Lev Shlosberg, a senior member of the Yabloko party, was sentenced to 11 years and one month in prison on Monday for “discrediting” and spreading “false information” about the Russian military. The charges come in the lead-up to next month’s parliamentary elections.
Published On 17 Aug 202617 Aug 2026
Share
Tired of budget stalemates, deficits and continuous acrimony in the state Capitol, California voters in 2010 started taking action to temper political gridlock and loosen the grip of entrenched special interests.
They approved statewide ballot measures to create an independent congressional redistricting commission, taking that power away from self-interested Sacramento lawmakers, as well as a new “top-two” primary system intended to stifle the power of the major political parties and provide more representative, less hyperpartisan candidates with a greater chance of victory.
Now, in an era of even more bitter divisions in the state and nation, those reforms face severe threats.
Last month, supporters of a proposal to repeal the state’s current primary system, in which the two candidates in state and congressional elections who receive the most votes move on to the general election regardless of party affiliation, received permission to gather voter signatures to place the measure on the 2028 ballot.
In November, Californians voted to temporarily scrap the congressional districts that were crafted by a voter-approved independent commission and instead replace them by ones approved by Democratic lawmakers in Sacramento. The move, aimed at giving Democrats an edge in the November midterm election, was in response to President Trump urging GOP state leaders, notably in Texas, to alter their districts to boost Republican numbers in the closely divided U.S. House of Representatives after the 2026 election.
“In the olden times, California liked to see itself as the epicenter of good-government reform,” said Jessica Levinson, an election law professor at Loyola Marymount University.
But the sense of optimism when voters approved these reforms has faded, she said, because of the divisiveness cultivated by Trump but also because of polarization that predates him.
“There’s no world in which you can look at California or any other state in 2026 and say it looks like 2010,” Levinson said. “We, the public, speak to each other in different ways. Politicians talk to each other in different ways. … It feels to me like we talk a lot more about triage than we do about building a shining city on a hill. It’s a different universe.”
But others question the effectiveness of the California’s good-government reforms and merits of the self-glorification that followed.
“It’s not clear that any of these reforms helped elect more moderates or limit polarization,” said Rick Hasen, a professor of law and political science at UCLA. “Reformers may have over-promised in the early 2010s what election reform could actually do to improve the lives of Californians. And Californians did not fully appreciate the unintended consequences of reforms enacted with even the best of intentions.”
The efforts to claw back the 2010 reforms occurs at a time of declining trust in institutions and during a fragile moment in the nation’s democracy. Trump continues to push debunked claims that the 2020 election was rigged, as well as other voting misconduct conspiracies that often focus on California.
In a prime-time speech last month, the president again raised concerns about the length of time it took California elections officials to count ballots in the June 2 primary.
“It took a month to count the votes,” he said. “I wonder what they were doing.”
Lauded by civic groups, the good-government reforms were championed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and funded by major GOP donor Charles Munger Jr.
Both of the state’s major political parties as well as prominent politicians and several labor unions opposed the efforts when they were placed on the 2010 ballot.
Jessica Millan Patterson, a former state GOP chairwoman, is among those who believe the temporary pause in independent redistricting that voters approved in November will not be temporary. And she said the top-two primary is a failed experiment.
“Speaking as a Republican, I just don’t feel that it has served us well at all,” she said. “Not only has it locked us out of many general election ballots, but it has also not moderated Sacramento at all.”
California Democratic Party Chairman Rusty Hicks, who supported the suspension of independent redistricting, agreed with Millan Patterson about the top-two primary.
“The current top-two system has failed to deliver on what its supporters promised,” he said. “It’s well past time to review, revise and maybe even repeal it.”
Hicks expressed fears earlier this year that the top-two primary would result in two Republican gubernatorial candidates advancing to the November ballot in a strongly Democratic state because of a sprawling and splintered Democratic field.
Hicks’ rare public move urging low-polling Democratic candidates, which included every minority candidate of color in the race, to consider their viability sparked widespread controversy during the primary.
The tension was heightened by a controversial USC debate selection process that would have resulted in no candidates of color taking the stage. (The debate was canceled less than 24 hours before it was scheduled to take place.)
Ultimately, the June primary resulted in the same outcome Californians have seen since the top-two primary was approved — a gubernatorial general election contest between a Democrat and a Republican. Xavier Becerra, a former Biden Cabinet member, and Steve Hilton, a GOP strategist and television commentator, will face off in November.
Still, a bipartisan coalition is striving to rescind the top-two primary system, which has created many noteworthy intraparty races, such as U.S. Senate contests between Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris and Rep. Loretta Sanchez of Orange in 2016, and incumbent Sen. Dianne Feinstein and state Sen. Kevin de León of Los Angeles in 2018, all Democrats.
In Congress, independent redistricting and the top-two primary created a brutal 2012 contest between veteran Democratic Reps. Brad Sherman and Howard Berman in the San Fernando Valley. Four years later, veteran Bay Area Rep. Mike Honda was toppled by fellow Democrat Ro Khanna, now viewed as a potential 2028 presidential candidate.
This year, a combination of the redrawing of the state’s congressional districts and the top-two primary means Republican Rep. Ken Calvert of Corona is battling with Republican Rep. Young Kim of Anaheim Hills.
On July 14, Secretary of State Shirley Weber announced that the proposal by veteran Democratic strategist Steve Maviglio — also backed by Republicans such as former state GOP Chair Ron Nehring — has 180 days to gather the signatures of nearly 875,000 registered voters to qualify the effort for the November 2028 ballot. If approved by voters, the top-two primary would be repealed and the system would revert to its prior version, insuring every qualified political party could have a candidate advance in the primary to the general election.
Maviglio argued that the top-two primary has failed to deliver on its promises to reduce partisanship and budget deficits in Sacramento.
“It’s gotten worse, not better,” he said. “I find it’s hard to make that argument if you look at what’s coming out of the Legislature the last 10 years.”
Supporters of the top-two primary repudiated these arguments and vowed to challenge the title of the proposed 2028 ballot measure about the state’s primary, arguing it would disenfranchise 5.4 million Californians who are not registered with either major political party.
“Voters passed Proposition 14 [which created the top-two primary] to take control away from party insiders and put it in the hands of the people,” said Cara McCormick, campaign manager of More Choice California, a group opposing the top-two primary being rescinded. “This initiative does the opposite. It takes away the rights of millions of California voters and gives them back to political parties. The least voters deserve is a ballot title that says so.”
Abel Maldonado, who served as lieutenant governor under Schwarzenegger and backed both 2010 reforms, staunchly supported the top-two primary as a response to a historic state government shutdown because of the failure of lawmakers to approve a balanced budget.
“Some of us thought that a complete open primary top two would create a system [that elects] people who were open-minded, pragmatic and had common sense,” he said. “It has happened in some races, but in other areas it has not.”
Maldonado said that he disagrees with returning to the prior system, in which political parties could opt to allow only voters affiliated with them to cast ballots in their primaries. But he said the current system ought to be tweaked, allowing voters to cast ballots for a candidate of any political party in a primary, with a candidate from each party moving onto the general election.
Schwarzenegger did not respond to a request for comment. But his prior comments, as well his efforts to end gerrymandering across the nation since leaving office, have made clear that his views have not changed.
“Of course the politicians want to undo reform that is good for the people and not for the politicians,” Schwarzenegger said in a statement earlier this year after the “Undo the Top Two” ballot measure was proposed. “They will always choose to move the goal posts instead of performing better.”
After California Democrats sought to redraw the state’s congressional districts last year, Schwarzenegger posted a picture of himself on X working out wearing a T-shirt that said “Terminate Gerrymandering,” a reference to one of his hit films.
Munger said he hoped groups he worked with to pass these reforms such as Common Cause and the California League of Women Voters would stay “true to their principles” and defend them when they “are under assault.”
“It was disappointing they stayed on the sidelines during last year’s fight over independent redistricting, and they should not do so going forward,” said Munger, who spent more than $30 million opposing the November ballot measure to suspend independent redistricting. “In order for the citizens to trust their government, they must have confidence that our elections are fair and free.”
Maldonado, who lauded the work of California’s independent redistricting commission, said he believes California Democrats will make the temporary pause of independent drawing of district boundaries permanent.
“We as Republicans have zero say in redistricting, and as much as I like to say this is what I like to have, the Democrats control supermajorities in both houses, and they get to choose whatever the hell they want,” he said. “The only way they’ll return it is by an initiative process with the will of the voters.”
He said he supports a national effort to create independent redistricting in every state, but believes it has no chance of passage.
“That would be great. It would be a step in the right direction. I think voters would have more confidence in politicians,” Maldonado said. “But, I mean, in this polarized era, this notion — think about it. The fox is building the henhouse for the chickens.”
Steve Soboroff leans back in a chair at his mayoral campaign headquarters in Sherman Oaks and ticks off the real estate deals that made him rich.
The auto parts store in Torrance: “Wonderful.” The Ralphs supermarket in Canoga Park: “A beauty.” And his favorite, a Sav-on Drugs in Mar Vista, the one he bought and resold for more than twice the price: “Enjoyed every bit.” He blows on his fingertips and buffs them on his chest.
“That’s how I’m going to run the city, too,” he says.
He calls himself a “wild man” in the world of strip malls. The 52-year-old landlord and broker built his fortune cutting deals with Mervyn’s, Office Depot, Pep Boys and scores of other retail chains sprawled across the Southland.
His sole ambition since college had been to make it big in real estate. But Mayor Richard J. Riordan stoked his political ambitions, making Soboroff his senior advisor, his parks commission president, his pit bull on school repairs, his trouble-shooter on the Staples Center sports arena.
Now, with Riordan’s blessing, Soboroff is running for mayor as a “problem solver, not a career politician.”
A similar pitch worked for Riordan, who sold himself to a city recovering from riots and recession as “tough enough to turn L.A. around.” For Soboroff, the question is whether the city, after eight years of social calm and prosperity, wants another multimillionaire Republican in charge at City Hall.
Dominating Soboroff’s campaign is his wealth–specifically, how much he has and how much he’s willing to spend. As of last week, he had vowed to put $687,000 of his own money into the race by the April 10 primary, well below what was expected but enough to remain competitive.
Soboroff is the only major contender for mayor who refused to live by the city’s voluntary spending limit of $2.2 million, a move that freed the other five to exceed it too. Rivals have accused him of trying to buy the election. He responds that as the only candidate seeking office for the first time, he must spend his own money “to level the playing field.”
He puts his net worth at less than $10 million, but won’t say how much less. He refuses to release his tax returns. Riordan, a far wealthier man, accepts $1 of the mayor’s $154,000 annual salary; Soboroff plans to take it all.
“I could use the money,” he said.
The Soboroffs live in a $3-million house overlooking the ocean in Pacific Palisades. It has seven bedrooms and a pool. A locked steel gate keeps strangers out of the neighborhood. On the guard shack is a sign: “Ridgewood Country Estates. A Private Community.”
The family’s half-million-dollar second home is in another gated community, the Indian Ridge Country Club near Palm Springs. Soboroff, a member of the club, golfs and relaxes by the pool. The club’s initiation fee is $52,000.
Soboroff, his wife, Patti, and their five children, ages 7 to 17, take frequent ski trips to Utah; he says they prefer “the places you dress down instead of dress up.” The seven of them have taken a safari in Kenya, snorkeled at the Great Barrier Reef, hiked in the Australian rain forest and toured London and Paris. In New York, they stay at the Plaza or the Pierre.
Soboroff’s hard-charging style helped him amass his wealth, but it has made him more than a few enemies in government. But he’s proud that they dislike him. It only reinforces his argument that he is an outsider–even if he is the incumbent’s hand-picked successor. The city, he argues, could use someone like him to rethink the basics, from crime to traffic.
“The left-turn signals– why do they need to be going on for two minutes at a time when there are no cars?” he asks. “Why aren’t they working on demand instead of on timers?”
Soboroff’s roots are in Chicago. His grandfather, Samuel Soboroff, arrived as a boy in the 1880s after the family fled Russia amid a pogrom. Around 1895, he opened a plant that made baseball caps and earmuffs for Sears. He passed the business along to his two sons, one of whom, Irving, was Soboroff’s father. By the time Soboroff was born in 1948, the plant on Chicago’s northwest side was thriving with 150 workers at sewing machines.
His family lived in Highland Park, Ill., an upper-middle-class suburb. He remembers being a shy, cross-eyed “klutz” of a boy. But already, he was an entrepreneur with a knack for self-promotion: He delivered eggs on his bike, and for advertising glued a picture of himself to an egg, placed it in an egg cup, snapped a photo and printed fliers. New customers got a free whisk.
He also sold homemade dog leashes.
“I wanted to have a few bucks,” he said.
Tough Times Prompt Family’s Move West
In the 1960s, the family hat business collapsed, a casualty of shifting fashion trends. The Soboroffs moved to Arkansas for six months as Irving tried–without success–to revive the firm with cheaper labor. His parents hoped for better fortunes in California, so when Soboroff was 16 the family moved to Woodland Hills, where Soboroff attended Taft High School. He ran track and joined the wrestling team, but 35 years later has nothing but scorn for Taft.
“All the kids were talking about was hubcaps, and how much they were going to spend on their car,” Soboroff said. “Let me tell you, they haven’t done anything to that school since I left. They haven’t emptied the trash.”
Tragedy struck the Soboroffs soon after their arrival in California. Steve’s older sister, Lucy, broke down with schizophrenia. It hit with the suddenness of an airplane crash, he said. For the rest of their lives, his parents would be consumed, emotionally and financially, by caring for her.
“It was quite a shock and quite a heartache,” said Soboroff’s aunt Eleanor Levy. “They did everything they could possibly do, but there’s only so much you can do. Very, very sad.”
Lucy has spent most of her adult life in mental institutions. She lives at a group home in Mar Vista. Soboroff and his younger sister, Amy Audino, take care of her, paying medical bills not covered by insurance. He goes on walks with her and takes her to lunch.
With the hat business gone, Soboroff’s mother, Evelyn, became the family breadwinner. She opened a custom linens shop in Beverly Hills that quickly took off. His father, who wore a suit to work every day, minded the books in the back room until he died in 1993.
Soboroff, after graduating from Taft, moved to Tucson to study finance at the University of Arizona. Vietnam War protests, the drug culture and sexual revolution were flourishing. But Soboroff followed his own path.
He volunteered as a mentor in the Big Brothers program. (He has been a Big Brothers leader ever since and is chairman emeritus of its Greater Los Angeles chapter.) He attended football games with his fraternity buddies, went to bed each night at 9 and kept his room tidy.
“He was immaculate,” said roommate Don Kain.
To break into real estate, he turned to Joseph Eichenbaum, a pioneer in shopping malls and a family friend. “What should I do to be like you?” he asked.
From Tucson, Soboroff sent him a plan for a mall with an Orange Julius, a pharmacy and two department stores. His reaction? “It’s lousy, but if you ever come to L.A., call me.”
Soboroff did. “I was going to make myself so important to this guy that he was going to adopt me,” Soboroff said.
His job was to lure tenants to the malls of Eichenbaum and his partner, developer Ben Weingart. Soboroff said they taught him “the psychology of deal-making,” an art he plans to apply as mayor.
“It’s bringing people together and letting them feel like they got something instead of feeling like they lost,” he said. “It’s not taking the last dime. It’s being open.”
But their protege was eager to move upward. To build his reputation and a network of investors, he organized a UCLA seminar on shopping malls. It worked. He met hundreds of players in real estate. Some provided leads that produced multimillion-dollar deals and paved the way for his independence.
In 1978, he opened Steven Soboroff & Co. in Westwood. The heart of the business was finding buildings that Kinney Shoes and other retail clients would lease for new stores. He got a commission on every lease. The business, now Soboroff Partners in Santa Monica and Encino, prospered as the number of clients expanded. Among the biggest are Circuit City and Orchard Supply Hardware.
From Broker to Landlord
Over the years, he has shifted the emphasis of his business from brokering to being a commercial landlord, in large part to give himself more time with his family.
“All you need is a mail slot to do that, because the checks come in,” he said.
Before long, he and his partners acquired retail properties in North Hollywood, Sun Valley, Buena Park, Fontana, West Covina, Sacramento, Tucson, Phoenix and Louisville, Ky.
Their showcase holding is the Cross Creek Shopping Center on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. Soboroff said it alone produced $120,000 of his income last year.
“In my niche, I’m a wild man,” he said. “I could turn on a dime. I would commit to something in 10 seconds.”
He says such traits would be useful in running the city. Yet the tactics used in business can sometimes produce, at the least, unwelcome publicity in politics.
In business, for example, Soboroff has been known to hold a grudge. For years, he resented a Tucson developer who refused to take his phone calls.
So Soboroff bought a lot that the developer needed to build a shopping mall. “I was basically standing in the way of progress,” he recalled. “It was nothing but revenge.”
In the end, Soboroff said, he sold his rival the lot, and they both made money.
He’s also willing to manipulate at times. He learned to stave off clashes with neighbors of his strip malls by slipping the word “preservation” into the the names of his holding companies. “Cross Creek Preservation Co.,” he said. “It works. It’s soft.” Neighbors figure “we’re preserving the creek.”
Soboroff’s career in real estate has not only made him wealthy, but also cushioned his move into politics. His friends in the industry have provided a large share of the $2.9 million raised by his campaign. Page after page of his finance reports list donations from developers, brokers, property managers and the like–California Home Builders, CB Richard Ellis and the Irvine Co. among them.
It was Soboroff’s real estate lawyer, Jeffrey L. Glassman, who steered him into the Riordan administration. Glassman, an attorney at the mayor’s firm, Riordan & McKinzie, recommended Soboroff for a City Hall appointment. Riordan, a former parks commission chief, had met Soboroff years before when Soboroff was raising money to fix up a park in Pacific Palisades. So, just after taking office in 1993, he named Soboroff to the city Harbor Commission.
Soboroff’s main assignment was to strike a deal with three railroads to allow construction of the Alameda Corridor, a freight rail artery linking the harbor and downtown.
He succeeded. The competing railroads agreed to share the line. Harbor colleagues say Soboroff’s talks with railroad executives were a key factor in removing a final obstacle to the $2.4-billion project, now under construction.
“He put on his Superman outfit and he made it happen,” Riordan said.
Making Some City Hall Enemies
Nothing else in his work for the mayor would seem so easy. When Riordan put him to work on Staples Center, Soboroff’s aggressive advocacy of the sports arena drew praise from the developers. But Soboroff made enemies of City Councilman Joel Wachs, a fellow mayoral candidate who crusaded against taxpayer subsidies of the arena, and Councilwoman Rita Walters, whose district is home to Staples Center.
“He thought he could come in and stampede folks,” Walters said. “He upset a lot of people in City Hall.” As it happens, Walters also chairs the council committee that oversees parks. So from 1994 until last month, he would need to work with her in his role as Recreation and Parks Commission president.
He left a bad impression. Walters said she found him rude and unpleasant, and she called his personality “explosive.”
Soboroff has been dogged by questions about his temperament, and at public events he has shown flashes of anger. But family, friends and co-workers deny that he has a bad temper. He is “not a bull in a china shop,” Riordan said.
As former parks commission president, Soboroff takes credit for renovating 200 parks and creating 153 community advisory boards. Park advocates applaud him for backing 30 agreements with the school district to open schoolyards for recreation on weekends and after school. Not enough, they say, but it’s a start.
They fault Soboroff–and Riordan–for doing little to acquire new parkland, especially in largely African American and Latino areas of the city with scarce open space. Overall, Soboroff says the park system is “grossly underfunded” and “grossly understaffed,” but promises no additional money as mayor. “It depends on what the other priorities are,” he said.
His most visible role under Riordan was as chairman of the school repair and construction oversight committee. It monitors spending of $2.4 billion in bonds that voters approved in 1997 under Proposition BB. For three years, Soboroff, whose children attend private schools, used the platform to bash the school bureaucracy.
The Los Angeles Unified School District “has no business in the school building business, and they prove it over and over again,” he said. “Without that oversight committee hanging there, this would have been an unmitigated disaster.” He championed more than 1,000 new repair projects after South-Central students and parents complained that their schools were getting shortchanged. “He took it on, and he was consistent until he delivered,” said Karen Bass, executive director of the Community Coalition, a South-Central advocacy group. “We were thrilled.”
Soboroff calls funding of the projects his biggest accomplishment on the school panel.
Soboroff also scored points with environmentalists for pushing a new policy of planting grass and trees in schoolyards instead of replacing cracked asphalt. How much greenery will actually get planted remains an open question.
To Soboroff, his leadership of the school panel illustrates his ability to get things done.
“I climbed 60% up an absolute slippery pole, with a whole lot of people sitting on the top of that pole pouring grease down it,” he said.
But his swaggering approach did not always work.
Fellow school committee members David Barulich and Michael B. Lehrer were impressed by Soboroff’s energy and enthusiasm. But Barulich said Soboroff’s mayoral aspirations got in the way of good judgment when he rammed through, with inadequate planning, a project to install school air-conditioners.
“He’s a guy who wants to make a deal happen,” Barulich said.
Lehrer, an architect, detected “well-meaning naivete” in Soboroff’s toughness with school officials bedeviled by project delays, contractor mix-ups and management turmoil. “Get-things-done and can-do sometimes can be too fast,” Lehrer said.
At school district headquarters, rancor toward Soboroff runs deep. Officials call him a bully who drove people out of their jobs when they resisted his will.
“He’s kind of an ask-questions-later person at times, and that would often rub district officials the wrong way,” said Erik Nasarenko, a former district spokesman.
Emulating Riordan’s Formula for Success
Other rich businessmen who turned to politics have faced similar criticism. Whereas Riordan–in an extraordinarily different political climate–proved that the transition is possible, it is far more common for candidacies like Soboroff’s to fail.
As much as he can, he is mimicking Riordan. His appeal is aimed at the same white Republicans, San Fernando Valley residents and Jewish moderates who formed the mayor’s base. He has made a point of courting Latino and African American voters, but it has been a tough sell. He is the only major candidate for mayor committed to fighting the federal court consent decree mandating Los Angeles Police Department reforms to curb police misconduct. The city must “stop fighting cops” and “start fighting crime,” he says. He also favors splitting the school district into neighborhood districts–a popular idea in the Valley, even if it would be outside his mayoral authority.
Soboroff says it never occurred to him to run for mayor until Riordan asked a few years ago if he might be interested. At times, his inexperience shows.
Over lunch downtown, he struggled with questions on abortion. First, he said teenagers should be required to notify parents before getting one. Should the government fund abortions for women who can’t afford them? “I would probably prefer not.” A moment later, he wobbled. “I just haven’t taken it to the different levels in my own thinking, and the realities of it haven’t hit me.”
The next day, he called to clarify: He opposes parental notification requirements and favors public funding of abortions for the poor.
Another time, Soboroff boasted at an environmental forum of driving an electric car. He needled the other candidates for their “gas guzzlers.”
“You guys talk the talk. I walk the walk,” he said. The next day, he pulled up to a restaurant on Ventura Boulevard in his other car, a gas-guzzling Ford Expedition.
“I’ve got five kids,” he said later with a shrug. “What am I supposed to do? I’ve got to drive them around.”
But to Soboroff, inexperience in politics is not a failing; it’s his calling card. Thirty years in real estate and eight in the Riordan administration, he argues, have trained him to run Los Angeles.
“I’m not doing this because I’m out of work,” he said. “I’m not doing it as a career politician who’s only been in politics. I’m doing it as someone who has a balance.”
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
Steve Soboroff
* Born: Aug. 31, 1948, in Chicago.
* Education: University of Arizona, bachelor of science and master of science in finance, insurance and real estate.
* Personal: Married to Patti Soboroff. Five children: Jacob, 17, Miles, 15, Molly, 13, Hannah, 12, and Leah, 7.
* Party: Republican
* Career: Senior advisor to Mayor Richard Riordan, 1996-2000; Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Commission chairman, 1994-2001; Proposition BB Blue Ribbon Citizens Oversight Committee chairman, 1997-2000; Harbor Commission chairman, 1993-94; Soboroff Partners, managing partner, 1978-present; J.K. Eichenbaum Associates, 1971-78.
* Strategy: Soboroff casts himself as a political outsider in the mold of Riordan, hoping to capture–and expand upon–the mayor’s base of white Republican, San Fernando Valley and Jewish voters. He emphasizes proposals to step up anti-gang programs, break up the Los Angeles Unified School District and ban road construction on major arteries during rush hours.
*
About This Series
The Times today presents the third of six profiles of the major candidates for mayor. The articles will appear in the order in which the candidates will appear on the ballot.
‘Here’s a more natural flowing version of that section…’
Canadian politician Bill Oliver has gone viral after he appeared to accidentally read AI-generated editing instructions aloud, not once, but twice, during a speech to lawmakers in early June.
Published On 28 Jul 202628 Jul 2026
Share
Police say a possible political motive is under investigation in the killing of the ex-minister.
Published On 20 Jul 202620 Jul 2026
Prosecutors in the United Kingdom have charged a 28-year-old man with the murder of Ann Widdecombe, a former government minister and member of the far-right Reform UK party.
Joshua Kerry was charged on Monday and is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates Court in London on Tuesday, the Crown Prosecution Service said.
list of 3 itemsend of list
Widdecombe, 78, was found dead at her home near Dartmoor National Park in southwest England on July 9, a day after she missed a television interview. Police said she had been deliberately targeted but did not disclose how she died, citing only “serious injuries”.
Kerry, who is from Rotherham in northern England, was arrested on July 11. He was initially held on suspicion of murder until evidence uncovered while he was in custody led to his additional arrest on “terror” charges.
National Counterterrorism Policing head Laurence Taylor said that the exact motive was still being established.
“Given [Widdecombe’s] profile and the targeted nature of the attack, determining the motivation, including any possible political motivation, remains an active avenue of investigation,” Taylor said.
Widdecombe served as a Conservative member of parliament from 1987 until 2010 and was known for her right-wing political stances.
She later joined the Brexit Party, winning a seat in the European Parliament, and moved to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party after the UK left the European Union.
The incident adds to mounting concerns over political violence in the UK. The past decade has seen the murders of two sitting members of parliament. Labour’s Jo Cox, shot and stabbed in 2016 by a far-right nationalist, and Conservative David Amess, stabbed to death in 2021 by a man inspired by ISIL (ISIS).
NEW YORK — The sudden death of Sen. Lindsey Graham, a top ally of President Trump and one of Washington’s best-known politicians, is renewing focus on the country’s aging lawmakers.
Graham, a South Carolina Republican who had turned 71 just two days before dying on Saturday, was far younger than many of his Senate colleagues and appeared to have been in good health. He suffered a tear in his aorta, according to a preliminary report from the medical examiner.
It was the second time in less than a month that emergency personnel were dispatched to the home of a U.S. senator. In early June, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former Republican Senate leader, was hospitalized for undisclosed reasons.
After weeks of increasingly dire speculation about his health, he finally revealed on Sunday that he had fallen and suffered from mild pneumonia. He released a photo, complete with a copy of the day’s newspaper.
Graham’s death and McConnell’s hospitalization have come amid an ongoing reckoning about the nation’s aging leaders, two years after the disastrous presidential debate that sparked widespread panic among Democrats about then-81-year-old President Biden’s capacities and accusations of a cover-up.
Some politicians have continued to obscure details about their health challenges, asking for privacy despite their public positions, and fueling conspiracy theories.
“I think we need some transparency,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said Monday. “I wish Sen. McConnell and his team would have done that earlier. I think it would have resolved a lot of questions.”
McConnell, who at 84 is only the third-oldest member of the Senate, was admitted to the hospital on June 14 with barely any explanation. Aides said he was “receiving excellent care” but offered no details about his condition.
The dearth of information fueled a wave of speculation about his prognosis, with Laura Loomer, a Trump ally and conspiracy theorist, claiming on social media that a “high level source close to the White House” had told her he was “officially brain dead.”
But McConnell, who will retire from Congress at the end of January after serving as the longest-ever Senate leader, said in a statement that he is on the mend. He said a fall had led to his hospitalization and that he was “briefly unconscious” and treated for mild pneumonia.
“You all know how folks of my generation often hesitate to share the vulnerability that comes with growing older,” he said. “Even in the public eye, I feel that same instinct — I can’t help it.”
That wasn’t enough to put speculation to rest. On social media, many refused to believe the veracity of a photo his office released that included the front page of the sports section of the Washington Post.
Conspiracy theories about McConnell’s health are “a symptom of our times,” said Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican who is also from McConnell’s home state of Kentucky. Paul said people should “give him a break.”
“People think they have a right to know everyone’s medical problems,” he said, “but I don’t know, where does it begin and where does it end?”
The oldest person ever elected president, at age 78, has long offered only the rosiest picture of his health.
“Everything checked out PERFECTLY,” he boasted after his last physical in May, adding that he took yet another cognitive test aimed at detecting early dementia and has “aced them all.”
His past medical reports have been criticized for offering limited detail and including statistics that some health professionals have viewed with skepticism.
When he first ran for president in 2016, Trump declined to release his health records, breaking with longtime precedent. He instead offered a four-paragraph note from his doctor declaring that he would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), White House doctor during Trump’s first term, later drew headlines when he extolled the president’s “incredibly good genes.”
When he was infected with COVID-19 in the midst of his 2020 reelection campaign, Trump’s doctors and aides withheld key details of his treatment and tried to downplay the severity of his illness.
And after an attempted assassination at a Pennsylvania rally, Trump aides kept the public in the dark for days, declining to discuss the extent of his injuries or release medical records after assuring he was “fine.”
The obfuscation extends beyond the septuagenarian and octogenarian set. New Jersey Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. spent four months missing without explanation before he finally disclosed late last month that he had been in treatment for depression.
He said in a brief floor speech after his return that he had remained silent about his condition because he is a “private person by nature.”
He won an uncontested primary during his absence, despite missing more than 100 votes in the House, and is running for reelection.
The approach stood in contrast to Sen. John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat, who disclosed his hospitalization for clinical depression the day after he was admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for treatment. He also suffered a stroke while running for office.
Biden’s halting gait, frail appearance and frequent verbal stumbles eventually doomed his 2024 reelection campaign. After a debate in which he frequently lost his train of thought, he chose to withdraw from the race, sparking an unprecedented swap at the top of the Democratic ticket that ultimately paved the way for Trump’s return to office.
Many others have refused to retire. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, died in office in 2023 at the age of 90, after years of declining health, including a bout of shingles. Though she returned to the Senate after her illness, she appeared frail and confused at times. It was later revealed that her office had failed to disclose in real time that she had contracted encephalitis while recovering.
Longtime Republican Rep. Kay Granger of Texas spent the final months of her more than two decades in Congress, when she was in her early 80s, suffering from what her office called “unforeseen health challenges” that made travel to Washington difficult.
Eleanor Holmes Norton, 89, the longtime House delegate for the District of Columbia, announced earlier this year that she would not run for reelection amid questions about her competency.
Colvin writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.
Politician Ann Widdecombe was found dead at her home with serious injuries, with police confirming a murder investigation is underway.
Politicians from across the political spectrum have paid tribute to the former Conservative MP turned Reform UK spokesperson, expressing shock and sadness over her death.
Published On 11 Jul 202611 Jul 2026
Share
SACRAMENTO — The man who brought California the top-two open primary now thinks it needs a drastic overhaul. In fact, he says the “top-two” part should be trashed.
Former state Sen. Abel Maldonado advocates returning to a “top-one” system where the winning vote-getter in each recognized political party — major or minor — qualifies for the November general election.
But he’d keep the “open” part that allows citizens to vote for any candidate on the state ballot, regardless of party.
Maldonado says he crafted the current system 16 years ago believing it would produce “pragmatic and commonsense” officeholders. But that has failed, he acknowledges.
The ex-politician, a Republican centrist who runs a Santa Maria farm operation, is one of several people from both major parties who contend the top-two system should be significantly altered or eliminated.
The movement gained momentum during the recent California primary. And I’ve got some other suggestions for reform that sprang from that election experience:
A solution: Quadruple both the current $4,900 candidate filing fee and the alternative collection of 6,000 voter signatures. That might dissuade frivolous “candidacies.”
George Skelton and Michael Wilner cover the insights, legislation, players and politics you need to know. In your inbox Monday and Thursday mornings.
By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Service, which include arbitration and a class action waiver. You agree that we and our third-party vendors may collect and use your information, including through cookies, pixels and similar technologies, for the purposes set forth in our Privacy Policy such as personalizing your experience and ads.
“It was disgusting. Horrible,” said Assemblymember Gail Pellerin (D-Santa Cruz), chairwoman of the Assembly Elections Committee and a member of the Legislative Jewish Caucus. She’s pushing legislation to prohibit such language in the guide.
You’d think that the secretary of state’s office would have burned the crud without needing a new law, but somebody dropped the ball.
If another governor did ever depart — many fantasize about being elected president — the job could be assumed by, perhaps, the attorney general.
But don’t expect any elective office ever to be eliminated by politicians. They desperately protect them as potential landing spots.
Back to the top-two open primary.
Maldonado jockeyed California’s oft-called jungle primary system onto the 2010 ballot as part of a late-night budget and tax deal. The senator agreed to vote for a gridlocked state budget and a hefty tax hike in exchange for legislative approval of the ballot measure.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pushed hard for the proposition and voters passed it.
Voters, regardless of party affiliation, can vote for any candidate. And the top two vote-getters, regardless of their party, advance to the general election.
The idea was that candidates would be forced to appeal to centrist voters — not just party idealogues — and more moderates would be elected.
“Can you seriously say that the top-two system has led to more moderation? No, that’s asinine,” asserts Republican Assemblymember Carl DeMaio of San Diego, who strongly supports returning to party nominations.
A few additional moderates have been elected to the Legislature, and some districts have become more competitive. But that’s mainly because of independent, nonpartisan redistricting, according to Eric McGhee, an elections expert at the Public Policy Institute of California.
Actually, the electorate has become so polarized in recent years — particularly during the Trump era — that very few centrist voters seem to be left.
The move toward abolishing or severely reshaping the primary system is nonpartisan.
Democrat Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, favors dumping the top-two.
For one thing, she says, there was too much focus this spring on whether any Democratic gubernatorial candidate would qualify for the November ballot. Fear spread that so many Democrats were running that they’d splinter the party vote and two Republicans would finish first and second.
She wanted to hear less talk about the horse race and more debate over substantive issues.
“People were obsessing about a Democratic shutout,” Gonzalez said. “And people were waiting until the last minute to fill out their ballot because they wanted to vote for the candidate who was ahead to make sure someone made the top two. We didn’t have a policy discussion.”
A top-two problem from the beginning has been that one party, usually the GOP, always gets locked out of some legislative or congressional elections.
In November, there’ll be eight congressional races with only Democrats running and one contest with just Republican candidates. And no general election write-ins are allowed.
That’s unfair to voters. They deserve a clear ideological choice.
Democratic consultant Steve Maviglio is pushing a proposed ballot initiative to wipe out the top-two. “It hasn’t delivered what it promised,” he argues.
Agreed. We gave it a try and it didn’t work out. Time to try something new–like Maldonado’s hybrid idea.
The must-read: Behested payments aren’t illegal, but they are a problem. Especially for Newsom
Money for nothing: Billionaire tax proposal faces hurdles as it moves closer to November ballot
The L.A. Times Special: People are betting on elections in prediction markets. Congress is watching
Until next week,
George Skelton
—
Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here to get it in your inbox.
After Gov. Gavin Newsom announced this week that the U.S. Department of Justice may be investigating his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, media and pundits pounced on millions in charity payments he has solicited for nonprofits, including ones she is involved in.
Those donations, known as “behested payments,” aren’t illegal in California, but, long before Newsom started asking for them, many have found them unsavory — with good cause. A behest, after all, is by definition a command or at least a strong suggestion.
Anytime a politician is commanding money, regardless of the purpose, there is at least the appearance that the giver — Meta, Google, Blue Shield for example — may expect something in return.
It may seem absurd that the Trump administration could be investigating Newsom for questionable ethics, when Trump has hawked everything from crypto-coins to sneakers from the Oval Office. But the problem Newsom now faces is that behested payments are actually skeevy, and legal or not, they make an excellent target for pummeling the presidential contender. Especially because some of the charities are tied to his wife.
“The Newsom case has blown it wide open, but this has been an issue for years,” Sean McMorris told me. He’s the transparency, ethics and accountability program manager at Common Cause, a nonpartisan organization that has been raising alarms over behested payments for more than a decade.
McMorris said that while these payments don’t violate any laws, they are “ripe for abuse” because companies and people likely aren’t ponying up cash just to be good citizens. If you or I called up PG&E and asked them to give a few million to our favorite cause, I doubt we’d have much luck, even if it involved kittens, puppies or small children in need.
The entire system, McMorris points out, “doesn’t really work unless you’re shaking down people who you know need things from you as a politician.”
Jerry Brown used behested payments to get millions for charter schools he supported. Lesser luminaries such as mayors (including Antonio Villaraigosa, Eric Garcetti and Karen Bass, just to name the last three in L.A.) have used them for all kinds of stuff from jobs programs to fixing up official residences.
And it’s far from a Democratic thing. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, used them to pay for travel and after-school programs. Republican James Gallagher, who recently won a congressional seat, used them to fund computers for schools while he was in the state Legislature. Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones has raised millions, including helping to get $800,000 in donations to fund a replica of a historic ship for the maritime museum in his San Diego district.
Trump himself could be considered king of behested payments, with his corporate-paid ballroom and birthday bash.
Literally, folks, find me a politician with an itty-bitty bit of clout, and I’ll show you a trail of behested payments stretching through their pet projects. For that reason alone, it’s unlikely that California legislators will take any action to curb them, especially now when doing so would appear as a criticism to Newsom and Democrats in general.
And, to be fair, behested payments can do a lot of good. Newsom supercharged behested payments during the pandemic, raising hundreds of millions for programs to get Californians through that social disaster.
For that reason and others, not all experts find them terribly troubling. Jessica Levinson, a Loyola Law School professor with an expertise in election and governance issues, points out that money in politics is nothing new and at least behested payments are (mostly) required to be acknowledged. Anything over $5,000 and the politician has to report it to the California Fair Political Practices Commission, which keeps a public database.
That makes behested payments far more transparent than, say, dark money donations to a mysterious political action committee. And at least the money is going to a good cause, be it historical ships or computers for kids.
“I actually don’t think that they’re the evil mechanism that other people do,” Levinson said. “I mean, my feeling is like, let’s live in reality, right? People are going to want to give as much money to or close to powerful people as possible, and I think that we have a choice between money going to independent expenditure groups or political committees or going to nonprofits.”
So behested payments in and of themselves might not be much of a headache for Newsom. But some of the payments Newsom solicited went to nonprofits Siebel Newsom is involved with, and which have paid her a salary. That proximity is uncomfortable for many of us. There is no distinction for a behest given to a charity with direct ties to the politician, but maybe there should be.
Still, salaries being paid by behested payments also aren’t illegal, and it’s been done before, even by Newsom. Villaraigosa was paid through behested funds for his work as the state “infrastructure czar” back in 2022. Bass considered paying former L.A. Police Commissioner Steve Soboroff through behested-funded nonprofits for his work after the recent fires before public scrutiny pushed him to forgo the funds.
None of that is to say the Newsoms are off the hook in a federal investigation. Newsom’s office said that along with the FBI, agents from the IRS have been knocking on doors and asking questions. All of us — probably the Newsoms included — will just have to wait to see if the fine-tooth combs of the feds pick up any dirt.
If there is any lesson to be learned at this point, it’s about ambition and hubris. Behested payments are easy money for California politicians and business as usual — everyone does it. But maybe they shouldn’t. It’s not black or white.
Newsom is learning quickly what it means to have a powerful enemy like Trump, one who has shown he will use the full power of the American government for his own purposes. One who can tip the scales and slide white to gray and gray to felony.
Federal investigators do not like to come up empty-handed, and the wink-wink nature of behested payments creates just that kind of ambiguity that provides reasonable cause for investigation — a self-inflicted vulnerability that surely has every California politician nervous.