If I were a voter in the city of Los Angeles — which I am not, residing in Pasadena — I would have voted for Adam Miller for mayor in the June primary.
Which is loser talk, which is like saying, “If I were a voter in the state of California, I would have voted for Matt Mahan for governor.”
Adam Miller and Matt Mahan are political moderates, registered as Democrats but really non-partisan centrist iconoclasts, like your correspondent.
Mahan got about 4.5% of the vote for governor in the California primary. Miller got about 3.5% of the vote in the Los Angeles mayoral primary.
From our editorial board’s endorsement of Miller: “Drawing from his private sector background, Miller, a lifelong Democrat, believes the key to saving L.A. is setting clear objectives and taking the necessary steps to achieve them. His practical approach might be best summed up in his policy platform on the city’s deteriorating streets: ‘A city that cannot fill a pothole in a reasonable timeframe cannot ask its residents to trust it with anything more ambitious. Getting the basics right is not a low priority. It is the foundation everything else is built on.’ … When it comes to both public safety and government in general, his message is simple: Bring L.A. into the 21st century. That means funding the police and fire departments like they’re actual priorities, leveraging technology to streamline government functions and holding city contractors and bureaucracies accountable.”
This, apparently, is crazy talk, at least to voters drawn to the bright, shiny objects of an incumbent mayor with good elected service bona fides in Congress but zero executive experience, which showed in that deer-in-the-headlights moment when she returned from overseas during the Palisades fire and couldn’t answer a question, from which she will never recover, or a City Council member at least formerly associated with the democratic socialist movement who has a brilliant academic record but zero executive experience.
So Karen Bass and Nithya Raman will face off in November to become the next mayor of L.A. and, I know, the really good news is that we don’t have to hear the truly idiotic babbling of former candidate Spencer Pratt for the next five months. We’re all really sorry he lost his house in the fire. So did a lot of people. Delusional MAGA raving is not the answer to that problem.
Given the choice between a traditional liberal Democrat and a newfangled left-wing Democrat, most of the Pratt voters will likely sit this one out in the fall.
But the rest of ordinary Angelenos will cast a vote for one of the two remaining serious contenders, imperfect though they may be. All of us are imperfect. Voters still have to make choices between fallible human beings.
There is plenty of time for Bass and Raman to make their cases. But if I moved down the street into Eagle Rock, and I were voting today, I’d vote for Raman, even if I disagree with some of the positions she’s taken in the past.
I’m a sucker for smart. And, out of fashion though it may be these days, I’m a sucker for academic excellence.
Matt Mahan went to Harvard. So did Nithya Raman, where she majored in political theory. She then moved to another Cambridge campus and took a master’s degree in urban planning at MIT. Urban planning is what a mayor does. I’m impressed.
You know what else I’m impressed with? Showing up. In our editorial board meeting with her, Raman not only showed up; she’d done her homework. You’d be surprised how many candidates do not. She clearly had sussed out the frequently libertarian leanings of the board. She lamented the many bureaucratic hurdles small L.A. businesses have to leap. She told us the city’s budget problems were crazily exacerbated by huge raises granted to the LAPD.
Mayor Bass blew us off. Offered countless different times and dates to meet with the only daily in Los Angeles that still makes endorsements, she never showed. At this point, I’ll bet Raman is L.A.’s next mayor.
Larry Wilson is on the editorial board of the Southern California News Group.