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Édouard Manet’s “Execution of Maximilian” will go on view at Pasadena’s Norton Simon Museum next week, marking the first time the painting has been exhibited on the West Coast. The historic canvas, on loan from London’s National Gallery, has a fascinating backstory and represents a key moment in French political history, making its arrival shortly after this country’s stunning midterm election particularly auspicious.

The painting is the second of five versions Manet created (circa 1867-68) shortly after the shocking execution of Austrian archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, who briefly served as the emperor of Mexico after being encouraged to do so by the French emperor Napoleon III. In 1867, Maximilian — along with his generals Tomás Mejía and Miguel Miramón — faced a firing squad made up of soldiers loyal to former Mexican President Benito Juárez, who had been forced out of Mexico City in 1863 when French forces descended on the capital. Maximilian’s ouster and death stunned many Europeans, who blamed Napoleon III for the bloodshed.

Manet’s monumental canvas is cold and unyielding in its impersonal depiction of the violent episode, and in many ways helped birth the modern historical political painting. Through Manet’s eyes, political violence is not heroic, but pedestrian, benign even. It contains echoes of another famous political painting: Francisco de Goya’s “The Third of May, 1808,” which also depicts death by firing squad — this time the execution of civilians by French troops during Napoleon’s notorious occupation of Spain.

The canvas coming to the Norton Simon was long neglected and is thought to have been discarded by Manet when he became dissatisfied by discrepancies in the size of the figures he painted. His family cut the canvas into four pieces after his death and sold them separately. It was saved from oblivion by Manet’s friend Edgar Degas, who managed to get a hold of all the fragments. The painting was acquired by the National Gallery in 1918 at Degas’ studio sale, and the painting was pieced together again in the late 1970s.

“Manet’s Execution of Maximilian is not only an icon within the history of nineteenth-century art, but also a profound reflection on the ways in which images shape our understanding of political events and collective memory,” said Emily Talbot, vice president of collections and chief curator at the Norton Simon in a news release. “By bringing this extraordinary painting together with historical materials that document the French intervention in Mexico, we invite visitors to consider how history is constructed in visual form.”

The painting will be on view at the Norton Simon from Nov. 14 to March 1, 2027.

I’m Arts editor Jessica Gelt ready for a jubilant walk through a museum on the heels of a roller coaster of an election. This is your arts and culture news for the week.

[Update: A previous version of this story said Manet’s “Execution of Maximilian” had not been shown in the U.S. for 20 years. It has not been shown on the West Coast before, but was shown in New York in 2024.]

The week ahead: A curated calendar

FRIDAY

LA Phil’s incoming music director Daniel Harding conducting at the Hollywood Bowl in 2025.

(Etienne Laurent/For The Times)

Daniel Harding Leads Bernstein & Brahms
The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s incoming music director leads the orchestra for Leonard Bernstein’s “Symphony No. 1,” with mezzo-soprano Avery Amereau, and is joined by Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes for Johannes Brahms’ “Second Piano Concerto.”
8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com

Idina Menzel
The Broadway star joins with the Pacific Symphony, led by conductor Enrico Lopez-Yañez, for a night of hits.
8 p.m. Friday-Saturday. Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 300 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. scfta.org

NOW 2026
REDCAT’s New Original Works Festival features a different program each week over three weekends. First up, Alfonso Abraham Cervera and Irvin Manuel Gonzalez’s “las cosas que enter(r)amos,” a mix of Latinx American social and folk dance, storytelling, and contemporary dance; Scottie Harvey’s “Hole Gazers,” a comedic satire about fantasy, surveillance and life online; and Jeonghyeon Joo’s “how to bathe properly,” a solo work for haegeum, a two-string instrument, performed in a staged Korean sauna.
8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, through Nov. 21. REDCAT, 631 W. 2nd St., downtown L.A. redcat.org

Radio Galaxy
Joey McIntyre, Lesli Margherita, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Meera Simhan, Rishi Golani and Jordyn Rahman star in a new play by Michèle Aldin Kushner about a New Jersey teen who dreams of becoming an astronomer. Directed by Kimberly Senior.
Through Nov. 22. The Wallis, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills. thewallis.org

Sable Elyse Smith
“Sky Fence Ground” features new woven works on paper, a recent video work and a monumental kinetic sculpture by the multimedia artist.
Opening reception, 6-8 p.m. Friday, exhibit runs through Dec. 19. Regen Projects, 6750 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles. regenprojects.com

SATURDAY

Angela Anh Nguyen
Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND) presents the artist’s “Entropy,” a site-specific installation that addresses the collective experience of the 2025 Eaton and Palisades fires through social media, monitoring apps, and other forms of digital communication.
Opening reception, 1-4 p.m., exhibit runs through Dec. 13. Old Fire Station No. 6, 534 E. Edgeware Road, Angelino Heights. nomadicdivision.org

Takes Care of Them
Four large-scale prints by artist Dyani White Hawk (Sicangu Lakota) each depict a dress adorned differently to reflect on the roles of Lakota women in four areas: Wówahokuŋkiya (Lead); Wókaǧe (Create); Nakíčižiŋ (Protect); and Wačháŋtognaka (Nurture).
Autry Museum of the American West, 4700 Western Heritage Way, Griffith Park. theautry.org

SUNDAY

Billie Holiday and The Blues
L.A.’s Marlonius Jazz Orchestra, led by virtuoso bassist and composer Marlon Martinez, is joined by Brooklyn vocalist Mara Kaye for this tribute to Holiday and deep blues cuts.
8 p.m. Sierra Madre Playhouse, 87 W. Sierra Madre Blvd. sierramadreplayhouse.org

Camerata Pacifica
The November program includes a world premiere by Niloufar Nourbakhsh, Mozart’s “Quintet for Piano and Winds in E-flat Major,” alongside contemporary chamber works by Michael Daugherty, Missy Mazzoli and the late Sarah Gibson.
3 p.m. Sunday. Bank of America Performing Arts Center, Janet & Ray Scherr Forum Theatre, 2100 Thousand Oaks Blvd., Thousand Oaks; 7:30 p.m. Tuesday. The Huntington, Rothenberg Hall, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino; 8 p.m. Thursday. The Colburn School, Zipper Hall, 200 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A.; and 7 p.m. Friday. Music Academy of the West, Hahn Hall, 1070 Fairway Road, Santa Barbara. cameratapacifica.org

Romeo and Juliet: Time Enough for Love
Open Fist Theatre Company presents a new age-reversed adaptation conceived and directed by Christian Lebano.
Previews, 7:30 Sunday, Wednesday and Thursday, play runs Nov. 13-Dec. 19. Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave. openfist.org

Sage Ni’Ja Whitson: Revival_ _Revival
A free processional performance across the once predominantly Black community of Santa Monica, visiting sacred historic sites lost to time and gentrification, with a live score of gospel, house, hip hop, and voice. Audience members are invited to wear white clothing and white masks, and the procession closes with a fellowship meal at Ocean Bay Beach.
2 p.m. First AME Church, 1823 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica. 18thstreet.org

WEDNESDAY

Destiny of Desire
Karen Zacarías’ smart and fearless homage to telenovelas yields an epic, twisting yarn, full of coincidences and cliff-hangers, mistaken identities and gobsmacking revelations. It’s invigorating fun but also radiant with insight into the age-old debate between nature and nurture. When I first saw the play at South Coast Repertory in 2016, I was seduced by the production’s Brechtian energy. And I’m eager to see what fresh light director Marcela Lorca sheds on a play that my students at CalArts one year claimed as their favorite of the semester — and they have excellent taste. (Charles McNulty)
Through Dec. 20. Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. centertheatregroup.org

LaTanya Richardson Jackson, from left, Kara Young, Glenn Davis and Jon Michael Hill in the Broadway/Steppenwolf Theatre Company production of “Purpose.”

(Marc J. Franklin)

Purpose
The original Steppenwolf Theatre Company cast of the Broadway production of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Pulitzer Prize- and Tony-winning drama reassembles at the Geffen Playhouse for the most anticipated dramatic event of the season. The play, about a prominent Black Chicago family headed by a civil rights icon with skeletons in his closet, has the scope, heft and flamboyant idiosyncrasy of the landmark American domestic dramas of the past. Under the assured direction of Phylicia Rashad, the actors brought the characters so richly to life in New York that I can’t wait to experience their ensemble alchemy in L.A. (Charles McNulty)
Through Dec. 13. Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood. geffenplayhouse.org

THURSDAY
The Heiress
Theater 40 presents the classic American romantic drama, adapted by Ruth Goetz and Augustus Goetz from Henry James’ novel “Washington Square.” Directed by Ann Hearn Tobolowsky.
Through Dec. 13. Beverly Hills High School, Mary Levin Cutler Theatre, 241 S. Moreno Drive. theatre40.org

Kafka’s Letter to His Father
Keeping things in weird perspective, CAP UCLA, in collaboration with Brightwork Ensemble, presents a production of Czech composer Jiri Trtik’s opera “Letter to His Father.” About Kafka’s artistic liberation from paternal authority, it is produced by and stars the most transformative tenor of our time, Timur. (Mark Swed)
8 p.m. Thursday-Nov. 14. UCLA Nimoy 1262 Westwood Blvd. cap.ucla.edu

Las Migas
The Spanish Latin Grammy-winning all-women quartet melds traditional flamenco with contemporary stylings to reimagine the classic art form.
7:30 p.m. The Wallis, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills. thewallis.org

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra with Isata Kanneh-Mason
The New York-based classical ensemble is joined by the British pianist for a program featuring Mozart, Handel, Haydn and Welsh composer (and New York transplant) Katie Jenkins.
7:30 p.m. Broad Stage at Santa Monica College Performing Arts Center, 1310 11th St., Santa Monica. broadstage.org

Dispatch: A harrowing exhibition of Iranian art in Chinatown

“Lunch,” by BSisters (Behnaz and Baharak Khaleghi), on view at the Fellows of Contemporary Art gallery in Chinatown.

(Fellows of Contemporary Art)

“Lunch,” a centerpiece installation at Fellows of Contemporary Art’s new exhibition centered on the works of Iranian-born women artists in California, is an upsetting sculpture that’s as soft and intimate as a pillow.

The piece, by the Bay Area duo BSisters (Behnaz and Baharak Khaleghi), riffs on the myth of Zahāk — a vain tyrant with snakes around his head that eat human brains to keep him alive. It’s a tale from the Shahnameh, a 1,000-year-old Persian epic poem. BSisters have rendered it here in cozy pastel fabrics and gauzy spilled cotton, materials that speak to how women activists in Iran have been brutalized and consumed by the fundamentalist regime there. The sculpture — very funny and unnerving at once — also evokes the strange mix of distance and intimacy of Iranian immigrants to the U.S., watching the current conflict curdle their hopes for change into deeper worry.

It’s one of several affecting pieces on display at FOCA’s Chinatown gallery as part of “I Saw a Woman, Pounding Light into Mortar,” an exhibition in which six California-based Iranian women artists grapple with distance and helplessness, amid a conflict where both governments seem driven by an almost cannibalistic consumption of people and resources.

“Growing up in Iran, political repression was never something distant from our everyday lives. It shaped our childhood, our experiences as women, and the ways we learned to express ourselves,” said Katayoun Bahrami, the exhibit’s curator. “Living in the United States now, I feel a constant tension between building a life here and remaining deeply connected to what is happening back home. This past year has been especially painful. After the deadly crackdown on protesters in January and the war that followed, hope and anger have been hard to separate. Watching from thousands of miles away, unable to do much, has brought a sense of helplessness that is difficult to describe.”

Much of the work here is quietly devastating in evoking absence, fear and exile. Shaghayegh Cyrous’s video installation “Reenacting the Future” is a mirror image of a mother and daughter, filmed over 12 years in the U.S. and Iran, a visual echo cleaved by exile. Narges Poursadeqi’s sculpture “Between Dots of Blindness” could fit in a desk drawer, but the braille poem it spools through a music box feels like the last thing you would shove in a suitcase, fleeing for a new country.

“This exhibition was born during the internet and phone shutdowns in Iran, when we had no way to reach our families or know whether they were safe. That silence was terrifying,” Bahrami said. “Bringing these artists together became deeply personal for me. I recognize parts of my own fears, memories, and longing in their work. Through their art and our conversations, I’ve found ways to process feelings that are difficult to carry alone. Curating this exhibition has helped me turn some of that helplessness into something meaningful. It has also reminded me how much we need one another, especially when we feel powerless to change what is happening.”

“I Saw a Woman, Pounding Light into Mortar” at FOCA-LA through Nov. 28; 970 N. Broadway, Suite 208, Los Angeles 90012.

— August Brown

Culture news and the SoCal scene

Director Zhailon Levingston sits outside before the rehersal of “Passing Strange” at the Pasadena Playhouse.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

“Passing Strange,” a 20-year-old musical that takes place in downtown L.A. and went to Broadway, has never been performed here — until now. Pasadena Playhouse hosts its SoCal premiere.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic is shaking things up. This week it announced a slew of new leadership positions that will go into effect alongside incoming music director Daniel Harding. The orchestra’s post-Dudamel future is shaping up to be quite interesting.

Times contributor Shana Nys Dambrot immersed herself in the world of L.A. galleries to prove that although many high-profile galleries have closed, plenty of new ones are also opening. Here is a handy guide for your next art adventure.

On election day we ran a piece about the possibility of patriotic orchestral music in deeply divided times. Martin Sheen told us why hope is more important than ever.

Former Times classical music critic Mark Swed returned for the first in an ongoing series of monthly columns. Up first: A look at orchestral democracy session across the globe, including one in Boston aided by AI.

The most anticipated play of the season is about to open as “Oh Mary!” heads for the Ahmanson. Ticket sales have been so brisk that Center Theatre Group has already booked the show again for next season.

“Richard Avedon: Hollywood” opens at Gagosian featuring more than 120 iconic photos of of celebrities and other cultural power brokers.

A “Do Not Enter” sign hangs on the fence at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Sept. 25 in Washington.

(Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP photo)

The Kennedy Center may be closed indefinitely for renovations, but that did not stop its Trump-anointed leaders from announcing who would be recognized at this year’s Kennedy Center Honors — to be held by necessity at the Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 7. Honorees include singer-songwriter Paul Anka, music producer David Foster, actor Andy Garcia, playwright David Mamet and country singer Barbara Mandrell.

— Jessica Gelt

And last but not least

It’s always fun with Times columnist Mary McNamara writes about Holland Taylor.

The girlfriend of Mötley Crüe frontman Vince Neil was arrested Sunday for reportedly striking the singer.

Rainbow Hannah Andreani, 45, was booked in Williamson County, Tenn., for alleged domestic assault, according to arrest records viewed by the Los Angeles Times. Andreani posted a $5,000 bond and was released Monday. She is due in court Dec. 3, according to the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office.

Andreani’s arrest occurred after she allegedly hit Neil, 65, TMZ reported.

The makeup artist, who goes by “Rain Hannah,” and Neil have been in a relationship since 2011, according to People. In 2025, she was aboard Neil’s Learjet when it was involved in a fatal crash in Scottsdale, Ariz. The aircraft left the runway when landing, collided with a parked plane and killed one pilot. Neil was not on the plane.

Rainbow “Rain” Andreani

(Williamson County, Tenn., Sheriff’s Dept.)

Neil wrapped up a 34-date North American tour on Sept. 26 in Washington with his Mötley Crüe bandmates, bassist Nikki Sixx, drummer Tommy Lee and guitarist John 5, who joined the group after Mick Mars’ 2022 departure. The Return of the Carnival of Sins tour celebrated two milestones for the band: the 20th anniversary of the 2005-2006 Carnival of Sins tour and the band’s 45th anniversary.

Days after the midterm elections, Proposition 40 has yet to be decided. The ballot measure, which would impose a one-time 5% tax on California billionaires to help fund healthcare, is failing by more than 8 percentage points.

Statewide, more than 4 million votes remain to be counted in this race, according to the Associated Press, which calculates the expected vote using returns and other data. That includes more than half a million from Los Angeles County, where the “yes” vote leads by more than 7 percentage points.

The proposition has so far found support in nine counties: Alameda, Humboldt, Los Angeles, Mendocino, Monterey, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Sonoma and Yolo. In Southern California, Los Angeles is the only county leaning toward “yes.”

Propositions 41 and 42

While Proposition 40 focuses narrowly on taxing billionaires, competing Propositions 41 and 42 would have broader impacts on the state’s ability to enact new taxes. And the measures could undercut Proposition 40 if it passes.

As of Friday, the latest vote tallies showed “yes” on Proposition 41 trailing by more than 7 points, while “yes” on Proposition 42 was ahead by more than 6 points.

Proposition 41 would would require audits for new state special taxes and prohibit new state taxes from being exempted from a voter-approved state spending limit. Proposition 42 would prohibit new taxes on retirement holdings, individually owned assets and other personal savings. If Proposition 40 passes and either of these measures passes with more “yes” votes than Proposition 40, it would prevent the billionaire tax from becoming law.

A late October poll showed voter opposition to Propositions 41 and 42 had grown even as support for the billionaire tax declined.

The money behind the measures

Support for Proposition 40 has totaled to nearly $35 million, mostly from the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, the healthcare workers union that proposed the tax.

Backers of Propositions 41 and 42 also opposed Proposition 40. Combined, they raised more than $300 million. Most of that money came from the billionaires who would be subject to the tax.

Unrivaled will tip off its third season with a coast-to-coast event on Jan. 8 at Intuit Dome, featuring a doubleheader.

Opening night in Los Angeles will begin at 7 p.m. with a matchup between the league’s first two MVPs, as Napheesa Collier and Lunar Owls BC go up against Chelsea Gray and Rose BC. The second game of the night will feature newly crowned WNBA champion Gabby Williams, the Sparks’ Cameron Brink and Hive BC going against Jackie Young and Laces BC.

“Opening our third season in Los Angeles at Intuit Dome is a significant milestone for Unrivaled and reflects how far the league has come in just two years,” said Unrivaled president and CEO Alex Bazzell. “With our expanded roster of talent and a coast-to-coast opening night, we’re excited to introduce even more fans across Los Angeles to the competition and player experience that make Unrivaled unique.”

Before the games at Intuit Dome, Unrivaled will start the season in Boston with a rematch of last season’s final, as the defending champion Mist take on Phantom. The opening game will be followed by Vinyl vs. Breeze.

The rest of the season will be played as part of an eight-city tour, including stops at the league’s home base, Sephora Arena in Miami, as well as Detroit and San Francisco on Jan. 11, Brooklyn on Jan. 22, Minneapolis on Jan. 24, Houston on Feb. 12 and Philadelphia on Feb. 15.

Unrivaled began touring the country during its second season, starting with a historic soldout game at Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia. The league also held its semifinal games before another sellout crowd at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

Three-on-three basketball made its Olympic debut at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics, where the United States took home the gold medal. Germany won the top prize at the Paris Summer Olympics. Unrivaled has maintained the three-on-three approach, but it is played on a condensed full court rather than the Olympic halfcourt format.

The league features WNBA stars such as Kelsey Plum of the Phoenix Mercury, Paige Bueckers of the Dallas Wings and Marina Mabrey of the Toronto Tempo.

Games will be televised on TNT, truTV and HBO Max.

In a surprise shakeup of the Dodgers coaching staff, hitting coach Aaron Bates and the team are parting ways, as confirmed by a person with knowledge of the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said after the season that he expected “status quo” for the coaching staff. But, as MLB Trade Rumors first reported, negotiations on a new contract for Bates eventually reached an impasse.

The rest of the Dodgers coaching staff, including co-hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc, is expected to return next year, according to people with knowledge of the matter but not authorized to speak publicly.

Bates spent 12 years in the Dodgers organization, including four as a co-hitting coach with Van Scoyoc, and four as an assistant hitting coach. Before joining the major-league staff, Bates served as a minor-league hitting director and coach.

This past season, the Dodgers’ star-studded but aging offense ranked No.2 in weighted runs created-plus (111) — a comprehensive offensive stat that adjusts for ballpark factors — behind only the Cubs. But the Dodgers are working to diagnose two straight years of a July and August dip in offensive production.

Their search to replace Bates begins in a unique offseason. When the current CBA expires on Dec. 1, MLB team owners are expected to impose a lockout, during which teams will be restricted from communicating with players. So, if the Dodgers want their new hitting coach to meet with hitters or contribute to their offseason hitting plans, they will have to finalize the hire or promotion in the next few weeks.

One mistake can turn your season around

From Kevin Baxter: The most significant game of Angelina Anderson’s season was also her worst.

It was Angel City’s fifth match of the season and Anderson, the team’s goalkeeper, made a crucial error in stoppage time that led to a winning goal. And while that was significant, what really made the game stand out is what happened next.

When she carried the weight of the loss home with her, her boyfriend, Las Vegas Raiders defensive tackle Thomas Booker, staged an intervention. Every time she make a mistake, Booker told Anderson, she would beat herself up. Yet when she played well, she simply considered that part of her job.

“We came to this conclusion that is not sustainable,” Anderson said. “I’m putting way too much pressure on myself so I had to figure out a way to care, not less, but care optimally. As athletes, we’re always like ‘what more can I do?’ when really I think it’s ‘what’s optimal for you?’

“That kind of gave me more freedom on the pitch.”

Playing with that freedom, Anderson gave up just one goal per game during the rest of the season, pitching a league-best nine shutouts since May 17 and leading Angel City (15-8-7) to its second playoff appearance. Anderson and Angel City will meet Kansas City (16-9-5) on Saturday morning at CPKC Stadium, where the Current is unbeaten in its past 32 games.

Continue reading here

Aaron Donald works on fumble recovery

From Gary Klein: Since coming out of retirement before this season, Rams defensive lineman Aaron Donald adopted a humble approach, always allowing younger, less-accomplished players to go ahead of him during drills.

But on Thursday, the future Hall of Famer enthusiastically moved to the front of the line.

The Rams practiced scooping fumbled footballs off the turf.

“I needed that,” Donald said Thursday, chuckling. “Learn bending and getting down.”

Last Sunday against the Chargers, Donald missed the opportunity to score his first NFL touchdown when, with a clear shot to the end zone, he failed to come up with a fumble, albeit in hilarious fashion.

Continue reading here

Angel City signs Maddie DiMaria, 17

From Kevin Baxter: Angel City heads into this weekend’s NWSL playoffs with the youngest starting lineup in the league. And with a 10-game unbeaten streak, it has the hottest team in the league as well.

On Thursday, that team got a little younger and potentially a bit better when it announced the signing of 17-year-old Maddie DiMaria, the leading scorer in the U-17 women’s World Cup. Financial terms of the four-year deal were not released.

“This person is special,” sporting director Mark Parsons said of DiMaria, who signed with Angel City before scoring 12 goals in four games in the age-group World Cup. “But she also represents what Angel City football is about and what Angel City is trying to do over the so many years, which is win.

“And she’s a winner.”

A two-time Gatorade girls’ national soccer player of the year, DiMaria scored 24 times in 23 appearances with the U-17 team, with her 12 goals in Morocco breaking Michelle Akers’ 35-year-old American record for most goals in a World Cup. Before graduating from Cor Jesu Academy in St. Louis, she scored 67 goals and had 25 assists as a junior, leading her team to a 25-0 season and a state championship.

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Lakers send two to G League

From Dan Loumena: Third-year guard Bronny James and rookie guard Cameron Carr have been assigned to G League Coachella Valley, the Lakers announced Thursday.

James, who is the third year of a four-year contract worth $7.9 million ($4.4 million guaranteed), played only 12 minutes this season across five games, scoring four points on two-of-three shooting while missing his only three-pointer.

Carr, who was the 24th overall draft pick this summer, has played only four minutes in three games, missing the only shot he took.

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UCLA women defeat UC Irvine

Sienna Betts scored 17 points on eight-of-10 shooting and No. 11 UCLA used a big start and strong finish to roll to a 78-42 win over UC Irvine on Thursday night.

The Bruins never trailed after Betts hit a short basket 12 seconds into the game. It was 23-8 after one quarter. The Anteaters were only outscored by seven in the middle quarters and then UCLA had a 14-0 advantage in the fourth quarter when Irvine went 0 for 11 from the field and committed seven turnovers.

Elina Aarnisalo added 14 points for the Bruins (2-0), Timea Gardiner had 12 points and KK Bransford had 10 points.

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UCLA box score

Ducks edge the Oilers

Cutter Gauthier became the first Ducks player with nine goals over a four-game span, scoring and adding an assist in a 5-4 victory over the Edmonton Oilers on Thursday night.

Gauthier — coming off consecutive hat tricks — has seven power-play goals in the four-game span. Dating to 1933-34, the only other NHL players to accomplish the feat are Dave Andreychuk (eight, Nov. 7-14, 1992) and Teemu Selanne (seven, Oct. 25-31, 2008).

Pavel Mintyukov and Beckett Sennecke each had two goals and an assist for the Ducks, and Laurent Brossoit made 23 saves. They have three in a row to improve to 8-7-1.

Continue reading here

Ducks summary

NHL standings

This day in sports history

1869 — First U.S. college football game played, Rutgers 6, Princeton 4.

1934 — Joe Carter scores four touchdowns and Swede Hanson rushes for 190 yards as the Philadelphia Eagles crush the Cincinnati Reds 64-0.

1966 — Philadelphia’s Timmy Brown returns kickoffs 93 yards and 90 yards for touchdowns to lead the Eagles to a 24-23 victory over the Dallas Cowboys.

1981 — Larry Holmes knocks out Renaldo Snipes in the 11th round to retain the world heavyweight title in Pittsburgh.

1983 — James Wilder of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers rushes for 219 yards and a touchdown in a 17-12 victory over the Minnesota Vikings.

1988 — Britain’s Steve Jones win the New York City Marathon in 2:08:20, the fastest time in the world this year. His margin of victory, 3 minutes and 21 seconds over Salvatore Bettiol, is the largest in the history of the five-borough race. Grete Waitz wins an unprecedented ninth women’s title, finishing in 2:28:07 well ahead of Italy’s Laura Fogli (2:31:26).

1992 — Manon Rheaume of the Atlanta Knights becomes the first woman to suit up for a regular-season pro hockey game. The 20-year-old goalie doesn’t play in Atlanta’s 3-2 overtime loss to Cincinnati in the IHL game.

1993 — French-based Arcangues stages the biggest Breeders’ Cup upset, rallying to beat Bertrando by 2 lengths in the $3 million Classic at Santa Anita. Arcangues went off at 133-1 and returned $269.20 on a $2 bet.

1993 — Evander Holyfield regains the WBA and IBF heavyweight championships from Riddick Bowe in a fight disrupted by a parachutist. During the seventh round at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, the chutist tumbles into the ringside seats and stops the fight for 21 minutes. Holyfield becomes the fourth man to become a heavyweight champion at least twice.

1995 — Art Modell officially announces Cleveland Browns are moving to Baltimore.

1999 — Charles Roberts rushes for 409 yards and five touchdowns to lead Sacramento State past Idaho State 41-20, setting a new NCAA record for a single-game rushing performance.

2005 — Annika Sorenstam becomes the first player in LPGA Tour history to win a tournament five straight times, shooting an 8-under 64 for a three-stroke victory in the Mizuno Classic.

2010 — Michigan wins the highest scoring game in its 131-year history by stopping a 2-point conversion attempt in the third overtime for a 67-65 victory over Illinois.

2010 — Zenyatta comes within a head of finishing a perfect career. Horse racing’s biggest star closes from dead last, but Blame holds off the 6-year-old mare and wins the $5 million Breeders’ Cup Classic under the lights Churchill Downs. Zenyatta entered the race hoping to improve to 20-0 on her career.

Compiled by the Associated Press

Until next time…

That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

Third-year guard Bronny James and rookie guard Cameron Carr have been assigned to G League Coachella Valley, the Lakers announced Thursday.

James, who is the third year of a four-year contract worth $7.9 million ($4.4 million guaranteed), played only 12 minutes this season across five games, scoring four points on two-of-three shooting while missing his only three-pointer.

Carr, who was the 24th overall draft pick this summer, has played only four minutes in three games, missing the only shot he took.

James has played in 74 games during his young career, including 42 last season when he averaged 2.9 points and 1.2 assists in 8.9 minutes.

The Lakers moved their G League affiliate to Coachella Valley, where they will open the season Friday at Acrisure Arena in Palm Desert against Salt Lake City.

Bold.

That’s what I initially thought when a political novice named Nithya Raman upset an incumbent in 2020 to become the first democratic socialist elected to the Los Angeles City Council.

That’s what I felt when Raman weathered well-funded challengers and loudmouth opponents to win reelection outright in the 2024 primary, despite representing a district redrawn to her disadvantage.

Bold was Raman filing to run for mayor just before the deadline. Taking on her ally Karen Bass, an L.A. institution she had endorsed just weeks earlier. Angering members of the Democratic Socialists of America’s L.A. chapter, who hadn’t planned to mount a mayoral campaign this year. Calling out L.A. establishment shibboleths like the pricey Convention Center renovation.

Picking Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City” as a campaign theme song despite its stark lyrics of urban despair. Dancing with all the grace of Elaine from “Seinfeld” on primary night, despite being in third place at the time.

“Bold,” I texted a friend when we found out Raman was holding her Nov. 3 election night party at the Greek Theatre — either a brilliant move that would mark the start of a new day for L.A., or the worst venue choice for a political loser since Hillary Clinton threw her 2016 party in a hotel ballroom with a glass ceiling.

Bold was all Raman had going for her. Bass raised more funds and was backed by L.A.’s blue establishment. Haters, from the Los Angeles Police Protective League to the California Post to her fellow City Council members, painted Raman as an immature, insecure pinko wimp who didn’t know L.A. and barely could do her job, let alone run one of the world’s great cities.

But Raman didn’t stop. She left the hipster areas of the city where democratic socialists have found a base and campaigned in districts represented by council members who openly loathed her. She trotted out her imperfect Spanish to show that she wanted to reach Angelenos in any way possible and was vulnerable enough to reveal that she still was learning. Raman even teared up in public, which City Hall insiders have long mocked her for, when crying in the name of trying for a better L.A. is as bold as you can get.

Bold is what this metropolis needs. And bold is what Los Angeles is going to get now that Raman has taken out Bass in a campaign for the ages.

Critics will downplay the victory as more a verdict on a deeply unpopular mayor than an embrace of Raman — a tree stump could have trounced Bass, they’re already saying. But that’s not what heavyweights who have long aspired to become mayor — like billionaire developer Rick Caruso, L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath and City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez — were thinking when they had the chance to run this year and chose not to.

They saw the road to City Hall as too dangerous to risk their reputations on a potential loss. They weren’t bold.

I can’t say I saw any of this coming. I did call Raman the comeback kid of L.A. politics in a September columna, as indefatigable a politician as I’ve ever covered. But she spent the last month of her campaign apologizing for easily preventable gaffes that seemed to confirm all the skepticism about her. The attacks against Raman became nastier and more relentless, while Bass glommed on to anyone she thought might get her more votes, from walking alongside Caruso to standing next to future governor Xavier Becerra at Homegirl Cafe the day before the election.

I told a friend on the morning of the election that Bass probably was going to win. Angelenos wouldn’t be brave enough to go with Raman. As I wrote just a few weeks ago, Los Angeles has long gone with the old for mayor, when it could have gone bold.

Not this time.

Los Angeles Mayor-elect Nithya Raman, left, embraces her father, Venkit Raman, during an election night party at Boomtown Brewery.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

As mayor, Raman will need to be bolder than ever. Angelenos yearn for safer streets, an end to homelessness, a renewal of the dreamland that the city has represented for more than a century. They want less of the bureaucracy that has slowed down rebuilding in Pacific Palisades and made running a small business more of a punishment than a reward. They don’t want someone beholden to any ideology other than that the City of Angels needs to be heaven again.

Raman will assume office with nearly half of those who voted, not to mention the entire City Council, having supported her opponent. She needs to go in with the humility to convince naysayers, the conviction to get rid of things and people that aren’t making L.A. better, the smarts to keep what works, the courage to defy the DSA and the vision to make the city believe in itself once again.

Above all, Raman needs to be bold enough to not become another Karen Bass.

The lifelong Angeleno used to be bold when she was an activist in South L.A. pioneering multiracial coalitions and taking on the old guard. She was an effective Assembly member and Congress member. But City Hall sucked out her creativity, her optimism, her drive. She became cautious, then negative. By the end of the race, Bass seemed to be running only so she could say she kept away another DSA insurgent as a final gift to the city.

Bright-eyed outsiders drowning in the swamp — that’s the story of L.A. politics. It’s a story Raman needs to show can come to an end.

“Bold” ultimately is having hope that you can be the one who breaks systems that need to be obliterated. That was the other big note Raman incessantly hit during her campaign, culminating in her election night speech at the Greek.

“Hopelessness can be fatal for a city,” she told an adoring crowd that kept getting bigger and bigger until security closed off the entrances. “But this campaign refused to accept that. You refuse to accept that. You saw hopelessness, and you chose hope.”

Angelenos chose bold. Let’s hope Raman stays bold.

Harold Greene, a beloved Los Angeles news anchor, has died. He was 82.

His daughter, Courtney Greene, shared news of his passing on Wednesday via Facebook, adding that she was by his side, alongside his wife, Charlene Greene, when he “signed off for the last time.”

His cause of death has not yet been announced by the family, but his daughter shared that “there was an extraordinary amount of love in the room” when he passed.

“We have a feeling he’s already settling into the great newsroom in the sky, no doubt with a few suggestions on how things should be run,” Courtney wrote in the Facebook post.

Harold Greene began his career as a reporter and producer for KABC (ABC7) Los Angeles in 1970. Throughout the decade, he shared his talent across other newsrooms in California, including San Diego, where he helped launch KCST-TV (now KNSD) and a short stint in the Bay Area at the CBS affiliate KPIX-TV, where he co-anchored alongside Dave McElhatton, who died in 2010.

Greene later returned to ABC7 for multiple stints, according to the news outlet, including their top-rated “Eyewitness News” team. His final return to the flagship station was in 1982, when he was hired as a reporter and weekend anchor. He served as host/celebrity interviewer of locally produced programs such as “Hollywood Close-Up” and “A.M. Los Angeles” for the station.

In 1986, he earned one of 10 Golden Mike Awards for his coverage of the Cerritos air disaster. He left ABC7 in 2000, but continued his work as a dynamic anchor at KCBS-TV and KCAL-TV until his retirement in 2008.

His on-air image was reportedly the inspiration behind the mustachioed protagonist portrayed by Will Ferrell in the 2004 comedy “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.”

Over his career, Greene earned multiple Emmys and three Edward R. Murrow awards, and he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1999.

I was so focused on looking ahead to make sure a mountain lion or bear wasn’t emerging from the fog that I didn’t notice the semitruck headed straight for me.

I simultaneously gasped and panicked.

Then my brain caught up with my body. I remembered I was hiking on a closed highway. And I was staring at, thankfully, stationary construction equipment. My heart rate slowed, and then I wondered aloud: “What’s this doing here?”

Construction equipment sits on a turnout on Highway 39 on a closed segment. Caltrans is, yet again, tending to emergency repairs the highway requires after serious storms last winter.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

Last week, I hiked on a foggy, misty day along a 4.4-mile stretch of Highway 39 that’s been closed for almost 50 years, after massive landslides left the road impassable (and too expensive and dangerous to fix). It’s since been a popular hiking and biking route, offering a quiet escape and easy connection to the larger Angeles National Forest. But how long can this road survive the elements, especially with El Niño increasing the odds of substantial storms this winter?

In this week’s edition of The Wild, our weekly outdoors newsletter, I will try to answer that question, which per a recent Reddit discussion, is weighing on local hikers. I can say that, after reporting this out, I actually feel some hope about Highway 39’s future.

On Friday, I began my hike at the start of the highway’s current closure, which lengthens the journey from 4.4 miles to about 6 miles. I parked in a large lot just past the Crystal Lake turnoff.

The gate that leads to the 4.4-mile segment of Highway 39 that has been closed almost 50 years.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

The stretch of Highway 39 that runs from Crystal Lake to Islip Saddle was constructed by inmates from San Quentin and other prisons, opening to traffic on Nov. 6, 1961, according to Times archives. This was part of a long history of California using prison labor — or commonly referred to as “involuntary servitude” by civil rights groups — to construct its roadways. The state is said to have granted workers credits toward reducing their sentences based on the number of days they worked.

The road was quickly at odds with Mother Nature.

Rain during an El Niño winter caused a major landslide in January to February of 1969 near Snow Spring and then again, in February and March of 1978, according to a Caltrans analysis and Times archives.

The roadway has been closed since and remains one of the Caltrans L.A. office’s biggest headaches, as massive boulders frequently tumble down from the jagged mountain side, and landslides remain common. Caltrans, meanwhile, remains bound by state law to maintain the roadway to some degree.

Heaps of scree and dirt line much of the shoulder along the closed segment of Highway 39.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

After my mosey down the closed road, I can easily see why the road is such a headache to repair. A massive boulder blocked most of the right lane (the lane that drivers would take to travel from Azusa to Islip Saddle). Several hillsides had collapsed, sending heaps of scree onto the shoulder or roadway.

One of the biggest challenges, though, for Caltrans is 2.3 miles from the first gate where storms have almost washed out the entire road. The large hole, covered in a thick white material that appears to be plastic, has a steep drop-off into the valley below, resembling someone trying to build an infinity pool in the middle of the forest.

I was surprised to find an active construction project underway.

Highway 39 is often said by influencers and bloggers to be an “abandoned” highway, and although that’s inaccurate, Caltrans has actually tried to relinquish its responsibility of this troubled road. In 2012, the agency asked if either the U.S. Forest Service or Los Angeles County officials would take the reins. Both agencies essentially said, “No thanks!” with the U.S. Forest Service adding that its interpretation of the contract between the state and federal agencies was that Caltrans would actually have to remove the roadway and “return the area to the natural landscape,” according to Times archives.

A large hole where storms destroyed a segment of Highway 39.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

All that‘s to say: Caltrans remains stuck with this road for the foreseeable future and thus has to keep working on it.

Caltrans spokesman Marc Bischoff said in an email that multiple severe winter storms between December 2025 and January 2026 produced higher-than-normal rainfall “that resulted in concentrated runoff down a slope at post mile 40.8 that eroded the slope, berm, and shoulder, and undermined and collapsed the roadway.”

“This section of highway must be repaired as soon as possible to provide access to emergency service response and maintenance vehicles,” Bischoff said. “Work includes excavation and removal of failed roadway and unstable slope material; disposal of material; reconstruction of the embankment; reconstruction of the roadway and shoulder with hot mix asphalt; and placement of erosion control mesh, turf reinforcing mat, fiber rolls, and hydroseeding to stabilize the disturbed slopes and reduce future erosion.”

Tall rock piles line the roadway that’s been closed to vehicles for almost 50 years.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

But Caltrans has plans beyond emergency repairs.

For several years, Caltrans has studied how it should address the future of Highway 39. After weighing several options (including doing nothing) with other state and federal agencies, the agency will move forward with a plan (called Alternative 2) to reopen State Route 39 as an evacuation route for emergency service responders and maintenance crews only. Caltrans will continue to allow hikers and bikers “informal” access to the roadway, according to its January 2025 environmental impact report.

This project is in its design phase. Construction is expected to begin in winter 2032, Bischoff said.

Some of the challenges that Caltrans will face include that, “the highway ascends from an elevation of 5,560 feet above mean sea level (AMSL) at the southern end to 6,670 feet AMSL at the northern end where it intersects with SR-2. The project area is located in the San Gabriel Mountains, within the Transverse Ranges geomorphic province, which is characterized by a complex series of mountain ranges and valleys with dominant east–west trends. Most of the roadway alignment and immediate area is predominantly underlain by slightly to moderately weathered and moderately to intensely fractured igneous intrusive bedrock … Due to the geologic conditions, significant rockfall events have occurred at numerous locations throughout the project area,” according to its environmental impact report.

A view of an open stretch of Highway 39 that leads to Crystal Lake Recreation Area, which includes a large campground and cafe.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

During construction, Caltrans might restrict access, though, when it is unsafe for hikers and bikers to pass through. I didn’t see any construction workers or signage barring access when I went. Please follow posted signage, as it’s generally there for your safety.

This closed stretch is even more important to hikers after a massive storm pummeled Angeles Crest Highway, leading Caltrans to close the roadway just past Three Points. (If you’re wondering about what El Niño could potentially do to Highway 2, check out my recent article.)

Clouds dissipate in the late afternoon above an open stretch of Highway 39 north of Azusa.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

With the Angeles Crest Highway closure, hikers could take Highway 39 about six miles to Islip Saddle, rather than the 10-mile journey required by parking at the Angeles Crest Highway closure and walking that stretch of closed road.

Caltrans has tried for years to address Highway 39’s long-term future. The agency projects its current plan will cost an estimated $46 million.

Meanwhile, the agency remains bound by California Streets and Highway Code to maintain the highway. If El Niño brings storms that damage the road again, history suggests Caltrans will fix it, seemingly stuck in an endless loop of patchwork repairs for one of California’s most challenging mountain highways to maintain. That’s a strange silver lining to a bureaucratic nightmare.

3 things to do

A Cabrillo Marine Aquarium staffer teaches children about life in a tide pool.

(Cabrillo Marine Aquarium)

1. Search for cephalopods in San Pedro
Educators from the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium will host tide-pool walks on Saturday (12:30 to 2 p.m.) and Sunday (1:30 to 3 p.m.) at the Point Fermin tide pools in San Pedro. Guests can attend a brief orientation and then head on a naturalist-led hike to see the animals in their natural habitats. Outdoor clothing and closed-toed sneakers are recommended. Learn more about the Saturday and Sunday hikes at cma.recreation.parks.lacity.gov.

2. Assist the land’s recovery near Altadena
We Explore Earth, a community-building outdoors nonprofit, is organizing a volunteer group to repair habitat from 8 to 11:30 a.m. Friday at Eaton Canyon Nature Area. Volunteers should wear close-toed shoes, long pants, work gloves and other protective gear, along with their own water and snacks. Park staff will provide hand tools. Sign up at signupgenius.com.

3. Seek out snowy egrets in Santa Paula
The Ventura County Resource Conservation District will host a free 3-mile walk from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. Saturday through the Santa Clara River Preserve (1368 Mission Rock Road in Santa Paula). A bilingual biologist will answer questions as guests meander the habitat, looking out for local bird species. Register at eventbrite.com.

The must-read

Times staff writer Deborah Vankin, left, participates in a 50-minute walking therapy session with therapist Ismary Colón Angueira on the Fern Dell Trail in Griffith Park.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

I often tell my wife as I return home that a hike felt “therapeutic,” but I mean it more in a holistic sense. I leave the trail often in an improved mood with more clarity — sometimes after talking through a problem with myself as the trees listen. But I hadn’t thought about meeting my therapist on the trail. Times staff writer Deborah Vankin recently explored the practice of walking therapy by taking a hike through Griffith Park with psychotherapist Ismary Colón Angueira, who specializes in the modality. “Bringing people back into relationship with nature,” Colón Angueira said, “is the bigger point of all this. In my ideal world, my clients continue walking after they stop seeing me. And they reconnect to this relationship with place. Being in nature is our birthright. It’s something that everybody has access to. And it’s healing.”

Happy adventuring,

P.S.

The Trans-Catalina Trail is a 38.5-mile journey across Santa Catalina Island, taking hikers through rugged landscape with incredible views of the island’s mountains, pristine coast and the Pacific Ocean. Planning a multi-day backpacking trip there is no easy feat, as visitors must pack for significant elevation gain and loss — more than 6,000 feet total, according to the Catalina Island Conservancy — on a route with minimal shade. Sports and outdoors store Sports Basement will host a free seminar about how to prepare for hiking the Trans Catalina Trail at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at its Long Beach location. Regardless of how long this trek has been on your adventure bucket list, this sounds like a great opportunity to learn more.

For more insider tips on Southern California’s beaches, trails and parks, check out past editions of The Wild. And to view this newsletter in your browser, click here.

For Democrats, one of the most delicious ironies of their historic victory in Tuesday’s midterms is that they won many of the congressional districts President Trump and his allies had recently redrawn to favor Republicans.

As the results rolled in on Tuesday evening, one after another of those gerrymandered Republican “safe” districts in Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Alabama got swamped by the overwhelming blue wave.

Last year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom led the charge to push back against Trump’s initiative and redraw as many districts as possible in favor of Democrats. On Wednesday, he bragged on X, “We fought fire with fire. And won.”

While it’s all laughter and high-fives for Democrats now, it’s worth remembering that in the summer of 2025 they were in utter despair.

The GOP’s redrawn maps spelled doom for Democrats

It seemed they had no hope of winning the Senate in 2026. Their razor-thin chances of retaking the House appeared to be dissolving as Republicans simply broke out their Sharpies and started doodling on maps.

Congressional districts are typically adjusted once a decade, after each census. The idea is to reflect where people actually live and distribute representation accordingly.

Redrawing the maps mid-decade was a norm-busting move by Trump and his allies who made little effort to hide that it was a naked bid to tighten the president’s grip on power. He seemed to revel in Democrats’ shock and dismay.

While others were wringing their hands and writing think pieces about the fate of democracy — as Democrats tend to do — Newsom made what felt to many like an indecent proposal.

Newsom’s ‘retaliatory’ proposal

What if California, the country’s most populous state with the most congressional districts, just as cynically redrew its maps to favor Democrats?

But there was a catch: Californians had voted for a ballot proposition in 2008 to take such gamesmanship out of politicians’ hands and entrust the drawing of the maps to a (hopefully) independent, nonpartisan citizens commission. Newsom would need to get voters to approve a new proposition to change the rules.

Local conservatives were outraged.

“Gov. Gavin Newsom’s political ambitions have reached a new low. In his efforts to look like a ‘fighter’ ahead of a potential run for the presidency in 2028, he’s willing to ignore democratic rules in pursuit of political aims,” wrote Lanhee J. Chen, a former Republican candidate for state controller, in the Los Angeles Times.

Even fellow Democrats had serious misgivings, calling Newsom’s plan obviously “retaliatory,” “misguided” and a “moral conflict.”

They were right, of course — it was all of those things. But voters approved the new maps, and it worked.

Tuesday’s blue wave

Californians elected Democrats in all five of the state’s redrawn districts, after Democrat Marni von Wilpert won in what had been the lone holdout, Republican Darrell Issa’s old haunt in San Diego and Riverside counties.

From the start, Newsom understood the moral murkiness of his maneuver and included a provision returning map-drawing to the independent commission after the 2030 census.

Will that actually happen? Time will tell.

But as his party’s victory became obvious on Tuesday night, he didn’t exactly take the high road and start talking about mending fences.

In response to a post on X about Republican losses in districts reworked by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Newsom replied simply: “RON CAN’T DRAW!”

Top stories

Los Angeles mayoral candidate Nithya Raman embraces her brother, Akash Raman, during her election night bash at the Greek Theatre plaza.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

Raman’s lead against Bass

California’s billionaire tax

• California’s much-debated billionaire tax didn’t get the support many expected in one of the country’s most liberal states.
• Nearly 56% of California voters rejected the proposal while 44% voted for Proposition 40.
• However, with roughly 6 million votes still needed to be counted, the results are still too close to call.

A new era for Democrats

More news

Commentary and opinion

Editor’s pick

More picks

Things to do

(Joao Fazenda / For The Times)

Today’s recipe

(Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times)

With Thanksgiving only weeks away, now is a good time to perfect your favorite recipes that feature sweet potatoes. This sweet potato bread recipe is a good place to start. You can use any leftover sweet potato you have on hand, whether roasted or steamed, or you can microwave until tender a whole one that’s been pricked with a fork, about five minutes on high. Canned sweet potato works, though the bread will be a touch less flavorful.

Question for you

Are you feeling hopeful or anxious now that the elections are over?
Email us at essentialcalifornia@latimes.com, and your response might appear in the newsletter this week.

Photo of the day

Los Angeles resident Aline Argueta, 18, celebrates after casting her vote for the first time at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CIHRLA) Flex Voting Center in Los Angeles.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Games

Here’s today’s mini crossword, plus our other free, daily crossword puzzle, sudoku, word search and jigsaw games.

Have a great day, from the Essential California team

Jack Dolan, investigative reporter
Hugo Martín, assistant editor, fast break desk
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
Andrew Campa, weekend writer
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters

How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@latimes.com. Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on latimes.com.

Lakers get past the Kings

From Broderick Turner: On a night when Lakers coach JJ Redick said his team was “a little flat,” Luka Doncic flattened yet another opponent.

Even Doncic started slow compared to his usual first-quarter exploits, but he picked up his pace as the game progressed, dropping 40 points on the woeful Sacramento Kings to lead the Lakers to a 116-103 win Wednesday night at Golden1 Center.

Doncic has scored 40-plus points in three straight games and in five of his last six.

So, after he went 11-for-23 from the field and six-for-13 from three-point range and after he also notched nine rebounds and seven assists, Doncic was asked if he’s ever had a better offensive stretch over his eight-year NBA career.

“Maybe. I don’t know,” he said. “I had some good stretches in my career. But obviously this could be one of the highest ones. But there’s still some work to do.”

Continue reading here

Lakers box score

NBA standings

Clippers lose at last second

Klay Thompson made the winning three-pointer with a second left in overtime and the Miami Heat rallied past the reeling Clippers 117-116 on Wednesday night.

Bam Adebayo set season highs with 35 points and 10 rebounds for the Heat, who have won three of four after losing their first four games. Thompson scored 30, going eight of 17 from three-point range, and Giannis Antetokounmpo had 27 points, 14 boards and six assists.

Miami trailed by 20 in the second quarter and was still down 10 with 4 1/2 minutes left in the fourth before a 9-0 spurt set up the tight finish.

Continue reading here

Clippers box score

NBA standings

Myles Garrett returns to Rams practice

From Gary Klein: Rams star edge rusher Myles Garrett, who has been sidelined for seven games following knee surgery, returned to practice Wednesday.

Garrett, the reigning NFL defensive player of the year, has been on injured reserve since undergoing left knee surgery after the Rams’ season-opening loss to the San Francisco 49ers in Australia.

Coach Sean McVay said the Rams have attempted to be “as diligent, as thorough” as possible before allowing Garrett to practice and opening the 21-day window for him to return to the roster.

McVay said Garrett would take half the amount of full reps on Wednesday and would be evaluated each day before determining when he would be activated to the roster for a game. Garrett went through individual drills with edge rushers during the portion of practice open to reporters.

The Rams play the Washington Commanders on Sunday in Landover, Md.

Continue reading here

Rams’ Jaylen Watson to miss rest of season

From Gary Klein: Rams cornerback Jaylen Watson will have shoulder surgery and is out for the season, coach Sean McVay said Wednesday.

Watson, who signed with the Rams as a free agent after winning two Super Bowl titles in four seasons with the Kansas City Chiefs, reinjured his shoulder during last Sunday’s victory over the Chargers at SoFi Stadium.

“That’s a big blow,” McVay said. “Bummer for him. He’s been such a stud for us. He wanted to be able to play through it but just kind of understanding the totality of it all, just some of the different things, recommended to get that surgery.

Continue reading here

Kempe’s hat trick leads Kings

Adrian Kempe had a hat trick and an assist, Quinton Byfield scored two goals, and the Kings routed the San José Sharks 7-2 on Wednesday night.

Erik Haula and Joel Armia also scored for the Kings and Darcy Kuemper made 30 saves. Artemi Panarin had four assists.

It was the 37th multigoal game Kempe has had with the Kings, moving him past Dustin Brown for sole possession of ninth place in the history of the franchise. Kempe returned to the lineup after missing a 3-2 loss to the Buffalo Sabres on Saturday because of an undisclosed injury.

Continue reading here

Kings summary

NHL standings

This day in sports history

1927 — Walter Hagen beats Joe Turnesa 1-up to capture the PGA Championship for the fourth consecutive year and fifth overall.

1955 — Montreal’s Jean Beliveau scores the second fastest hat trick in NHL history in a 4-2 win over Boston. Beliveau, who scores all four Canadien goals, gets three in 44 seconds against Bruins goaltender Terry Sawchuk on the same power play.

1961 — Bill Stacy of the St. Louis Cardinals returns two interceptions for touchdowns in a 31-17 victory over the Dallas Cowboys.

1966 — Virgil Carter of Brigham Young passes for 513 yards and rushes for 86 to set an NCAA record for total yards with 599 in a 53-33 victory over Texas Western.

1977 — BYU sophomore Marc Wilson sets an NCAA record with 571 passing yards in a 38-8 rout of Utah.

1978 — Oakland coach John Madden becomes the 13th head coach to win 100 games in the NFL as the Raiders beat the Kansas City Chiefs 20-10.

1988 — Alysheba becomes the richest racehorse when he beats Seeking the Gold by a half-length in the $3 million Breeders’ Cup Classic at Churchill Downs.

1994 — George Foreman regains part of the heavyweight title he lost to Muhammad Ali in 1974, stopping Michael Moorer with a two-punch combination at 2:03 of the 10th round. Foreman, 45, captures the IBF and WBA championships to become the oldest champion in any weight class.

1999 — Carolina’s Ron Francis becomes the sixth NHL player to reach 1,500 points when he assisted on Sami Kapanen’s first-period goal for the Hurricanes in 3-2 loss at Detroit.

2008 — Tony Parker scores a career-high 55 points, including a 20-footer at the buzzer to force a second overtime in San Antonio’s 129-125 victory over Minnesota.

2010 — Calvin Borel and Javier Castellano tussle at Churchill Downs just moments after tangling during the $500,000 Breeders’ Cup Marathon in an ugly, chaotic scene. Castellano’s horse Prince Will I Am runs into the path of Romp and Martin Garcia. Garcia is able to stay on top of his horse but also impedes Borel and A.U. Miner. After the race, an enraged Borel is restrained by security personnel and his older brother Cecil.

2010 — Mexico beats the United States in one of the biggest upsets in the history of women’s soccer. The Mexicans, on goals by Maribel Dominguez and Veronica Perez, post 2-1 victory and qualify for the 2011 World Cup.

2011 — Drew Alleman kicks a 25-yard field goal in overtime to give top-ranked LSU a 9-6 win over No. 2 Alabama.

2016 — Arrogate catches 4-5 favorite California Chrome in the final 100 yards to win the $6 million Breeders’ Cup Classic.

2017 — Shalane Flanagan dethrones three-time winner Mary Keitany to become the first American woman to win the New York City Marathon since 1977.

2017 — Eli Manning of the Giants became the seventh NFL quarterback to reach the 50,000-mark with his completion to Sterling Shepard in the fourth quarter against the Rams.

2022 — Alex Ovechkin scores 787th goal for the Washington Capitals surpassing Gordie Howe of the Detroit Red Wings, for all-time NHL record for most goals scored for a single team, in 3-2 loss to Arizona Coyotes.

2022 — World Series: Houston Astros win second title in franchise history; beat Philadelphia Phillies, 4-1 iat Minute Maid Park, Houston for 4-2 series victory; MVP: Astros SS Jeremy Peña, Dusty Baker (73) becomes oldest manager to win championship, Phillies set ignominious record striking out 71 times.

2025 — Washington Capitals left wing Alex Ovechkin becomes first NHL player to score 900 goals in a 6-1 win over the St. Louis Blues

Compiled by the Associated Press

Until next time…

That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

On weekends, 1st and 2nd streets between Alameda and Los Angeles swell with crowds of families, anime fans, sneakerheads and tourists and locals alike in search of ramen or sushi, manga and magazines, matcha, toys, Japanese crafts, groceries, traditional sweets, records, Shohei paraphernalia and vintage fashion.

This is Little Tokyo, one of the most walkable, vibrant neighborhoods in Los Angeles — a historic small town within a big city that has thrived, even if sometimes precariously, through waves of urban development.

Get to know Los Angeles through the places that bring it to life. From restaurants to shops to outdoor spaces, here’s what to discover now.

The 300 block of 1st Street is known as the Little Tokyo Historic District, a nationally registered designation that’s the heart of the neighborhood. Here more than a dozen buildings preserve the pre-World War II streetscape and represent the social and cultural history of Japanese Americans in L.A.

The block is also an emblematic crossroads, where sweeping changes and cultural preservation converge.

“People want places like Little Tokyo,” says Kristin Fukushima, executive director of Little Tokyo Community Council, a nonprofit focusing on sustainable development for more than 5,000 residents and 400 businesses. “People identify with the culture and character of the neighborhood.”

In 1884 a cook named Hamanosuke “Charles Hama” Shigeta opened L.A.’s first Japanese-owned business, Kame, a 1st Street restaurant that stood where gift shop Bunkado is today. It was the seed of what’s now the largest Japanese American neighborhood in the U.S.

In the spring of 1942, Little Tokyo was emptied almost overnight, its residents forced from their homes and sent to incarceration camps. The businesses and institutions that survived and rose after the war remain part of its foundation, including confectionery shop Fugetsu-Do, Anzen Hardware and Far East Cafe, along with Buddhist temples such as Koyasan and Higashi Honganji.

Echoes of displacement resounded last summer when masked federal agents arrived in Little Tokyo and armored vehicles flanked the Japanese American National Museum — a memorial of historic trauma turned into a backdrop for immigration enforcement sweeps.

Meanwhile, generations of activists have helped save the neighborhood from being erased by eminent domain and real estate development. Every major monument and community space exists because of negotiation between activists, city government and corporate interests. “Asian American civil rights are a critical piece of the history here,” Fukushima says, referring to a movement that fought urban displacement, created services and allied with Black, Latino and anti-war groups for social justice.

The latest chapter of endurance is taking shape at the 1st Street North Residences, a mixed-use development with 100% affordable housing that used to be a city-owned parking lot. But before the 1950s the same land was a neighborhood of Japanese American businesses and homes for a growing Black community. Those buildings were demolished following evictions via eminent domain to make way for police headquarters. Now the project represents a reclamation.

Iconic Little Tokyo restaurant Suehiro and mochi maker Fugetsu-Do are expected to move into ground-floor retail spaces surrounding a cherry tree courtyard and the Go For Broke Monument, a black granite memorial honoring the more than 16,000 Japanese American men and women who served in the U.S. Army during World War II.

Philip Hirose is a third-generation owner of Anzen Hardware, an institution that disappeared from Little Tokyo in 2023 but returned to its original location on 1st Street earlier this year. He also operates Azay, a restaurant his mother and late father founded. “Being in Little Tokyo where families have known each other for generations, there’s a lot of interconnectedness,” Hirose says. “You get a kind of gem.”

When asked what it’s like to be part of this neighborhood, one that’s rooted in a century of resilience and renewal, he says, “It feels like everything.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Klay Thompson made the winning three-pointer with a second left in overtime and the Miami Heat rallied past the reeling Clippers 117-116 on Wednesday night.

Bam Adebayo set season highs with 35 points and 10 rebounds for the Heat, who have won three of four after losing their first four games. Thompson scored 30, going eight of 17 from three-point range, and Giannis Antetokounmpo had 27 points, 14 boards and six assists.

Miami trailed by 20 in the second quarter and was still down 10 with 4 1/2 minutes left in the fourth before a 9-0 spurt set up the tight finish.

Darius Garland had 26 points and seven assists to pace the Clippers, who have lost seven games in a row since winning their season opener Oct. 21 against Sacramento.

For more than a year, Marissa Roy has vowed to turn the Los Angeles city attorney’s office into a massive “public interest law firm.”

Now, she has a sweeping mandate to put that plan into action.

As of Wednesday morning, Roy had nearly double the vote tally of her opponent, L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. John McKinney, all but assuring the 34-year-old progressive will walk into City Hall in one of her jewel-toned blazers next year as Los Angeles’ chief lawyer. While the contest has not officially been called, McKinney effectively conceded the race in an interview with The Times on Wednesday.

For decades, the L.A. city attorney’s office has focused almost exclusively on prosecuting minor crimes and defending the city from increasingly expensive litigation. In an interview in May, outgoing City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto scowled when a reporter mentioned Roy’s campaign line about running the office as a “public interest law firm.”

“That’s insane,” Feldstein Soto said, days before her historic primary defeat.

But in Roy, an enthusiastic and tenacious California deputy attorney general, the city will have a proactive top litigator who’s ready to play offense. Roy has promised to take her experience from a years-long legal battle with Meta to aggressively pursue litigation against corporations and landlords for alleged misconduct that harms the average Angeleno.

Long before she announced her candidacy, Roy had begun courting public servants inside the sprawling city attorney’s office to ensure her plan passed muster.

What began as a series of informal coffees at Pitchoun! Bakery downtown quickly evolved into a network of trusted advisors, who helped shape her campaign promises and fine-tune policy proposals so they could be executed on Day One.

“There’s not a single word on my website that they haven’t reviewed first to make sure that we can implement it,” Roy said in an October interview. “It’s why sometimes I won’t take a hard line on something, because I talk to the deputies involved and they say they need discretion.”

Despite attack ads saying otherwise, Roy hasn’t vowed to block prosecution of certain misdemeanor crimes — even though she prefers diversion programs as a way to aid homeless defendants.

She’s been more direct about her plans to protect the city’s immigrant communities from potential future raids and aggressively fight the Trump administration in court when it targets Los Angeles. Given her affiliation with the Democratic Socialists of America, Roy’s stances on litigation involving the Los Angeles Police Department could also depart from her predecessors’.

The union representing rank-and-file LAPD officers spent millions against Roy. Feldstein Soto also steadfastly defended the LAPD’s widely criticized uses of force on protesters and journalists during immigration raids last year.

Roy also benefits from a deep bench of elected allies across the state, including her current boss, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, and fellow progressive city attorneys in San Diego, San Francisco and Oakland. Many local supporters showed up to toast her presumptive win Tuesday night, already riding high on the blue wave that crashed across the U.S. when the first Los Angeles returns dropped around 8:20 p.m.

The event at Audio Graph Brewery in downtown L.A. had all the energy of a wedding reception, with DSA acolytes munching cookies emblazoned with Roy’s face in icing and union organizers bopping up and down to the viral Slayyyter track “Dance…” as results rolled in.

Roy is an evangelist for affirmative litigation, proactive suits of the type that forced President Trump to cede control of the California National Guard late last year after he deployed thousands of soldiers to quell protests and aid immigration enforcement across the state.

“We need someone who knows how to sue the Trump administration, who also has the relationships and can pick up the phone and call the San Francisco and San Diego city attorney,” Roy said. “We’re all part of this very tiny niche of municipalities suing the federal government. We all became experts [in those methods] together.”

Despite at times amplifying inaccurate claims that McKinney was a conservative, Roy and her opponent shared some policy planks. Both were highly critical of ballooning legal costs under Feldstein Soto, as well as her penchant for hiring outside law firms to fight the city’s battles. Both also said they wanted to revive internal programs the outgoing city attorney had scuttled, such as neighborhood prosecutors and specialized units for handing child abuse and domestic violence.

“This election is gonna go her way, and I’m just really truly grateful for the opportunity to be part of this over the last nine months,” McKinney said Wednesday morning. “I met a remarkable group of people. I learned a lot about the city, the City Attorney’s office, about city politics and I’m a better person for it. I congratulate Marissa on her victory, I wish her well.”

McKinney said he hopes Roy can “uplift that office to be the finest municipal law office in the country,” but also suggested she spend her energy on more than legal combat with business leaders or the White House.

“She’s gonna have to broaden her focus to issues related to public safety, homelessness. Obviously, we both agree that city liabilities need aggressive proactive risk management,” he said.

Meanwhile, Roy could scarcely contain her excitement as she laid out her plan to supporters chanting her name.

“I’m much more comfortable when people chant things like ‘Let’s sue it’, because that’s the work that we’re going to do,” she said.

“Let’s sue it!” the crowd cheered.

In the race to become Los Angeles’ next mayor, City Councilmember Nithya Raman holds a three-percentage-point lead over incumbent Karen Bass, according to preliminary results released by county officials Wednesday.

Early leads may change as the vote count continues. So far, Raman leads with 51.7% of the vote, while Bass trails with 48.3%.

The precinct-level results include more than 730,000 votes in the mayoral race counted as of 3 a.m. on election night. The county’s latest update totals to more than 784,000 votes.

The map below shades each precinct by the leading candidate. Deeper green or orange indicate a wider lead. Precincts with more votes cast per square mile appear more solid, with areas with lower voter density fade to white. Hatched areas had 10 or fewer votes.

With the county’s latest returns, about 66.6% of the expected vote is in. The Associated Press, which estimates the voter turnout, has not called the race.

Election results will be finalized by the California secretary of state in early December.

A jubilant Nithya Raman stood before cheering supporters at her election night party Tuesday, giving a speech that fell just shy of declaring victory, but one that urged the crowd at the Greek Theatre plaza to hold off on the celebrations for now.

“I’m hopeful. I’m very hopeful,” Raman told a raucous crowd fueled by tequila and chicken tenders. “I’m also really superstitious. So we’re all just going to be cool, okay? Very cool.”

The initial vote tally Tuesday had Raman slightly behind incumbent Karen Bass in the race for Los Angeles mayor, but analysts were quick to point out that this was actually a strong indication that Raman would win. Polls have consistently shown Raman is heavily favored by younger voters, who tend to vote later than older people and whose late-arriving ballots are considered likely to turn the tide in her favor.

“The expectation is that once Nithya Raman starts gaining votes she will continue to gain votes. There is not going to be a seesaw. It is likely going to be pretty unidirectional,” said Paul Mitchell, who heads the polling data firm PDI. “I don’t call races. But if that expectation holds true then there is no reason to expect that Raman is going to do anything but gain votes from here.”

Votes were still being counted the day after the election, but by early Wednesday morning, Raman had taken a slight lead over Bass.

“Nithya Raman is going to win. She’s going to be our next mayor,” said a gleeful L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who has clashed with Bass and endorsed Raman a few weeks before the election.

“It’s over,” declared Estevan Montemayor, who ran an independent expenditure group supporting Raman.

Across town at the Loews Hollywood Hotel, Bass projected confidence on Tuesday night that she would triumph in her reelection bid.

“Let me just say it takes a while to count the vote in our city, but pretty soon we shall know and I am confident with all the work that is done here that we will achieve victory,” the mayor said at the L.A. County Democratic Party’s election night watch party.

The pattern of Raman gaining votes would follow what occurred in the June 2 primary, when former reality TV star Spencer Pratt was leading Raman for second place on election night, only for Raman to claw her way back day after day, until she finally overtook him five days after the election.

Raman and Bass were locked in a tight race up until election day, with final polling in the race showing the second-term council member and the incumbent mayor each with support from 40% of Angelenos while 19% of the electorate was still undecided.

But a blue wave across the country that toppled Republicans in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives also appeared to be buoying Raman’s campaign against Bass from the left.

Raman ran with the backing of the Democratic Socialists of America, the leftist organization that endorsed Mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) in Congress, among others.

Bass, meanwhile, ran on a public safety message that was meant to convince moderates and more conservative voters that she was a better alternative to Raman.

Raman also cast herself during the race as a hopeful technocrat who wanted to deliver “A City that Works,” her campaign slogan, promising to make L.A. a city that fixes broken sidewalks and potholes and repairs darkened streetlights in a more timely manner.

“This city’s government has made solving problems look impossible for so long that I heard form people across this city who started to believe it was impossible,” Raman said during her more than 20-minute-long election night speech that verged on a victory speech. “Hopelessness can be fatal for a city, but this campaign refused to accept that.”

She then pitched a more hopeful Los Angeles.

“In just one century, Los Angeles built itself into a global metropolis. The gateway to the Pacific. A center of ingenuity and invention. The cultural capital of the entire planet,” she said. “That ambitious Los Angeles, that joyful Los Angeles, that creative Los Angeles, that entrepreneurial Los Angeles, that inclusive Los Angeles, is the Los Angeles that this campaign was born to fight for.”

Raman’s position on the precipice of ascending to the mayoralty would have seemed nearly unthinkable at the start of the year, when Bass’ challengers included Pratt, former LAUSD Schools Superintendent Austin Beutner, leftist Rev. Rae Huang and entrepreneur Adam Miller — with Horvath and billionaire developer Rick Caruso also considering bids.

Beutner suspended his bid following the death of his daughter and it seemed Bass, despite low approval ratings, might glide to a second term without a serious challenger in the race.

But the night before the filing deadline on Feb. 7, rumors began swirling that Raman was considering challenging Bass.

“Who remembers in February when it was the end of the candidate filing and no one was, like, running for mayor?” asked City Controller Kenneth Mejia at Raman’s election night party. “I was like, ‘Oh my God,, I’m going to be here again for another four years stuck like this.”

“And then out of nowhere — out of nowhere — Nithya Raman came out of nowhere with the three pointer and she came out of nowhere and was like, ‘I’m running for mayor!’” Mejia yelled during a rollicking speech, as he mimed himself shooting a basketball.

After her speech, Raman asked that her supporters join her on the dance floor, where she shimmied to “Remember the Time” by Michael Jackson, pausing every few moments hug her backers and pose for selfies with them.

Joeseph Fuchs, a representative for the Western States Regional Council of Carpenters, was watching the returns closely as they first came in.

“That’s just the beginning,” he said. “Get ready.”

Another point of data for Raman: “Kalshi says it’s a 95% win” for Raman, he said, referring to the prediction market site.

Bass had a warm reception at her election night party, with supporters chanting “four more years!”

Despite high energy at the party — in part due to the Democrats’ victories in Congress — some supporters understood the lead was far from safe.

“I’m disappointed that people don’t recognize all of the great things she’s done,” said Alton Reed, when asked how he felt about the extremely tight initial results.

Reed, who works for the Communications Workers of America 9003, said he had put in more than 100 hours knocking on doors urging voters to support Bass. He said the positive response he received in the field had made him feel that the incumbent mayor had a strong chance.

Reed said he was not giving up hope that Bass would prevail.

“I’ve been through many close races,” he said. “So we will see what happens.”

City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez said he was “feeling good” about the election results shortly after the initial round of ballots were released Tuesday evening.

Soto-Martínez was one of several elected city leaders who gathered alongside labor union representatives and nonprofit leaders to support Bass at the watch party.

“I’ve been part of many elections and I think when you have a bigger coalition and more people behind you that is going to show in the results,” he said. “That’s why I remain hopeful.”

Lakers have room for improvement

From Thuc Nhi Nguyen: Austin Reaves described it as “fun.” Luka Doncic called the Lakers’ effortless-looking offense as “flowing.” And this is still the early stages of development for a team that brought in nine new players.

Through eight games, the Lakers have the most dynamic offense in the NBA. Led by Doncic, the Lakers are second in scoring with 122.5 points per game and first in offensive rating with 121.9 points per 100 possessions. The starting lineup of Doncic, Reaves, Walker Kessler, Ziaire Williams and Matisse Thybulle has a league-best 135.5 offensive rating among five-man groups that have played at least 40 minutes together entering Wednesday’s game at Sacramento.

“Everything’s as expected,” guard Quentin Grimes said Monday after the Lakers hung 138 points in a21-point win over the Miami Heat. “Winning, everybody’s getting involved, everybody’s making the right play, getting a lot of assists.”

The Lakers (6-2) had 39 assists against the Heat, the most during JJ Redick’s head-coaching tenure. Doncic is on a historic scoring binge; he is the first Laker since Kobe Bryant in 2007 to have five consecutive games of 35 or more points. While putting up a seemingly ho-hum 42 points against Miami, he also had a season-high 13 assists.

“It’s a really good offense that we’re playing right now,” Redick said. “And a lot of that, of course, is Doncic and what he’s able to do and bend the defense.”

Doncic, the NBA’s leading scorer at 38.3 points per game, does his damage early. He typically plays all 12 minutes of the opening quarter and leads the league with 15 points a game in the first quarter. Once he gets his shot going, teams send double teams to force the ball out of his hands. That’s when Doncic can be particularly dangerous.

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How Angel City helped ‘Ted Lasso’

From Kevin Baxter: Angel City and “Ted Lasso” both came to life in the summer of 2020 when the rest of the world was preoccupied with something far more serious, the global COVID-19 pandemic.

In those dark times, the series about kindness, grace, optimism — and soccer — became the show we didn’t know we needed, but suddenly couldn’t do without.

Angel City, meanwhile, would play its first NWSL game two years later, by which time “Lasso” and Jason Sudeikis, the title character of the Apple TV series about a fictional Premier League team and its manager, had already won multiple Emmys.

Hollywood is a small town, so it wasn’t long before Sudeikis reached out to Kara Nortman, a venture capitalist who co-founded Angel City in 2020, and asked to talk about women’s soccer.

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UCLA is No. 8 in first CFP rankings; USC is No. 20

UCLA coach Bob Chesney and the Bruins are ranked No. 8 in the first College Football Playoff rankings, a remarkable turnaround for a program that recorded three wins last season.

Chesney has led a revival in his first season that has the Bruins on track to host a playoff game if they can navigate formidable games at Minnesota on Saturday, at home against Illinois on Nov. 13, at Michigan on Nov. 21 and at home against crosstown-rival USC on Nov. 28.

The Trojans (7-2) were ranked No. 20 in the poll after their defiant 30-18 win over No. 12 Ohio State Saturday at the Coliseum.

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Split election results for local teams

From Sam Farmer: Hollywood Park was winning one fight and losing another, both by slim margins, as vote counting continued Tuesday night on two ballot measures in Inglewood.

According to results posted by the Los Angeles County registrar shortly after 10:30 p.m., Measure AT was losing, 51.9% to 48.1%, a margin of 583 votes; and Measure BB was losing 51% to 49%, a margin of 307.

Measure AT would mean more ticket taxes for big events in Inglewood, home to SoFi Stadium, Intuit Dome and the Forum. The City of Inglewood wants that.

Measure BB would bar the city from allowing billboard advertising on sidewalks, medians and the like. Owners of those sports and entertainment venues, who have their own sponsorship deals, are backing that measure.

Meanwhile, City Council member Gloria D. Gray led incumbent Mayor James T. Butts Jr., 34.6% to 29.8%, putting them on an early track for a runoff election in March.

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Ducks beat the Canucks

Cutter Gauthier scored a hat trick for the second game in a row and the Ducks held on for a 5-4 victory over the Vancouver Canucks on Tuesday night.

Mikael Granlund added a goal and two assists for the Ducks, while Leo Carlsson put away a shorthanded tally and Beckett Sennecke had four assists.

Laurent Brossoit stopped 19 shots for the Ducks.

The Ducks (7-7-1) came into the game with the league’s second-best power play (34%) behind only the Utah Mammoth and went three for three with the man advantage. Two of Gauthier’s goals came on the power play and the Ducks have 10 power-play goals on 12 chances over their past three games.

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Ducks summary

NHL standings

This day in sports history

1934 — The Detroit Lions rush for an NFL-record 426 yards in a 40-7 rout of the Pittsburgh Pirates. The only bright spot for the Pirates is scoring the first touchdown against Detroit this season, ending the Lions’ shutout streak at seven games.

1951 — The U.S. wins six of eight singles matches and ties another to win the Ryder Cup 9½-2½ over Britain at Pinehurst in North Carolina.

1959 — Ernie Banks, Cubs shortstop, wins his 2nd consecutive NL MVP.

1960 — Wilt Chamberlain of Philadelphia scores 44 points and sets an NBA record by missing all 10 of his free throws in the Warriors 136-121 victory the Detroit Pistons.

1976 — Baseball holds its first free agent draft with 24 players from 13 major league clubs participating. Reggie Jackson eventually signs the most lucrative contract of the group, $2.9 million over five years with the New York Yankees. Others free agents are Joe Rudi, Don Gullett, Gene Tenace, Rollie Fingers, Don Baylor, Bobby Grich and Willie McCovey.

1984 — Seattle’s Dave Brown returns two interceptions for touchdowns in a 31-17 triumph over the Kansas City Chiefs.

1987 — NBA announces four new franchises; Charlotte & Miami for 1988 & Minneapolis & Orlando for 1989.

1989 — Sunday Silence holds off the late charge by favorite Easy Goer to win the $3 million Breeders’ Cup Classic by a neck at Gulfstream Park.

2000 — R.J. Bowers rushes for 128 yards to become the first player in NCAA history to gain 7,000 yards in his career, leading Grove City past Carnegie Mellon 14-10.

2000 — In the highest scoring Division I-AA game in NCAA history, Ricky Ray passes for 344 yards and three touchdowns and scores three more to lead Sacramento State over Cal State Northridge 64-61.

2001 — Luis Gonzalez’s RBI single caps a two-run rally off Mariano Rivera in the bottom of the ninth, and the Arizona Diamondbacks win their first championship by beating the New York Yankees 3-2 in Game 7.

2006 — Rod Brind’Amour of Carolina scores his 1,000th point, assisting on a goal in the Hurricanes’ 3-2 win over Ottawa.

2007 — Adrian Peterson runs for an NFL-record 296 yards and three touchdowns in Minnesota’s 35-17 win over San Diego.

2009 — The New York Yankees win the World Series, beating the defending champion Philadelphia Phillies 7-3 in Game 6 behind Hideki Matsui’s record-tying six RBIs.

2012 — Andrew Luck breaks the NFL’s single-game rookie record by throwing for 433 yards in leading Indianapolis to a 23-20 win over Miami

2016 — Cam Atkinson, Nick Foligno, Scott Hartnell and Josh Anderson score two goals apiece and the Columbus Blue Jackets beat Montreal 10-0, matching the biggest loss in the Canadiens’ storied history.

2017 — Quarterback Ahmad Bradshaw rushes for a career-high 265 yards and Army ends Air Force’s 306-game scoring streak with a 21-0 victory.

2017 — With a 31-24 overtime victory over Nebraska, Northwestern becomes the first Football Bowl Subdivision program to win three consecutive overtime games.

Compiled by the Associated Press

Until next time…

That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

Mike Madrid was prepping to interview Xavier Becerra on Olvera Street last month when the immensity of the moment hit him.

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That morning, Becerra held a rally for his gubernatorial campaign in the birthplace of Los Angeles alongside California Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and the leader of the state Senate, Monique Limón, that doubled as a referendum on where Latinos stood politically.

Never before have Latinos occupied the top spots in both chambers of the Legislature and the governor’s mansion simultaneously, Rivas told the cheering crowd. Becerra reminded the audience that the moment was fraught for Latinos, though. Federal agents were still detaining undocumented immigrants across the state, and Latino residents — the state’s largest ethnic group at 41% — were suffering under the crushing cost of food, gas and housing.

“[Latinos] are here, we are present and we will fight,” Becerra said. “But right now, our fight is to get the vote out, to make sure everyone understands that our power lies in our vote.”

Gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra purchases an agua fresca from Taqueria Vista Hermosa in Mercado La Paloma on June 9.

(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)

Madrid, a longtime political commentator and strategist, had set up his recording equipment at the Pico House, formerly a historic hotel named after the last Mexican governor of California. He recalled how Pio Pico, who helped found the California Republican Party but ended up dying destitute, opened the structure in 1870 as a testament to what Latinos had contributed to their state. But they would eventually be seen as a relic of the bygone days when Mexicans ruled — days that gringos imagined would never return.

The symbolism of a Becerra victory would be “kind of a big deal,” Madrid said, representing a back to the future opportunity for an ethnic group that ruled California until the United States won the Mexican-American War, then was relegated to political irrelevance for over a century before finally being at the doorstep of the governor’s mansion again. Becerra would become California’s first Latino governor in modern times and the second since Romualdo Pacheco served for 10 months in 1875.

Now that the race has been called, Becerra’s victory signifies how much Latinos have advanced since Pico’s days. But it’s also anticlimactic.

As California’s Latino population grew and their political power eventually did too, the days when such a victory would have been an inspiring surprise are long gone. Becerra is now just one of many Latino political captains who steer the Golden State.

Xavier Becerra, right, fist bumps with Roy Kuroyawagi, owner of Japangeles, during a tour of businesses in Little Tokyo on Aug. 18.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

California Supreme Court Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero became the first Latina to occupy that role when Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed her in 2023. The state’s senior U.S. senator, Alex Padilla, is the son of Mexican immigrants who settled in the San Fernando Valley. Rep. Pete Aguilar, a fourth-generation Mexican American from Redlands, is the third most powerful Democrat in Congress as the head of the party’s House caucus. Lorena Gonzalez, daughter of a Mexican immigrant father and white mother, leads the California Labor Federation, a longtime kingmaker in state politics.

And now, with Becerra at the helm, they will have to govern at a precarious moment, inheriting a state with existential problems affecting everyone, everywhere.

Droughts, El Niño, an eroding coast and the year-round threat of wildfires, much of it accelerated by climate change. Stagnant population growth that threatens to shrink the number of congressional seats. A presidential administration that keeps fighting California in federal court and has attempted to block the votes of 20,000 Californians it alleges are noncitizens. A restive population that Madrid predicts won’t let Becerra bask in his historic win.

“This is what you’ve always wanted. Here’s the keys to the car,” he cracked. “You’re responsible for it now. Who you’re going to blame if things don’t get better — Trump?”

Jody Agius Vallejo, associate director of USC’s Equity Research Institute, said she hopes that California’s new caretakers remember the struggles of getting to the summit — that they represent the dreams and battles of generations of politicians, voters and activists — as they embark on whatever’s next.

“You use these narratives [of Latino personal and collective struggle] to get elected,” she said. “Use them to understand what people need, and govern for them.”

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1. Patricia Guerrero, left, is sworn-in to the California Supreme Court in 2022 by Gov. Gavin Newsom. (Nathaniel Levine / The Sacramento Bee via Associated Press) 2. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., questions Attorney General Pam Bondi as she testifies before a Senate Judiciary Committee in 2025. (Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press) 3. Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., speaks at a Democratic Steering and Policy Committee hearing in 2026. (Allison Robbert / Associated Press) 4. Lorena Gonzalez at podium with California Attorney General Rob Bonta during a news conference in Los Angeles in 2024. (Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)

Many voters were already shrugging about the significance of Becerra’s likely victory — especially Latinos. Only 45% of Latino voters in California felt “proud” about the prospect of a Latino governor, according to a Berkeley IGS poll released last week.

Those results aren’t surprising to Lena Gonzalez, a Long Beach-area state senator who chairs California’s Latino Legislative Caucus. She praised Becerra’s victory as the culmination of decades of political organizing. But voters care more about results than identity, she said — something the Latino political class has been slow to realize.

“People will say, ‘OK, that’s great [he’s Latino], but how are you fighting back?’” she said. “I just think we need to lead now and not advertise we’re Latinos.”

Los Angeles mayoral candidate Xavier Becerra waves goodbye after a visit to Hoover St. Elementary School in March 2001.

(Kim D. Johnson / Associated Press)

Becerra has long been a poster child for Latino political firsts, representing L.A.’s Eastside in the state Assembly and Congress for 27 years before Gov. Jerry Brown appointed him to be California’s first Latino attorney general in 2017. Three years later, Becerra became the country’s first Latino Health and Human Services secretary under President Biden.

Becerra has rarely highlighted his latinidad while never shying away from his background as the child of Mexican immigrants. He told Madrid at the end of their interview at the Pico House that Californians should be prouder of his working class roots than his ethnicity.

Some have complained that Becerra is an unworthy, boring torchbearer for Latinos — not dynamic enough to meet a moment where many hoped for a firebrand. But in many ways, his style is a callback to the past.

When Latino politicians first began winning local and state legislative elections in the decades after World War II, they “were constantly about, ‘How do I mobilize the Latino vote without alienating the white vote, and how do I get support from the establishment which is white?’” said Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University and a longtime chronicler of California politics.

Latinos were the majority of the population in some areas during that era, but politicians couldn’t rely solely on them to win, because they still didn’t represent a majority of voters. That changed by the late 1980s, as immigration brought millions of Latinos to California.

Civil rights activists successfully sued cities and counties to draw district lines making it easier for Latinos to vote for Latino candidates. Local activists registered new voters by selling them a future where people like them would be leaders, not tokens. Pioneers like Richard Alatorre and Gloria Molina subsequently created political machines, which helped Becerra get his start.

Mayoral candidate Antonio Villaraigosa, center, and Assemblywoman Karen Bass, left, dance to gospel music sung by the McCoy Memorial Baptist choir during an endorsement celebration in 2005.

(Stefano Paltera / For The Times)

That set the stage for politicians who “didn’t need the external validation anymore” of white voters or power brokers, Guerra said. “They could now say, ‘I am a Latino candidate with a Latino agenda, because I represent a Latino district.’”

By 1996, two years after the anti-immigrant Proposition 187 galvanized Latino activism, a record number of newly registered Latino voters in Orange County helped Loretta Sanchez upset longtime Republican Rep. Bob Dornan, the first welt of purple in a famously red county. That same year, Cruz Bustamante became the first Latino Assembly speaker, then lieutenant governor — the first Latino elected to statewide office in California since Pacheco ascended to the same position in the 1870s. In 2005, Antonio Villaraigosa was elected mayor of Los Angeles, sparking national headlines as the first Latino to occupy that position in modern times.

The Latino political firsts kept coming over the next 20 years, now reaching a pinnacle with Becerra’s win. Guerra said that “incremental” approach made Latinos mainstream to the point where the novelty of another milestone quickly wore off.

“Do you want a transformative moment? Absolutely,” he said. “But those come few and far in between. Incremental comes every two years.”

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra takes a selfie with supporters after a campaign stop on May 21 at the Wende Museum in Culver City.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Becerra started his campaign for governor far behind in the polls, surging after Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out due to sexual assault allegations. Becerra’s campaign leaned into his milquetoast persona and crowned him Tío Xavier — Uncle Xavier — to market him as a non-threatening moderate who happened to be Latino.

Madrid, a lifelong Republican, voted for Becerra because of GOP candidate Steve Hilton’s refusal to denounce MAGA. He also thinks Becerra can “resurrect a healthy economy for the working class” — something he accuses Democrats of “abandon[ing] for a generation.” The “burden” is on California’s Latino leaders to show they can serve not just their own community but everyone, he said.

On Monday, Becerra mingled with eaters at Homegirl Cafe in Chinatown, looking anodyne in a white shirt, wire-framed glasses and tan khakis as supporters asked for selfies or a hug.

Half-hearted shouts of “¡Sí se puede!” gave way to authentically boisterous chants of “Be-ce-rra!”

The heavy favorite for governor took questions in the packed dining room and didn’t flinch when I asked him to reflect on the fact that Latinos will head every branch of California government if he wins.

“We’re all fortunate when a state like California gives all of us opportunities to be in position of authority,” Becerra replied.

He nodded at Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who stood by his side.

“But we gotta do it right,” he said. “And it’s on me to be a good governor — not to be a good Latino governor, but to be a good governor.”

Marissa Roy is on track to become Los Angeles’ next city attorney after jumping out to a significant lead over L.A. County prosecutor John McKinney based on early returns.

Roy, 34, a deputy state attorney general, campaigned on a promise to convert the city attorney’s office into a massive “public interest law firm,” vowing to champion renters and defend Angelenos from an increasingly hostile White House.

Roy, a coalition-builder, had long been the favorite in the race, leading McKinney by double digits in polls leading up to Tuesday. She won the June primary with more than 40% of the vote.

Roy and McKinney’s head-to-head race came after voters and powerful city unions turned on the incumbent, Hydee Feldstein Soto, whose June primary defeat marked the first time a sitting L.A. elected official failed to advance to a general election in nearly a century.

Supporters at Roy’s watch party at the downtown Audio Graph brewery erupted in cheers when the first batch of results dropped, showing Roy doubling up McKinney’s early vote total. The mood was ebullient as the first batch of returns trickled in, buoyed by dramatic wins for Democrats across the country and a better than expected early lead for their candidate.

Roy arrived around 9 p.m. in a plum-colored dress, her arms stacked with bangles that rang as she embraced supporters and took the stage.

“I was planning on hedging and saying, ‘It looks like we’re winning,’ but I think we won!” Roy told the crowd to whoops and cheers.

Roy ran to the left of her opponent and tried to paint him as the preferred choice of Republicans in L.A. County. McKinney is a lifelong Democrat and has been critical of President Trump.

At Hill Street bar, close to the downtown criminal courthouse where McKinney has built his career, supporters swayed to smooth jazz and Top 40 radio hits, nursing cocktails and betraying no reaction to the dismal early returns.

In a brief interview outside the bar, McKinney remained positive and said he always knew he faced an uphill battle. He announced his candidacy long after Roy and Feldstein Soto began their campaigns, yet still surged to a surprise second-place finish in June. He said he was proud he was able to inject discussion of public safety issues and real strategies for solving homelessness into the race.

“I got into this race nine months ago because the people of Los Angeles deserve better,” he said.

Although he said he had “no bitterness” toward Roy and wished her the best of luck, he did express disappointment at the efforts her campaign and some of her supporters took to incorrectly paint him as a conservative.

“I just felt that it was very misleading … it’s not a political position. It’s not a partisan position,” he said.

The candidates were a study in contrasts: Roy is a stylish progressive with savvy social media campaign videos, while McKinney is a stoic law-and-order-type. They also offered voters starkly different plans for leading the city attorney’s office.

A core part of the California Department of Justice legal team that won a historic $17-billion settlement from Meta this summer, Roy ran as a champion of the average Angeleno, promising to hold corporations and landlords accountable for misconduct. A Yale-educated lawyer, she positioned herself as the only candidate who would stand up to Trump administration policies that have harmed Los Angeles.

McKinney, who often noted he has been a lawyer nearly as long as Roy has been alive, leaned on his nearly unblemished record prosecuting some of the region’s most notorious and violent crimes and his compelling personal history. Orphaned at 5, he was raised by an older sister in a household where money was extremely tight and found himself painting houses just to afford college classes. In a 28-year career as an L.A. County prosecutor, McKinney won convictions in a number of high-profile cases, including the murder of rapper Nipsey Hussle.

The veteran prosecutor promised to focus his energy on reducing homelessness and improving public safety through misdemeanors he believed the prior administration under-enforced, including street racing and animal abuse on Skid Row. He also vowed to conduct more aggressive reviews of the way nonprofits that do business with the city spend funds meant to aid unhoused citizens.

Although they aligned in few places, both Roy and McKinney said they would work to bring down the city’s out-of-control legal costs. That figure exploded to nearly $300 million in city payouts last year.

Roy was supported by the L.A. County Democratic Party, the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). McKinney was backed by a coalition of law enforcement unions, four former city attorneys and L.A. County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman.

HIGH SCHOOL FLAG FOOTBALL
CITY SECTION PLAYOFFS
TUESDAY’S RESULTS
First Round

DIVISION III
#1 Maywood CES 19, #16 Stern 0
#9 RFK Community 12, #8 Legacy 0
#5 Torres 18, #12 L.A. University 0
#4 Santee 27, #13 Sylmar 0
#3 Palisades 22, #14 Brio College Prep 0
#6 San Fernando Arroyo 37, #11 Orthopaedic 6
#7 Hawkins 19, #10 Hollywood 12
#2 Sotomayor 21, #15 Fairfax 0

WEDNESDAY’S SCHEDULE
(Games at 3 p.m. unless noted)
First Round

DIVISION I
#16 Verdugo Hills at #1 Panorama
#9 Jefferson at #8 Cleveland
#12 L.A. Roosevelt at #5 Birmingham
#13 Van Nuys at #4 El Camino Real
#14 San Fernando at #3 Garfield
#11 L.A. Hamilton at #6 King/Drew
#10 Venice at #7 GALA
#15 L.A. Marshall at #2 Granada Hills Kennedy

DIVISION II
#16 SOCES at #1 Bell
#9 Westchester at #8 Washington Prep
#12 Angelou at #5 Taft
#13 Contreras at #4 Arleta
#14 East Valley at #3 North Hollywood
#11 Manual Arts at #6 Fremont
#10 Huntington Park at #7 Dorsey
#15 Sun Valley Magnet at #2 Foshay

DIVISION IV
#17 Elizabeth or #16 Marquez at #1 South East
#9 New Designs University Park at #8 Los Angeles
#12 VAAS at #5 Chatsworth
#13 Rise Kohyang at #4 Crenshaw
#14 Bernstein at #3 Collins Family
#11 Alliance Levine at #6 Monroe
#10 View Park at #7 Port of Los Angeles
#15 Grant at #2 South Gate

THURSDAY’S SCHEDULE
(Games at 3 p.m. unless noted)
Quarterfinals

OPEN DIVISION
#8 Franklin at #1 Carson
#5 L.A. Wilson at #4 San Pedro
#6 Lincoln at #3 Narbonne
#7 Wilmington Banning vs. #2 Eagle Rock at Contreras, 7 p.m.

DIVISION III
RFK Community at #1 Maywood CES
#5 Torres at #4 Santee
#6 San Fernando Arroyo at #3 Palisades
#7 Hawkins at #2 Sotomayor

Note: Quarterfinals (Divisions I, II, IV) Friday, Nov. 6 at higher seeds; Semifinals (all divisions) Tuesday, Nov. 10 at higher seeds; Finals (all divisions) Saturday, Nov. 14.