My California & LA Primary Endorsements
Tuesday, June 7th is Election Day.
This Tuesday is Election Day, and while last election saw record turnout, this time turnout has been dismal—especially among younger voters. Only 6% of voters 18-34 (a category that regrettably no longer includes me) voted by the day before election day.
While turnout is often down in years without a presidential election, it’s still surprising it’s so low even among widespread consternation about homelessness and despite Rick Caruso all but placing election flyers under your pillow at night.
But the relative lack of attention may actually make it a more important election: the lower the turnout, the more impactful your vote.
Nonetheless, I confess I am putting this voter guide out very late. The ballot has a ton of choices on it to go through, and critical obligations like fatherhood, volunteering, and my unfortunate tendency to write multiple-page justifications for my choice for insurance commissioner have bogged my process down. So I deleted a bunch of what I wrote and replaced it with shorter summaries to get it this out while it can still potentially be helpful.
I also want to emphasize that voting for any office should be seen as optional. If you just want to vote for mayor, or mayor and city council and sheriff, that is super valuable, doesn’t take long, and covers most of the valuable and actively contested races.
Now, this voter guide will have three sections:
A simple list of my choices for quick reference.
An explanation of my overall priorities.
My brief rationale for each choice.
A simple list of all my choices (or: Every Endorsement Everywhere All At Once)
State
Governor - Newsom
Lt. Governor - Eleni Kounalakis
Senate - Padilla (short term and full term)
Secretary of State - Shirley Weber
Controller - Ron Galperin
Treasurer - Fiona Ma
Attorney General - Rob Bonta
Insurance Commissioner - Marc Levine
House of Representatives (CA-30) - Brad Sherman
LA County
Superintendent of Public Instruction - Marco Amaral
Board of Equalization - Tony Vazquez
Supervisor - Lindsey Horvath
Assessor - Jeffrey Prang
Sheriff - Robert Luna
Judges - I just use the LA Times guide. I don’t think these should be elected positions, as I don’t have the expertise in any form to evaluate them. But I’ve spent time with a fair amount of LA Times journalists and found them to be pretty smart and thoughtful and trust that at a minimum they can weed out totally unqualified people running for fun. It’s also reasonable just to leave these blank.
LA Area State Offices (in West LA where I live)
State Senate - Toby Muresianu (Ben Allen is running unopposed so I wrote myself in)
State Assembly - Jacqui Irwin
LA City
Mayor - Karen Bass
City Council (CD1) - Gil Cedillo
City Council (CD3) - Bob Blumenfield
City Council (CD5) - Scott Epstein
City Council (CD7) - Monica Rodriguez
City Council (CD9) - Dulce Vasquez
City Council (CD11) - Erin Darling
City Council (CD13) - Kate Pynoos
City Council (CD15) - Bryant Odega
City Attorney - Gil Faisal
Controller - Kenneth Mejia
LAUSD Board of Trustees - Nick Melvoin
Measure BB - No
My Perspective
The housing and homelessness crises are the biggest problems in LA and cause a huge amount of California’s dysfunction, if you haven’t heard me saying this for years. Renters are paying huge chunks of their salary to landlords. Families can’t afford to live here, services like trash pick-up and transit are suffering as essential workers are priced out. Overcrowded housing led to thousands of deaths from COVID-19. More people are living in their cars, and rates of homelessness and displacement are unconscionable. People driving further away from job centers to find housing they can afford causes huge amounts of traffic and may cause us to miss our climate goals.
The reason for this is not mysterious. For decades, homeowner associations and town governments severely restricted the amount of housing, especially cheap forms of it, that could be built nearby. 75% of California’s residential land became reserved only for detached houses with large yards. This successfully drove up their property values and preserved the look of their neighborhood simply by steadily pushing the less affluent further and further away. Now a house costs nearly a million dollars on average, the city’s back is breaking under the strain of pandering to a small cadre of vocal homeowners who live in the largest American city within 2,000 miles who treat looking at an apartment building (or not having their home appreciate like a hedge fund) as an unimaginable tragedy.I think our housing and environmental crises demand changing our city fast. A big red flag for me is candidates who focus on “community led processes” that end up placing vital infrastructure works in the hands of whoever shows up to obscure four hour community meetings on Tuesday nights. It’s basically the equivalent of handing veto power to the facebook comments section you see on every local news article.
I’ve spent the last several years going to these meetings, and I really want to emphasize that it is neither democratic nor effective and they are an idea that needs to die, no matter where you are on the political spectrum.
If you a liberal against voter suppression and the filibuster, you should realize that it’s not democratic to have 0.01% of the electorate who has the free time to jump through incredibly inconvenient hoops about obscure issues to vote down desperately needed infrastructure—and that trying to get consensus among a group of unelected neighborhood kooks is a bad way to govern.
If you are a conservative who wants efficient government, you should recognize it’s a complete waste of time to have 3 years of cumbersome legal processes and thousands of pages of paperwork funded by the taxpayer in order to produce results that are often worse than the initial one.
If you are a leftist who wants big government, you should recognize that government is never going to do anything large in scale handcuffed by this process. You can’t both eat the rich and allow them to block duplexes in their neighborhood because of concerns about their views.
Rationale for positions
State
Governor - Newsom
Basically uncontested.
Lt. Governor - Eleni Kounalakis
Basically uncontested.
Senate - Padilla (short term and full term)
Heavy favorite, has done a good job.
Secretary of State - Shirley Weber
Veteran incumbent, by far the most qualified candidate.
Controller - Ron Galperin
He did a good job as LA city controller in exposing the $700,000 per unit LA was paying for homeless housing due to bloat and inefficiency. Lanhee Chen is a respected Stanford professor often on KCRW as well as a (non-Trumpy) Republican who was endorsed by the LA Times on the grounds of his independence. This is a justifiable choice, but Galperin’s experience and track record sway me to vote for him.
Treasurer - Fiona Ma
Incumbent and most experienced candidate.
Attorney General - Rob Bonta
Has taken the initiative in loudly going after scofflaw cities who try to evade their legal obligations to allow new housing.
Insurance Commissioner - Marc Levine
The incumbent, Lara, is mired in scandal after taking large campaign donations from the companies he was supposed to be regulating. And given that incumbent Insurance Commissioner campaigns aren’t exactly splashy media affairs, I’m guessing “campaign donations” just means “bribes.”
House of Representatives (CA-30) - Brad Sherman
Uninspiring but qualified incumbent.
LA County
Superintendent of Public Instruction - Marco Amaral
The current official, Tony Thurmond, is caught up in scandal after hiring friends and allegedly fostering a toxic workplace. He is still likely to win without facing any imposing challengers, and in the end the role is not hugely powerful. Of his challengers, Amaral - who favors raising teacher salaries to a $70k minimum - seems the most qualified, and I agree that raising teacher salaries would pay dividends in economic productivity and quality of life across the millions of Californians in public schools.
Board of Equalization - Tony Vazquez
A scandal-prone former Santa Monica politician, nonetheless the most reasonable platform of three bad choices.
Supervisor - Lindsey Horvath
A smart, detail-oriented candidate endorsed by a ton of good organizations and officeholders—from the LA Times to Abundant Housing LA to Planned Parenthood.
Assessor - Jeffrey Prang
Has done a good job in a low-profile and scandal prone office after is predecessor was forced out.
Sheriff - Robert Luna -
Villanueva is an absolute disaster: ignoring the gangs the department is rife with, failing to enforce mask and vaccine mandates countywide, having his resignation demanded by the county, etc. The two best candidates to succeed him are Eric Strong, who’s been a strong voice for change within the department, and Robert Luna, who was well-respected as a police chief in Long Beach and presided over declines in crime, use-of-force complaints and police shootings. I think we could benefit from his experience and history of helping improve things.
Judges
I just use the LA Times guide. I don’t think these should be elected positions, as I don’t have the expertise in any form to evaluate them. But I’ve spent time with a fair amount of LA Times journalists and found them to be pretty smart and thoughtful and trust that at a minimum they can weed out totally unqualified people running for fun. It’s also reasonable just to leave these blank.
LA Area State Offices
State Senate (26th district) - Toby Muresianu
Ben Allen is running unopposed, so I wrote myself in. I like all my ideas!
State Assembly - Jacqui Irwin
Incumbent running basically unopposed.
LA City
Mayor - Karen Bass
Karen Bass has decades of experience working at all levels of government, from local to state to federal. This will be a big asset to wrangling the assets at all levels needed to address our current crises. She also is a person I trust not to make inhumane decisions when it comes to the homelessness crisis front and center in our politics.
That said, I understand the appeal Rick Caruso has for many. Bass is the sort of qualified Democratic veteran who staffs offices all over City Hall—look no further than our current mayor, Eric Garcetti. They are the sorts of people who have driven us into this crisis, so I understand the desire to roll the dice. Rick Caruso also has legitimately built a lot of housing and successful, walkable communities in LA (The Grove, Americana at Brand, etc) and has good ideas for reforming the sinkhole of process and building requirements that has made it de facto impossible to build inexpensive forms of housing in LA even independently of widespread apartment bans. He has also promised to invoke emergency powers and put homeless shelters in all neighborhoods, overriding the NIMBYism that prevented progressive efforts that prevented many needed shelters on the Westside.
However, he also consistently fearmongers about crime and criminal justice reform. Crime is clearly bad and needs to be reduced, but it’s just false that LA’s crime can be blamed on the mild criminal justice reforms that have been passed. Cities across the country, including ones run by conservatives at all levels of government like Jacksonville or red counties in California itself, have also seen surges in similar kinds of crime (e.g. murder after surges in gun ownership during the pandemic)—while many types of property crime are still near historical lows. And for the record, this isn’t just coming from an ideological position—I regularly go to LAPD briefings at local community meetings and the officers are far less scared than the leadership or NextDoor crowd. Vilified laws that are blamed as enabling mass theft are actually more lenient in states like Georgia.
Ultimately his parroting of misinformation is a nonstarter for me, and that position is reinforced by his plans to immediately force people into congregate shelters, which I fear is likely to result in covid outbreaks and deaths. While I think comparisons to Trump are not entirely fair - Caruso is actually smart and has produced legitimately good projects - his stance on crime heavily evokes Trump’s “American Carnage” and “Law and Order” speeches and do not give me any faith that he will hold police accountable for abuses, let alone preside over a humane and effective justice system. He also plainly does not care about public transit at a time when we have to take bold action to make our notoriously car-choked and polluted city sustainable.
City Council (CD1) - Gil Cedillo
He built the most affordable housing of any district and was the only city council member who voted against formal opposition to state bills permitting more housing (SB9 and 10). Eunice Hernandez, his challenger, is much better on transportation and the environment, but is also embracing untrue ideas that new unsubsidized housing inflates rents and is pushing for even more community review of projects.
City Council (CD3) - Bob Blumenfield
He’s nothing special, but his only opponent is a basically a walking NextDoor rant.
City Council (CD5) - Scott Epstein
Scott is a really wonderful, dedicated advocate for better transportation and housing who I’ve volunteered for. Jimmy Bilbarz also has a decent, similar platform, but Scott has a longer track record of public service and I know him to be very hardworking. Sam Yebri and Katy Yaroslavsky are both classic NIMBYs; Yebri is pretty conservative, and Yaroslavsky is a typical “neighborhood character concerns” wealthy liberal who is the daughter-in-law of Zev Yaroslavsky—a former councilmember who has probably done more than anyone to destroy Los Angeles through anti-housing legislation like Prop U (which banned much housing on commercial streets and ushered in the era of generic strip malls and skyrocketing rents). While they aren’t the same person, neither he nor her has shown any remorse for these policies.
City Council (CD7) - Monica Rodriguez
Fine, nothing special but better than her opponents.
City Council (CD9) - Dulce Vasquez
Dulce is a wonderful candidate. She’s very pro-housing and environment and is running against an incumbent who has more or less been a seat-warmer.
City Council (CD11) - Erin Darling
Erin is another candidate I’ve volunteered for. He’s a tenants rights attorney who was drafted into running after the surprise announcement that Mike Bonin, the incumbent, was not going to seek re-election. He’s thoughtful and of all the likely candidates has the most concern for the housing crisis, sustainability, and humane values: most of the other candidates are running on promises to crack down on crime and push out homelessness without doing much to provide supportive housing or housing overall. Erin is still new to politics and developing his positions, but has been endorsed by the LA Times and other leading elected officials because of his integrity and long record of serving the less fortunate.
City Council (CD13) - Kate Pynoos
Kate is another excellent candidate. She has a very thoughtful, detailed housing plan and is running against an incumbent—Mitch O’Farrell—who is a poster child for the policy of pushing homeless people from area to area without real housing available for them.
City Council (CD15) - Bryant Odega
Bryant is very focused on renters rights, which are obviously a major factor in stopping the immediate pricing out of people from their communities. He also supports housing for all, which is a key goal. To accomplish this, though, he leans more heavily on ideas like “community land trusts,” a form of co-op which is a nice but niche solution. I would like to see more reckoning with what the scale of creating enough housing for all who want to live looks like and how we can feasibly enable this quickly—without discussing things like zoning or permitting or the unit cost of subsidized housing, it’s hard to imagine how we achieve it. His opponent is a classic mail-it-in suburban LA NIMBY incumbent who hasn’t been a big presence on council.
City Attorney - Gil Faisal
While fears of crime have taken the front seat to police reform, I think it’s important to have a voice committed to holding police accountable. Gil is boldly running on that promise even in a potentially unfavorable environment. He has earned my vote.
Controller - Kenneth Mejia
Kenneth Mejia has been a breath of fresh air - he’s a young candidate running for Controller, whose job it is to inform the public about government finances. He hasn’t waited to do this: releasing good, effective explainer videos on social media and even in billboards. Meanwhile, the institutional favorite—Paul Koretz—is a classic insider who has opposed new housing and even street beautification and bike lane projects at every turn.
LAUSD Board of Trustees - Nick Melvoin
Nick is an incumbent who is perfectly qualified. I think he defers too much to wealthy neighborhood groups on issues like bussing programs. However, he’s competent and his opponents aren’t similarly qualified.
Measure BB - No
This is a measure that allows LA City to offer preference in contracts to businesses based in LA. It sounds good, but often these types of arrangements end up leading to governments overpaying for services and providing an opportunity for corruption. It also feels silly to prioritize City of LA businesses when officially independent cities like West Hollywood and Santa Monica are an integral part of the area—if a Culver City business offers a good bid, for example, it feels silly to pass it over in favor of one located 100 yards away.
I disagree with you on the Insurance Commissioner race. How much have you focused in on Levine's actual policy proposals? I have found this election incredibly frustrating, because I _know_ Marc -- we worked together as officers of the CA Dem Business and Professionals Caucus more than a decade back. I absolutely believe he would do good things with the office in terms of transparency and accountability, and yes, Lara has engaged in a bunch of shady dealings with lobbyists. That said, the core of Marc's platform has been "oh isn't it sad that insurers don't want to issue cheap policies to people who want to rebuild in Paradise, CA." Which... No! No it's not! If the actual risk of a place burning is high, we should not encourage people to live there. It is sad that folks lost their homes, and we should make sure that insurers paid up what was due, and that we help those folks relocate to safer places. (And we should build a hell of a lot more places for people to live, as infill in places that are NOT out in the Wildland Urban Interface.) He has this policy concept that he'll arrange $10k grants for people to do fire hardening, and then after that companies will be required to sell affordable policies. And again: No, $10k would not have been enough to make houses in Paradise, CA fire-safe.
I reached out to Marc to try to talk about this stuff, and to suggest he should talk to folks from groups like Urban Environmentalists and the Rocky Mountain Institute. Basically he would consistently try to redirect to stuff we agreed on, or just outright deny that his positions had the implications that they do. He'd say, "Oh no of course I don't mean for taxpayers or ratepayers in safe areas to subsidize places with high fire risk." But if that's the case, then how the hell do you come up with low rates for places that have high fire risk? Are you just going to make all the insurers go bankrupt providing the subsidy, so then we have no insurers anywhere in CA? The money has to come from _somewhere_.
This is very much a "pick your poison" race. Everyone knows Lara is kind of shady and people can keep an eye on him; he's at least not pushing policies that will hurt the very people they purport to help. If Steve Poizner had run again this year, I would've cast my first-ever vote for a Republican. Sigh. I think the best outcome is that Lara gets re-elected, and then we can promptly remove him from office for corruption, and appoint somebody better.