What’s happening today?
Latest poll continues lead for LA mayoral challenger Nithya Raman: The California Post just released poll findings that show Nithya Raman leading among respondents at 46.7%, with Karen Bass with at 38.8%, a difference of nearly 8 percentage points. Their article says 13.5% polled were undecided. Bass had high unfavorable and disapproval percentages of 70% and above, according to the figures in the article. (POLITICO also detailed some poll findings in their newsletter today that points to Bass being unpopular.) The poll findings also broke respondents down by geography. Raman has the edge in the San Fernando Valley, Central LA, East LA and South LA. Bass has the edge on the Westside and in the Harbor area. The pollster the Post commissioned, McLaughlin & Associates, surveyed 400 voters from Oct. 15 until the 18th via text and phone calls (both cell and landline).
More city election money reports dropping today: Campaign spending and fundraising disclosures from LA city candidates are due by midnight. The reports will reflect the numbers as of this past Saturday, on Oct. 17, going back to about a month to the previous filing deadline on Sept. 19. The disclosures are posted on the city ethics commission website here.
Homeless services worker conditions on county ‘cluster’ agenda today: LA county officials will be hearing from a panel of people who represent homeless services workers during a 2 p.m. “cluster meeting.” This “labor council” was formed to discuss “pay equity and career development at contracted service providers, especially with regard to racial disparities and for those with lived experience of homelessness.” The panel was required as part of Measure A, a half-cent sales tax to pay for homeless services and affordable housing. They are expected t present on a set of recommendations on wages, recruitment, training and skillbuilding, benefits, retention and funding.
What just happened?
On-the-spot Raman blanks on a police chief she admires; former CA GOP director unimpressed by Bass’s appeal to conservative voters
LA City Council member Nithya Raman seemed at a loss for words when CNN’s Elex Michaelson asked her for an example of a police chief she “respects or admires.” Her response ended up being “I don’t know,” which she followed up with yet another, “I don’t know” and an “um.” Maybe there were too many chiefs to name, and she had trouble picking just one?
The question would have been a good compromise option for Raman, who has been hounded to name her choice for a potential replacement for LAPD chief Jim McDonnell, which she says she plans to replace if she is elected mayor. It was a way to name someone whose qualities her actual pick should embody. Supporters of her opponent, Mayor Karen Bass, have said that former DA George Gascon was her pick – but Raman’s camp had stated pretty immediately that this was untrue. A couple years ago, Gascon lost his re-election bid for another term as District Attorney after serving out a rocky tenure in that office.
Meanwhile, some noted that Raman could have easily pointed to former police chief Bernard Parks, who endorsed her. Spencer Pratt, a former opponent in the primary who was narrowly edged out of the runoff, proposed that Chief Charlie Beck as a great option for an answer there. Beck has a culturally popular profile in Los Angeles, and many have long speculated that Beck and his family were the inspirations for the TV show Blue Bloods.
As Raman stumbled with her CNN interview, Bass appeared to not have impressed in her own recent interview with John KobyIt. Her appearance on KobyIt’s radio show reached conservative voters, but Jon Fleischman, a political strategist and former executive director of the California Republican Party, says Bass did not come across well. Fleischman described Bass’s decision to go on the show “remarkable,” given that KobyIt is one of her harshest critics, but he says Bass’s answers gave the impression that she was prone to deflecting to other people responsibility over the failures of the very city government she leads. “At no point does the buck seem to stop at her desk,” Fleischman writes.
More public transit construction starts this week, with a zippy bus lane on Vermont Boulevard, and an Inglewood transit connector that lays some people-mover groundwork
Construction is starting up on a 12.4 mile bus rapid transit line along the north-south Vermont Boulevard street. It should provide a fast, straight shot connection between the B, D, E and C rail lines and the various bus lines that cross Vermont Boulevard, which is the busiest bus corridor in LA County, according to Metro officials. The route is now served by Metro’s Line 204 and 754. You can find coverage of the groundbreaking ceremony in Urbanize LA. Metro’s website for the Vermont Corridor Bus Rapid Transit project is here.
It’s the second major groundbreaking for Metro this week, after local officials marked the start of major construction on a East San Fernando Valley light rail line along another north-south street, Van Nuys Boulevard (after construction had already begun in 2024 to move utility lines).
There was actually another groundbreaking, a bit more under the radar, on Wednesday organized by Inglewood officials for a connection between SoFi Stadium and the K Line. It had originally been slated to be an automated people mover, but was scaled down (for now) due to lack of funding, reports Joe Linton of StreetsblogLA. Linton reports that the initial phase – which leaves room for building a people mover later, potentially in time for the 2028 Olympics – includes park-and-ride mobility hubs (with a “thousand parking spaces” as touted by Mayor James Butts) and a pedestrian bridge.
Tyler Shaun Evains of Southern California News Group (which includes LA Daily News) has a report out on the Inglewood groundbreaking as well. And back in August, LA Local’s Isaiah Murtaugh Barish wrote about a shopping center that was bulldozed for the project.
Evains’ report on Wednesday says the mobility hub is replacing a shopping and restaurant plaza that includes some already shuttered spaces, as well as the still-open “CVS, DD’s Discounts, Randy’s Donuts and Chinese Food, Inglewood Optometric Center and Advance America.”
Meanwhile, Butts said at the groundbreaking that after the 2028 Olympics, what’s being built will still be there to serve people in the area, according to Evains.
A few more things…
Vote on LAPD’s Axon surveillance camera contract moved to next Tuesday: The Los Angeles City Council delayed a vote on a three-month contract with Axon to try out light post-mounted cameras that would record drivers’ car license plate to put into a database used by law enforcement officials. The LAPD recently chose not to continue on with Flock for “automated license plate reader” cameras, and as with many other cities, Los Angeles police officials may now be turning to Axon as an alternative. LAPD officials have insisted that the problem of federal immigration officials tapping into the data that is often associated with Flock cameras won’t be an issue with Axon, due to their efforts to get data security agreements with Axon. The delay on the vote was requested by Council President member Marqueece Harris-Dawson. His office confirmed that the plan is to place the issue on next Tuesday’s meeting on Oct. 27 – which happens to be the deadline for taking up the issue. The item has an unusually short lifespan because the council had taken the extraordinary stepped of asserting authority over a decision that is usually under the purview of the city’s police oversight commission.
LA city leaders go into closed session to discuss suing for control of homeless services delivery: The Los Angeles City Council spent a substantive portion of Wednesday’s meeting behind closed doors, where they took up another controversial matter – suing for control of important roles in delivering homeless services. Those roles are likely to go to the county, but LA city leaders have long expressed frustration over their sense of control over what happens with homeless encampments in their districts. They say that they struggle in their efforts to remove encampments, which ought to entail matching their unhoused constituents to services, shelter and housing, and they say the problem is with the county not giving them enough information, particular around services, which is provided by the county. The roles city leaders are trying to gain control over would allow them to handle the database that manages unhoused people’s cases, and would give them the ability to determine the criteria for how and whether people get matched to services and housing. City Council members did not report anything out of the closed session, and they are expected to continue discussing the matter at their Friday meeting, which is tomorrow.
LAUSD leader Chait says declining enrollment will lead to empty school buildings: LAUSD Superintendent Andres Chait, who was made the permanent head of the sprawling school district in June, spoke to a Los Angeles City Council committee on Wednesday, and he focused on the declining enrollment at the district, which Chait said has prompted district officials to begin working out a plan to close and consolidate school campuses to better reflect the fact that their student enrollments have been cut almost in half since a peak two decades ago of more than 700,000 students enrolled. A few weeks into the school year, around 375,000 students are enrolled at LAUSD, Chait reported. He noted that as they close school sites, they want to have a plan so that communities aren’t left dealing with vacant former school sites for long periods.
An interview short-list to be selected for county ethics panel: The first three members of LA County’s newly formed Ethics Commission are in the midst of selecting the four remaining members of the seven-person panel. After an initial meeting last week, the panel will meet again tomorrow, on Friday, Oct. 23, to select a short list of 12 to 16 people to interview. You can find the full meeting calendar here. The calendar shows their plan to interview candidates at two subsequent meetings on Oct. 30 and Nov. 6, and to nominate the four other commissioners at a fourth meeting on Nov. 13.
Bass campaign makes another small haul of small dollars: Mayor Karen Bass’s campaign made some more progress on her matching funds haul, boosting them to $1.446 million from $1.183 million. Raman’s campaign maxed out on matching funds months ago, but Bass has a room left still to raise small dollar donations. Matching funds gives a wider pool of candidates to compete in elections, but they also reflect a campaign’s ability to reach donors who live in the city of Los Angeles, and they can reflect that they are able to persuade a higher number of donors to give, since the dollar amounts can’t be higher than $257, and can be as low as $5. It’s also touted as a reflection that a candidate might prioritize constituents, even if they don’t have big pockets (that’s the dream, at least!).
Sandbag distros, warnings about beach bacteria and some prep tips, oh my, during this rainy week: LA County officials are giving out sandbags at two additional temporary locations in Malibu and Altadena, in addition to the usual county fire station sites. LA city fire stations, listed here, are also distributing sandbags. The LA County Public Health Department is advising that people avoid county beaches until Saturday Oct. 24 due to the rain and high levels of bacteria that could make people sick. And Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass details some recent preparations for the rain this week, including some tips for people on what to do ahead of time.
Local officials respond to fed’s voter fraud probes, two weeks out from the midterm election: As the U.S. The Department of Justice prepare to send along another set of names of voters they claim are noncitizens, LA County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk officials say that nearly 40% of the voters included in an earlier set of names were of people born in the United States, reports Kevin Rector of the LA Times. County Clerk Dean Logan also said in a statement on Wednesday that their office “takes voter eligibility seriously, and any credible evidence of unlawful voting or attempts at disrupting elections warrants appropriate review. Claims of unlawful voting must be supported by verifiable evidence, not assumptions.” Also, a judge has blocked the Department of Homeland Security from conducting field operations aimed at trying to uncover voter fraud in California and eight other states.