his mother Sheryl Sokoloff, continued its campaign spending spree this week, reporting it had paid out nearly $4.8 million by Thursday. The latest tranche of money went toward attack ads against City Controller Kenneth Mejia.

— WAGE WARS: The City Council took the first step Wednesday toward scaling back a planned $30 hourly minimum wage for hotel and airport workers, in the hope of persuading business leaders to drop a planned ballot measure to repeal the city’s business tax. Under the plan, the hourly wage would reach $30 in 2030, instead of summer 2028. The move is not final and more deliberations are planned next week.

— OLYMPIC ANGST: State lawmakers pressed organizers of the 2028 Olympic Games about the effort to secure federal funding, pointing to Trump’s animosity toward California. Joey Freeman, vice president of state affairs for the LA28 Organizing Committee, assured legislators that his committee has a “wonderful working relationship” with the Trump administration. L.A. is on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars if the games lose serious money.

— POLL POSITION: A new voter survey showed Bass continuing to lead the pack of candidates in the mayor’s race, with Pratt in second and Raman third. Paul Mitchell, vice president of voter data firm Political Data Inc., questioned the poll’s accuracy, saying it oversampled Latinos and undersampled people over 50.

— DUMPING THE DEBATE: The FOX11 mayoral debate that had been planned for this week was canceled after Bass and Raman pulled out. Pratt had already declined to attend the event.

— TARGETING TAXES: L.A. County voters historically have been generous about sales tax hikes, signing off on increases to pay for public transit and homeless servcies. But with the public reeling from soaring gas prices and other rising costs, some are wondering if they will get behind Measure ER, a half-cent sales tax hike to pay for healthcare programs.

— DIGITAL FIRST: TV ads used to dominate in L.A. mayoral campaigns. But this year, candidates have been relying heavily on social media, posting snappy, off-the-cuff videos in the hope of going viral.

— REALITY, STARS: Songwriter/producer David Foster and his wife Katharine McPhee held a star-studded fundraiser for Pratt at their home, one that featured McPhee singing a parodied version of Tina Turner’s “The Best,” according to a video posted on X. Pratt has been scooping up donations from a number of Hollywood players, including Universal Music Group chief executive Lucian Grainge and Sandra Rebish, also known as TLC’s Dr. Pimple Popper.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to combat homelessness went to Boyle Heights this week, tackling encampments at Hollenbeck Park and at the entry to the Sixth Street Bridge. The area is represented by Councilmember Ysabel Jurado.
• On the docket next week: The council meets Tuesday to take another stab at renegotiating the terms of the $30-per-hour wage hike for airport and hotel workers.

Stay in touch

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