MOVE LEFT LA

A Voter Guide to Better Politics in Los Angeles

November 5, 2024, General Election

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This guide was prepared by Kris Rehl, a writer, organizer with LA Street Care, and 2020 DNC delegate. If you’d like to show your support, consider buying Kris a coffee (Venmo: krisrehl) and subscribe to their newsletter.

This guide includes recommendations for the best (or often least worst) options on the ballot with explanations based on policy, track record, and financial records. The resource section at the end of this guide features links to election coverage, voting records, campaign finance tools, and more. Always be mindful of bias in corporate media and beware of candidates who claim to be “progressive” or “compassionate.” Many are not. (Surprise! Politicians lie.)

The resource section also includes a list of local organizations that I hope you will consider joining because electoral politics will not save us. Even when the best candidates win, they’re largely limited (and often corrupted) by a system that’s fundamentally designed to protect corporate interests rather than improving people’s lives. Submit information/corrections here.

Tips for voters:

You can same-day register to vote at any LA County voting center through Election Day.
If you’re unhoused, you can register to vote with a California ID or your social security #.
If you vote by mail, track your ballot to make sure it’s counted.
If you plan to vote in person but received a mail-in ballot, bring it with you.
Have questions or concerns? Visit lavote.gov.

A note on paywalls: The LA Public Library provides free subscriptions to several publications with a library card. If you’re blocked from viewing a news source, try searching “plain proxies.”

A note on endorsements from political organizations & nonprofits: Almost every political organization bases endorsements on just one or two questionnaires/interviews, which are typically not shared publicly. Why? The endorsement process is a lot like the Golden Globes—it’s all about winning over a small group of people by any means necessary and has little to do with merit. Endorsements are often transactional, and pre-existing relationships can have greater influence than a candidate’s policy or track record (e.g., Planned Parenthood endorsed alleged sexual assaulter David Ryu over Time’s Up alum Nithya Raman in 2020). Even with otherwise trustworthy groups, there’s almost never disclosure about conflicts of interest (e.g., voting members who also work on a candidate’s campaign) or examination of finances (e.g., candidates donating to the organization that’s voting on their endorsement). And according to those racist City Council tapes, many political orgs can be paid off by politicians—and for cheap. Always exercise skepticism when someone tells you who to vote for without showing their work.

A note on endorsements from news outlets: Most voter guides published by news outlets—even reputable ones—are researched and written by “editorial teams,” which do not include their regular staff of reporters (e.g., LA Times, Knock LA).

LA CITY COUNCIL

District 2 / District 10 / District 14

CULVER CITY

LAUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION

District 1 / District 3 / District 5

LA COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Seat 1 / Seat 3 / Seat 5 / Seat 7

STATE SENATE

District 23 / District 25 / District 27 / District 33 / District 35

STATE ASSEMBLY

District 34 / District 39 / District 40 / District 41 / District 42 / District 43 / District 44 / District 46 / District 48 / District 49 / District 51 / District 52 / District 53 / District 54 / District 55 / District 56 / District 57 / District 61 / District 62 / District 64 / District 65 / District 66 / District 67 / District 69

U.S. REPRESENTATIVES

District 23 / District 26 / District 27 / District 28 / District 29 / District 30 / District 31 / District 32 / District 34 / District 35 / District 36 / District 37 / District 38 / District 42 / District 43 / District 44 / District 45

LA CITY MEASURES

Measure DD / Measure HH / Measure II / Measure ER / Measure FF

LAUSD MEASURES

Measure LL / Measure US

DISTRICT ATTORNEY

JUDGE OF THE SUPERIOR COURT

Office 39 / Office 48 / Office 97 / Office 135 / Office 137

LA COUNTY MEASURES

Measure G / Measure A

STATE MEASURES

Prop 2 / Prop 3 / Prop 4 / Prop 5 / Prop 6 / Prop 32 / Prop 33 / Prop 34 / Prop 35 / Prop 36

US SENATE

PRESIDENT

VOTER RESOURCES

Campaign Finance Tools / Candidate Voting Records / Local News + Politics / Glossary

GET INVOLVED

LA CITY COUNCIL

District 2

Jillian Burgos - Burgos is an essential healthcare worker, SAG-AFTRA member, small business owner, and neighborhood councilmember, who made a splash in the March primary with a platform of solid, progressive policies.

Burgos is running to replace LA City Council President Paul Krekorian, who recently found himself at the center of multiple scandals, had a meltdown when someone coughed during a public meeting, and infamously delayed public comment until the end of Council meetings, forcing constituents to wait several hours to participate in civic engagement. Krekorian is terming out and setting up his former chief-of-staff turned Assemblymember Adrin Nazarian as his successor. In March, Krekorian even violated ethics laws to promote Nazarian’s City Council bid.

If elected, Burgos would become the second renter on LA City Council, a fact that her opponent seems quite threatened by. In August, Nazarian posted a video on social media with the caption: “As a longtime renter in LA, I understand the anxiety that comes with the first of the month for so many in our community.” This isn’t the first time he’s tried to mislead voters into thinking he’s a renter. The reality is, Nazarian is a landlord. His campaign accepted money from the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles, a landlord PAC that filed a lawsuit against the City of LA over the pandemic rent freeze and *checks notes* openly opposes rent control.

Burgos will fight to keep renters in their homes with tenant protections like rent stabilization and a right to counsel. She will work to properly fund the LA Housing Department to enforce the Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance and dedicate a staff member from her office to accompany the LAHD on inspections to ensure renters in her district aren’t being ignored. And renters desperately need that level of follow-through. Over the past three years, more than 13,000 LA tenants have filed harassment complaints (e.g., for intimidation, illegal eviction notices, unlawful entry, threats, lockouts, withholding repairs, retaliation against tenant organizing), but City Attorney Hydee Feldstein-Soto has failed to criminally prosecute a single landlord.

Burgos supports creative housing solutions that have been successful outside of LA, including social housing—permanently affordable, community-owned housing designed for mixed-income tenants, allowing people to live in the communities where they work. She will identify vacant, city-owned land that can be used for housing and community land trusts—housing stock that is permanently affordable and helps prevent gentrification.

Unlike Nazarian, Burgos believes housing is a human right and opposes 41.18, a local law that criminalizes the existence of unhoused people with a draconian ban on sitting, lying, and sleeping in large swaths of the City. Burgos calls 41.18 a failed policy, which all data supports. LA City Council ordered a report on the law’s effectiveness, and the results have been a disaster by every measure. (Council President Krekorian allegedly spent months hiding this report, delaying its release by a year.)

Burgos has been an outspoken critic of the conservative Supreme Court’s ruling on Grants Pass v. Johnson, which essentially decided that it’s constitutional to criminalize people for being too poor to afford a place to sleep. Burgos has also taken a stand against California’s liberal Governor Gavin Newsom for cheering on the conservative SCOTUS decision and signing an Executive Order that calls for the “humane” removal of unhoused people without any provisions for housing, shelter, or services.

Nazarian’s homelessness platform skirts any policy specifics but pledges to “make sure that we don’t wait for permanent housing,” demonstrating a critical lack of understanding of our housing crisis. Burgos understands the specific barriers to shelter access, and she will work to remove them. She pledges to end sweeps while focusing on increasing services in the district (e.g., more trash receptacles, public restrooms).

Nazarian wants to increase the number of cops on the police force despite the LAPD’s own data showing crime is down across the City of LA and the department’s budget continuing to balloon at the expense of other city services. Nazarian made the questionable decision of featuring a photo of himself with former President Bill Clinton on his website even though Clinton recently made headlines when he was repeatedly named in unsealed court documents, closely linking him with convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Which raises the question—who exactly does Nazarian believe is deserving of safety? Certainly not queer people or people of color. Nazarian accepted an endorsement from homophobic LASD Sheriff Robert Luna. During his time in the California Assembly, Nazarian refused to support the Racial Justice Act for All (AB 256), a law that lets people charged with a crime raise issues of racial or ethnic discrimination in their cases. Nazarian similarly withheld his support from Mental Health Access for People Behind Bars (SB1223), earning him a “C” rating from the ACLU.

Burgos doesn’t flatten the concept of public safety, instead proposing policies that tackle broader harms. While Nazarian spotlights “community policing,” a tried-and-failed, reformist policy that increases police funding and expands surveillance, Burgos advocates for fully funding unarmed response programs, which have already been piloted in parts of Los Angeles. She will work to establish a Department of Community Safety to ensure these programs continue to receive the proper funding and infrastructure necessary to be successful in their goals. Burgos will also fight to fully staff the Office of Wage Standards so that the City of LA can better hold employers accountable for wage theft, which has resulted in an estimated $1.6-2.5 billion in wages stolen from LA-area workers in the past decade. In addition to non-punitive crime deterrents like improving street lighting, Burgos wants to expand LA’s guaranteed basic income program, which has provided $1,000/month to low-income families for one year to help afford basic necessities. Surprise! This money has been life-changing for recipients, and a study found the program drastically improved their standard of living.

In 2023, traffic deaths in LA reached an all-time high with 337 people killed, outpacing homicides; another 1,559 people were severely injured. Burgos supports the utilization of the City’s Mobility Plan 2035 for increased walkability and traffic calming (e.g., speed bumps near schools, protected bike lanes, adding traffic lights/stop signs at dangerous intersections) and more well-maintained bus shelters. To improve maintenance and safety, Burgos supports expanding LA Metro’s Ambassador Program, which has been far more effective than costly and inept LAPD patrols. Burgos champions fare equity for Metro riders with the ultimate goal of fare-free transit, a policy everyone should support because 75% of fare revenue pays for…fare enforcement and costs associated with fare administration (e.g., TAP cards). This would increase ridership, reduce the number of cars on the road, and decrease pollution. And while fares comprise just 1.7% of LA Metro’s budget, the LAPD has literally killed people over $1.75 fare evasion.

Increased public transit ridership means fewer drivers, which is why Burgos will prioritize housing and infrastructure development near transit hubs. She will work to create energy-efficient standards for new housing (e.g., investing in solar reflective or green roofs, sustainable building materials). Burgos will prioritize electrification of all City vehicles (e.g., buses, sanitation trucks, fire trucks) and develop a comprehensive electric vehicle charging infrastructure to help curb the 40% of California’s emissions created by transportation.

Burgos will address the district’s susceptibility to extreme heat by planting more trees, opening community gardens, implementing cool pavement, and opening more cooling centers—free, air-conditioned locations where you can keep cool during extreme heat. She’ll also work to cap the district’s many orphaned oil wells, which leak harmful chemicals into the community.

Burgos understands the urgent need for Los Angeles to achieve its zero-emissions and climate justice goals. That means moving beyond LA’s 2019 Green New Deal, a cringey attempt by disgraced former Mayor Eric Garcetti to co-opt language from the climate justice movement. The Sunrise Movement called Green New Deal (Eric’s Version) “not a Green New Deal” and criticized its immense shortcomings (e.g., a 20-years-too-late net-zero emissions goal, failure to address environmental racism). Instead of taking the climate crisis seriously, Garcetti’s plan has left LA’s energy production heavily reliant on coal (13%) and natural gas (35%).

In 2023, LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia responded to the hottest summer on record with his “This Is Not Fine” report, calling for a reboot of LA’s Climate Action Plan. Burgos pledges to make changes to the City’s climate policies based on this report’s analysis of where benchmarks should be improved. She’s determined to rapidly replace fossil fuels with solar, wind, hydroelectric, and geothermal energy to reach 100% renewable energy by 2035.

As a union member, Burgos is adamantly pro-worker and will advocate for a just transition. That would include job programs, educational grants, and apprenticeships for workers transitioning out of the fossil fuel industry to renewable energy production. Burgos mobilized her campaign to support striking workers in 2023 and demonstrated how much she cares about building community in her district.

Burgos is running a clean money campaign. As of this writing, Nazarian has had $410k in PAC money backing him since February. Half of his campaign contributions came from rich donors, who maxed out the $900 contribution limit, including the CA Real Estate PAC, a bunch of real estate developers, the owner of an investment firm, and insurance execs. So many of Nazarian’s campaign contributions came from corporations, PACs, and donors who live outside of Los Angeles that compared to Burgos, he’s qualified for just 65% of City matching funds—a program that works to create more equitable races in local politics. [UPDATE: According to the latest filings, Nazarian raised more money from lobbyists than any other LA City candidate this cycle. In fact, he raised 140% more from lobbyists than all other City candidates combined. Just 0.78% of his fundraising is from grassroots support. Meanwhile, Burgos has the highest percentage of small-dollar donors of any City candidate.]

One last thing: Do you remember the LA Fed Tape Scandal? That’s the one where disgraced former City Council President Nury “Fuck That Guy He’s With The Blacks” Martinez infamously colluded with Council colleagues Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo to destroy Black voting power in LA while spouting a bunch of racial epithets. The one that made Joe Biden publicly call for the resignation of the three racist Councilmembers? On the tapes, these Councilmembers specifically discussed gerrymandering this district to help Nazarian win this year’s election…even though they doubted his ability to win. Here’s an excerpt:

Kevin de León: Krekorian, I think, will come with us, but if they’re made sure that the labor map is better for Krekorian.

Nury Martinez: He also wants his guy elected. So he needs a district that Adrin Nazarian can win it. That’s what they want. They want to assure, they want to be reassured that they have, not a Armenian district in the Valley, cause that doesn’t exist. But they want as many Armenians in that district as possible to be able to play. Now I don’t think Adrin, Adrin gets elected[...]I don’t know that he can win.

If you want a political insider, backed by corrupt politicians and funded by corporations, Nazarian is your guy. If you want a more affordable, renter-friendly LA with better transit, vote for Jillian Burgos.

District 10

No recommendation - Incumbent Heather Hutt received 37.8% (13,499) of the primary vote, followed by Grace Yoo’s 23.1% (8,257). Neither has substantive policies that would do much to improve the lives of their constituents, but the series of scandals that led to the run-off between these women is fucking bonkers. More on that after a review of their policies.

Heather Hutt’s campaign slogan is “Potholes. Not Politics.” Which, frankly, is fucking stupid. Hutt was undemocratically appointed to her seat in LA City Council thanks to extremely ugly politics. She also voted to defund the Bureau of Street Services (the department that fixes potholes) by 25% because it was politically expedient.

Yoo is a NIMBY, who ran for this seat in 2020 but lost to disgraced former Councilmember Mark Ridley-Thomas. Her campaign was largely motivated by her activism to block a shelter from opening in Koreatown, leading to opposition from Ktown for All, a volunteer-led grassroots organization serving Koreatown’s homeless community members through direct aid and political advocacy. (KTown for All rated Yoo a D+ candidate in 2020.) Yoo’s policy page broadly identifies problems with the City’s approach to homelessness but fails to offer specific solutions. Elsewhere, Yoo said she will prioritize the conversion of existing properties (e.g., abandoned commercial buildings) into 100% affordable housing.

Hutt claims that she will implement a Housing First strategy, providing permanent housing to unhoused people without preconditions because housing is a critical first step towards addressing other underlying issues (e.g., it’s much more difficult to find a job when you don’t have an address and reliable place to sleep and shower). Hutt accurately points out that studies show the Housing First model leads to better outcomes for housing stability, health, and overall well-being. Unfortunately, she hasn’t followed the Housing First strategy during her time in office.

Hutt recently swept an encampment in preparation for…a community cleanup event. She instructed LA Sanitation to conduct a cleanup that displaced unhoused people, so that housed people could arrive to do separate, feel-good cleanup. Ktown for All pointed out how this indicates Hutt does not see unhoused people as part of the community. Hutt has repeatedly voted in favor of expanding 41.18, a local law that criminalizes the existence of unhoused people with a draconian ban on sitting, lying, and sleeping in large swaths of the City. She continued to do so even after a report ordered by LA City Council showed that the law is a failure by every measure, resulting in the housing of just two people in three years. I can’t find any record of Yoo publicly supporting 41.18, but it’s hard to imagine she doesn’t support it as well.

Hutt is an advocate for “community policing,” a tried-and-failed, reformist policy that increases police funding and expands surveillance. To her slight credit, Hutt opposed more police helicopters, and she was one of four Councilmembers to oppose authorizing LAPD’s use of a robot dog. Unfortunately, City Council authorized its use, and Mayor Karen Bass declined to veto the decision. Abolish the police and drone dogs.

Despite LAPD data showing that crime has continued to trend downward, Yoo wants more cops. One almost silver lining is that she claims to want to “dedicate resources to social workers, mental health clinicians, and community outreach teams to focus on homelessness so LAPD can focus on fighting violent crime.”

Unfortunately, the program she seems to support most is the CIRCLE program, which deploys “trained crisis response teams to respond to non-urgent 9-1-1 calls related to unhoused individuals.” And while I’m genuinely glad we have any unarmed alternative, CIRCLE has some major flaws. The program’s teams are supposed to include one licensed mental health clinician and two outreach workers with lived experience (e.g., currently/formerly unhoused, formerly incarcerated). But due to lack of investment and a shortage of licensed mental health clinicians, CIRCLE is mostly just outreach workers with lived experience responding to calls sans mental health professionals. A nonprofit called Urban Alchemy supplies CIRCLE’s outreach workers, who reportedly receive a startling lack of training. In January, Urban Alchemy made headlines when its employee sprayed water at an unhoused person on a cold night, prompting LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia to launch an investigation.

Hutt voted to approve a new surveillance program, which gives LAPD access to live video feeds of security cameras, including private homeowners’ cameras. Yoo also wants to expand the state surveillance apparatus and give police even more money—despite the fact that the LAPD budget, combined with massive liability settlements for police misconduct (i.e., money that is not paid out from the LAPD budget) threw our city into a major budget crisis.

How did that happen? Mayor Karen Bass negotiated a terrible contract with the LA Police Protective League, awarding cops $1 billion in pay raises—money that isn’t accounted for in the LAPD’s $3.4 billion budget. To find that extra billion dollars, Bass raided the budget of almost every other severely-understaffed City department and slashed public services to reconcile the budget crisis. Councilmember Hutt voted to approve all of this, including the elimination of 1,700 City jobs. Hutt must be hoping no one remembers that vote because her website continues to prominently feature “Filling Empty City Jobs” as one of the pillars of her campaign platform.

Both candidates have vocalized their dedication to reforming the City’s charter (i.e., LA’s constitution) to fight corruption and restore public trust. Yoo wants an independent City Ethics Department, an independent redistricting process, and more independence for the LA City Controller’s office to perform audits. Unfortunately, Hutt refused to confirm Controller Kenneth Mejia’s highly qualified nominee, good governance reform advocate and Reseda Neighborhood Councilmember Jamie York, to the City Ethics Commission. Hutt has failed to explain her reasoning on this vote. She was also caught sneaking out of a City Council meeting when she was logged as present.

Hutt has touted her work with the Ad Hoc Committee on Governance Reform, which put charter amendments on this year’s ballot to address some of these issues. (You can vote to implement an Independent Redistricting Commission and some ethics reforms via “yes” votes on Measures DD and ER).

Why are these kinds of reforms so important? In recent years, LA City Council has been comprised of members investigated and/or indicted by the FBI (5), called on by POTUS to resign for overt racism (3), indicted by the LA District Attorney (1), accused of sexual harassment or assault (3), caught on video assaulting a protestor (1). And that’s not even counting the number of cases the Ethics Commission has opened against them. Hutt says she’s been demoralized by these scandals, but she’s failed to meaningfully address most of them. Which brings us to how she ended up representing this district.

When Yoo ran in 2020, she ran against Mark Ridley-Thomas (MRT), not Heather Hutt. That’s because he was removed from his position. And this district had yet another Councilmember replace him before Hutt took over.

Let’s throw it back to 2013 when Sebastian Ridley-Thomas, son of MRT, won a special election at 26 years old, becoming the youngest member of the California legislature. Citing unspecified chronic health issues, Sebastian abruptly resigned in December 2017. That same month, he applied to USC and sent an email, inquiring about the school creating a paid position for him despite his lacking a graduate degree. Weeks later, Sebastian enrolled at USC for a dual degree in social work and public policy with a full scholarship worth $26k. Two months later, USC hired him with a $50k salary.

Sebastian’s resignation from the California Assembly came two months after New York Times journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey published their bombshell story, exposing substantial allegations of rape and sexual abuse against Harvey Weinstein and triggering the Me Too movement. Women in the state legislature began speaking out against pervasive workplace misconduct, and it turns out the younger Ridley-Thomas was the subject of two sexual harassment complaints when he resigned.

At the time, MRT was a member of the powerful LA County Board of Supervisors, and USC sat inside his district. MRT donated $100k from his campaign account to USC’s School of Social Work. Because of USC’s prominence in his district and its role as one of the largest employers in the County, this wouldn’t necessarily raise eyebrows. Unfortunately for the Ridley-Thomases, a whistleblower caught on, triggering an investigation. Initial reports speculated that MRT’s donation was a bribe for his son’s scholarship and paid position. The truth was much worse.

USC’s School of Social Work was facing a multimillion-dollar budget deficit, and its dean Marilyn Flynn thought up a quick fix. The school had an existing contract with LA County’s Department of Mental Health to provide telehealth services. Flynn sought to amend that contract to make it more lucrative for her school, but she needed support from a high-level County official. With his son’s misconduct in danger of exposure, MRT voted to approve three contracts for the School of Social Work worth $9 million annually. This is especially appalling when you consider how drastically underfunded LA County mental health programs are.

If you’re concerned about the progression of Sebastian’s health, he managed just fine. In addition to his graduate school course load and becoming a professor, he also started a consulting firm and a nonprofit within a few months of his resignation. More recently, he’s become a shill for Donald Trump. As for MRT’s donation—that money didn’t even stay at USC. As part of a quid pro quo scheme, Flynn agreed to launder that $100k through the school into Sebastian’s new nonprofit.

In October 2021, the U.S. Attorney General indicted MRT on 19 counts. His defense tried to play off MRT as a good guy who does good things like support contracts for mental health programs. But MRT had a history of financial impropriety, and he’s…pretty bad at doing crime. The prosecution introduced emails from MRT that included gems like, “Please call and assure him...of the School’s commitment and that you have begun the funds transfer...Please confirm receipt and keep me in the loop🤫[shushing face emoji].” Also, Flynn pled guilty to her well-documented involvement in the scheme, squashing his bullshit defense.

Flynn’s corruption at USC implicated both LA Mayor Karen Bass and her 2022 opponent Rick Caruso. The Ridley-Thomas case is one of the less horrific scandals Caruso, who repeatedly covered up sexual violence, oversaw as Chairman of USC’s Board of Trustees. The MRT investigation revealed Flynn’s emails stated her intent to “give highest priority to” Sebastian, rush his acceptance, and “open every door for him, just as I did with Karen.”

In 2011, Flynn awarded Karen Bass a $95,000 scholarship to USC’s School of Social Work even though then-Rep. Bass hadn’t directly applied for it. According to court filings, Flynn hoped to obtain her assistance in passing federal legislation. Bass subsequently sponsored a bill to expand funding for social work programs at private universities, including USC.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office released a statement, clarifying that Bass was not the subject of an active investigation, but her ethically questionable history would be used to bolster their case against Flynn. When disgraced former LA Police Chief Michel Moore learned about these allegations, he instructed detectives to investigate Bass. Reports of this LAPD investigation became public in December 2023, leading to Moore’s abrupt resignation without announcing a successor. Marilyn Flynn recently concluded her 18-month sentence of home confinement. Her web connects us all.

Anyway, just ten months into his term on LA City Council, MRT announced that he would step back to fight corruption charges. Two days later, his Council colleagues voted to suspend him before eventually voting to expel him. In August 2023, he was sentenced to 3.5 years in federal prison; he has since filed an appeal. In June, MRT made a public appearance alongside Tavis Smiley, who was suspended from PBS for sexual misconduct allegations, and Mayor Karen Bass…because corruption is a joke to LA’s political establishment..

Upon MRT’s removal, Council leadership appointed his predecessor Herb Wesson as his replacement. Six months after Wesson’s swearing-in, he was forced to resign when a judge ruled his reappointment violated term limit laws. Again, the Council decided to appoint a replacement—Wesson’s chief of staff Heather Hutt. Because City Council made the undemocratic decision to block a special election, the people of this district have been denied elected representation since October 2021. This whole situation also denied CD10 constituents a real advocate on City Council during the redistricting process.

Here, the ramifications of MRT’s corruption collide with the racist LA Fed tape scandal. That’s the one where disgraced former Council President Nury “Fuck That Guy He’s With The Blacks” Martinez infamously conspired with Councilmembers Kevin De León and Gil Cedillo to gerrymander the hell out Los Angeles while spewing a bunch of racial epithets. On the tapes, the Councilmembers also expressed their desire to select an appointee to replace MRT and Herb Wesson—someone who would go along with their self-serving designs for our city. Gil Cedillo uttered a sentence, damning the incumbent before she was ever appointed: “The one who will support us is Heather Hutt.”

Not only was Hutt’s appointment undemocratic, it was designed to undermine voters and help pass legislation that would increase criminalization and police funding. Unfortunately for the people of this district, a Councilmember Yoo would yield the same results.

District 14

Ysabel Jurado - This race is all about corruption—and the corruption in this district runs deeeep. I’ll get into what kind of wild abuses the incumbent, disgraced LA City Councilmember Kevin de León, and his predecessor, disgraced former Councilmember José Huizar, have committed. But first, let’s talk about Ysabel Jurado, a tenants’ rights attorney, affordable housing advocate, single mom, and daughter of undocumented immigrants. Jurado is a socialist, campaigning on a solidly leftist platform that emphasizes strengthening people’s rights and public services.

Boasting a robust set of housing policies, Jurado wants to implement vacancy taxes on empty units and charge property flippers with speculation fees. She will work to expand social housing—permanently affordable, community-owned housing designed for mixed-income tenants, allowing people to live in the communities where they work. She wants the City to buy up vacant buildings and develop them into housing that’s administered by community land trusts, which would keep them permanently affordable and help prevent gentrification.

Jurado understands the true root cause of homelessness is housing affordability and lack of tenant protections, which is why she wants to establish a right to counsel, implement stricter eviction regulations, and invest in financial assistance for tenants who need support. She wants to tie rent control to real wages. That’s important because inflation and rent increases outpace wage increases almost every year. If people aren’t getting raises, they shouldn’t be paying more for rent. Since 2014, the median rent in California has increased by 115% while the median household income has increased by just 18%.

Jurado wants to establish community resource hubs that help unhoused Angelenos navigate our complicated housing and services systems. These hubs would offer shelter, meals, and wraparound services like mental health counseling, job training, and social support. She wants to discontinue violent sweeps, which push unhoused people from block to block, and end 41.18, an ordinance that criminalizes the existence of unhoused people with a draconian ban on sitting, lying, and sleeping in many public areas throughout the City. (A leaked report about this ordinance also proves what we already knew—the ordinance is ineffective and impedes case workers’ ability to connect unhoused people to housing and services.) Los Angeles is home to four million people but only has 14 public bathrooms. That’s absolutely bonkers. Jurado will establish a network of accessible and well-maintained public restrooms throughout the district with a focus on areas where homelessness is most prevalent.

As a former union member during her stint in a legal services job, Jurado is a strong supporter of labor rights. One of my favorite pillars of her primary platform was that “every city service must be done through unionized public labor—that means no outsourcing to private companies. We must bring back any city service or public sector job that the city privatized and stop any further privatization of city services.” She’s since revised this policy to “require project labor agreements and prevailing wage for all of the City's public works, construction, and development projects. City leaders are quick to approve construction projects but we need to make sure the workers who build these structures have a good wage, benefits, a pension, and most importantly a union contract.” Still solid, but a bit disappointing, especially considering how many crimes LA officials have committed in league with private entities. Jurado also removed policy proposals about protections for undocumented workers.

In fact, her labor policies have been almost completely overhauled, and I would imagine that the endorsement from the LA Fed, which she did not have in the primary, may have something to do with that. Her labor rights platform now includes policies that would implement basic labor standards (e.g., paid family/medical leave, paid sick days, fair scheduling practices, just-cause protections for workers). Those are great additions, but learning the others have been removed is a bummer, especially if this is the result of political meddling.

Jurado opposed the contract that Mayor Karen Bass negotiated to give already-overpaid LAPD officers nearly $1 billion in raises. Jurado is a vocal critic of how much money the City spends settling police misconduct cases. (LA City blew through the allocated budget for these kinds of liability settlements in the first three months of this fiscal year, putting us on track for another major budget crisis with even more cuts to City department jobs and services. LAPD will likely not be impacted even though police spending is the primary source of this crisis.)

Jurado believes taxpayers shouldn’t have to shoulder these settlements for police misconduct. Instead, she proposes those payments should be deducted from the LAPD's pension fund. She wants to end qualified immunity, demilitarize police, and remove cops from traffic enforcement, replacing them with an unarmed division in the City's public services department.

Public health is an important aspect of public safety, and CD14 includes Boyle Heights, a neighborhood where pollution has created disproportionately high rates of child hospitalization for asthma. Jurado wants to increase green spaces, open community gardens, and implement community-driven reforestation, which would shade neighborhoods and reduce pollution. She offers thoughtful plans to remediate polluted soil and unpave certain areas to increase groundwater stores, improve air and water quality, and restore ecosystems.

Making Los Angeles sustainable is a major priority for Jurado. She supports a just transition, which would include green jobs that offer long-term employment to the people most impacted by the climate crisis. That would also mean expansion of public transportation infrastructure with community input and prioritizing underserved areas.

Jurado supports fare-free transit, a policy everyone should support because 75% of fare revenue pays for…fare enforcement and costs associated with fare administration (e.g., TAP cards). This would increase ridership, reduce the number of cars on the road, and decrease pollution. And while fares comprise just 1.7% of LA Metro’s budget, the LAPD has literally killed people over $1.75 fare evasion.

Jurado also wants to expand access and safety for pedestrians, cyclists, and bus riders (e.g., on-demand crosswalks, protected bike lanes, bus shelters). I encourage you to check out the detailed environmental and transportation policies Jurado published, offering thoughtful strategies on several important issues.

Shortly after completing her undergraduate degree at UCLA, Jurado spent two years working in the office of disgraced former LA Mayor Eric Garcetti. When I learned about this part of her employment history, I considered it a red flag, especially because I haven’t been able to find any record of Jurado commenting on Garcetti or her time in his office. However, given what has been reported about the culture of cruelty that Garcetti and his top advisors fostered in that workplace, I don’t necessarily think it’s fair to hold this against Jurado, who was a young assistant at the time. Many of her former colleagues have gone on record describing their time in that office as traumatic, and that may have been Jurado’s experience as well. However, I hope Jurado chooses to open up about working for Garcetti. Los Angeles could benefit from the critical perspective of someone who’s witnessed the way an unethical leader operated behind closed doors. These insights could help shape policies that combat abusive and unethical behavior in our government.

Jurado has a strong set of ethics and governance policies, which include expanding the 15-member LA City Council. The number of Council seats and districts has remained stagnant since 1925 despite LA’s population growing by ~800% to nearly four million. Meanwhile, New York has 51 councilmembers, and Chicago has 50 aldermen. This concentration of power in LA City Council facilitates the types of corruption covered throughout this guide. Jurado supports the creation of a Los Angeles with at least 25 districts. She also supports an independent redistricting process (i.e., the people who draw the new district maps aren’t appointed by politicians with personal agendas) and reforming the City’s Ethics Commission, which you can support via “yes” votes on Measures DD and ER. Speaking of ethics and redistricting…

You’ve probably heard about the incumbent Jurado is challenging. Disgraced Councilmember Kevin de León is such a piece of shit that one of the architects of mass incarceration said he’s too racist to hold public office.

That was in the fallout of the LA Fed Tapes scandal, the one where leaked audio revealed Kevin de León (KDL), disgraced former Council President Nury “Fuck That Guy He’s With The Blacks” Martinez, disgraced former Councilmember Gil Cedillo, and disgraced former LA Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera colluded to decimate the voting power of Black people, renters, and progressives—in between spewing racist and homophobic epithets.

Gil Cedillo had already lost his re-election bid, and Martinez promptly resigned. (A year later, LA Mag ran a bizarre story, claiming she moved to Arizona and became a Republican. Martinez denied the report, but this is my headcanon.) Immune to shame, KDL refused to resign.

After spending two months in hiding, de León returned to City Council to chants of “all lives matter” from his racist supporters. To underscore just how racist de León is, he assaulted Black organizer Jason Reedy, then coordinated a media campaign to smear him, employing anti-Black tropes in an attempt to spin Reedy’s racial justice activism as predatory. In reality, Reedy was doing a public service. He was doing what our elected officials would not—he was holding a deeply corrupt politician accountable.

Kevin de León previously served in the state legislature. In an attempt to boost his political profile, he challenged disgraced Senator Dianne Feinstein (RIP) for her U.S. Senate seat in 2018 and lost. KDL then ran for LA City Council in 2020, replacing his best friend, disgraced former Councilmember José Huizar, who had been arrested by the FBI. (Keep reading for more on Huizar’s absolutely batshit scandals.)

It doesn’t seem like de León was ever that interested in serving on City Council. He planned to use it as a stepping stone to boost his name recognition for the 2022 LA mayoral race. But even that was just another stepping stone—one that he didn’t come close to stepping on. KDL won just 7.8% of the primary vote, and the LA Fed Tape scandal permanently derailed his planned 2026 bid for Lt. Governor of California.

However, KDL had already filed to run for the statewide position, so a pile of money has been sitting in his campaign account. The law prohibits politicians from using funds raised for state campaigns in municipal elections, so de León has been prohibited from spending his war chest on an LA City race.

Instead, KDL used that money to pay for a bunch of ads, promoting Props 3, 32, and 33, which respectively enshrine marriage equality in the state constitution, increase the state minimum wage, and allow for the expansion of rent control. De León did not do this because he’s a champion of LGBTQIA+ rights, a living wage, or rent control—his voting record in City Council attests to that. KDL did this because those measures are popular…and he found a loophole in campaign finance rules, allowing him to put his name and face on $582,266 worth of de facto ads for his extremely competitive re-election bid.

KDL exploited another loophole, wasting nearly half a million dollars in public funds to send 1.2 million pieces of mail to his constituents in the first nine months of 2023. That’s more than double the amount all 14 other members of LA City Council spent on mailers combined. These materials were branded with de León’s name prominently featured, again acting as de facto ads for his re-election campaign. Jurado commented on this unethical use of funds, which could have been used to provide resources and services to assist people living on Skid Row. “To me, it seems like a thinly veiled attempt to use public resources for his re-election and diverting funds from tackling the real problems our communities face.”

Despite positioning himself as progressive during his 2020 City Council campaign, de León regularly wields his power to oppose efforts toward progress. KDL has been a vocal critic of expanding LA City Council, and he’s been caught sneaking out of City Council meetings even when he’s logged as present. In the face of his many ethics scandals, de León refused to confirm City Controller Kenneth Mejia’s highly qualified nominee, good governance reform advocate and Reseda Neighborhood Councilmember Jamie York, to the City Ethics Commission.

KDL voted for a police contract that gives cops $1 billion in pay raises and hiring bonuses. To be clear, Kevin de León voted to hire 1,000 more cops to the force at the detriment of every other City service despite 2023 becoming the deadliest year for killings by police in the United States. He also voted to approve a new surveillance program, which gives LAPD access to live video feeds of security cameras, including private homeowners’ cameras. He pillaged $150,000 from a neighborhood services fund to give to the LAPD, and he gave LAPD approval to accept police service dogs from a kennel named after Adelhorst—Hitler’s bunker.

De León continues to support 41.18, an ineffective local law designed to criminalize and displace unhoused people. He also approved rent increases of up to 6% on rent-controlled apartments earlier this year. CD14 is home to the largest unhoused population in the City, and KDL has made a concerted effort to increase temporary shelter in the wealthiest and whitest parts of his district while ignoring the growing humanitarian crisis on Skid Row—also in his district.

A quick fact check: On his website, de León claims he “built the most homeless housing out of any LA City Councilmember since he has been in office—over 2,000 units and beds.” Politicians, including KDL and Mayor Karen Bass, like to refer to interim shelter as “housing.” It’s not. Many of those 2,000 units and beds are pallet shelters. Politicians like to call these pallet shelters “tiny homes,” a euphemism for 8x8 foot shacks (smaller than the legally required minimum space of a prison cell) that typically shelter two people. Stays in pallet shelters are meant for temporary placements—up to 90 days—while waiting on housing, but they’re often utilized for significantly longer periods of time. Pallet shelters are not a long-term housing solution. They’re not even a long-term shelter solution. Pallet shelters are proven fire hazards, prone to flooding, and lack kitchens or bathrooms. (Speaking of fires and the unhoused, de León accepted several campaign contributions from Daniel Nogueira and his family members. In 2018, Nogueira set an encampment on fire in this district.)

In March 2020, De León won his City Council primary with an outright victory but wasn’t sworn in until October. In the months between, AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) paid KDL $110k for “consulting.” De León failed to disclose this employment history, which created several conflicts of interest, especially as he and AHF increasingly promoted the other’s interests.

You probably know AHF as the entity behind Out of the Closet, free HIV tests, or those scary STI billboards that tell you your genitals will look like the cover of Dianetics if you get syphilis. AHF also operates pharmacies, which generate about 86% of the nonprofit’s $2.5 billion in annual revenue. In 2017, AHF launched the Healthy Housing Foundation and has since purchased at least 15 buildings to create low-income housing. That would be great except tenants filed complaints about uninhabitable, slum-like conditions. When AHF/Healthy Housing reportedly failed to rectify these problems, tenants filed a class action lawsuit over rampant mold, vermin, bedbugs, cockroaches, severe plumbing issues, electrical failures, and more. The building’s chronically broken elevator was particularly horrific, trapping elderly and disabled tenants who couldn’t make it down the stairs. A blind tenant fell 12 feet down an open elevator shaft. An exploding radiator scalded another tenant’s dog alive.

De León became directly implicated when a former AHF employee contacted his office about the horrific conditions. A CD14 staffer joined the whistleblower to meet with tenants. But when they arrived at the building, staff refused to let them sign in, called the cops, and followed them with cameras. Fortunately, the staffer was able to document some of the conditions before the police arrived and kicked them out. In case you were wondering whose side the cops are on, it’s the slumlords—even when you’re a City official doing your job. Anyway, the staffer then received texts directly from de León, which the Councilmember reportedly attempted to hide from public records requests. Despite these horrific conditions, KDL has refused to take action and continues to publicly support AHF, including its new housing ventures. What a guy!

After the LA Fed Tape scandal, KDL was removed from his committee assignments, which freed up a lot of time for him to campaign. A year later, his PR machine went into overdrive, launching a shady campaign in an attempt to rehab his image. De León has sworn up and down that while, yes he was present for and did not stop his colleagues from spewing racism on the Fed Tapes, he did not join in on the racism. That’s not true. Listen to the recording and read the transcript. Look at the damage the collusion plotted on the tapes has caused and all the harmful policies KDL has consistently supported with his co-conspirators. And while de León has attempted to publicly distance himself from those co-conspirators, he has happily accepted their maxed-out campaign contributions in both the primary and this general election. Disgraced former LA Fed President Ron Herrera showed up to support KDL at his primary election night party and his recent debate with Jurado. KDL is the same self-serving grifter he’s always been.

Jurado has argued that KDL is too tainted and toxic to build coalitions, citing the long list of prominent organizations that endorsed her as evidence of powerful players’ unwillingness to work with him—at the expense of his constituents. Unfortunately, she later took a friendly approach and excitedly took a selfie with KDL at the end of their debate. Being cordial to a political opponent in front of voters might be a strategic ploy, but it undermines Jurado’s own argument. These types of gestures have slowly normalized KDL—and by extension, his acts of corruption.

Despite Biden publicly calling for de León’s resignation two years ago, KDL felt emboldened to attend a June fundraiser for the President’s re-election campaign. A month prior, former Council President Paul Krekorian reinstated KDL and his colleague Curren Price, who is facing embezzlement, perjury, and conflict of interest charges, to committee assignments in City Council. This month, current Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson appointed KDL to the Planning and Land Use Committee, a position that’s been leveraged to carry out multiple bribery and corruption schemes, including by fellow Committee member City Staffer B aka Councilmember John Lee (allegedly).

Juardo’s campaign has framed this district’s many scandals as a curse that needs to be broken. As many scandals as KDL has created, his predecessor José Huizar is arguably the godfather of recent corruption scandals in City Hall. In 2005, Huizar won a special election to become this district’s representative, a position that was vacated by the newly-elected Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who would also become the subject of multiple scandals. Huizar, who loosely inspired a corrupt Boyle Heights politician in the groundbreaking Starz series Vida, remained in office until he was arrested in June 2020.

In 2013, Huizar launched a re-election campaign for a third and final term when a long-time aide publicly accused him of offering professional advancement in exchange for sexual favors—and retaliation when she refused. The aid threatened a sexual harassment lawsuit against Huizar, who negotiated a settlement one month before the election. Although the City had already coughed up $200,000 for Huizar’s legal defense, it did not pay for the settlement. The City could have been on the hook for settlement money, and if it had paid, the terms would have become public. Because Huizar settled privately, the terms would not be disclosed—a boon for his re-election chances.

One question remained: how did Huizar afford a payment that would likely be in the mid-six-figure range? This question, paired with the allegations of retaliation, appear to have flagged Huizar’s behavior at the FBI.

Huizar and his co-conspirators schemed to route $600,000 from a billionaire real estate developer through a foreign shell company, which Huizar used to confidentially settle his sexual harassment lawsuit. Huizar didn’t stop at recouping the settlement money though. In total, he reportedly accepted $2 million in bribes (e.g., cash, casino gambling chips, sex work services, political contributions, private jet flights, stays at luxury hotels) from real estate developers and their proxies. In exchange, Huizar used his official position to ensure their real estate projects received favorable treatment. Because politicians are subject to financial disclosures, Huizar concealed these bribes by laundering cash through his mother and brother.

In 2017, Huizar’s special assistant George Esparza delivered a Don Julio tequila box stuffed with $100 bills to the Councilmember’s residence. Huizar instructed Esaparza to hide the bribe money, a half-million dollar payment from a real estate developer, guaranteeing Huizar and the Planning and Land Use (PLUM) Committee’s approval of a planned residential tower.

By the way, one of Huizar’s bribery schemes involved Oceanwide Plaza aka the Graffiti Towers, which were abandoned in the fallout of Huizar and his co-conspirators’ indictments. Conservative reactionaries fumed about the “vandalism,” decrying what is clearly a political statement on corruption and allocation of resources. The abandoned towers include 688 units, enough to house nearly 2% of LA City’s unhoused population. Some argue that the City has legal precedent to seize the towers. So far, City Council has wasted $4 million on LAPD patrols of the property. Cool cool cool.

Huizar later hounded Esparza for the bribe money, showed up at his house, and told him, “I have a lot of expenses now that Richelle's running. Richelle's not going to be working anymore. And I'm gonna need money.” José Huizar’s wife Richelle planned to succeed her terming-out husband, a move, some have speculated, that would allow the couple to continue these bribery schemes.

Richelle’s aspirations were dashed in November 2018 when the FBI raided Huizar’s office and residence, confiscating computers and boxes of files. One week later, LA City Council removed Huizar from his committee assignments, but he was not suspended from office until he was arrested in June 2020. Huizar was indicted on racketeering charges and sentenced to 13 years in federal prison in January 2024. However, he’s managed to repeatedly delay the start of his sentence in state prison. [UPDATE: Huizar surrenedered for his prison sentence on October 7.] For more on Huizar and his crimes, check out the podcast Smoke Screen: The Sellout.

Given the district’s intense history of corruption, I understand why Jurado and her campaign would frame this as a “curse.” It’s a flashy hook to grab voters’ attention, but I think it’s unwise. Kevin de León and José Huizar chose to betray the people of CD14 to profit and advance their personal agendas just like many other corrupt LA elected officials. Suggesting this is a symptom of a curse negates responsibility from these power-hungry men, who had full agency when they made these series of horrible decisions. This “curse” narrative undermines the political education that will be imperative to dismantle these corrupt systems. To be clear, our political system doesn’t just attract corrupt people; it’s a system that corrupts.

Before Kevin de León became one of the slimiest politicians in recent LA history, he was an activist, an advocate for undocumented immigrants, and a labor organizer. Like his bestie José Huizar before him, KDL won the endorsement of the LA Federation of Labor, an extremely powerful force in Los Angeles politics with intricate, unethical ties to City Hall. So powerful that it’s one of the organizations that Jurado alluded to in her debate when she said KDL was too toxic to build the types of coalitions necessary to get things done for the district’s constituents. Again, former LA Fed President Ron Herrera acted as KDL’s co-conspirator in the Fed Tapes gerrymandering scheme, and others within the labor organization appear to have helped. On the tapes, de León refers to a so-called “labor map,” which would benefit his political allies. A labor lobbying group attempted to push this map on the redistricting commission, and commissioners later stated that they assumed the LA Fed was the source of this map.

In the primary for this seat, the LA Fed spent $400k in PAC money backing Assemblymember Miguel Santiago, who was close friends with both Jose Huizar and Kevin de León prior to their scandals, and who has consistently held nearly identical policy positions. Now, Ysabel Jurado has the endorsement of the LA Fed, and as I mentioned, some of her more radical labor policies from the primary have gone poof. Jurado still has one of the most progressive platforms of any City Council candidate in history. But again, our political system doesn’t just attract corrupt people; it’s a system that corrupts.

Jurado edged out KDL by a little more than one point in the crowded primary race. Each garnered nearly a quarter of the vote, which is generally a bad sign for an establishment incumbent like de León. But even with all his damning scandals, KDL has managed to raise $377k to Jurado’s $253k. It’s worth noting that as of the most recent filing, Jurado has raised more from small-dollar donors than any LA City candidate this election; KDL raised just $1,300 from grassroots donors. He also has $235k in PAC money backing him, including $114k from a police PAC. De León counts many, many real estate developers among his top donors, including one that seems to be trying to circumvent contribution limits. If you love skyrocketing rent and gentrification, KDL is your man!

[Update: I wanted to share a few breaking developments. On October 9, LA Community Action Network announced its lawsuit against Kevin de León, citing targeted harassment, political retaliation, and racist policy changes, including a sharp increase in arrests of Black people on Skid Row. Later that evening, Ysabel Jurado alleged that de León’s campaign staffer stalked her teenage daughter at a mall.]

CULVER CITY

Several people have asked if I could cover Culver City elections. I don’t have the bandwidth, and I’m not politically active in Culver or familiar with its political landscape. Olga Lexell is, and she made a guide that covers those races and Measure O. Check it out. (Culver City Council candidate Bubba Fish also posted about which candidates cops, real estate developers, and conservative interests are backing financially.)

LAUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION

What does the Board of Education do?

The seven member School Board passes policy and the budget for the second largest school district in the United States. They review and have the authority to approve potential charters in the district. They also appoint (and can fire) the superintendent, who oversees operations.

Note on UTLA endorsements: I generally avoid discussing endorsements in this voter guide (unless the endorser is a red flag). Why? The endorsement process is a lot like the Golden Globes—it’s all about winning over a small group of people by any means necessary and has little to do with merit. However, UTLA (LA’s teacher union) endorsements are usually worth examining because of the specific power dynamic between UTLA workers and the Board. However, UTLA sometimes endorses candidates, who are not completely aligned with their members’ interests (e.g., UTLA endorsed incumbent Kelly Gonez in the 2022 primary despite her soft stance on charter schools, which might be related to the Charter School lobby spending over $250,000 in PAC money to support her).

District 1

Sherlett Hendy-Newbill garnered the most votes in the primary election (25.7%). She’s a teacher and basketball coach, who grew up attending LAUSD schools in South LA. Hendy-Newbill says she wants to establish community schools with quality afterschool programs and wrap-around health, mental health, social, and family services. She also supports the creation of sustainable apprenticeship programs for non-traditional careers. These are great policies even if Hendy-Newbill fails to elaborate on them.

Unfortunately, the rest of her platform is problematic, likely attributable to her worldview. On her campaign website, Hendy-Newbill states, “My parents believed in the promise of America—that if you worked hard, you could succeed no matter who you are or where you come from.” This is objectively false, especially in a community that’s been ravaged by policing and mass incarceration.

Hendy-Newbill wants to establish consistent funding for the Black Student Achievement Program (BSAP). In 2021, student-led organization Students Deserve pressured the LAUSD Board of Education to cut 133 school police positions, reallocating $25 million of the school police budget to hire counselors, social workers, and other staff, specifically at schools with the most Black students. Unfortunately, Hendy-Newbill opposes this hard-won progress.

“I don't think it should be a one-size-fits-all. If a [school] wants a resource officer to be near their campus, to be available to their campus for whatever crisis may happen, I think that is the way in which we should go,” Hendy-Newbill said. “More questions should have been asked, you know, are we going to be short staffed because of this cut? We want to make sure that our campuses have the availability for officers to come out. We don't have that now because of that cut,” she continued, completely missing the point.

These student organizers specifically wanted to defund school police to pay for the Black Student Achievement Program because they don’t want school police on campus, especially with new surveillance measures that disproportionately target them. They don’t want school police on campus because they frequently make students less safe (e.g., the school-to-prison pipeline). If you search “school police bodyslam,” you will find a shocking number of stories from schools across the country where “resource officers” violently slam literal children into the ground.

A school isn’t a person, so who does Hendy-Newbill think deserves to decide what is best for a school? A politician? A principal? Seemingly not the students, especially the Black, Latine, and disabled students who are disproportionately targeted for arrest by school police.

Research shows that police in schools do not save lives—Parkland and Uvalde were unfortunate examples of just how useless they are. However, school police do increase rates of suspension, expulsion, and arrest of students.

Hendy-Newbill’s opponent, Kahllid Al-Alim took 20.1% of the primary vote. Al-Alim is a union member, a founding member of Students Deserve, and a parent member of Reclaim Our Schools Los Angeles, a group working to improve access and ensure racial justice with the community schools model. He supports further reallocating school police budgets to services that will actually improve students’ lives. He opposes all forms of privatization in public education, including charter school co-locations and privatization of public contracts.

Before March’s primary election, UTLA (the teachers’ union) endorsed him but later rescinded their endorsement. That was in reaction to reports of Al-Alim liking and sharing harmful social media posts that perpetuated conspiracy theories about Jewish people, linked vaccinations to autism, and suggested Sandy Hook was a hoax.

Al-Alim responded to the report with a video, apologizing, taking responsibility for his actions, and debunking the antisemitic tropes he engaged with on social media. He also offered to make himself available for restorative justice. I think that’s the best, most genuine way to handle a situation like this. If someone is willing and acting in good faith, I believe we should give them the space to grow and learn. I also believe people in power (and those seeking it) should be held to a higher standard. Restorative justice requires time, education, and action in addition to words. I’m inspired by Al-Alim’s accomplishments and policy proposals, but I’m not sure how he can truly prioritize healing while campaigning. As of this writing, he has not officially withdrawn from the race, but he’s deactivated his campaign website and erased his social media presence.

District 3

Scott Schmerelson - The UTLA-endorsed incumbent Scott Schmerelson won 44.6% of the vote to his challenger, teacher Dan Chang’s 29%. Unlike Chang, Schmerelson generally opposes charter schools, which is important because the charter school lobby has once again dumped a lot of money into School Board races this cycle.

Why does that matter? Charter schools are publicly funded but privately run, meaning they operate with significantly less oversight. The state funds public education on a per-pupil basis. When a student leaves a public school to enroll in a charter school, that funding moves with the student. You might think—if 5% of students leave, why not cut 5% of teachers? For starters, you’d eliminate union jobs that would likely be replaced with non-union positions with worse pay and worker protections at charter schools. You’d also fail to account for fixed costs that can’t be scaled down (e.g., building utilities; every school has a principal regardless of enrollment).

Losing students creates a massive deficit that forces public schools to close, creating longer commutes for students and their parents. Charter schools also compete with public schools for resources, including actual classroom space. Thanks to a 2000 ballot measure, California public schools are legally required to co-locate with charter schools, meaning two schools worth of students are forced to share the same space. That has been a disaster for obvious reasons, but it’s also undermined community schools initiatives, which would offer wraparound healthcare and support services.

Charter schools have been the subject of massive fraud cases, illegally restricted enrollment, and created conditions that lead to high attrition rates for both students and teachers. As of 2019, the federal government spent an estimated $1.17 billion on charters that either never opened or that opened and had shut down. One report found 40% of all charters shutter within ten years. Despite these results, charter schools have become a pet project of billionaires seeking to completely dismantle public education, frequently under the philanthropic guise of “school choice” and “closing the education gap.” In fact, charter schools have contributed to racial segregation.

Former UTLA chief Alex Caputo Pearl cited deregulation as one major motive of the charter movement and its backers: “Part of it is ideological commitment[...]teacher unions are the last, biggest unions, and taking them down will create much more room for a broader deregulation of the economy and public sector.” LAUSD already has more charter schools than any other U.S. school district thanks in part to billionaires dumping enormous amounts of PAC money into Board of Education races.

Dan Chang’s top financial supporters include the conservative group New Majority PAC and the charter school lobby, which has spent almost $2.15 million supporting him as of this writing. Chang helped open 17 charter schools. Put another way: Chang helped rip 17 charter schools worth of per pupil funding away from public schools.

Unfortunately, both Chang and Schmerelson support school policing. In 2020, Schmerelson voted against what would become the Black Student Achievement Plan. LAUSD students’ persistent activism persuaded Schmerelson to change his vote and defund $25 million from school police—more than one-third of the department’s budget. That funding was reallocated to hire counselors, social workers, and other staff to support students, specifically at schools with the most Black students.

However, Schmerelson has continued to support school policing even in non-emergency situations. Even though a mountain of evidence proves school policing results in negative outcomes for Black, Latine, and disabled students (e.g., targeted surveillance, assault, school-to-prison pipeline). Even though Black students are handcuffed at twice the rate of white students. Even though California schools have more cops than social workers and more security guards than nurses. And if you’re wondering why I keep harping on this issue—it’s fucking important.

Research shows that police in schools do not save lives—Parkland and Uvalde were unfortunate examples of just how useless they are. School police do increase the use of suspension, expulsion, and arrest of students. They also increase the violence enacted on literal children. If you search “school police bodyslam,” you will find a shocking number of stories from schools across the country where “resource officers” violently slam kids into the ground.

Schmerelson failed to publish any policy specifics for voters to assess, which is concerning, considering the many substantial challenges LAUSD faces. But based on his interviews, past Board of Education votes, and public stances, he will be less damaging to the education system than Chang.

District 5

Karla Griego - The UTLA-endorsed Griego is an experienced special education teacher, parent to LAUSD students, and organizer in her union. She received 36.7% of the primary vote compared to Graciela Ortiz’s 28.8%.

Griego supports Community Schools, which provide wraparound services (e.g., medical and mental health care, food assistance, after school care, jobs programs, legal aid, immigration services) to meet students’ needs and address the underlying social and economic causes of the opportunity and achievement gaps. She views Community Schools as an opportunity to transform entire communities by providing vital services to both students and their families. Griego wants to open more infant and early education centers for both employees and community members, and she supports parent organizing efforts to ensure communities are engaged in decision-making.

Griego advocates for the Black Student Achievement Plan because she believes real safety means improved mental health, culturally relevant curriculum, more college counselors, restorative justice, and resources that help Black students. Griego wants to invest in mental health support for students and training for staff. She has pledged to protect LGBTQIA+ students, which is especially needed when Los Angeles has been targeted by incidents like June 2023’s violent, transphobic, and homophobic rally outside Saticoy Elementary.

Griego will demand more resources from the federal government for special education and

expand infant and early education centers. She wants LAUSD to invest in electric buses, solar panels, trees, lead-free pipes, clean drinking water, and flexible attendance policies during extreme weather.

Girego opposes privatization (e.g., huge handouts to testing and technology corporations) and will fight to curb the power of charter schools, which are an existential threat to public education. How? Charter schools are publicly funded but privately run, meaning they operate with significantly less oversight. The state funds public education on a per-pupil basis. When a student leaves a public school to enroll in a charter school, that funding moves with the student. You might think—if 5% of students leave, why not cut 5% of teachers? For starters, you’d eliminate union jobs that would likely be replaced with non-union positions with worse pay and worker protections at charter schools. You’d also fail to account for fixed costs that can’t be scaled down (e.g., building utilities; every school has a principal regardless of enrollment).

Losing students creates a massive deficit that forces public schools to close, creating longer commutes for students and their parents. Charter schools also compete with public schools for resources, including actual classroom space. Thanks to a 2000 ballot measure, California public schools are legally required to co-locate with charter schools, meaning two schools worth of students are forced to share the same space. That has been a disaster for obvious reasons, but it has also undermined community schools initiatives.

Charter schools have been the subject of massive fraud cases, illegally restricted enrollment, and created conditions that lead to high attrition rates for both students and teachers. As of 2019, the federal government spent an estimated $1.17 billion on charters that either never opened or that opened and have shut down—one report found 40% of all charters shutter within ten years. Despite these results, charter schools have become a pet project of billionaires seeking to completely dismantle public education, frequently under the philanthropic guise of “school choice” and “closing the education gap.” In fact, charter schools have contributed to racial segregation.

Griego’s opponent, Graciela Ortiz is a Huntington Park Councilmember and former LAUSD attendance counselor. Ortiz is being sued by her former student, who was allegedly sexually assaulted by Ortiz’s associate when the minor was improperly recruited to work on the counselor’s previous political campaign. Ortiz’s top campaign contributors include LA School Police, LCCC (a conservative-leaning PAC), and GPSN, a group that claims to focus on improving public education even though its chair and board are charter school stooges.

LA COMMUNITY COLLEGE BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Seat 1

Cheyenne Sims - Sims is an alumna of LACC and board member of her Neighborhood Council with a background in grassroots organizing for racial justice and social, economic, and educational equity. Sims launched her campaign amid multiple district scandals, including sexual harassment lawsuits against LACCD. The District Academic Senate, which represents more than 4,000 faculty, cast a vote of no confidence against LACCD’s Chancellor and its Board of Trustees. In a statement, the organization called out current chancellor Francisco Rodriguez, who “circumvented calls for transparency, sidestepped meaningful reforms, and failed to adequately address concerns about sexual harassment, retaliation, and the use of public funds, particularly in the case of large public contracts.” Rodriguez subsequently announced his retirement.

Sims has been an outspoken critic of LACCD awarding a $125 million security contract to the LA Sheriff's Department after two administrators unethically manipulated their ratings of competing bidders. The Sheriffs’ proposal was also several million dollars more than the other proposals.

Sims is focused on eliminating corruption, intimidation, and discrimination with proposals like racial equity in faculty hiring and “robust internal controls to prevent undue influence from administrators with a history of sexual violence or corruption.” She wants to increase funding for tutors on campuses and meet students’ needs. To address food insecurity, she proposes ideas like establishing well-stocked food pantries on every campus, providing healthy food at no cost throughout the year. Sims will work to establish a need-based, mini-grant program for students and part-time staff. She also wants to triple funding for gateway housing programs to help ensure no LACC students become unhoused.

Sims is challenging incumbent Andra Hoffman, who critics say is complicit in the aforementioned scandals. Hoffman’s priorities include building more student housing and increasing the number of LACCD colleges that offer bachelor’s degrees. The other candidates in this race include a private equity investor (no thanks) and LAUSD teacher Peter Manghera, who does not have a website as of this writing.

Seat 3

Nancy Pearlman - The previous entry detailed some of the scandals that led to LACCD Chancellor Francisco Rodriguez’s abrupt retirement. One of those sexual harassment lawsuits was from the Board of Trustees’ General Counsel Maribel Medina, who alleged that Chancellor Rodriguez stated in a meeting: “Mexican women serve me and they like it.” Later, Board President (and the incumbent in this seat) David Vela allegedly admonished Medina, saying the Board would fire her if she disclosed concerns about Rodriguez’s illegal conduct.

Vela’s challenger Nancy Pearlman is a former anthropology professor, who previously served on the Board of Trustees. Pearlman is a self-described environmentalist and wants to make LACCD campuses more ecological and sustainable. She says, “most of the current trustees oppose sustainability although they publicly claim they are for it as part of their ‘greenwashing’ efforts.” She wants the district to provide free textbooks and eliminate parking fees for unhoused students.

Seat 5

Nichelle Henderson - The incumbent, Henderson is focused on increasing enrollment, retention, and diversity in hiring. She also wants to increase funding and improve accountability for LACCD leadership. Henderson hopes to expand awareness of and access to student services, including mental health resources, academic counseling, housing support services, and dual enrollment for high school students to earn college credit. She says she’ll also continue to improve outreach and recruitment to underserved groups.

One of her challengers is Jason Aula, a Trump supporter, who describes himself as a businessowner/journalist/lawyer. As of this writing, the landing page for his campaign website is a bizarre press release about college football from nearly two years ago. He wants to extend the costly LA Sheriff's Department contract with LACCD. Henderson’s other challenger is medical healthcare recruiter Elaine Alaniz, who ran for Assembly and lost in 2022. Alaniz does not have a campaign website as of this writing, but she is also a Trump supporter.

Seat 7

Kelsey Iino - In 2022, Iino won a special election for this seat. Previously, she was a counselor at El Camino College (outside of LACCD). Iino says she’s focused on increasing college accessibility and affordability. Unfortunately, she’s failed to publish any policy specifics.

Her challengers are Pamela Evans, who decided to abort her campaign, and Robert Payne, a self-described writer/researcher/videographer, who appears to not have updated his website since 2020.

STATE SENATE

District 23

No recommendation - Attorney and former prosecutor Kipp Mueller challenged this district’s Republican senator in 2020 and came up 1.6% short. In this year’s primary, he placed second among five candidates with a different Republican candidate edging him out by a few points. Mueller’s platform lacks any substantive policy although it does strongly emphasize tough-on-crime rhetoric. He highlights the need to address “smash-and-grab” robberies, a talking point that the lobbying group National Retail Federation designed and pushed corporate media to propagate. Now, conservative and moderate politicians repeat it even though these claims have been debunked so thoroughly that the NRF was forced to retract its claims. Mueller has endorsements from anti-rent control group Abundant Housing and Democrats for Israel. He also accepted maxed-out donations from another pro-Israel PAC.

District 25

Sasha Renée Pérez - In 2020, Sasha Renée Pérez unseated conservative cop David Mejia to become the first renter, first woman, and first queer Councilmember in Alhambra—and its youngest mayor. Pérez started her career as a civic engagement educator at Cal State LA before joining the Campaign for College Opportunity, advocating for equitable policies in higher education. At her first council meeting, she took on Big Tech and passed an ordinance to cap delivery app fees on local restaurants. The only red flag I could find is that Pérez seems a little too friendly with Alhambra’s police chief, but Pérez claims to have brought key stakeholders together to hire social workers and mental health professionals to the city’s public safety team.

District 27

No recommendation - After his failed 2022 bid for the LA County Board of Supervisors, incumbent Henry Stern is running for re-election against a Republican challenger. Stern does not deserve your vote, especially when he will safely beat his Republican challenger Lucie Volotzky. Stern has branded himself an environmental champion, calling for an end to oil drilling in South LA and for the closure of the Aliso Canyon gas facility, which was responsible for the single worst natural gas leak in U.S. history in terms of its environmental impact. However, his voting record on environmental issues doesn’t quite match up. He withheld his support from multiple bills to prevent developers from exploiting environmental review loopholes and AB1395, which codified California’s goal to reach carbon neutrality by 2045 (even thought 2045 is still 15+ years too late).

Stern also withheld his support from SB57, an important bill that would have allowed life-saving overdose prevention programs to open in three California cities, and AB1215, which prevents cops from integrating facial recognition surveillance software with body cameras. He outright voted against AB1608, which sought to separate the duties of sheriffs and coroners, which the ACLU called “a critical step in ensuring both medical and civil integrity in our criminal legal system.” Why would Stern fight against transparency when he knows the sheriff in his own county interfered with autopsy results? Maybe it’s related to the PAC money cops donated to his campaign.

Another egregious offense is Stern’s role in the implementation of CARE Courts, a carceral program that mandates forced treatment on those deemed a “danger to themselves or others” even if they have not committed any harm or crime. Entry to a CARE Court starts with a referral “by a family member, behavioral health provider, first responder, or other approved party.” Meanwhile, more than 20% of people fatally shot by cops have a mental health disability. Guess who will be in charge of enforcing these referrals. If a person doesn’t successfully complete a “CARE Plan,” the Court may place them in a conservatorship. The ACLU describes this as “a draconian legal status that strips people of the right to make decisions about almost every aspect of their lives.” But this isn’t just immoral. Plenty of evidence proves forced treatment is ineffective and results in tragic outcomes.

To be clear, CARE Courts were not created to help people with mental health disabilities. The politicians pushing this program didn’t bat an eye when LA County jails were exposed for torturing thousands of people with mental health disabilities. Governor Gavin Newsom doesn’t care about helping anyone. He’s concerned with eliminating visible poverty (i.e., displacing his unhoused constituents without providing a safe place for them to go). And Newsom hasn’t exactly been shy about it.

Rather than addressing systemic failures, this carceral program targets and punishes individuals. The state budget won’t provide counties with new funding for behavioral health or tackle the crisis-level shortage of mental health professionals. Instead, CARE Courts will further strain and take funds from existing mental health programs to implement the Governor’s pet project. A lawsuit from disability and civil rights advocates has already challenged the constitutionality of CARE Courts, arguing the new court system will violate due process and equal protection rights under the state constitution. Advocates also point to existing systemic racism, which will ensure these violations “inevitably fall hardest on Black, brown, and Indigenous people, who are routinely misdiagnosed with serious mental health disabilities.” What options should we pursue? Voluntary mental health services, single-payer healthcare, and permanent supportive housing. Unfortunately, politicians have their own agendas.

Stern has received endorsements and campaign contributions from pro-Israel PACs while remaining uncritical of Israel’s war crimes in Gaza and Lebannon. In February, Stern joined a group of colleagues from the California legislature on a sponsored trip to Israel. Why did state legislators, who have no authority on American foreign policy, take a propaganda trip to a country that was more than four months into a genocidal campaign? The group claimed the purpose of the trip was to assess “devastation caused by the Oct. 7 Hamas attack,” but California lawmakers had been taking caucus-funded trips to Israel for years. I found records of similar trips in 2018, 2019, 2022, and summer 2023.

California allows state elected officials to accept unlimited free travel from nonprofits. To exploit this loophole, many political organizations established foundations to launder money. This allows lobbyists to pay for politicians’ travel and even tag along on trips with them. In 2022, about one fifth of all spending on sponsored travel went to paying for a single trip to Israel. Despite legislative measures to improve transparency about gifted travel, disclosure around this issue has been a major problem. The California Legislative Jewish Caucus Foundation failed to file disclosures for another of these trips to Israel in July 2023.

The same week as the February PAC-funded trip to Israel, Stern and some of his colleagues introduced SB1287. The censorship bill, which Governor Gavin Newsom signed in September, targets student ceasefire protestors with restrictions on the “time, place and manner” in which protests are allowed. It also requires universities to create mandatory training that teaches students “civility.” In case you haven’t noticed, polite protests never result in meaningful political change because respectability politics are a tool of the oppressor.

Neither Stern nor his colleagues in the legislature have taken any action to address extensive reports of LAPD and California Highway Patrol officers brutalizing students, many of whom were Jewish. Extreme use of force against campus protestors has been well documented and independently corroborated by medical volunteers.

Stern’s campaign finances are as slimy as his political allegiances. His top contributors include Amazon, Fox News parent company Fox Corporation, Airbnb, Wells Fargo, insurance companies, landlord PACs, real estate PACs, police PACs, Big Tech PACs, consulting firm PACs, and charter school PACs. Despite calls from advocates, Stern failed to donate the $5,200 in campaign contributions he received from serial predator/murderer Ed Buck to funds benefiting Buck’s victims.

District 33

Lena A. Gonzalez - Democratic Majority Whip in the California Senate, Gonzalez is seeking re-election against a Republican challenger. Specifics in her policy positions are frustratingly sparse, but she has a consistently progressive voting record. Gonzalez signed the No Fossil Fuel Pledge. As a member of the Committee on Environmental Quality, she co-authored a bill to divest state pensions from fossil fuels by 2031, which passed the Senate and is expected to make its way through the Assembly this year. Her other high-profile climate bills now require large companies doing business in the state to submit accessible reports, disclosing their carbon footprints and climate-related risks. She recently authored a bill, guaranteeing most California workers a minimum of five accrued sick days annually, which went into effect on January 1, 2024. Some red flags in her campaign finances include real estate developers, finance firms, Fox News parent company Fox Corporation, police, and various special-interest PACs.

District 35

No recommendation - Laura Richardson is a self-described housing advocate. She pledges to promote policies that encourage affordable housing development and says she will work to address systemic issues in the criminal justice system, including sentencing reform. Those are obviously good things. Unfortunately, she accepted lots of money from real estate and police PACs, so don’t expect any meaningful action from her. Richardson also accepted endorsements from the LA Police Protective League and Democrats for Israel. Her opponent, self-described community justice advocate, Michelle Chambers, supports CARE Courts, which the ACLU “vehemently opposes.” CARE Courts institutionalize unhoused people, subject them to ineffective forced treatment, and strip them of rights with conservatorships. Chambers accepted money from an anti-rent-control PAC, a lobbyist PAC, and banks.

STATE ASSEMBLY

District 34

Ricardo Ortega - Ortega is challenging the ex-cop incumbent Republican in this historically conservative district. After spending his youth in foster care, Ortega dedicated much of his adulthood to advocating for youth. At age 17, he worked on AB2247, a bill to prevent youth in foster care from experiencing unnecessary or abrupt placement changes that negatively impact their well-being. At 20, he worked on AB46 to promote direct engagement between disadvantaged youth and policymakers. He’s since become a peer advocate with the Children’s Law Center of California. His platform emphasizes community investment with a focus on improving infrastructure in the High Desert, including utilities like water supply and sewage systems, expanded highways, improved broadband, and enhanced transportation opportunities. He will also fight to expand access to healthcare facilities in his district and advocate for funding to expand community clinics and enhance existing healthcare facilities.

District 39

Juan Carrillo - Before his election to the Assembly in 2022, Carrillo was a city planner for fifteen years and a member of the Palmdale School Board. He was also the only member of Palmdale City Council to oppose a vote of no confidence in LA District Attorney George Gascón. Unfortunately, Carillo withheld his support for multiple progressive bills in the Assembly (e.g., requiring large corporations to publicly file climate-related financial risk reports, strengthening protections for communities impacted by local oil well operations, increasing charter school accountability). His campaign finances include major contributions from Edison Energy, Chevron, Walmart, police PACs, real estate PACs, and Big Pharma. His opponent is a Republican, who claims crime is on the rise (despite the LAPD reporting crime has decreased for another consecutive year) and wants to increase police budgets.

District 40

No recommendation - Incumbent Democrat Pilar Schiavo is the worst kind of political sellout you could imagine. A former member of People’s City Council (PCC), she regularly posted on social media about police brutality, police brutality, and more police brutality. Now, she celebrates and accepts endorsements from the same violent cops that she used to criticize regularly. This especially sucks when you consider that LASD has been actively surveilling Pilar’s former PCC friends, and an LAPD officer rear-ended the partner of a PCC organizer while tailing her.

In 2022, Schiavo’s website said she would “make passing guaranteed healthcare for every Californian one of her top priorities,” but she’s since removed any mention of this from her platform. As a longtime nurse’s advocate, she is extremely well acquainted with the human cost of our broken healthcare system. More specifically, Schiavo worked for the California Nurses Association, one of the strongest supporters of CalCare, which would bring single-payer health care to California and actually guarantee health care for everyone. Schiavo left the California Nurses Association when she ran for office and began working for Healthy California Now.

After Schiavo took office in 2023, Healthy California Now sponsored SB770, authored by the organization’s political ally State Senator Scott Wiener, who claimed the bill would put California “on the path toward a Medicare for All type of system.” In reality, the bill was a study for "unified financing," which is not single-payer. Both CalCare author Assemblymember Ash Kalra and Schiavo’s previous employer the California Nurses Association vocally opposed the bill, sounding the alarm on its true intent: derailing CalCare.

Schiavo’s more recent employer Healthy California Now publicly undermined these calls for accountability, framing advocates as “divisive.” In response to DSA leadership’s alignment with Healthy California Now and other insurance industry stooges, DSA-LA's Healthcare Justice Committee resigned en masse. The committee’s members publicly stated, “DSA is no longer a trustworthy partner in the fight for single-payer health care,” and launched a new organization called Socialists for CalCare to continue their work.

Ignoring the outcry from advocates, Schiavo lobbied support for SB770 in the Assembly, leveraging the trust she had built while working for the California Nurses Association to manipulate legislators who supported CalCare. Governor Gavin Newsom, another politician who betrayed the movement for single-payer health care, signed SB770 into law, and it has done exactly what its supporters intended: nothing.

AB 2200, 2024’s version of CalCare, was introduced earlier this year but was subsequently blocked in the Appropriations Committee by Oakland Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, another former CalCare supporter, who chose fealty to Newsom over ensuring 40 million Californians’ access to health care.

During her inaugural campaign, Schiavo signed the Patients Over Profits pledge, but she hasn’t signed it this go around. Profits over patients for Pilar, I guess.

Schiavo withheld her support from multiple pieces of progressive legislation (e.g., AB12, which now caps the security deposits for all rental units at one month’s rent; AB1306, which would have prevented the transfer of incarcerated people who qualify for release under certain criminal justice reforms to ICE…had Governor Newsom not vetoed it). She also received a “strong support” rating from Democrats for Israel. Red flags in Schiavo’s campaign finances include contributions from Airbnb, a landlord PAC, a real estate PAC, and Erin Brokovich villain PG&E. Fuck Pilar. Do not vote for her.

District 41

John Harabedian - In the primary, Harabedian placed second with 30% of the vote behind Republican Michelle Del Rosario Martinez’s 39.8%. The other primary candidates were Dems, so this should be an easy win for Harabedian. His platform primarily focuses on privatized efforts to address environmental issues (e.g., fund renewable energy programs; incentivize electric vehicle production and charging stations; invest in transportation infrastructure). Harabedian’s only real standout proposal is the expansion of supportive programs for housing-insecure families in danger of eviction. Harabedian has several major red flags in his campaign finances. His top contributors include Airbnb, multiple police PACs, the CA Real Estate PAC, landlord lobby group the CA Apartment Association, and obliterator of worker protections Doordash and Uber.

District 42

No recommendation - Incumbent Democrat Jacqui Irwin is running against a Republican challenger in this blue district. Irwin accepted large contributions from police and prison groups and her voting record is an unwavering atrocity. She voted against bills to allow overdose prevention programs in certain cities to combat opioid deaths, minimize the time youth spend on probation, and remove War on Drugs-era enhancements that double or triple sentencing for non-violent drug offenses. She abstained from voting on a bill that would have increased oversight of sheriffs’ departments and voted against a 2020 bill to allow previously convicted defendants to challenge racial discrimination. She also abstained from voting on the VISION Act, which would have prevented California prisons from transferring incarcerated people who have completed their sentence to ICE for deportation.

District 43

Celeste Rodriguez - San Fernando Mayor Celeste Rodriguez is facing off against far-right candidate Victoria Garcia. Rodriguez wants to increase funding for public schools and has some decent environmental policies (e.g., tax incentives for renewable energy sources in residential and commercial buildings; invest in water recycling and conservation programs; phase out gas hookups in new buildings).

Rodriguez has relatively strong housing policies. She supports emergency rental assistance programs, rent control, and legal support for tenants. She says she wants to create innovative financing models and focus on building mixed-income communities. (Although she doesn’t specifically name social housing, it is one example of a mixed-income housing model that keeps rent permanently affordable).

Unfortunately, Rodriguez previously worked for disgraced former LA Mayor Eric Garcetti. Her top donors include the California Real Estate PAC, health insurance companies, and Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, who was responsible for killing the latest CalCare bill, which would have brought single-payer health care to California.

District 44

Nick Schultz - Schultz was elected to Burbank City Council in 2020 and is cycling through a one-year term as Burbank Mayor. He played a key role in passing Burbank’s greenhouse gas reduction plan, outlining the City’s path to carbon neutrality, and he helped implement policy to reallocate $2 million from the police budget to social welfare spending. He has strong (and detailed) progressive policies on several issues, which you can read more about here, including support for single-payer healthcare. However, I did find a few red flags. He accepted a $2,500 donation from Warner Bros Discovery, which has become one of the most corrosive forces on entertainment industry unions under the recent leadership of Batman villain David Zaslav. He also accepted endorsements from Democrats for Israel and YIMBY groups that oppose the expansion of rent control. Schultz is running against a Republican.

District 46

No recommendation - Incumbent Jesse Gabriel is a moderate and worked as a constitutional rights and general litigation attorney before taking office. He has a less than stellar voting record, especially on police accountability. Gabriel opposed legislation to decertify officers found to have committed serious misconduct. He also withheld his support from several important progressive bills (e.g., increasing charter school accountability, approving overdose prevention centers in certain cities to combat opioid deaths, protecting the digital records of people who travel to California for abortion or gender-affirming care from police in states that ban them). He’s running against a Republican challenger but will safely defeat her in this blue district.

Gabriel stated that he does not support a ceasefire in Gaza, and he accepted an endorsement from a pro-Israel lobbying group. In February, Gabriel joined a group of colleagues from the California legislature on a sponsored trip to Israel. Why did state legislators, who have no authority on American foreign policy, take a propaganda trip to a country that was more than four months into a genocidal campaign? The group claimed the purpose of the trip was to assess “devastation caused by the Oct. 7 Hamas attack,” but California lawmakers had been taking caucus-funded trips to Israel for years. I found records of similar trips in 2018, 2019, 2022, and summer 2023.

The same week as the February PAC-funded trip to Israel, Gabriel and some of his colleagues introduced SB1287. The censorship bill, which Governor Gavin Newsom signed in September, targets protests on university campuses with restrictions on the “time, place and manner” in which protests are allowed. It also requires universities to create mandatory training that teaches students “civility.” In case you haven’t noticed, polite protests never result in meaningful political change because respectability politics are a tool of the oppressor.

Neither Gabriel nor his colleagues in the legislature have taken any action to address extensive reports of LAPD and California Highway Patrol officers brutalizing students, many of whom were Jewish. Extreme use of force against campus protestors has been well documented and independently corroborated by medical volunteers.

District 48

No recommendation - The incumbent, Blanca Rubio, is a conservative Democrat, whose only 2022 challenger was a write-in Republican candidate. Rubio has one of the worst track records on environmental and criminal justice issues of any LA Democrat in the state legislature, and she’s largely supported by PAC money from cops, Big Oil, insurance companies, and other corporations. She withheld her support from several progressive bills, including the VISION Act, which would have prevented California prisons from transferring incarcerated people who have completed their sentence to ICE for deportation. She’s expected to safely defeat her Republican challenger in this bright blue district.

District 49

Mike Fong - Fong is the incumbent Democrat, facing a MAGA challenger. Despite Fong’s political alignment with the party establishment, he’s delivered a decent voting record. Fong serves as Chair of the Higher Education Committee in the Assembly. He says his “priorities include reducing homelessness, protecting the environment, expanding access to higher education, and helping businesses create jobs.” However, he hasn’t published any policy specifics beyond that. Unfortunately, Fong’s top financial backers include: the California Real Estate PAC, a police PAC, and Erin Brokovich villain PG&E, which caused 30 wildfires and likely killed upwards of a thousand people without ever admitting wrongdoing.

District 51

No recommendation - Incumbent Democrat Rick Chavez Zbur won this seat when he defeated progressive Louis Abramson in 2022. Zbur has been an outspoken supporter of Israel’s genocide and war crimes throughout the past year and joined a zionist counter-protest at UCLA in April. He also withheld his support from CalCare, which would provide health care to all Californians. Zbur’s campaign finances are as mucky as they come. His supporters include: cops, big insurance, the California Real Estate PAC, AIPAC, and Erin Brokovich villain PG&E, which caused 30 wildfires and likely killed upwards of a thousand people without ever admitting wrongdoing.

District 52

Franky Carrillo - Carrillo spent 20 years in prison for murder—one he didn’t commit. Born to Mexican immigrants, Carrillo grew up in the Los Angeles area. While getting ready for school one morning, Franky heard a pounding on the door and was swarmed by LA County Sheriff deputies, who held him and his father down. The deputies failed to communicate the reason for his arrest, and he was charged with murder for a drive-by shooting. At 16 years old, he was denied bail and couldn’t afford an attorney.

Even though Franky had an alibi, he remained incarcerated while on trial. Despite witnesses changing their testimony of the shooting, Franky received a guilty verdict. During his 20 years of incarceration, he spent hours in the library and wrote letters to anyone he thought could help get his case reviewed. Eventually, he got the attention of attorneys, who discovered a white supremacist LA Sheriff’s deputy had coerced witnesses into identifying Franky as the killer. The deputy was a member of The Lynwood Vikings, one of several LASD deputy gangs. (If you aren’t familiar with LASD gangs, LA Sheriff deputies commit violent crimes and get branded with tattoos to join these literal gangs, which continue to operate inside the Sheriff’s Department. Check out Cerise Castle’s “A Tradition of Violence” to learn more.)

The coerced witnesses in Franky’s case had since recanted their testimony. Another man even confessed to involvement in the shooting and stated Franky was not present in a sworn statement, but the judge refused to hear his testimony at Franky’s sentencing. If you’ve followed Adnan Syded’s case, you’ll remember that it also featured an ignored alibi and witness tampering from police. These are just two examples. There are many, many more. Our “justice” system is deeply racist, corrupt, and broken.

In 2011, Franky Carrillo was exonerated, and his case later became the subject of a Netflix documentary. Carrillo earned his degree and has tirelessly advocated for justice reform and exoneration of the wrongfully convicted through his work with the LA Innocence Project and LA County’s Probation Oversight Commission, the same department that incarcerated him as a youth. He also played a key role in passing 2022’s Measure A, the LA County ballot measure that increased oversight of the Sheriff.

If elected, Carrillo will become the first formerly incarcerated exoneree to hold office in California. Carrillo’s story makes him a strong advocate against systemic injustice, and he plans to utilize his experiences to implement transformative policies. He will work to shift response to traffic incidents and mental health crises to unarmed alternatives that provide services to those in need. Carrillo identifies how the existing approaches to law enforcement are punitive and often lead to increased criminalization of people of color. He wants to address police misconduct, which is badly needed when LASD gangs continue to operate unchecked and 2023 became the deadliest year for killings by police in the United States. Carrillo will work to eliminate the racist practice of mandatory minimums and sentencing enhancements meant to increase mass incarceration. He wants to expand rehabilitative programs and reform legislation that has created barriers to services for people with criminal histories, so they can transition out of incarceration and grow into contributing members of the community.

Carrillo supports a single-payer health care system that would provide true universal coverage. He would also invest in community clinics and healthcare centers to reduce health disparities in underserved areas. During the primary, Carrillo unfortunately supported Prop 1, a disastrous ballot measure that will defund existing county mental health programs to fund Gavin Newsom’s plans for mass institutionalization and forced treatment. Why someone who was wrongfully incarcerated would support this measure is beyond me, but his opponent Jessica Caloza also supported Prop 1 and other harmful initiatives.

Caloza, who presents herself as a progressive, is a strong supporter of CARE Courts, a carceral program that mandates forced treatment on those deemed a “danger to themselves or others” even if they haven’t committed any harm or crime. Those who don’t comply can be stripped of their rights and placed in a conservatorship. As of this writing, Caloza’s largest donor is the California Real Estate PAC.

District 53

No recommendation - Michelle Rodriguez, wife of the terming-out Democratic incumbent, is facing off against Republican Nick Wilson for this seat. Rodriguez’s campaign is funded by Walmart, police PACs, Big Oil, and the health insurance industry. She wants to increase funding for police and implement neighborhood watch programs, which have repeatedly resulted in violent racial profiling, including the 2012 murder of Trayvon Martin. She also wants to implement community policing, a tried-and-failed reformist policy that increases police funding and expands surveillance. No thanks.

District 54

John Yi - In the March primary, Yi received 34.5% of the vote, trailing Mark Gonzalez’s 45.2%. Yi is a pedestrian and public transit advocate with a platform focused on housing, income inequality, and urban climate change. Gonzalez is an establishment Democrat and district director to Miguel Santiago, who will be vacating this seat after a failed bid to dethrone his former bestie, disgraced racist and LA City Councilmember Kevin de León. (For more, see the LA City Council District 14 entry.)

Yi’s website calls out the common practice of politicians referring to housing as a human right while simultaneously offering policies that depend on the same profit-driven housing market that’s responsible for our housing crisis. “An inalienable right to housing? That’s not even on the radar.” That’s correct! And it’s exciting to hear a candidate say it. Instead of repeating the failed strategy of “trying to coax a system that has no interest in being coaxed,” Yi wants to invest in community land trusts and nonprofit community development organizations to build affordable housing. He believes our housing crisis isn’t just about a lack of housing but a lack of renter power. And again, he’s correct! Yi will work to improve rent control, and his campaign refuses donations from real estate interests.

Gonzalez says he will, “keep renters in their homes by increasing rental assistance programs, putting limits on rent hikes, and protecting tenants from abusive landlords.” He has also accepted large donations from California Real Estate PAC. Seems fake.

Yi believes we need density development that makes sense for communities and will invest in more public parks, public libraries, and safe, walkable streets with more trees that provide shade. He wants California to expand utility, rent, food, and transportation assistance to help close the wealth gap and ensure our most vulnerable stay housed. He supports the unionization of the working class in the tech industry (e.g., warehouse workers, delivery drivers) and wants to enshrine working class power in legislation (e.g., mandating worker seats on corporate boards, support for tenants associations).

His climate policy takes aim at the negative health impacts that people in his district face, and he will hold corporations responsible for the impact of their production (e.g., oil and gas, plastics, forever chemicals). Yi will drastically increase investments in pedestrian, cycling, and public transit options. He also wants to replace the politically-appointed LA Metro Board with a publicly-elected body to ensure the people who ride buses and trains are making the decisions.

Gonzalez says he will work to invest in clean, renewable energy (e.g., wind, solar) to combat climate change, but his campaign accepted donations from Ford Motor Company’s PAC.

Yi wants to implement single-payer health care. Gonzalez claims he will fight to make health care a right for all, but he doesn’t support CalCare or any version of single-payer health care—the only way to actually deliver on that promise. Probably because Big Insurance is a top contributor to Gonzalez’s campaign. Also found in his campaign finance records: FOX Corporation (parent company of FOX News) and DoorDash.

One of the biggest red flags about Gonzalez is his support for CARE Courts, which the ACLU “vehemently opposes” because the program will institutionalize people with mental health disabilities, subject them to ineffective forced treatment, and strip them of rights by forcing them into conservatorships. CARE Courts will further strain and strip funds away from existing mental health programs to implement the Governor’s pet project.

A lawsuit from disability and civil rights advocates has already challenged the constitutionality of CARE Courts, arguing the new court system will violate due process and equal protection rights under the state constitution. Advocates also point to existing systemic racism, which will ensure these violations “inevitably fall hardest on Black, brown, and Indigenous people, who are routinely misdiagnosed with serious mental health disabilities…It harks back to a dark era when forced treatment of people with serious mental health conditions was the norm. It would unravel decades of hard-won progress by the disability rights movement to secure self-determination, equality, and dignity for people with disabilities.” What policies should be supported instead? Voluntary mental health services, single-payer health care, and permanent supportive housing.

District 55

No recommendation - Democratic incumbent Assemblymember Isaac Bryan won 84% of the primary vote and is expected to beat his Republican challenger by a wide margin in this runoff. He has a relatively progressive voting record, especially compared to most of his colleagues in the legislature, where Democrats hold a supermajority but spend a lot of time fucking over struggling people in favor of monied interests.

Let’s start with the good: Bryan introduced AB1848, which ended the practice of prison gerrymandering in California by forcing redistricting commissions to use the last home address of incarcerated people when drawing political boundaries. He was the primary sponsor of AB1686, which ended the punitive practice of forcing parents to pay for costs when their children are placed in foster care, which disproportionately impacts families of color. The bill’s passage increased family reunification, which is the primary goal of foster care.

Bryan is also co-author of AB2200, the latest version of CalCare, a bill that would have brought single-payer healthcare to California. Unfortunately, members of the Democratic Party have repeatedly undermined CalCare, and Bryan has aided efforts to sabotage its advancement. That probably explains why health insurance companies like Blue Shield donated to Bryan, a candidate who claims he wants to eliminate all private health insurance.

Ignoring outcry from CalCare author Assemblymember Ash Kalra and single-payer advocates like the California Nurses Association, Bryan voted for another health care bill: SB770. This bill’s author claimed it would put California “on the path toward a Medicare for All type of system.” In reality, the bill was a stalling tactic, forcing a study on "unified financing," which is not single-payer. Governor Gavin Newsom, who also betrayed the movement for health care justice, signed SB 770 into law, and it has done exactly what its supporters intended: nothing. (In case you were wondering, the most recent version of CalCare was blocked in the Appropriations Committee by Oakland Assemblymember Buffy Wicks—yet another former CalCare supporter.)

Bryan accepted major contributions from AirBnB, real estate PACs, and landlord lobbying group the California Apartment Association PAC. That last one is especially concerning. Earlier this year, Bryan introduced a bill that would have established a statewide Office of Tenants’ Rights and Protections. The California Apartment Association successfully lobbied to have the bill killed in the Assembly Appropriations Committee, which Bryan is a member of. Although Bryan has espoused support for rent control in the past, I haven’t been able to find any record of him expressing support for Prop 33, a measure on your ballot that would allow local governments to expand rent control. All of this is especially concerning when his website lacks any policy specifics.

Unlike many of his colleagues, Bryan did not attempt to mischaracterize a January ceasefire demonstration at the state legislature, instead describing it as “a powerful showing of civil disobedience.” Unfortunately, he has since repeatedly mischaracterized the actions of protestors advocating for Gaza during Israel’s genocidal campaign. In April, Bryan implied the UCLA encampment protest was violent while failing to condemn the many documented instances of violence perpetrated by zionist counterprotestors against the students, many of whom were Jewish. Neither Bryan nor his colleagues in the legislature have taken any action to address extensive reports of LAPD and California Highway Patrol officers brutalizing student protestors—even though these accounts have been independently corroborated by medical volunteers.

In June, Bryan condemned a protest that The Palestinian Youth Movement organized to object to the sale of occupied Palestinian land, which is illegal under international law. Hosted at an LA synagogue, the event was part of ongoing Israeli efforts to colonize areas like the West Bank with Americans and Canadians. (If you aren’t familiar with these efforts, John Oliver did a crash course on this topic that I strongly recommend). This article features documentation of several assaults perpetrated by zionist counterpotestors, one of whom repeatedly chanted, “Sand n*ggers go home!” Bryan received an endorsement from Democrats for Israel with a “strong support” rating.

District 56

No recommendation - The incumbent Lisa Calderon is a moderate running against a Republican challenger. She withheld her support from several pieces of progressive legislation and accepted lots of money from oil and real estate interests. And cops. She won her previous election against a Republican by 17 points.

District 57

Sade Elhawary - Former high school history teacher Sade Elhawary is running for the seat being vacated by Reggie Jones-Sawyer, who lost his primary bid for LA City Council District 10. Elhawary has relatively strong housing and homelessness policies. She wants to expand tenant protections and will work to develop non-market housing, subsidized housing, and greater incentives for first-time homeownership. She support the Housing First model, a strategy that emphasizes providing permanent housing to unhoused people without preconditions because housing is a critical first step towards addressing other underlying issues (e.g., it’s much more difficult to find a job when you don’t have an address and reliable place to sleep and shower).

While Elhawary says she supports “healthcare for all,” she does not specify support for CalCare or any other form of single-payer, which is the only way to ensure that policy. Elhawary promises to phase out oil drilling and remediate existing oil wells, which leak harmful chemicals into the community. Her environmental platform also includes reclaiming urban space for sustainable food purposes and increasing access to renewable energy.

Elhawary supports community-led alternatives to policing and believes in “making the deepest investments in disadvantaged communities disproportionately targeted by police brutality and mass incarceration.” Her opponent, conservative Democrat Efren Martinez, wants to implement predictive policing, which is…terrible. Martinez supports “community policing,” a tried-and-failed, reformist policy that increases police funding and expands surveillance.

I didn’t find any serious red flags in Elhawary’s campaign finances, but Martinez’s campaign is funded by police PACs, Big Oil, Walmart, an obliterator of worker protections Doordash. Martinez accepted endorsements from multiple police groups, including the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs (ALADS), which is certainly a choice. If you want to know why, search “LASD gangs.”

District 61

Tina Simone McKinnor - McKinnor was elected to the Assembly in 2022. She has advocated for important legislation, including a bill to replace the mandate on healthcare workers for reporting suspected domestic violence and abuse to police with new guidelines that direct survivors to social service agencies. McKinnor authored AB1310, which would allow resentencing for people who received firearm sentence enhancements, a practice that typically targets people of color. (The Assembly passed these bills, but both have been held in the state Senate since September 2023). McKinnor supports tenant protections, single-payer health care, universal pre-K education, student loan forgiveness, and ending qualified immunity. She’s been an outspoken advocate against environmental racism and wants to invest in new infrastructure that ensures equitable and sustainable development.

McKinnor has a relatively strong voting record but recently received criticism from Inglewood constituents for authoring a bill that allows an exclusive club inside the Intuit Dome to sell alcohol until 4am. LA Clippers owner Steve Ballmer hired lobbyist Jason Kinney to lobby Governor Gavin Newsom for his support of this bill. (Newsom was celebrating Kinney’s birthday at the French Laundry when he was caught violating his own safety protocols during a covid surge in November 2020.) Inglewood residents trying to prevent school closures have also criticized McKinnor for failing to intervene and for kicking advocates out of a Town Hall when they raised this issue.

District 62

No recommendation - Democrat José Luis Solache is the former Mayor of Lynwood, running against a Republican. Solache has failed to publish any substantive policy, and the California Real Estate PAC is among his top donors. Don’t waste your ink.

District 64

No recommendation - The incumbent Blanca Pacheco wasted no time, building a disastrous voting record since her 2022 election to the Assembly. She supports cops integrating facial recognition software with body cameras, discriminatory bench warrants for minor infractions, and warrantless searches. She withheld her vote from a bill that would protect the digital records of people who travel to California for abortion or gender-affirming care from police in states that ban them. Some of her top contributors include PAC money from real estate developers, landlords, and cops. Pacheco is facing a Republican challenger, who she beat by 23 points in the 2022 general election. Pacheco does not deserve your vote.

District 65

No recommendation - The incumbent Mike Gispon is a former cop. He withheld his votes from several important pieces of legislation, so I think it’s only appropriate for you to withhold your vote from him. Real estate and police PACs are among his largest campaign donors.

District 66

No recommendation - The incumbent, Al Muratsuchi, is a conservative Democrat facing a Republican challenger. He’s a former prosecutor, Deputy Attorney General, and a former Torrance School Board member. He voted against the VISION Act, which would have prevented California prisons from transferring incarcerated people who have completed their sentence to ICE for deportation. He also withheld his vote from several important bills (e.g., that would prevent cops from using facial recognition software on body cameras; allow overdose prevention programs in certain cities to combat opioid deaths; and protect the digital records of people traveling to California for abortions and gender-affirming care from states that ban them). His top donors include Facebook, police PACs, and the guy who took a break from canceling your favorite shows/decimating public education to tell you to stop whining about transphobia.

District 67

No recommendation - Incumbent Democratic Assemblymember Sharon Quirk-Silva is expected to beat her Republican challenger in this blue district. Quirk-Silva has a trash voting record, regularly withholding her votes from important progressive bills. I suggest you do the same to her. Quirk-Silva also voted against environmental bills that would implement zero-emission lawn equipment and phase out unnecessary plastic packaging in online shopping. She voted against public banking and a bill to require law enforcement agencies to receive approval from their governing bodies before acquiring military equipment.

District 69

No recommendation - Josh Lowenthal, the Democratic incumbent, ran a relatively moderate campaign in 2022 but delivered a re progressive voting record since taking office, especially on environmental issues. However, he recently introduced AB2153, a bill intended to gut the efficacy of the California Public Records Act and decrease government transparency. His campaign accepted money from the insurance industry, Big Tech, a police PAC, and the California Apartment Association, the nation's largest statewide organization representing the rental housing industry. Lowenthal has a Republican challenger.

U.S. REPRESENTATIVES

District 23

Derek Marshall - Marshall is a gay community organizer running to represent the high desert and Inland Empire. His platform focuses on meeting the needs of the people, and his campaign says it’s 100% funded through small-dollar donations. He pledges to support The Equality Act, which would amend existing civil rights law to guarantee non-discrimination protections for LGBTQIA+ people in areas such as employment, housing, education, and government services.

Marshall believes health care is a human right and will advocate for a single-payer system that includes primary care, mental health, dental, and vision coverage. He recognizes that transforming our healthcare system will be a long-term battle, so he will fight to cap pharmaceutical drug prices, cancel medical debts, and fund healthcare centers in underserved regions. He also supports codifying reproductive rights into federal law, establishing a federal program to provide contraception resources, and addressing injustices like the Black maternal mortality crisis.

Some highlights from Marshall’s environmental platform include investment in local electric bus infrastructure and commuter rail, phasing out the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035, and requiring the electrification of all railways by 2040. He will fight to eliminate all fossil fuel subsidies and use those funds for renewable energy, including the construction of a solar panel highway along I-15 to Vegas as proposed by state Senator Josh Becker. Marshall wants to prohibit new oil and gas leases on federal land, phase out existing ones, and ban all fracking operations. (Sorry, RuPaul.) Marshall wants to ensure our military, the institution with the largest carbon footprint on the planet, complies with emission reduction standards. He has called for a ceasefire.

District 26

No recommendation - The moderate Democratic incumbent Julia Brownley has failed to support major progressive legislation. Brownley has an endorsement from AIPAC and voted to send $14 billion in weapons to Israel. She also supported the cut to UNRWA funding, which has exacerbated the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

District 27

No recommendation - The incumbent Republican Mike Garcia was an executive at weapons manufacturer Raytheon before winning this seat by just 300 votes in 2020. His challenger George Whitesides, the former CEO of Virgin Galactic, is a conservative Democrat with an endorsement from Democratic Majority for Israel. Whitesides supports increasing criminalization and mass incarceration via Prop 36. No thanks.

District 28

Judy Chu - The incumbent Chu co-sponsored Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. She authored the U.S. Citizenship Act to try to create a pathway to citizenship for 11 million immigrants. Chu has become a strong advocate for ending military hazing since her 21-year-old nephew shot and killed himself after enduring three and a half hours of discrimination-motivated assault and torture from his fellow marines in Afghanistan. Chu was one of the only Democrats to support rail workers by voting against forcing through a shitty tentative agreement in 2022. In November 2023, she called for a ceasefire in Gaza.

District 29

Entry coming soon.

District 30

No recommendation - Democratic Assemblymember Laura Friedman is running against a Republican for the seat vacated by Adam Schiff. Friedman has campaigned on her relatively progressive record in the California legislature, where she co-authored CalCare, a bill that would have brought single-payer healthcare to the state. Unfortunately, members of the Democratic Party have repeatedly undermined CalCare, and Friedman has aided efforts to sabotage its advancement. That probably explains why a health insurance PAC donated to Friedman, a candidate claiming she wants to eliminate all private health insurance companies.

Ignoring outcry from CalCare author Assemblymember Ash Kalra and single-payer advocates like the California Nurses Association, Friedman voted for another health care bill: SB770. This bill’s author claimed it would put California “on the path toward a Medicare for All type of system.” In reality, the bill was a stalling tactic, forcing a study on "unified financing," which is not single-payer. Governor Gavin Newsom, who also betrayed the movement for health care justice, signed SB770 into law, and it has done exactly what its supporters intended: nothing. (In case you were wondering, the most recent version of CalCare was introduced earlier this year but was subsequently blocked in the Appropriations Committee by Oakland Assemblymember Buffy Wicks—yet another former CalCare supporter.)

Even with at least 42,000 dead in Gaza, Friedman still refuses to call for a ceasefire or criticize Israel’s genocidal actions. In this December 2023 interview, she condemned Hamas for killing Israeli children but refused to condemn Israel’s actions when the interviewers asked about Israel’s targeting of Palestinian children. The New York Times recently published a report from a group of health care workers who volunteered in Gaza. These independent observers witnessed an unprecedented number of preteen Gazan children who had been shot in the head or chest. Gaza has the highest rate of child malnutrition globally. Friedman’s stance is so toxic that she declined to publish a single word of foreign policy.

Friedman accepted endorsements and contributions from multiple pro-Israel PACs. In February, Friedman and some of her colleagues introduced SB1287, which Governor Gavin Newsom signed in September. The censorship bill targets protests on university campuses with restrictions on the “time, place and manner” in which protests are allowed. It also requires universities to create mandatory training that teaches students “civility.” In case you haven’t noticed, polite protests never result in meaningful political change because respectability politics are a tool of the oppressor.

Neither Friedman nor her colleagues in the legislature have taken any action to address extensive reports of LAPD and California Highway Patrol officers brutalizing students, many of whom were Jewish. Extreme use of force against student protestors has been well documented and independently corroborated by medical volunteers.

During this race, the charter school lobby made large contributions to Friedman’s campaign this cycle and spent a whopping $2.1 million backing her in recent elections. Charter schools are parasites on public education. They’ve been the subject of massive fraud cases, illegally restricted enrollment, contributed to racial segregation, and created conditions that lead to high attrition rates for both students and teachers. As of 2019, the federal government spent an estimated $1.17 billion on charters that either never opened or that opened and had shut down. One report found 40% of all charters shutter within ten years. Despite these results, charter schools have become a pet project of billionaires seeking to dismantle public education, frequently under the philanthropic guise of “school choice” and “closing the education gap.” Former UTLA chief Alex Caputo Pearl cited deregulation as a major motive of the charter movement and its backers: “Part of it is ideological commitment[...]teacher unions are the last, biggest unions, and taking them down will create much more room for a broader deregulation of the economy and public sector.

A few more red flags: Friedman accepted substantial financial support from Boeing, real estate interests, Police PACs, Amazon, Elon Musk’s Tesla, and failed conservative LA Mayoral candidate Rick Caruso. No thanks.

District 31

No recommendation - Gil Cisneros was laid off from his job at Frito-Lay then won $266 million playing Mega Millions a few weeks later. He and his wife donated a bunch of their winnings, and their wealth caught the attention of President Obama, who appointed Cisneros to the Advisory Committee on the Arts at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Then Cisneros did what an increasing number of rich people do: he decided to run for office. He won a Congressional seat in 2018, representing an Orange County district…then lost re-election in 2020. Not to worry! He landed on his feet, accepting an appointment as Biden’s Undersecretary of Defense. But he was itching to get back to Congress, so he left Virginia and moved to El Monte, a community that he has no apparent ties with. But who cares? He’s rich, and it’s convenient for his renewed electoral aspirations! With at least 42,000 Gazans dead, Cisneros continues to misrepresent Israel’s genocidal actions as self-defense and refuses to call for a ceasefire.

Cisneros accepted an endorsement from the Association of Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs despite ongoing atrocities from LASD deputy gangs. (If you aren’t familiar with LASD gangs, LA Sheriff deputies commit violent crimes and get branded with tattoos to join these literal gangs, which continue to operate inside the Sheriff’s Department. Check out Cerise Castle’s “A Tradition of Violence” to learn more.)

District 32

No recommendation - I’ll keep it real short: incumbent Brad Sherman is one of the shittiest corporate Democrats in Congress, where he’s been festering since 1996. His challenger in this run-off is a Republican.

District 34

David Kim - This man is so close to unseating the corporate Democrat currently representing this district. David Kim tallied an impressive 47% of the vote in 2020 when he ran for this seat, before reaching 49% in 2022! Kim has been a children’s court attorney, immigration attorney, labor advocate, corruption investigator, member of the Los Angeles Tenants Union, activist, and board member serving on a neighborhood council. Working directly with some of LA’s most vulnerable has shaped his politics and his policies.

Kim wants to institute life-empowering policies that meet people’s basic needs so that everyone can thrive. Los Angeles has the worst air quality in the country, and the majority of people who live here are highly vulnerable to major consequences of climate change (e.g., extreme heat, wildfires, drought, sea level rise). Kim believes the best way to combat the impacts of dirty energy and the political influence of Big Oil is a Green New Deal. We need urgent action to reach the critical 2030 deadline that scientists set to reach zero emissions. A Green New Deal could meet that urgency while creating 20 million union jobs that pay Americans a living wage. Kim wants to hold dirty energy corporations accountable for their environmental damage and shift all fossil fuel subsidies to support clean energy solutions. Kim will address environmental racism by prioritizing communities disproportionately affected by pollution (e.g., Indigenous populations, communities of color, people with disabilities) and uplift the voices of energy-industry workers to ensure they transfer to clean energy careers.

Housing has become unaffordable for a record half of U.S. renters. Kim proposes building 12 million new social/publicly-funded housing units that would charge rent according to real cost-based or income-based formulas. This would eliminate exploitative profiteering from the housing market and combat segregation through mixed-income housing. Kim wants to pass a tenant bill of rights that would protect renters from predatory practices, discrimination, rent increases, and no-fault evictions. He would work to give tax breaks to renters spending more than 30% of income on rent, establish a federal housing program for formerly incarcerated Americans, and eliminate all legal barriers to federal housing assistance for undocumented immigrants.

Kim wants to meet other basic needs, too. He believes healthcare is a human right and supports a national program like Medicare For All that would provide comprehensive health care to every American. That includes no-premium, no-deductible coverage for vision, hearing, dental, mental health, substance use treatment, reproductive care, prescription drugs, and disability care. Because this plan will take time to implement, Kim wants Congress to pass initiatives that provide vouchers to pay for mental health; end predatory hospital charges; invest in medical facilities; and more. Kim will fight for social safeguards, including Universal Income (UI). His proposal would establish a free public bank that distributes $1,000 from the federal government to every American adult each month, which would cost less to implement than existing inefficient, means-tested relief programs. (Administrative costs of means testing are very expensive, and it creates major roadblocks that prevent people most in need from accessing resources!) Kim lays out a persuasive argument for UI that I think is worth reading rather than me trying to summarize. I do want to point out that unlike Andrew Yang’s Freedom Dividend, Kim explicitly states that his UI proposal would not undermine existing assistance programs (e.g., housing, food, disability).

The other main tenets of Kim’s platform are co-governance and people centered politics. That means prioritizing people over corporate interests and proactively partnering with local activists, community organizations, and residents to create legislation that works for the people. In addition to setting office hours to hear directly from constituents, Kim will introduce a Responsive Representation Bill, which would require U.S. Representatives to host public town hall meetings in their districts, create a database for easily accessible constituent resources, and help make the legislative process more accessible through education. He’s also running a 100% clean-money campaign.

In the face of growing voter suppression, Kim will fight to pass legislation that bans unnecessary voter ID requirements, consecrates mail-in ballot voting, establishes a federal election holiday, ends gerrymandering nationwide, and restores civil liberties to formerly incarcerated Americans. Kim will work to combat Citizens United while working to make politics more equitable. He staunchly supports democracy vouchers, which would provide every voter with vouchers to donate to candidate(s) who represent their values and help mitigate corporate influence. He also supports ranked choice voting, which creates a more democratic system by letting voters select their real first choice rather than who they think can make it to a run-off. That would be fantastic, and it shouldn’t be difficult to implement when states like Alaska and Maine already have.

Kim identifies the harm that the United States has caused globally and believes in transforming our nation’s foreign policy. He will prioritize diplomacy instead of military intervention, work to rein in Presidential war powers, and advocate to cut the defense budget to reinvest in our communities. Kim also wants the U.S. to lead on global climate action and advocate for human rights accountability by rejoining the International Criminal Court.

You can read his policies specific to several countries here, but I will cover his proposals on Israel and Gaza. Kim swiftly called for a ceasefire and continues to demand wide-scale humanitarian support for Gaza as well as an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestine. He wants the U.S. to leverage its “diplomatic and economic influence to pressure the Israeli government to replace its far-right government, enabling more productive two-state negotiations.” Kim supports the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement, which works to end international support for Israel's oppression of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law. Kim also believes in the establishment of an international criminal court through the UN Security Council to prosecute illegal settlers in the West Bank and deliver justice to Palestinian families.

The incumbent Jimmy Gomez is an establishment Democrat, who claimed to be a progressive when he first ran for office. Since then, Gomez has abandoned pretty much all of his stated progressive priorities in favor of corporate interests. 98.8% of his campaign is funded by large dollar donors and corporate PACs, including insurance and pharmaceutical companies, debt collectors, and weapons manufacturers—which probably explains why he has dismissively refused to support a ceasefire. Then much later, pretended like he was a longtime ceasefire supporter.

Gomez has an alarming history of cozying up to corrupt, racist, and violent allies. He traded endorsements with disgraced former Councilmember Jose Huizar, who was recently sentenced to 13 years in federal prison for bribery and corruption charges. He also traded endorsements with Huizar’s successor, disgraced Councilmember Kevin de León, who assaulted a protestor, colluded to undermine Black voting power, and was caught spewing racism in the leaked LA Fed Tapes scandal. Gomez accepted $3,000 from serial predator and murderer Ed Buck but ignored calls from advocates demanding that he donate that money to funds benefiting Buck’s victims.

District 35

No recommendation - I only have one nice thing to say about the moderate incumbent, Norma Torres. She was one of the only Democrats who refused to force rail workers to take a shitty tentative agreement in 2022. That’s it. In December 2023, Torres joined 94 Democratic colleagues in supporting a Republican resolution that conflated all anti-Zionism with antisemitism despite Jerry Nadler, the senior Jewish member of the chamber, speaking out against it. "The resolution… states that all anti-Zionism is antisemitism. That's either intellectually disingenuous or just factually wrong,” Nadler said. Why would Torres do this? Probably because she’s backed by pro-Israel PACs and weapons manufacturers. Many of her decisions appear to be driven by PAC money rather than the needs of her constituents, 14% of whom live in poverty. Torres is being challenged by a Republican, but she is expected to win this race by a wide margin.

District 36

No recommendation - This race will be an easy win for Democratic incumbent Ted Lieu, but he doesn’t deserve your vote. Lieu has a terrible voting record on military spending and foreign policy—largely motivated by massive campaign contributions from the Pro-Israel America PAC, American Israel Public Affairs Cmte, and arms manufacturer Raytheon.

District 37

Juan Rey - Rey is a train mechanic for LA Metro, running as an independent, calling out both Democrats and Republicans for catering to the needs of the wealthy. Rey is outspoken about the exploitation of workers and will fight for labor protections. He believes decent housing and health care should be human rights. Rey is challenging the incumbent Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, who won this seat when Karen Bass vacated it to run for mayor. Kamlager-Dove’s top campaign contributors include a pro-Israel lobbying PAC and Vistria Group, which touts its growing business in healthcare on its website. That would explain why she hasn’t called for a ceasefire in Gaza. And why she’s stayed quiet about Medicare For All despite campaigning on her support for single-payer healthcare.

District 38

No recommendation - The incumbent Linda Sánchez is a moderate Democrat in a blue district. She finally called for a ceasefire in March, but she’s consistently supported increases in military spending. She also accepted a ton of money from the insurance industry, lobbyists, and big real estate.

District 42

No recommendation - Entry coming soon.

District 43

Maxine Waters - The incumbent, Rep. Maxine Waters garnered national media attention as an outspoken critic of Donald Trump, but she has strong ties to the Democratic establishment and corporate donors. Just 1% of her campaign is funded by small-dollar donors. Her top financial supporters include Big Real Estate, Nissan, a blockchain technology company, and the insurance industry. That last one might explain why she, like many of her establishment colleagues, co-sponsored Medicare for All but has otherwise stayed silent on the issue.

Some of her constituents have been critical of her lack of involvement in addressing issues in Inglewood, including the city’s lack of transparency around how local officials have spent federal funds meant for low-income and unhoused residents. Waters came under fire in March 2022, when unhoused residents showed up to an event after a nonprofit erroneously promised permanent, subsidized housing in a social media post. Waters shouted for “everybody to go home,” and someone in the crowd yelled back, “We don’t got no home, that’s why we’re here. What home we gonna go to?” Is Waters to blame for this misunderstanding or the homelessness crisis? Not exactly. Did this incident illustrate an unfortunate lack of awareness from one of the highest-ranking Democrats in Congress that speaks to the systemic failures of the party? Yes.

To her credit, Waters called for an immediate ceasefire on November 3, 2023.

District 44

No recommendation - Despite being a cosponsor of Medicare for All, the incumbent Nanette Diaz Barragán is a moderate and has since removed all references to the policy from both her congressional and campaign websites—possibly because Blue Cross/Blue Shield is among her top donors. Her other top donors include political consultants, the CEO of a pharmaceutical company, and the American Israel PAC. In May, she finally called for a ceasefire in Gaza. In the primary, she beat her Republican challenger by 41% and will certainly beat him again in this run-off.

District 45

No recommendation - Incumbent Republican Michelle Steel won a majority of the votes in the primary; her Democratic challenger Derek Tran took 15.9% of the vote. Unfortunately, their policies share some unfortunate similarities. Both candidates fearmonger about Communist China; both have been vocal supporters of Israel’s genocide and war crimes; and both promise to expand affordable health care/lower prescription drug costs while opposing single-payer. Tran’s campaign messaging pretty much boils down to “I’m not a Republican, and I’m pro choice!” These are important qualities, especially when Steel is decidedly anti-choice. But Tran has some uniquely concerning policies of his own. Tran has no environmental policies on his website’s bare-bones issues page. What he does have is a section dedicated to his support for blockchain and crypto technologies. This is concerning given the immense ecological footprint these technologies create (e.g., energy consumption comparable with a moderately-populated European country; devastating water footprint to cool servers). Tran has failed to indicate what measures—if any—he would take to address these impacts. Trans says he refuses to take donations from corporate PACs and other special interests, but a concerning number of his top donors are venture capitalists. He also accepted an endorsement from the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs (ALADS), which is certainly a choice. If you want to know why, search “LASD gangs.”

LA CITY MEASURES

Measure DD

YES - Every ten years, the boundaries of LA’s 15 City Council districts are redrawn, using updated census data. Each City Councilmember selects a commissioner to represent their district in that process, which is supposed to incorporate public input. However, this process mostly amounts to political theater because City Council and the Mayor have final say on district boundaries. That has created major conflicts of interest and turned the most recent redistricting process into a complete clusterfuck.

“Two years ago, this city was shaken by scandal when a few Councilmembers were recorded trying to game the redistricting process for themselves while diluting the power of entire communities.” This excerpt from the official argument in favor of Measure DD is referring to the LA Fed Tap scandal. That’s the one where LA City Council President Nury “Fuck That Guy He’s With The Blacks” Martinez infamously colluded with Councilmembers Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo to decimate the voting power of Black people, renters, and progressives—in between spewing racist and homophobic epithets.

The shocking words spoken on the Fed Tapes mostly drowned out coverage of the corrupt actions these elected officials described. In the leaked audio, Kevin de León expressed excitement about throwing Councilmember Nithya Raman’s district into a “blender,” and that’s exactly what happened. These corrupt councilmembers successfully cut renters out of Raman’s district, diminishing their voting power and separating them from the representative they elected. In total, Raman lost about 40% of her original district. The new Council District 4 is now whiter and more conservative with white residents accounting for 69% of CD4’s voting-age population.

Raman campaigned on creating a more transparent redistricting process in 2020, but being targeted in what became a national scandal made this personal. And with public outrage on her side, Raman led the charge to create an independent redistricting process in the form of this measure.

With majority approval, Measure DD will establish an Independent Redistricting Commission (i.e., the people drawing the new district maps won’t be appointed by politicians with self-serving agendas) to lead this process, starting in 2031.

Here’s how the 16 commissioners (and four alternates) would be selected:

Every ten years, applicants will be screened for conflicts of interest (e.g., no elected officials, their staff, or their family members; no candidates, lobbyists, or political consultants; no City employees).
The City Clerk’s Office will randomly select half of the commissioners from the pool of screened applicants.
Those eight commissioners will select the remaining slots from the same pool of applicants with a mandate to reflect the diversity of LA City (e.g., taking race, gender, age, and income into consideration).

Commissioners would perform all of the same duties as existing ones (e.g., educate the public about the redistricting process, consider public input, make recommendations to officials). They would also get final say on redrawing maps, transferring that authority away from the politicians.

Commissioners are prohibited from communicating about redistricting outside of public meetings. After completing their service, they become ineligible to run for any City Council seat they helped draw.

Why is this a ballot measure that we have to vote on? All of the LA City measures on the ballot this cycle would amend the charter (i.e., our city’s constitution). That means City Council can’t vote to implement them without majority voter approval.

Is there anything harmful in Measure DD? Not really, but it does have some weaknesses. The selection process is a bit unpredictable, but that’s in the interest of fairness. Commissioners would receive stipends that help cover expenses like child care and transportation, but redistricting is time intensive, which eliminates any prospective candidate who can’t afford to take time off of work.

The Measure does not create a protected budget for the Commission, meaning it would still be reliant on City Council to fund things like adequate translation services and public outreach, which have been issues in the past. That could open the door for budgetary retaliation from Council.

The state and county use independent, outside lawyers to preside over their redistricting meetings and provide advice on legal obligations. If Measure DD passes, the City Attorney would continue to serve in this role for LA’s redistricting process. That means one elected official could continue to exert some influence over this process, and our current City Attorney is infamous for overstepping.

Something Measure DD does not address is council expansion. LA’s 15 councilmembers govern our city’s nearly four million residents. The number of Council seats and districts has remained stagnant since 1925 despite LA’s population growing by ~800%. For comparison, New York has 51 councilmembers, and Chicago has 50 aldermen. This concentration of power in LA City Hall facilitates the types of corruption detailed throughout this guide. Despite strong support for adding more seats and districts to the Council, our elected officials couldn’t be bothered to negotiate a revised number of seats to propose to voters. Thanks to two councilmembers, a decision on council expansion won’t be made until at least 2026 and won't be implemented until at least 2032.

To be clear, Councilmember Raman isn’t responsible for these shortcomings. This measure and other reforms on the ballot are negotiated packages, many of which were undermined by elected officials who are unwilling to concede any amount of power. I would argue that Raman is the only LA City Councilmember who is a serious advocate for good governance reform. Even her progressive colleague Hugo Soto-Martinez fought to remove key reforms, betraying the policies he campaigned on. Fellow progressive Eunisses Hernandez attempted to shrink the number of weekly Council meetings from three to one, which would have drastically reduced the public’s ability to engage with our elected officials. Fortunately, that proposal tanked.

Measure DD is an important effort to combat corruption in redistricting, and the lingering harm it’s inflicted on our communities. But it’s also the bare minimum.

LA City has 18 elected positions. In recent years, LA elected officials have been investigated and/or indicted by the FBI (6), called on by POTUS to resign for overt racism (3), indicted by the LA District Attorney (1), accused of sexual harassment or assault (3), accused of covering up rampant sexual harassment and assault (1), caught on video assaulting a protestor (1). Two sitting councilmembers are currently facing ethics charges.

Unfortunately, the LA Fed Tapes weren’t leaked until almost a year after the new redistricting map had been finalized. Nury Martinez and her allies wiped out the Redistricting Commission’s work, creating their own so-called “hybrid map,” which was swiftly approved. Even after everything that’s come to light, that map will define our district borders through 2032. Or so I thought…

Immediately after completing this entry, I visited the LA Times website to find this breaking news alert: “State attorney general wants LA to redraw council districts, confidential document says.” California Attorney General Rob Bonta is pressuring LA City Council to redraw its district maps before the 2026 primary election. It’s unclear why Bonta waited three years—and two full election cycles—to take this action or how he expects Los Angeles to meet this deadline while implementing a new Independent Redistricting Commission. However, this complication will likely further hinder council expansion efforts.

Measure HH

YES - Measure HH seems like a relatively disparate list of amendments to the charter (i.e., LA City’s constitution), but some serious drama landed parts of it on the ballot.

Majority voter approval of Measure HH would:

Require that at least one member of the Board of Harbor Commissioners lives in San Pedro and another lives in Wilmington.
Define the subpoena and investigative authority of the LA City Attorney.
Clarify the LA City Controller’s audit authority over city contractors/subcontractors.
Require Commission appointees (i.e., politically-selected citizens who do things like draw redistricting maps or oversee policy of LA City departments) to file financial disclosures that help screen for conflicts of interest before they’re confirmed.
Provide additional time to evaluate fiscal impacts of laws proposed by ballot initiatives.
Some other minor amendments (e.g., authorization of temporary managerial appointments, removal of outdated language).

Let’s break down those first three bullets. The five-member Board of Harbor Commissioners oversees the Port of Los Angeles, which receives nearly 40% of all U.S. imports. That’s historically made the Port the largest single source of pollution in Southern California although recent measures have helped curb pollutants. In August 2024, Mayor Karen Bass received backlash for replacing local Commissioner Diane Middleton with one of her political consultant cronies. Middleton had a strong track record of protecting the community, combatting automation that threatened to eliminate jobs, and advocating for longshore and shipyard workers, who were exposed to asbestos. By specifying a requirement for more representation from the immediately surrounding communities, Measure HH will help elevate concerns and experiences of the residents most greatly impacted by the Port’s operations.

Up next, the City Attorney’s subpoena power is already enshrined in state law but not the City Charter. Measure HH would change that. It would also prevent the City Attorney from investigating LA City officials, departments, and employees. Did you read all of City Hall’s recent crimes listed in the previous entry? Seems bad.

And finally, the audits! In 2022, Kenneth Mejia revolutionized the LA City Controller’s Office after a decisive electoral victory. Mejia campaigned on educating the public on our city’s generally opaque finances and bringing accountability to City Hall. Mayor Karen Bass and City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto aren’t big fans of transparency, so they’ve done pretty much everything in their power to undermine Mejia’s efforts. That’s why we’re voting to clarify his authority to conduct audits on city contractors.

Since 2020, Los Angeles has contracted Urban Alchemy, a nonprofit that hires people with lived experience (e.g., currently/formerly unhoused, formerly incarcerated) to operate some of its programs like CIRCLE, a program that responds to 9-1-1 calls related to unhoused people. Or to act as a “mercenary outfit” that disappears encampments on the order of disgraced former Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell. (O’Farrell was ousted from office two years ago, but Urban Alchemy continues to torment poor people in his former district, now represented by Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez. I regularly hear from unhoused residents in Council District 13 that Urban Alchemy workers chase them away from locations that had been previously targeted by Inside Safe operations, helping to prop up a facade of compassion.)

On a cold January night, an Urban Alchemy employee was caught spraying water at an unhoused person, prompting LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia to launch an investigation into the scandal-plagued nonprofit. Urban Alchemy complied until the Controller requested contractual information. The Controller’s Office issued a subpoena, but Urban Alchemy sued to block it, suddenly claiming that their employee, who they had fired, did nothing wrong. Again, a video showed that employee spraying an unhoused person with a hose on a cold January night.

City Attorney Feldstein Soto refused to defend the Controller’s charter authority, claiming Meija couldn’t audit a contractor. Measure HH would simply clarify that the Controller does have this authority, which is critical for transparency and accountability.

Privatization includes any instance in which the government outsources work to a contracted entity—even if it’s a nonprofit. Workers are exploited (e.g., non-union, worse pay and benefits than city employees), and these “providers” deliver subpar services (e.g., Urban Alchemy employees reported receiving a startling lack of training). This type of privatization also results in degraded transparency and accountability.

This analysis from The Appeal sums it up:

“The state’s eagerness to outsource this work to nonprofits only frustrates broader accountability efforts, as private organizations elude the meager transparency laws otherwise applied to public agencies. Despite its inefficiencies, this mercenary model is growing in popularity, largely due to support from politicians looking for the cover of a feel-good narrative that makes the clearing of encampments seem more palatable.”

Like for-profit entities, nonprofits have engaged in corrupt conduct while engaging with the electoral system, and politicians have used nonprofits to commit fraud. All contractors must be held accountable. How is this even a question?

In case you’re curious, here’s how the rest of the legal battle with Urban Alchemy played out. In June, the Controller asked City Council to approve a request for pro-bono legal counsel to defend his subpoena without incurring costs to the City. After a closed-door session, Council voted to approve the City Attorney’s recommendations, which were not made public. They also reportedly approved the Controller’s request to pursue outside legal services. That same day, Urban Alchemy agreed to produce the requested documents.

Measure HH does not resolve a similar dispute, regarding the Controller’s authority to audit the Mayor’s Inside Safe program, which has failed to deliver promised services, produce transparency reports, or publish invoices for court-mandated accountability purposes.

If you think the Urban Alchemy situation was bad, here’s some upsetting news: most of LA’s case management (i.e., caseworkers connecting unhoused people to services, shelter, and housing) is privatized. We pay nonprofits a fuck ton of money to operate all kinds of shelters and programs, including Inside Safe. However, administrative costs and consulting fees typically consume large swaths of this funding, resulting in insufficient services and housing. (These nonprofits generally do not pay case workers a living wage, leaving many of them housing insecure.)

This is the Homeless Industrial Complex. It’s designed to perpetuate the status quo. This is what “electoral politics is not going to save us” means. Under capitalism, every system—even ones that “help” people—are designed to facilitate exploitation of vulnerable people for profit.

After nearly two years and $342 million, Inside Safe currently houses fewer than 700 people. The program has been plagued with scandal, including reports of inhumane conditions, harassment from staff, and people starving at program locations. According to the most recent data, the program’s eviction rate has steadily risen to 32%.

In response to Inside Safe’s expensive failures, a federal judge ordered an audit of the program in March 2024. Since performing audits is one of the Controller’s primary duties, Mejia stepped up. In response, Mayor Bass swiftly announced that she would waste millions in tax-payer money to fund a private audit—an attempt to prevent Mejia from conducting a public audit. Even though Bass was already in the middle of a massive budget crisis of her own making that led to her slashing thousands of City jobs (and services). What’s another few million bucks, am I right?

Some of the Mayor’s allies have publicly claimed that the Controller lacks the authority to audit Inside Safe because the program is under the Mayor’s control. I think the City Charter is super clear in affirming that the Controller does have this authority, but that clarification may warrant another charter amendment down the line.

These tactics failed to dissuade the Controller. Mejia swiftly responded by announcing his office would be moving forward with its own audit of Inside Safe. As of this writing, the results of that audit have not been published. However, the Controller’s Fraud, Waste & Abuse Unit did announce its investigation into a service provider (i.e., a contracted nonprofit) that runs an Inside Safe location. The unit found the meals the program served primarily consisted of instant ramen…even though the program pays service providers $110 per person each day to cover expenses like meals and services. And I can tell you with absolute certainty that Inside Safe does not provide many services. To learn more, check out the Community Audit of Inside Safe, a report that I co-authored in collaboration with a coalition of mutual aid organizations.

Measure II

YES - Measure II is another smattering of amendments to the City Charter. Voter approval would:

Prohibit employment discrimination against LA City employees on the basis of gender identity and gender expression.
Allow LA City departments to sell food and merchandise to support operations.
Allow the Department of Recreation and Parks to lease sites to LAUSD, creating more recreational space available for children in park poor neighborhoods.
Allow the use of electronic signatures for certain bureaucratic documents.
Require zoning rules and regulations be made available to public records requests.
Clarify the Airport Commission’s authority to establish fees and regulations.
Clarify that the El Pueblo Monument and the Zoo are park property.
Update the names of some city positions and departments.

Why is this list such a hodge podge? In December 2023, City Council asked city departments to recommend updates to the charter.

Why is this disparate list of amendments separate from the relatively disparate list in Measure HH? Probably to mitigate the risk of litigation. A “single subject” rule requires ballot initiatives (i.e., measures that make it on the ballot via collecting signatures) to limit the scope of those measures to one topic. That technically doesn’t apply to measures that City Council places on the ballot, so it’s unlikely either HH or II could be successfully challenged, but officials would prefer not to deal with the headache if they can do anything to avoid it.

Measure ER

YES - The City of LA’s Ethics Commission is responsible for addressing corruption in political campaigns, lobbying, City contracts, and general governmental ethics. Obviously, the Commission hasn’t been able to keep up with the rampant corruption in City Hall due to hindrances such as budget constraints, lack of authority, and even political threats. In 2023, the Ethics Commission proposed several recommendations to expand its authority and independence. City Council approved some of the Commission’s recommendations, which formed the basis of this measure. However, the story behind City Council sabotaging the proposals that have been omitted from Measure ER illustrates why this charter amendment is not nearly strong enough and just how badly our corrupt City Council requires oversight. We’ll get to that but first…

With voter approval, Measure ER would:

Triple ethics violation fines from $5,000 to $15,000 and annually adjust the fine to the Consumer Price Index. Increasing this penalty is a good thing, but remember: punishable by fine means legal for a price. And $15k doesn’t mean much to most people who violate ethics rules…because they tend to be extremely wealthy.
Add limitations about who can serve as an Ethics Commissioner (e.g., restrict relatives of City officials, campaign employees, or major political donors; limit ownership interests in businesses that the City contracts).
Authorize removal of Ethics Commissioners for cause with a majority vote from City Council and mayoral approval. Currently, removal requires a ⅔ vote from City Council.
Increase the time frame to fill an Ethics Commission vacancy from 30 to 90 days. This sucks because the Commission is small, and three months is a long time to be short-staffed. Also, these vacancies already go unfilled for a year without consequence, so this deadline is meaningless.
Require City Council to hold a public hearing on new policy proposals from the Ethics Commission within 180 days. Currently, Council sits on these proposals but frequently never hears them, allowing corruption in City Hall to keep chugging along unchecked. While this change would improve the likelihood of public comment and media coverage, it does not require City Council to have a substantial discussion about proposals, allowing them to continue to ignore the Ethics Commission.
Allow the Ethics Commission to retain outside legal counsel under limited circumstances. That’s important because…when the Ethics Commission brings charges against a City Councilmember who has violated ethics rules, the City Attorney has to represent both parties, creating an inherent conflict of interest.
Establishes a minimum $7 million annual budget that’s tied to the City’s revenue from the prior year…unless City Council finds that circumstances exist to not do so. You may have noticed that annual ethics fine increases are tied to the Consumer Price Index while the Commission’s budget is tied to City revenues. That was an intentional decision made by City Council, and this measure fails to define specific circumstances that would allow the Council to block a budget increase.

Let’s talk more about that last bullet. Establishing a minimum budget to protect against retaliatory cuts is an important step toward the Ethics Commission’s independence, especially when Ethics staff has blown the whistle about City Council making retaliatory threats to their budget in the past. However, Measure ER essentially locks the current budget into the status quo with some deficits. The minimum budget would preserve existing staffing levels, but this fails to account for the Commission’s expanded responsibilities, including a significantly increased workload around Independent Redistricting (as detailed in the Measure DD entry). More importantly, this budget fails to provide sufficient funding that would allow the Ethics Commission to conduct investigations into rampant corruption in City Hall.

Measure ER would implement small improvements, but it was thoroughly defanged by politicians who do not want to be held accountable. Two City Councilmembers are actively facing corruption charges. City Council’s actions on this measure prove that (with the exception of Nithya Raman) none of our Councilmembers are serious about fighting corruption. They are not accountable to the people and cannot be trusted.

In May, self-described “progressive” Councilmembers Hugo Soto-Martinez and Eunisses Hernandez joined their colleague, former LAPD lobbyist Tim McOsker, to gut the strongest ethics reforms from this measure. Only Nithya Raman and Paul Krekorian cast dissenting votes against these amendments—although the terming-out Krekorian contributed some undermining provisions of his own throughout the process.

Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez led the charge to successfully remove two proposals in response to a last-minute lobbying campaign led by the LA Federation of Labor, whose former president colluded with the three racist City Councilmembers in the LA Fed Tape scandal. I’m a union member and vehemently pro-worker, but when we’re talking about rules to combat political corruption, maybe LA Fed leadership should read the fucking room and sit this one out.

The rules that the LA Fed and Hugo opposed? 1) Adding two new, independently-selected Ethics Commissioners. Which…why the fuck would you oppose that? Why would you ever think it’s a good idea to continue letting politicians appoint the people who are supposed to hold them accountable? 2) “Permitting the Ethics Commission to directly place items on the ballot when the elected City Council disagrees with their recommendations.” I should stress that the LA Fed is lying about this second point. As I mentioned earlier in this entry, City Council regularly sits on the Ethics Commission's proposals until they disappear. What the second proposal actually would have done is put any ethics proposals that City Council refused to take up for a vote on a path to the ballot. (The LA Fed also opposed the provision to put a deadline on hearing the Commission’s proposals.)

By the way, former LA City Councilmember Herb Wesson, who became a lobbyist after a judge removed him from his appointed City Council seat, also pitched in and lobbied to kill these reforms. A former elected official becoming an influential lobbyist to kill laws that would protect public interests from corrupt lobbyists is exactly why we need stronger lobbying laws. JFC!

Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez attempted to shrink the number of weekly Council meetings from three to one, which would have drastically reduced the public’s ability to engage with our elected officials. Fortunately, that proposal tanked. Councilmembers Hernandez and Soto-Martinez introduced multiple amendments, but neither ever moved to increase funding for the Ethics Commission because they do not want stronger ethics rules.

Both Hernandez and Soto-Martinez appear to have abandoned their support for expanding City Council as well. In his 2020 “Corruption and Governance” platform, Soto-Martinez stated: “Increasing the size of Council would give everyone more representation—especially underrepresented communities like renters and essential workers—and greater power to elect candidates of their choice. It would also increase the responsiveness of councilmembers to constituents, and decrease the power of any one individual to block progressive legislation.”

Why did Soto-Martinez completely reverse course on this issue in such a short amount of time? He doesn’t want to give up any amount of power even when doing so would create a more democratic government and decrease corruption. Soto-Marinez claimed that council expansion would “create a more dysfunctional City Council,” which is a pretty fucked up thing to espouse when power hoarding has fueled his colleagues’ growing list of corruption charges, a topic that he’s grown increasingly quiet about.

Other ethics reform proposals that City Council struck down include:

A requirement for City Councilmembers to file the same disclosure forms as Ethic Commissioners.
Authorizing the Ethics Commission to recoup costs (e.g., legal fees) from bad actors.
A municipal lobbying ordinance (MLO), which would update ethics rules for all types of lobbying.

If you’re comparing voter guides, I should point out that DSA LA parroted Hugo’s harmful and misleading talking points on the MLO: “Attempts at reform would have lumped labor union designations in with corporations and anti-working class entities such as the Apartment Association of Greater LA or California Apartment Association.”

With some very minor exceptions, LA’s municipal lobbying rules already apply the same to labor organizations as they do corporate lobbying groups…and with good reason. The racist LA Fed Tapes scandal is a perfect example of why that should continue to be the case. As I mentioned, disgraced former LA Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera colluded with Councilmembers Nury Martinez, Kevin de León, and Gil Cedillo in their racist redistricting scheme at the headquarters of the LA Fed, a labor organization. And that’s not the only example of labor leaders engaging in harmful political activity (e.g., lobbied to undermine provisions in LA’s Green New Deal).

Exempting labor organizations would also exempt cop and sheriff “unions,” allowing them to weigh in on policy, including topics like criminalization. That would be a disaster. Hugo even went as far as repeating predatory business improvement districts’ arguments that they should be excluded from the MLO because they “represent the businesses.” Everyone and every type of entity should have to report when they give gifts to politicians. Politicians should not be allowed to accept bribes from corporations, unions, nonprofits, business improvement districts, or anyone else. Any argument against such regulations is an argument in favor of corruption. It’s that simple. For more, I recommend Jamie York’s Twitter thread on this issue.

Measures DD and ER include important efforts to combat corruption in redistricting, and the lingering harm it’s inflicted on our communities. But they’re also the absolute bare minimum. On their own, the amendments to the LA City Charter on this ballot are not an appropriate response to the rot exposed in the Fed Tapes or the many, many other instances of corruption that have continued to plague City Hall.

Again, LA City has 18 elected positions. In recent years, LA elected officials have been investigated and/or indicted by the FBI (6), called on by POTUS to resign for overt racism (3), indicted by the LA District Attorney (1), accused of sexual harassment or assault (3), accused of covering up rampant sexual harassment and assault (1), caught on video assaulting a protestor (1). Two sitting councilmembers are currently facing ethics charges.

These vipers will do anything to kill accountability and hold onto power. Electoral politics will not save you.

Measure FF

NO - Do you want LA City to pay $109.5 million so that a few hundred cops can transfer their pensions into a different pension fund? Measure FF can FFuck off.

Voter approval of Measure FF would require a one-time $23 million payment from the LA City General Fund, which is used to pay for things like neighborhood services and infrastructure. Plus, another $1 million annually for costs associated with payroll. The rest would be covered by the Airport and Harbor Revenue Funds.

The measure is backed by Mayor Karen Bass, who mismanaged Los Angeles so badly in her first year in office that she sent us into a budget crisis. In 2023, Bass negotiated a contract with the LA Police Protective League, which will give cops $1 billion in pay raises over the next four years. That’s on top of new department increases to the LAPD budget. All of this was paid for by raiding other LA City department budgets, decimating many severely-understaffed departments by eliminating 1,700 city jobs, and slashing public services to reconcile the enormous budget crisis.

Bass isn’t the only one to blame. According to LA Controller Kenneth Mejia, the LAPD can overspend with no spending controls. The city has been racking up record liability payouts, mostly due to LAPD misconduct (e.g., assaulting protestors, in-custody deaths, killing a disabled man at Costco and shooting his parents). And that settlement money doesn’t come out of the police budget. Mejia projects that we’ll be in a budget crisis until 2029. So, no, we should not waste more than a hundred million dollars so that cops can move their pensions around.

Measure FF is also backed by LA’s two most conservative elected officials: N-word defender Traci Park and LA City Council’s token Republican City Staffer B aka John Lee, who has been investigated by the FBI for corruption and is currently facing 10 ethics charges.

LAUSD MEASURES

Measure LL

YES - Measure LL essentially does the same for the LA Unified School District’s redistricting process that Measure DD does for LA City redistricting. (If you live in part of an LAUSD district that’s outside of LA City, Measure DD isn’t on your ballot, but you can read about the events that spurred these changes here.)

Every ten years, the LAUSD Redistricting Commission redraws the boundaries of the seven LAUSD Districts, using updated census data. Each LAUSD Board Member selects a commissioner to represent their district in this process; the LA City Council President and Mayor each appoint another four commissioners. That last part isn’t particularly fair to the portion of voters who live within LAUSD boundaries but outside LA City (e.g., residents of Bell, West Hollywood, Gardana, and several more) because they can’t vote for those LA City positions.

If a majority of voters approve Measure LL, the politically-appointed Commission would be replaced with a 14-member Independent Redistricting Commission (along with four alternates). Commissioners would be tasked with the same duties as existing ones (e.g., educate the public about the redistricting process, consider public input). Currently, LA City Council and LA’s Mayor have final say on redrawing LAUSD district boundaries, but LL would transfer that authority to the independently selected commissioners.

Here’s how the selection process would work:

Every ten years, applicants, who must be 18+ and live within LAUSD boundaries, will be screened for conflicts of interest (e.g., cannot have worked for LAUSD in the preceding four years, lobbyists, family members of lobbyists).
The City Clerk’s Office will randomly select seven commissioners from the pool of screened applicants—one from each district.
Those seven commissioners will select the remaining slots from the same pool of applicants with guidance to reflect the demographics of LAUSD (i.e., taking race, gender, age, income, geographic/professional diversity into consideration).

Commissioners are prohibited from communicating about redistricting outside of public meetings. They cannot endorse, work/volunteer for, or make campaign contributions to Board of Education members or candidates while serving on the Commission. After completing their service, commissioners become ineligible to run for any Board of Education seat they helped draw.

At least four commissioners must be “parents or guardians of pupils who attend a school within the Los Angeles Unified School District at the time of selection.” The way this is phrased does not necessarily guarantee those will be parents of LAUSD public schools students; this could include parents of students at charter schools or private schools within district boundaries.

Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez introduced a motion to explore youth participation in this process. Measure LL does not mandate participation from current LAUSD students or recent graduates even though students are the most directly-impacted stakeholders. The final text of the charter amendment does allow for it though: “The Commission may provide for youth participation on the Commission with participants selected through a process, and possessing the powers and duties, as provided by ordinance.”

Measure US

YES - This is a pretty straightforward bond measure put on the ballot by the LAUSD Board of Education. Most LAUSD schools are quite old—80% opened more than 50 years ago, and 20% are at least 100 years old. The school district needs 55% voter approval for $9 billion in loans, which would be paid for by a small property tax increase. Officials say that LAUSD, which is the second largest school district in the country, needs $81 billion to fund facility needs. Measure US would only cover 11% of that need. (See the entry on Prop 2 for more on where additional funding could be sourced.)

Measure US would fund construction and facility/equipment upgrades, which include:

Renovate older schools and address hazardous conditions at schools in disrepair (e.g., leaky roofs, plumbing issues, HVAC systems, cafeteria upgrades, earthquake safety).
Upgrade classroom environments (e.g., air conditioners, new WiFi networks, build labs).
Improve accessibility to make campuses more equitable for disabled students.
Make LAUSD more sustainable with a $75 million investment in electric school buses.
Spend $1.25 billion to create more outdoor learning spaces and improve playground areas (e.g., replacing asphalt with grass, planting more shade trees, removing asphalt).

DISTRICT ATTORNEY

District Attorney: George Gascón - In the primary, ten candidates challenged George Gascón from the right. Ten lawyers were so mad about the anti-racist policies Gascón has implemented as District Attorney that they decided to run for office in the hopes of reversing them. Specifically, these ten challengers wanted to stuff our already overcrowded LA County jail system—the largest in the world—with even more people. Mostly Black people, who make up just 8.6% of LA County’s population but account for 29% of people incarcerated in its jails. That’s 7x the incarceration rate of white Angelenos, who make up 25.2% of the county’s population but only 12% of its jail population.

These numbers pose a simple question: Do you think Black people are inherently 7x more criminal than white people? OR do you think we live in a deeply unjust country that systematically oppresses and criminalizes marginalized groups? If your answer is the former, we have a term for that: white supremacy. If your answer is the latter, then congratulations—you aren’t so obsessed with incarcerating more people that you decided to run for District Attorney.

The good news is, Gascón won the most votes in the primary. The bad news is, he only took 25.2%, a poor showing for an incumbent. Runner-up Nathan Hochman, Gascón’s most conservative challenger, took 16% of the vote. Fortunately, Republicans and older voters had disproportionately higher turnout in the primary compared to what is expected in November.

In 2007, George W. Bush appointed Hochman to Assistant Attorney General. In 2022, he ran as the Republican nominee for Attorney General of California and lost. Following in the footsteps of several Republican political hopefuls in LA (looking at you Rick Caruso), Hochman registered as an independent in April 2023 in an attempt to obscure his conservative political values before launching his bid for District Attorney.

Hochman has since tried to distance himself from the GOP, but his largest financial backer is a right-wing mega donor. Hochman’s corporate/billionaire supporters have provided him with a tremendous financial advantage over Gascón, outspending him 10:1. As of this writing, the incumbent has raised $785,000 to Hochman’s $2.63 million. That doesn’t include another $5.21 million in PAC money that’s gone to support Hochman and oppose Gascón.

During his 2022 campaign, Hochman accepted endorsements from former Republican House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and deputy gang apologist/disgraced former LA Sheriff Alex Villanueva. This election cycle, Hochman accepted an endorsement from LA City’s only Republican elected official aka City Staffer B, John Lee, who was previously investigated by the FBI for corruption and is currently facing 10 ethics charges related to his alleged bribery schemes. Accepting Lee’s endorsement, is especially egregious when you consider Hochman served on the LA City Ethics Commission, which is responsible for administering the law with regards to political campaigns, lobbying, contracting, and governmental ethics. Glad to know the man who wants to become LA County’s top prosecutor is happy to accept political support from someone this blatantly corrupt!

Hochman is a strong proponent of CARE Courts, a carceral program that mandates forced treatment on those deemed a “danger to themselves or others” even if they have not committed any harm or crime. Entry to a CARE Court starts with a referral “by a family member, behavioral health provider, first responder, or other approved party.” More than 20% of people fatally shot by cops have a mental health disability but guess who will be in charge of enforcing these referrals. If a person doesn’t successfully complete a “CARE Plan,” the Court may place them in a conservatorship. The ACLU describes this as “a draconian legal status that strips people of the right to make decisions about almost every aspect of their lives.”

This isn’t just immoral. Plenty of evidence proves forced treatment is ineffective and results in tragic outcomes. Despite this evidence, Hochman says he wants to expand CARE Courts so that he can also place people with substance use disorder into forced treatment facilities.

To be clear, CARE Courts were not created to help people with mental health disabilities. The politicians who created this program didn’t bat an eye when LA County jails were exposed for torturing thousands of people with mental health disabilities. Governor Gavin Newsom’s pet project isn’t intended to help anyone. Hochman and Newsom are primarily concerned with eliminating visible poverty (i.e., displacing unhoused people without providing a safe place for them to go). Rather than addressing systemic failures, this carceral program targets and punishes individual people while straining and defunding existing mental health programs. What alternative should politicians pursue? Expansion of voluntary mental health services, single-payer healthcare, and permanent supportive housing.

Again, Hochman decided to run for office to force more Black people, more brown people, and more poor people into our barbaric, inhumane, unsafe, deadly, racist jail system.

The incumbent, ex-cop and former San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón, became a symbol of hope in the fight for criminal justice reform in 2020 when he unseated his predecessor Jackie Lacey. At his swearing in, Gascón said, “I’m not the same man that I was when I once put on a uniform. Those days continue to haunt me[...]how did we fail multiple generations of the same families?” And then he immediately implemented criminal justice reforms, including directives to ban the death penalty, end cash bail for minor offenses, and eliminate the racist practice of charging juveniles as adults. (A staggering 61% of children transferred to adult courts are Black. Again, this is the status quo that Hochman is fighting to restore.)

Critics, conservatives, and corporate media reacted with shock even though Gascón had just spent a year campaigning on these policies. Cops and prosecutors, several of whom would become Gascón’s challengers in the March 2024 primary, expressed outrage, spinning these reforms as a “slap in the face to crime victims—both past victims and the ones to come.” All while ignoring the very tangible harm they and the system they work for actively cause (e.g., mysterious in-custody deaths, sheriff gangs, solitary confinement, wrongful convictions, coerced plea deals). These criticisms also ignore Gascón’s directive that eliminated the requirement on victims to testify in order to receive county services. Not to mention, the majority of crime victims think there should be a greater emphasis on rehabilitation over increased incarceration.

In the time since, Gascón implemented even more sweeping directives and initiatives like dismissing 60,000 cannabis charges. He’s faced growing reactionary backlash, including multiple failed recall attempts, which notably gathered hundreds of signatures from ghosts. Over the past few years, you’ve probably been inundated with news stories about a crime wave. But the LAPD’s own statistics show crime has trended downward. Even with poor people not sitting in jail just because they can’t afford cash bail. Even when kids aren’t tried as adults. Even when LAPD staff levels are at their lowest in decades.

Unfortunately, Gascón hasn’t delivered on some of his most important promises. He campaigned on increasing police accountability, and the DA’s office has charged (or in many cases undercharged) cops for certain misconduct, including drug smuggling, perjury, filing false police reports, threatening to kill civilians, assault, concealing excessive force, sexual assault of a minor, and vandalism.

However, Gascón declined to charge the cops who shot and killed Mely Corado at the Silver Lake Trader Joe’s in 2018. And the LASD deputy gang member who executed 18-year-old Andres Guardado in 2020. And the deputy who fatally shot Fred Williams III in the back.

In October 2023, the DA’s office declined to charge police for 18 incidents in which they shot civilians. Gascón has failed to hold cops accountable every time they’ve killed someone with one exception. In January 2024, former deputy sheriff Andrew Lyons agreed to a plea deal when he was convicted for fatally shooting Ryan Twyman, a 24-year-old father of three.

Earlier this year, Gascón declined to charge a USC student for stabbing an unarmed unhoused man to death because he said he was genuinely afraid.

So far, Gascón has declined to bring charges against Edan On, who was caught on video at UCLA, assaulting unarmed ceasefire protesters with a metal pole. William Gude, who stated that he witnessed over 200 such assaults perpetrated by violent, zionist counterprotestors, confronted Gascón about his inaction. Gascón’s Chief of Staff connected with Gude about this matter, and the DA’s office is rumored to be bringing charges against three assailants. [UPDATE: The District Attorney’s Office charged Eyal Shalom, Malachi Joshua Marlan-Librett, and possibly others involved in the violent zionist assaults on student protestors at UCLA.]

Despite these failures, Gascón’s directives have positively impacted tens if not hundreds of thousands of lives. His Conviction Integrity Task Force has exonerated 14 wrongfully convicted people, who spent nearly 300 combined years wrongfully incarcerated. Under his direction, at least 244 people have been resentenced, including 187 people whose resentencing resulted in their release. (And no, none of those 187 people have been convicted of a new offense.) By ending the death penalty in 2020, Gascón ended LA’s record as the county that sent the most people to death row in the U.S.

In 2023, Gascón formed a Labor Justice Unit, a team of investigators dedicated to combatting wage theft and labor exploitation. An estimated 91% of California’s service workers were victims of wage theft last year. In the Los Angeles metro area, employers steal an estimated $1.6 to $2.5 billion in wages from workers each year. In its first year, the Labor Justice Unit has handled investigations involving more than 350 victims and $2,750,000 in lost wages, according to LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia.

Losing the progress we’ve made since Gascón took office is a terrifying prospect, especially when someone as conservative as Hochman is waiting in the wings. Remember all those nightmare statistics and news stories I shared at the top of this entry? Those represent where we are now—three years after Gascón took office.

But even in a hypothetical world where there was no pushback, a district attorney could not end systemic corruption and racism. Regular people started to envision, educate, and organize to make these policy changes a possibility long before George Gascón ran for office, and abolitionist groups like Justice LA continue the work of reclaiming, reimagining, and reinvesting money away from incarceration and into community-based systems of care.

One more thing: During the primary, TV writer and Vice Chair of the WGA Disabled Writers Committee Jamey Perry reached out with concerns about another of Gascón’s policies. Perry is a paraplegic wheelchair user, who supported Gascón until he accused a law firm of fleecing small businesses with “baseless” disability rights suits in 2022. Gascón asked a judge to halt the use of the Unruh Act, a California law that protects against discrimination from business establishments on the basis of disability and other protected classes, in lawsuits enforcing Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance. “When disability laws are improperly used to target small businesses for financial gain, it not only hurts business owners but also harms the people whom this law was enacted to protect,” Gascón claimed.

A representative from the firm countered: “There is no dispute that the businesses that have been subject to our claims violated the law. Instead, the fingers are being pointed at our clients, the victims, for noticing.”

Perry noted that no coverage of this story included comment from disabled people or activists, and she was disgusted by Gascón framing “the issue as Disabled scammers vs. the poor mom-and-pop immigrant businesses they were ‘extorting.’ Pitting two oppressed minorities against one another for political reasons.”

A judge dismissed Gascón’s lawsuit, but a related case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court in late 2023. That case had the potential to do away with “testers,” people who investigate whether businesses are ADA-compliant. The stakes of this case were extremely high because lawsuits are the only enforcement mechanism disabled people have. "If the Supreme Court narrows who can enforce the ADA, there will be no ADA enforcement,” said Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund’s Michelle Uzeta. That organization’s website shared this post, debunking myths about ADA lawsuits. SCOTUS ultimately dismissed this case.

“Nobody wants to be sued, no matter how righteous the reason,” Perry shared. By making disabled people the face of ADA enforcement, the existing system vilifies them and produces more ableism. “They misplace their anger onto us, instead of their own failure to comply with a 33-year-old civil rights law. Or the federal government. They almost never take any responsibility or show real remorse.” Perry said she dreams about Congress finally creating a Bureau of ADA Enforcement. That would put the onus of ADA compliance on government officials instead of individual disabled people, who are currently spending a lot of energy, resources, and emotional labor righting wrongs.

With Perry’s permission, I wanted to share an excerpt from her message about this issue:

“You know that phenomenon, where you listen to someone you think is really smart begin to take on a topic you happen to know a lot about? And you suddenly realize they’re not as smart as you thought they were? Which probably means they were wrong about a bunch of other stuff too? As an occasional ADA plaintiff myself, I am in a position to tell you Gascón is so far in the wrong here that it’s difficult for me to imagine that he spoke to any Disabled activists or ADA plaintiffs before filing a lawsuit against one of the biggest ADA firms in the country. I have a love/hate relationship with Potter Handy (the ADA firm being sued). On one hand, they are kind of a machine that chugs out ADA suits, some of which are poor quality. On the other hand, I filed my very first ADA suit with them years ago, and their size and specialty made it very easy for me.

“But none of that matters, because the lawsuit would have set a horrifying precedent that would have severely affected all ADA firms and my day-to-day life as a paraplegic wheelchair user. Worst of all, this 6-3 SCOTUS that loves to take away civil rights has made it clear that they would love to roll back the ADA the second they get the chance. That means any lawsuit involving the ADA could potentially end up at the Supreme Court, resulting in its gutting. My personal ADA attorney has to be extremely wary these days about which cases he files, terrified of the unintended consequences he may set into motion. Gascón’s case was thrown out, but it was incredibly reckless of him to do what he did in this climate. It shows me he neither knows nor cares about Disabled people.”

Given the state of Congress, a federal Bureau of ADA Enforcement could take decades to establish, but our municipal governments could and should establish local approximations. Such a department could also provide ADA guidance to new establishments and resources for small businesses to meet compliance.

For more information on the history of Disability Rights, I recommend checking out Crip Camp.

JUDGE OF THE SUPERIOR COURT

What do Superior Court Judges do?

The Superior Court operates 37 courthouses across LA County with an annual budget of $1+ billion. The court’s 431 judges serve six-year terms, overseeing criminal and civil court and adjudicating a range of cases (e.g., family, contract disputes, probate, small claims). Judges hear arguments, enforce adherence to court rules (or at least their interpretation of them), and are required to rule according to existing law. However, most laws contain ambiguities that require interpretation. Judges have some level of discretion in handing down penalties (e.g., amount owed in civil cases, length of sentencing, alternatives to incarceration). Every judge enters the courtroom with a pre-existing perspective that either challenges systemic biases (e.g., exclusion of people of color in jury selection, stacking charges on Black defendants) or perpetuates these injustices.

Note on Bar Association ratings: We live in the most carceral country in the world. Yet short of a major scandal, The Bar Association always rates prosecutors as more qualified than public defenders. Because our judicial system prioritizes criminalization, prosecutorial experience holds significantly more weight in these ratings than a candidate’s ability as an attorney.

Note on judicial candidate restrictions: The California Committee on Judicial Ethics bars candidates from speaking about how they will act on the bench. As a result, voters rarely know what a candidate stands for, creating an advantage for judicial candidates with wealthy donors—most often, deputy district attorneys. But no matter how neutral a judge (or any person) tries to be, they’re still human, which means any given set of facts will be interpreted based on their experiences. In most instances, candidates who work in the district attorney’s office are more focused on criminalization than rehabilitation or restorative justice (e.g., The Association of Deputy District Attorneys overwhelmingly voted to support the recall of their boss, District Attorney George Gascón, opposing his progressive directives such as banning the death penalty; refusing to charge minors as adults; ending cash bail; and discontinuing sentence enhancements). Public defenders tend to have a more holistic understanding of the system and its many, catastrophic flaws because they directly serve the people it harms. Before Holly Hancock and Patrick Hare’s 2022 victories, a public defender had never been elected judge in LA County. Another won in the March 2024 primary. Now, you can help elect more.

Office No. 39

George Turner - Turner’s campaign website notes how California constructed 23 prisons over the past 50 years but only three colleges. As a public defender, he’s worked toward alternative solutions that meet community needs. As a judge, he’s committed to acknowledging the limitations of the current system and offering more compassionate and effective approaches to justice. He also wants to modernize the court, implement e-filing, maintain accurate statistics on basic demographic information, and centralize post-conviction work.

Turner is running alongside Ericka Wiley (Office No. 48) as the Defenders of Justice, a slate of Black public defenders. Why does that matter? Check the numbers: 63% of LA Superior Court judges are white compared to 25.6% of the county’s population and 12% of its jail system. Meanwhile, Black people make up just 8.6% of LA County’s population but account for 29% of people incarcerated in its jails.

The office of judge puts a premium on impartiality, but like objectivity, impartiality is a myth. Every judge chooses to challenge systemic biases (e.g., exclusion of people of color in jury selection, stacking charges on Black defendants) in our legal system or chooses to ignore those injustices. There’s nothing impartial about choosing an unjust status quo, especially when Los Angeles operates the world’s largest jail system, incarcerating 12,441 people.

To be clear, elevating Black lawyers to judgeships alone will not fix the judiciary. Representation without principled action doesn’t change anything, but this slate has pledged to advocate for alternatives to incarceration and for resources that help people successfully reintegrate into society. As judges, these public defenders have pledged to further address the root causes of crime (e.g., socioeconomic disparities, mental health challenges) rather than perpetuate cycles of incarceration.

Office No. 48

Ericka Wiley - Wiley served as a deputy public defender for more than 23 years, advocating for alternatives to incarceration and ways to better her clients’ lives. Like her Defenders of Justice slatemate, Wiley is dedicated to criminal justice reform, fair sentencing, and ending cycles of mass incarceration. She’s proven her dedication to her community, helping formerly incarcerated people expunge their records and educating youth about their rights. Wiley is running against a prosecutor.

Office No. 97

La Shae Henderson - Henderson served as a deputy public defender for 18 years. She believes in healing communities through restorative justice and plans to develop restorative programs. Henderson believes perspectives and experiences like hers can lead to more in-depth analysis of court cases. She thinks judges need to be cognizant of the court system’s disparate treatment of Black and Latine litigants to ensure fair proceedings. She conducted trainings with attorneys across the state, developing legal strategies to fight cases under the Racial Justice Act, which prohibits discrimination in charging, conviction, and sentencing based on a defendant’s race, ethnicity, or national origin. Henderson’s opponent is a deputy district attorney.

Office No. 135

No recommendation - Retired Deputy District Attorney Georgia Huerta ran for a different Superior Court office in the 2022 primary and placed fourth. Her opponent, Deputy District Attorney Steven Yee Mac is also a Lt. Colonel in JAG. Their perspectives on the criminal justice system seem indistinguishable. Both want to advance their careers but not grapple with the deeply unjust flaws in the system.

Office No. 137

Luz Herrera - I’m not excited about either of these candidates, but one has spent her career working for the LA Sheriff, the Juvenile Dependency Division (responsible for family separation), and the San Bernardino DA. The other is Luz Herrera. In her two decades helping individuals, non-profits, and small businesses navigate legal issues, she gleaned that most people who walk into courtrooms are intimidated by the process and confused by the language. As a law professor, she encourages her students to remember this when interacting with clients. That might seem super obvious, but remember, all of these candidates are lawyers. Having read through every candidate’s campaign site, I can tell you that few spare a thought for anyone else or admit to flaws in the system.

I reached out to candidates in this race to ask if they support CARE Courts, a carceral program that mandates forced treatment on those deemed a “danger to themselves or others” even if they have not committed any harm or crime. Herrera initially responded with a statement of support for CARE Courts: “I think they are quite important and necessary for the segment of the population that they are designed to assist.” I responded, urging her to review the ACLU’s criticisms of the program and explained how CARE Courts will strip people with mental health disabilities of their rights, placing them in conservatorships. Herrera seemed unaware of this information and pledged to “do more research” to “understand all aspects.” Could she be paying me lip service? Sure. But the possibility of open-mindedness is more than we’ll get from her opponent.

LA COUNTY MEASURES

Measure A

YES - Full disclosure: I collected a few dozen of the nearly 393,000 signatures that helped put Measure A on the ballot. I also read all 20 pages of the measure, and I have some concerns, which I will address. But first, some background.

In 2017, voters overwhelmingly approved Measure H, a .025% sales tax increase that funds homelessness initiatives. Here’s the good news: Since 2017, Measure H funding has housed 42,300 people and helped prevent nearly 10,000 more from losing their housing.

Here’s the bad news: LA County’s unhoused population increased 37% during that same period. That means people are losing housing more rapidly than they’re being housed. For every 100 people placed in housing, 120 more become unhoused. The sales tax implemented by Measure H is set to expire in 2027, which County officials say could lead to a 28% increase in unsheltered homelessness (i.e., people living outside or in a vehicle).

With majority voter approval, Measure A would immediately repeal and replace Measure H, imposing an additional .025% sales tax (e.g., on a $100 purchase, you would pay 25 cents more in tax). This additional revenue would primarily fund things like affordable housing development and loss of housing prevention. In total, Measure A would generate $1.08 billion annually.

Let’s address the elephant in the room. Nobody is thrilled about the prospect of a sales tax increase, especially when we’ve recently been hit with the double-whammy of inflation and predatory price increases fueled by corporate greed. But it’s important to note that this tax only applies to discretionary spending; it does not apply to essential items (e.g., gas, groceries, rent, medication, diapers, EBT purchases). Supporters estimate this would cost the average household about $5 more each month.

LA County has one of the highest concentrations of billionaires in the world, so why aren’t we taxing them instead? Great question! The answer is that we should be. I honestly don’t know the technical reasons that might prevent or discourage Measure A from doing that, but supporters say a single source of revenue like a sales tax is the most effective way to direct funding through the bureaucracy.

Supporters also say that Measure A would implement changes that troubleshoot some of Measure H’s shortcomings. The initiative explicitly defines five goals:

1) Increase the number of people moving from encampments into permanent housing.

The emphasis on permanent housing here is super important although I’m a bit skeptical that the County will meaningfully deliver on this promise—even with the changes and additional funding from Measure A. Permanent housing placements can be very challenging (e.g., NIMBYs flip politicians to sabotage new affordable housing; landlords refuse to accept housing vouchers). These types of roadblocks have created a growing emphasis on “beds” and “interim housing,” a euphemism for temporary shelter. Public officials frequently utilize shelter as a quick fix to hide visible poverty. However, shelters cost significantly more than permanent housing. Shelters frequently have high eviction rates, and many unhoused people avoid them for a variety of reasons (e.g., safety concerns, carceral rules, inability to bring a partner or pet with them, harassment from staff, lack of privacy, lack of rights). Shelters are not a solution to this crisis; housing is the only solution. Interim shelter ≠ housing.

2) Reduce the number of people with mental health disabilities and/or substance use disorders who experience homelessness.

Increased mental health funding is important because Prop 1 defunded county mental health programs across the state. As far as I can tell, Measure A funds cannot be used for involuntary psychiatric treatment although it does not explicitly state this. The ACLU, which vehemently opposes forced treatment, supports Measure A. Language in the measure also states that it’s prohibited from funding criminal investigations or prosecutions of unhoused or housing-insecure people.

3) Increase the number of people permanently leaving homelessness.

Some organizations define “permanent housing” as a placement that lasts as little as six months. Standardizing data collection and tracking long-term results will hopefully better ensure that people are placed in stable housing situations.

4) Prevent people from losing housing.

Last fiscal year, Measure H generated $527 million in funding but only spent $13.6 million on eviction prevention (less than 3%). Many people facing eviction are only a few hundred dollars short on rent. Older adults are the fastest growing demographic in LA’s unhoused population—because many can’t afford rent increases on a fixed income. Unlike Measure H, Measure A specifies a prevention strategy and allocates significantly more funding to keep people in their homes. Rental assistance programs are a vastly more efficient use of tax dollars and a lot less work than trying to rehouse someone who has already been evicted. More importantly, it’s the absolute minimum we should do for victims of our predatory housing market.

5) Increase the number of affordable units.

Measure H did not fund affordable housing construction, but a large chunk of Measure A money would. Most affordable housing in Los Angeles is affordable because of something called an affordable housing covenant. That’s when a developer agrees to offer housing to low-income tenants below market rates in exchange for government incentives (e.g., tax credits, loans).

In his war on public housing, Ronald Reagan championed these covenants, claiming they incentivized the private sector to build more housing. And when Reagan is involved, you know there’s a catch. These affordable housing covenants expire. In Los Angeles, several thousand have in recent years. Nearly 42,000 more are set to expire throughout California in the next five years. The government can try to negotiate extensions on covenants; otherwise, landlords can jack up the rent on low-income tenants, essentially serving as an eviction. My reading of Measure A is that some of its funding could be used to negotiate extensions of affordable housing covenants.

In case this isn’t obvious, we shouldn’t count on Reagan-era housing solutions to solve our housing crisis. We need solutions that never expire—like social housing, which is a permanently affordable, community-owned housing model designed for mixed-income tenants, and community land trusts. Again, my reading is that some Measure A funding could be allocated to these types of solutions. Measure A mandates the types of programs that funding must be distributed to, but it leaves final say on many of the specifics to public officials, who unfortunately have not expressed interest in these alternative housing solutions. Probably because that wouldn’t align with the interests of corporate donors.

Measure A mandates that officials set metrics that would help meet these five goals and collect data from all programs that receive funding to track their progress. Oversight committees would evaluate the effectiveness of these programs and make recommendations to the LA County Board of Supervisors about how money should be allocated based on the results, especially if a program is underperforming. Other accountability features include transparency reports and audits. To learn more, check out the end of page 6 through page 11 of the measure’s text.

As is the case with accountability measures built into every ballot measure with a funding component, I’m skeptical about enforcement, especially when much of Measure A’s enforcement is ultimately at the discretion of the County Board of Supervisors. To be clear, I’m not a fiscal conservative—I believe we should invest significantly more in housing solutions, specifically ones that aren’t market-driven.

I’m skeptical because I’ve seen how programs like Mayor Karen Bass’s Inside Safe had transparency reports mandated as a stipulation of its funding, but those reports didn’t materialize. A federal judge also ordered Bass to publish invoices from her program, but she dragged her feet for months before producing them. I acknowledge Measure A is a County initiative with more thorough transparency measures (e.g., some citizen oversight) than Inside Safe, which is an LA City program. Despite these and other scandals, Mayor Bass would have a seat on one of Measure A’s oversight committees. Unfortunately, accountability measures have a way of going *poof* at any level of government.

A lot of well-intentioned people worked to get Measure A on the ballot, but the ballot has some problematic backers as well, including a few anti-rent control groups (e.g., Abundant Housing LA, California YIMBY), the Association for LA Deputy Sheriffs (ALADS), and PATH, one of the largest “service providers” in the LA area. Over the past 18 months, I’ve regularly witnessed PATH dehumanize people at the shelters it operates, and I’ve repeatedly organized against the nonprofit’s attempts to violate people’s rights. PATH should not be valorized for their involvement in this initiative.I know multiple unhoused people who oppose Measure A, partially due to PATH’s involvement, but mostly because this type of measure contributes to the Homeless Industrial Complex, a system of privatization designed to outsource services to contracted nonprofits and maintain the status quo. I strongly agree with this criticism of Measure A.

Despite my concerns, I’m voting yes. If Measure H money expires, 8,332 rental subsidies would end. That means 8,332 households would become unhoused very quickly—and that’s just one form of support that would end. A solid chunk of Measure A will have a meaningful impact on the lives of unhoused and housing-insecure people across LA County; other aspects will perpetuate harmful cycles.

Measure A supporters say it addresses the root causes of homelessness. However, loss of income—not mental health disabilities, not drug use, not personal failure—is the largest contributor to homelessness. Until we mandate a living wage, until we enshrine tenant protections, until we stop predatory landlords, we have not come close to addressing the root causes of homelessness. Until then, no amount of money can do more than triage.

Elected officials lack the political courage to stand against corporate interests and fight for these policies, but we do not have to count on them. Politicians are not coming to save you. Groups like The Reclaimers, LA Tenants Union, and Hillside Villa Tenants Association know this, so they’ve taken matters into their own hands. They’ve successfully stopped evictions, rent hikes, and landlord harassment, and they’re fighting for even more. Learn more about their work from LA Public Press or by visiting the Housing Justice section at the end of this guide.

Measure G

YES - Entry coming soon.

STATE MEASURES

Note: I won’t be describing audit and accountability measures built into these ballot measures because 1) These types of check and balances frequently lack meaningful mechanisms for enforcement. 2) Politicians frequently find ways to evade transparency without consequence.

Prop 2

YES - Most states have dedicated funding for school repairs. California does not. Voter approval of Prop 2 would authorize the state to borrow $10 billion for renovations and construction at California’s 9,270 public schools and 115 community colleges. (Charter schools are parasites on public education, but existing law requires this kind of funding for public schools be made accessible to charters.) A portion of funding would also pay for classroom upgrades (e.g., smoke detectors, labs, learning technology). A simple majority is required for approval.

Funding from 2016’s school repair bond is expected to run out by January or February 2025 and that money is needed to address hazardous conditions on campuses (e.g., mold, contaminated drinking water, deteriorating sewer lines, asbestos, lead paint, damage caused by natural disasters).

According to the Public Policy Institute of California, 38% of students in our state attend schools that fail to meet minimum facility standards, and 15% attend schools with extreme deficiencies (e.g., gas leaks, power failures, structural damage). Hundreds of California schools have been forced to temporarily close in recent years due to poor facility conditions, even though California is the world’s fifth largest economy. This is by design. This is a policy decision.

In case it isn’t obvious, hot, decaying, and poorly maintained environments negatively impact students’ health. Studies show these conditions strongly correlate with “low student learning and achievement;” students who attend well-maintained schools with quality infrastructure thrive.

To be clear: Prop 2 is a problematic measure. Even if it passes, this bond will fail to meet schools’ needs. It also perpetuates an inequitable system for funding school facilities. Prop 2 would distribute money via matching funds, meaning districts have to come up with their own local funding from property taxes to access bond money. The more money a school district can raise on its own, the more it can take from state funding. Districts with higher property values already generate more funding for their schools, creating a cycle of affluent schools receiving even more money while the poor get poorer. A study from UC Berkeley found that this matching funds system delivered 4x more funds per student to wealthy districts compared to low-wealth districts.

The measure does include some relatively small provisions to assist disadvantaged districts (e.g., those with larger populations of English language learners, youth in foster care, unhoused students) that can’t raise large amounts on their own. However, funding is awarded on a first-come, first-serve basis. When wealthy districts can afford consultants to speed up the application process, poorer school districts and their students are perpetually disadvantaged.

Public Advocates, a nonprofit law firm and advocacy organization that challenges systemic causes of poverty and racial discrimination, vehemently opposed Assembly Bill 247, which was responsible for putting Prop 2 on the ballot. While Public Advocates recognizes the dire need for an education bond, they “remain concerned that this funding will not reach the low-income students of color in low-wealth districts that need it most.” The organization has not formally taken a position on Prop 2 because the state’s Democratic leadership has left everyone in a horrible position.

Should the state legislature have approved funding for school repairs as part of our budget instead of pushing it onto the ballot? Yes, absolutely. But that would’ve required Governor Newsom to approve tax increases on corporations and our state’s 197 billionaires. And that’s something he simply refuses to do because it would conflict with his political aspirations. If Prop 2 fails, would elected officials take action to create alternate sources of funding to address hazardous conditions at our schools? I don’t know. A “yes” vote perpetuates a discriminatory cycle that produces genuinely horrific outcomes; a “no” vote ensures the poorest students will suffer.

As of this writing, nearly $3.2 million has been spent in support of Prop 2. The measure is supported by the California Teachers Association, California School Nurses Organization, and Community College League of California; the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association opposes it. Conservative critics of Prop 2 cite a 6% decline in enrollment over the past decade as a reason to oppose the measure, but that fails to account for California’s 700 school closures during that time period.

Prop 3

YES - Prop 3 is easily the most straightforward measure on your ballot. Its approval would remove one sentence—added via Prop 8 in 2008 then later voided by the courts—from our state constitution: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

This language will be replaced with: “The right to marry is a fundamental right. This section is in furtherance of both of the Following: (1) The inalienable rights to enjoy life and liberty and to pursue and obtain safety, happiness, and privacy guaranteed by Section 1. (2) The rights to due process and equal protection guaranteed by Section 7.”

Why are we voting on this a decade after Obergefell? Because SCOTUS is hellbent on eliminating rights. That’s it. No one, not even Republicans, in the state legislature opposed placing this measure on the ballot, and the only groups publicly opposing it are evangelical whackos.

The only other thing you should know: disgraced LA City Councilmember Kevin de León name and face are plastered all over ads supporting this measure (and Props 32 and 33). Spoiler: he did not do this because he’s a champion of LGBTQIA+ rights (or a living wage or rent control). In fact, Kevin de León is such a piece of shit that one of the architects of mass incarceration said he was too racist to hold public office.

That was in the fallout of the LA Fed Tapes scandal, the one where leaked audio revealed de León, disgraced former Council President Nury “Fuck That Guy He’s With The Blacks” Martinez, and their allies colluded to decimate the voting power of Black people, renters, and progressives—in between spewing racist and homophobic epithets. Soon after, de León assaulted a protester and was welcomed back to City Hall by a mob of his supporters, chanting, “All lives matter!”

These scandals thwarted de León’s 2022 mayoral bid and derailed his prospects of becoming Lt. Governor of California. However, he had already filed to run for the statewide position, so a pile of money has been sitting in his campaign account. The law prohibits politicians from using money raised for state campaigns in municipal elections, so de León is prohibited from spending his war chest on an LA City race. He can use that money to support popular ballot measures.

De León didn’t pay for a bunch of ads because he cares about helping marginalized people—his voting record on LA City Council attests to that. De León exploited a loophole in campaign finance rules to put his name and face on $582,266 worth of de facto ads for his extremely competitive re-election bid. (More on that in the LA City Council District 14 entry.)

Prop 4

YES - In 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom and state legislators approved $54 billion for the California Climate Commitment to cut pollution, transition away from fossil fuels to clean energy, and protect our state from the effects of climate change. Then Newsom slashed that funding by $10 billion in this year’s budget and negotiated with legislators to put this measure on the ballot.

Why? Governor Grease Ball doesn’t want to raise taxes. He’s made it abundantly clear that he’s a champion of billionaires. Instead, he wants California to borrow $10 billion, which will cost $16 billion to pay back later. Like many of these ballot measures, Newsom and his allies have engineered hostage situations. Their corruption and mismanagement created these crises, and the solutions they offer are never great. Voters don’t really know what the consequences of rejecting these propositions would be, but politicians kick the “choice” to voters, bucking responsibility regardless of the outcome. Putting a bill that’s this long (49 pages) and complex in front of voters is straight-up negligence.

Anyway, voter approval of Prop 4 would authorize California to borrow $10 billion for environmental projects, and 40% of funds are required to benefit disadvantaged communities (defined as having “a median household income of less than 80% of the area average or less than 80% of statewide median household income).

Here’s how Prop 4 funds would be earmarked:

$3.8 billion to improve the safety/quality of our drinking water and for water resilience (e.g., wastewater recycling, groundwater storage, protection against flooding, dam repairs).
$1.95 billion for wildfire prevention (e.g., thinning trees in forests, clearing vegetation near residential areas) and extreme heat mitigation (e.g., adding trees and greenspaces).
$1.9 billion for protection of natural lands, parks, and wildlife (e.g., habitat restoration, repairing/expanding parks, preserving undeveloped land, creation of new trails).
$1.2 billion for protection of coastal lands, bays, and oceans (e.g., reduce risks related to rising sea levels, restoring wetlands to serve as buffers, improve ocean habitats).
$850 million for clean energy (e.g., shift to more renewable energy sources such as offshore wind farms). Why are the wind farms being built off the California coast? I don’t know, but it seems like that could create a negative ecological impact.
$300 million for agriculture (e.g., assistance to make farms more sustainable, conserve water, improve soil health, and better prepare for climate impacts).

Prop 5

YES - If a local government in California wants to borrow money for affordable housing, the state constitution requires ⅔ voter approval on bond measures to raise those funds. That gives people who oppose affordable housing a lot of power even when they’re a relatively small minority. If approved, Prop 5 would drop the threshold down to 55% when city and county governments borrow money to fund affordable and permanent supportive housing; means-tested assistance for first-time homebuyers; and public infrastructure.

Prop 5 broadly defines “public infrastructure” to include: “facilities or infrastructure for the delivery of public services, including education, police, fire protection, parks, recreation, open space, emergency medical, public health, libraries, flood protection, streets or, highways, public transit, railroad, airports, and seaports.” It also covers infrastructure to protect against fires and flooding.

What’s the catch? Bond measures allow the government to borrow money, but like all loans, that comes with interest, which must be paid back with property taxes down the line. Wouldn’t it save money, especially for less affluent homeowners, if politicians just raised taxes on the rich to pay for these projects now? Yes. Yes, it would. A 1978 ballot measure places some limits on California’s ability to increase property taxes on existing homeowners, but lawmakers have plenty of other levers they could pull. However, even with veto-proof, Democratic supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature, California leadership simply refuses to raise taxes on corporations or the uber-rich.

As of this writing, the California Association of Realtors has spent $27 million in PAC money opposing Prop 5 because it combines the two things they hate most: higher property taxes and housing that could put poor people in proximity to single-family homes. Big Real Estate already won a major concession in Prop 5, successfully lobbying legislators to include a ban on the use of bond money to convert single-family homes into affordable units.

Prop 6

YES - The Yes on Prop 6 slogan comes close to summing it up: “End slavery in California this November.”

Have you seen Ava Duvernay’s documentary 13th? (If not, you should watch it for free.) In 1865, the U.S. ratified the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude…except as punishment for crime. Often described as “slavery by another name,” this loophole was designed to re-enslave freed Black people (e.g., chain gangs, “convict leasing”). To this day, corporations continue to make billions of dollars exploiting forced prison labor, which is legalized slavery.

Voter approval of Prop 6 would amend California’s equivalent of the 13th Amendment from our state constitution. It would also enshrine that “slavery and involuntary servitude are prohibited” in state prisons and that “the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation shall not discipline any incarcerated person for refusing a work assignment,” starting January 1, 2025.

Currently, incarcerated people in California are forced to work an array of “jobs” with no protections and no flexibility in choosing their hours or position—even if the tasks they’re assigned cause them bodily harm. If they refuses to “work,” they’re often punished with violence, denial of parole, denial of services (e.g., access to showers, phone calls with family), and/or solitary confinement, a practice linked to drastically higher rates of suicide attempts. Many incarcerated laborers are forced to work for private corporations (about 4,000 as of 2019), making paltry wages.

As important as Prop 6 is, much of its support is a byproduct of political cynicism. Many state leaders hope that by championing the abolition of prison slavery, they can obscure justice movements’ demands to increase California’s measly prison minimum wage of 16 cents/hour—or 1% of the state’s $16 minimum wage for non-incarcerated workers. That’s just 25% of the national average for prison wages (63 cents/hour) despite California having the second-highest cost of living in the country.

Despite making next to nothing, incarcerated people still have to pay for many basic necessities and services. Corporations have jacked up prices on many privatized “services” inside jails and prisons. A 2022 survey found that 70% of incarcerated workers could not afford basic necessities with their prison wages. In 2017, incarcerated people and their loved ones paid more than $2.9 billion for prison phone calls and commissary purchases in the U.S.

Incarcerated people should be able to save money for their release. What do you expect people to do for food or housing when they get out? It’s hard enough to find an apartment or job with a conviction on your record. They can’t pay into social security either, so they won’t even qualify for a pittance of a safety net when they retire. Do you want to rehabilitate people, or do you want to perpetuate a cycle of violence, poverty, and incarceration? These are the two options, and option B has been an unmitigated humanitarian disaster.

This year, California’s prison population is estimated to average 90,240 people (not including ~60,000 more incarcerated in county jails) on any given day. Incarcerating one person costs the state $132,860/year. That cost has doubled in the past decade—largely due to lucrative contracts with law enforcement departments and private corporations.

California is one of 16 states that still allows “involuntary servitude.” Despite our Democratic supermajority, we are years behind states like Alabama in taking this step—a damning indictment of Democratic leadership and their priorities. As you may have noticed from all the measures on your ballot, Governor Gavin Newsom couldn’t find enough money in our state budget to pay for school repairs or affordable housing or health care or projects to combat the climate crisis. He did decide we have enough money to lock up more people than anywhere else on the planet, and he successfully sabotaged a previous effort to end prison slavery.

The End Slavery in California Act was first introduced in 2020, but Newsom’s opposition killed it in the California Senate. Newsom’s administration said the bill would mean increasing the minimum wage for incarcerated labor to $15/hour, which would cost the state too much. Well, Gavin…if you can’t afford to pay your workers, you shouldn’t be running a business. Also, he was lying—there’s nothing about the prison minimum wage in the bill. Regardless, legislators seem to have appeased Newsom by adding language that ensures the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation could continue providing “time credits” to reduce the sentences for those who voluntarily accept work assignments.

You should understand that the passage of Prop 6 would only mark the end of California prison slavery on paper. Those who “enforce” the law frequently fail to follow it. Incarcerated people regularly file reports of abuse and assault that are completely ignored. And in many cases, they’re retaliated against by the offending officers, who face little or no consequence. This isn’t hypothetical.

In 2018, Colorado voters approved a comparable measure to abolish prison slavery. In the summer of 2023, an investigation uncovered 727 instances where the Colorado Department of Corrections wrote up incarcerated workers for failing to report to work or to do assigned work—even five years after the law had banned this practice.

Incarcerated workers aren’t protected by workplace safety regulations or labor laws. They frequently do not receive the necessary training or resources needed to deal with dangerous situations (e.g., handling heavy machinery, working in extreme heat). Like nonincarcerated workers, they’re victims of wage theft and will continue to be even if Prop 6 passes.

In case it isn’t clear, I believe approving Prop 6 is extremely important. But our votes cannot fix a system designed to be this predatory. Please check out the Get Involved section at the end of this guide to learn how you can join movements to fight back.

Prop 32

YES - Voter approval of Prop 32 would raise California’s minimum wage to $18/hour by 2026 and be adjusted to “keep pace with the cost of living in California.” Well, not exactly. But sort of.

Here are the specifics:

For employers with 26+ employees, the minimum wage would immediately increase to $17, before rising to $18 on January 1, 2025.
For employers with 25 or fewer employees, the minimum wage would increase to $17 on January 1, 2025, before rising to $18 on January 1, 2026.
Starting in 2027, minimum wage would be adjusted for inflation each year.
If inflation exceeds 3.5%, minimum-wage workers would be limited to a 3.5% increase.
If inflation is negative (which has happened only once in the past 65 years), minimum wage would not increase.

Prop 32 comes to your ballot via the Living Wage Act of 2022, which states in its text that “for more than 12 years, the federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25. If it had increased at the rate of productivity growth since 1960, it would be $24 right now.”

Increasing wages will have a meaningful impact on millions of people’s lives, including many in LA where the minimum wage is currently $17.28. But Prop 32 doesn’t close the historical wage gap cited in its own text. It doesn’t increase the minimum wage to $24/hour, and it ensures that the minimum wage will never catch up.

Frustratingly, Prop 32 does not provide a living wage either. At the very least, every single person working full time should be able to afford their basic survival needs (i.e., rent, food, clothing, transportation, health care).

Working full-time at $18/hour comes to $37,440 a year. The median rent in California is currently ~$2,800 or $33,600 annually. Even in a two-income household, that would mean 48% of pre-taxed income goes to housing costs. We have a term for that.

Rent-burdened describes tenants who spend more than 30% of household income on rent and utilities. And if you think I’m nitpicking, here’s a wake-up call: The California Department of Housing and Community Development sets income brackets for affordable housing each year. A single-person household earning below $48,550 is considered “very low income” in LA County; earning below $77,700 is considered “low income.”

If wage increases ever are paused due to negative inflation, rent increases won’t pause with them. And the 3.5% ceiling also frankly sucks when inflation has exceeded that amount in each of the past three years. Prop 32 addresses some of the damage caused by decades of wage erosion, but it also maintains some of the holes that will allow exploitation of low-income workers to continue. Elected officials are happy to cut landlords a break, but not the poor.

Who does the minimum wage not apply to? Independent contractors (aka freelance/gig workers), self-employed people, and app-based drivers (e.g., Uber, Lyft, Postmates, Doordash) thanks to the hundreds of millions of dollars that predatory tech companies poured into 2020’s passage of Prop 22. Unlike some states, employers are required to pay tipped workers the same minimum wage as non-tipped workers in California.

The minimum wage does not apply to incarcerated workers, who are subject to a 16 cent/hour wage. Unless they literally put themselves in the line of fire. In exchange for being placed in deadly situations, they can make as much as $10 in a day. As a treat.

The minimum wage will not apply to many disabled workers making subminimum wage until that practice is banned next year.

The minimum wage will not apply to exploited migrant workers, many of whom are subjected to extremely hazardous conditions on a daily basis while keeping us fed.

The minimum wage will not fully apply to workers who are victims of wage theft like the 91% of California’s service workers who were victims of this practice last year. In the Los Angeles metro area, employers steal an estimated $1.6 to $2.5 billion in wages from workers each year.

The measure is opposed by anti-worker lobbying groups, including the California Chamber of Commerce, California Restaurant Association, and California Grocers Association. A representative from the National Federation of Independent Business told LAist he opposes Prop 2 because “no minimum wage job is expected to be a long-term job.” Which is wildly out of touch, considering 16% of California workers make minimum wage.

Prop 33

YES - Landlords and real estate PACs have spent $100 million on misinformation campaigns to tank this measure. But Prop 33 is actually quite simple—it allows for more rent control. Here’s how:

1) Prop 33 would repeal the Costa-Hawkins Act, a state law from 1995 that bans local governments from instituting:

Rent control on apartments built after 1995, single-family homes, and condominiums.
Vacancy control, which limits landlords’ ability to jack up prices on rent-stabilized apartments every time a tenant moves out.

2) Prop 33 adds a single sentence to the law:

“The state may not limit the right of any city, county, or city and county to maintain, enact, or expand residential rent control.”

That’s it. If you want to see for yourself, go to page 100 of the Official Voter Information Guide. Prop 33 won’t expand rent control on its own; it would only remove the state’s ban on local governments implementing new rent control.

As I mentioned, the landlord lobby has spent a fortune opposing Prop 33, and it’s not out of concern for renters. In August, a superior court judge ruled that corporate landlords’ entry in the Official Voter Information Guide included four statements that were “false or misleading.” The judge ordered these landlords to revise ballot initiative disinformation and rewrite their summary. That hasn’t stopped them from spreading anti-renter lies elsewhere. Let’s debunk some of the misinformation around this measure:

Myth: Prop 33 won’t reduce the cost of rent.

Factcheck: Again, Prop 33 doesn’t do anything to change rent regulations on its own. However, its repeal of Costa-Hawkins would allow local governments to pass vacancy control measures, which could regulate market rates.

Myth: If Prop 33 passes, some renters who live in properties that aren’t covered by rent control would spend more on rent.

Factcheck: The Tenant Protection Act of 2019 prevents landlords statewide from increasing rent by more than 5% plus inflation (up to 10%) annually. Prop 33 does not amend The Tenant Protection Act or change the law in any way that would allow landlords to increase rent more than what is already allowed.

YIMBYs frequently cite a Stanford study that claims rent control in San Francisco drove up the average rent by 5%. Other academic research produced opposite conclusions. In addition to flaws in its methodology, the Stanford study ignores the prohibition of vacancy laws, which could have easily prevented that increase. Also, here’s an important statistic from the study that always gets overlooked: “We find rent control increased renters’ probabilities of staying at their addresses by nearly 20%.” It straight-up says rent control prevents displacement.

Myth: California already has reasonable and balanced rent control measures.

Fact Check: That’s simply not true. According to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, California renters pay a 50% premium on housing compared to other states. Lack of tenant protections has made California home to the largest unhoused population in the country.

Myth: This will hurt “mom-and-pop” landlords.

Fact Check: This 2021 study found that corporate investment vehicles own 67% of rental housing in Los Angeles. And remember that Prop 33 would allow local governments to expand rent control to cover single-family home rentals, which is important because corporate investment firms may own 40% of single-family rental homes in the next five years. Also, ALAB. “Mom-and-pop” landlords are well off enough to own property that they don’t live in. The median property sale in California is $739,000. In Los Angeles, the median exceeds $1 million. Mom and Pop will be fine.

Myth: Conservative cities like Huntington Beach support Prop 33 because they want to weaponize rent control to block new housing development.

Fact Check: This right-wing talking point is based on misreporting about Huntington Beach Councilmember Tony Strickland, a Trump supporter, who clarified that he vehemently opposes both rent control and Prop 33. If conservatives did want to implement radical rent control, I’d say don’t threaten me with a good time—that would be a major win for tenants. Too bad it will never happen.

Myth: Rent control will discourage developers from building new housing.

Fact Check: A 2018 USC report found that “rent regulations do not impact new housing construction.” A 2018 UC-Berkeley report found that “claims that rent control has negative effects on development of new housing are generally not supported by research.” A 30-year study of 76 cities in New Jersey found that rent control had little to no statistically significant effect on new construction. And by the way, the landlord lobby estimated that California had 1.2 million vacant units in 2022. California has 13.32 million households.

There’s a reason all the arguments against rent control involve pretzel logic. Rent control benefits renters tangibly and immediately.

And that’s the thing. People in power keep pushing the same convoluted solutions that are not working. The rent is too damn high. Tenants are getting evicted. Our unhoused population keeps growing. More permanent solutions take a long time to implement, but a 2020 report found that Los Angeles had 93,000 vacant housing units—more than twice the number of unhoused people. If Prop 33 passes, rent control could be enacted immediately. And paired with a vacancy tax, we could rapidly end our city’s housing crisis. We really could.

Prop 34

Voter approval on Prop 34 would require health care providers to spend 98% of revenues from federal discount prescription drug programs on direct patient care…if they meet these criteria:

Spent $100+ million in any ten-year period on anything other than direct patient care.
Operated multifamily housing reported to have at least 500 high-severity health and safety violations.

If that feels oddly specific…well, it is. The measure is designed to target a single organization. So, why are we voting on it? Put simply: The California Apartment Association (the landlord lobbying group that has spent $100 million opposing Prop 33) is big mad about AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s repeated efforts to put rent control expansion on the ballot. Prop 34 is the landlord lobby’s attempt to shut down AHF’s political activity permanently.

Why is AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) advocating for rent control measures? Fair Question. You probably know AHF as the entity behind Out of the Closet, free HIV tests, or those scary STI billboards that tell you your genitals will look like the cover of Dianetics if you get syphilis. AHF also operates pharmacies, which generate about 86% of the nonprofit’s $2.5 billion in annual revenue.

How? AHF participates in a federal program that provides medications at significantly reduced costs. The program requires manufacturers participating in Medicaid to provide discounted drugs to health centers that serve vulnerable populations (e.g., people living with HIV, children’s hospitals, people who lose their job/health insurance due to economic downturn). Health centers like AHF pass savings from the discounted medications onto their patients, but they can still charge their patients’ insurance full price for the discounted medication. They’re supposed to invest any revenue from those transactions into expanding patient care. Co-opting justice movement language, AHF created a loophole in this rule, declaring “housing is health care.” That’s a sentiment that I generally agree with but not as it has been applied in this situation.

In 2017, AHF used revenue from this program to start the Healthy Housing Foundation and has since purchased at least 15 buildings to create low-income housing. This revenue was meant to support AHF’s HIV+ patients, many of whom are unhoused or housing-insecure, but these patients weren’t prioritized for placement in AHF/Healthy Housing’s buildings. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

After moving in, low-income tenants living at AHF’s Madison building filed complaints about uninhabitable, slum-like conditions. When AHF reportedly failed to rectify these problems, tenants filed a class action lawsuit over rampant mold, vermin, bedbugs, cockroaches, severe plumbing issues, electrical failures, and more. The building’s chronically broken elevator was particularly horrific, trapping elderly and disabled tenants who couldn’t make it down the stairs. A blind tenant fell 12 feet down an open elevator shaft. An exploding radiator scalded another tenant’s dog alive.

An LA Times investigation later found that many of AHF’s 1,300 residents “live in squalid conditions with dozens under the threat of eviction.” AHF’s buildings have been the subject of 3x the number of health and safety complaints compared to other buildings owned by nonprofits in the area. A representative from AHF responded to the investigation with “The perfect cannot be the enemy of the good.” Housing people in dangerous slums isn’t “good.” A growing number of public officials and nonprofits claim that placing unhoused people in any form of shelter or housing is a win, so I want to be super clear: living in a dangerous slum is not better than living on the street.

This measure is a battle between two despicable organizations—both landlords. Despite the horrific investigations into AHF’s housing initiatives, most coverage of Prop 34 ultimately frames the organization as an advocate for tenants. AHF has invested significant resources into supporting tenant rights—just not its own tenants. Even beyond the slum-like conditions, AHF’s treatment of the people living in its buildings has been nothing short of monstrous.

Continuing to co-opt language from the housing justice movement, AHF has trumpeted phrases like “evictions kill” while simultaneously carrying out its own brutal evictions (likely numbering in the hundreds)—frequently over just a few hundred dollars in back rent. Again, AHF generates $2.2 billion in revenue each year. Tenants who AHF evicted also reported the nonprofit destroyed all of their belongings, including car keys, IDs, and clothes.

Like many of the corporate landlords that AHF claims to want to hold accountable, the nonprofit has cracked down on its tenants’ attempts to organize for better conditions. This is especially disturbing when the U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently awarded AHF $10 million to promote tenant organizing at low-income housing developments. Instead of giving that money to a known slumlord, funding could have gone to a group like the LA Tenants Union, which has been successfully organizing tenants for years.

When the LA Times asked HUD about AHF’s nightmarish track record as a landlord, a department spokesperson did not answer questions. Instead, HUD provided a statement about AHF being “well-qualified.’ Electoral politics will not save us.

Slumlords should unequivocally be banned from operating any type of housing. I’ve spoken to a few advocates who have been directly involved in investigations and lawsuits against AHF. With permission, I wanted to share an excerpt of what one wrote about Prop 34:

“AHF has disguised itself as a defender for tenant rights while providing slumlord conditions to its tenants[...]When voting for this proposition, it is vital to think about what type of housing we want in the future. Replacing billionaire business landlords with billionaire nonprofits isn’t really much of a difference. I suggest folks take a look at AHF’s history with their housing properties. Are we defending affordable housing or slum housing?”

These are extremely important points. Some of the tenants who survived AHF’s slums, including the man whose dog they killed, are too afraid to sue AHF, a multi-billion-dollar organization with political connections reaching all the way to the White House. Some of the advocates I spoke with believe this measure might be the only way to stop AHF from continuing its ventures in the slumlord business. And if that’s all Prop 34 did, I would wholeheartedly urge you to vote for it. Unfortunately, that’s not the goal of Prop 34.

So what is? The California Apartment Association’s primary objectives are to decimate tenant protections and make rent as expensive as possible. They spent $36 million on Prop 34 to retaliate against AHF’s continued support of rent control expansion. That is their only motivation.

If Prop 34 passes, AHF could lose its California tax-exempt status, its health care licenses, and its ability to receive state/local grants and contracts. As much as I believe AHF should be banned from housing anyone ever again, as horrific as AHF’s actions have been, I cannot ignore that Prop 34 is a measure funded by corporate interests to target an individual organization.

Corporate interest PACs should not be allowed to buy a ballot measure. They should not be able to buy any legislation, especially not with the rent money we pay them. I don’t think AHF should be allowed to funnel millions of dollars into politics either. I don’t believe any organization should be able to funnel large amounts of money into politics, but a corporate landlord PAC should not be allowed to cherry-pick which ones can. Prop 34’s passage would set a dangerous legal precedent, one that could open the door for billionaires and corporate PACs to target other nonprofit entities that cross them. Prop 34 and any measure like it should not be on the ballot.

Even if voters approve Prop 34, there’s a decent chance the courts will strike it down. The U.S. Constitution prohibits the targeting of an individual or a small group with punishment through legislation, rather than the judicial process. Prop 34 does just that. AHF already challenged the measure’s legality and attempted to remove it from the ballot. In July, The California Supreme Court decided it would not hear AHF’s legal challenge against Prop 34 unless it actually passes.

Ballot measures sometimes bring positive change—usually when they’re required to amend the state constitution to remove harmful and/or discriminatory policies. But corporations and the uber-wealthy are usually the only ones with enough money needed to collect the 550k valid signatures required to put initiatives on the ballot statewide. And if a decent initiative does make it to the ballot, those monied interests have essentially unlimited funds to nuke it.

Another aspect of Prop 34 is that it “permanently” authorizes the state to negotiate Medi-Cal drug prices on a statewide basis. That sounds great except it doesn’t change anything. Governor Gavin Newsom already took executive action to enact this policy years ago. The California Apartment Association doesn’t give a shit about patients or Medi-Cal drug prices. They’ll do anything to lie to voters if it means they can continue exploiting renters.

One more thing: As I mentioned in the Prop 3 entry, disgraced LA City Councilmember Kevin de León funneled a bunch of money from his aborted 2026 Lt. Governor into some of the measures on your ballot, including the AHF-backed Prop 33. That was especially brazen, considering de León’s corrupt involvement with AHF and his complicity in its treatment of tenants.

When a former AHF employee contacted de Leon’s City Council Office about the horrific conditions at one of the nonprofit’s residential buildings, de León’s staffer joined the whistleblower to meet with tenants. But when they arrived at the AHF building, staff refused to let them sign in, called the cops, and followed them with cameras. Fortunately, the staffer was able to document some of the conditions before the police arrived and kicked them out. In case you were wondering whose side the cops are on, it’s the slumlords—even when you’re a City official doing your job. The staffer then received texts directly from de León, which the Councilmember reportedly attempted to hide from public records requests. Despite its vast history of negligence and abuse in his district, Kevin de León has refused to take action and continues to publicly support AHF.

Prop 35

NO - Prop 35 is an infuriatingly complicated measure about funding Medi-Cal, California’s version of Medicaid, a government program that provides health insurance for low-income people and families. The state covers about 40% of the costs, and the federal government covers the rest with matching funds. Most state funding for Medi-Cal comes from the General Fund, California’s primary budget account, which is used to pay for most public services. Much of the remaining cost is covered by a 2009 special tax on health insurers that provide coverage to both Medi-Cal and commercially insured patients, based on the number of people they enroll. This tax generates an estimated $7 to $8 billion annually.

Revenue from the tax goes to two things:

Existing costs of Medi-Cal, which insures 15 million low-income Californians.
Rate increases for health providers that service Medi-Cal patients, totaling to $4 billion in recent costs increases added to Medi-Cal annually.

Prop 35 wouldn’t generate more funding, but it would make this health plan tax (and the revenue it generates) permanent—along with some concerning changes, which we’ll get into. Because the federal government provides matching funds for Medi-Cal, it would also have to approve changes to this tax. The existing tax is set to expire in two years, but the legislature can still extend the tax even if Prop 35 fails to pass—and I can’t imagine any scenario in which lawmakers wouldn’t extend it. So…why are we voting on this?

In an attempt to cover their asses after abandoning support for and repeatedly sabotaging CalCare, Governor Gavin Newsom and top Democratic legislators tried to spin expanded eligibility for Medi-Cal as “universal” health care. (Newsom & co. changed income criteria and removed immigration status requirements, which increased Medi-Cal enrollment to record highs, but these changes fail to meet the World Health Organization’s criteria for universal health coverage and still leave hundreds of thousands uninsured.) Because Medi-Cal reimburses doctors with lower rates than private insurance companies, the increased number of patients enrolled in Medi-Cal has impacted bottom lines. The state budget included some increases in Medi-Cal rates for providers, but some of them want more. Alas, Prop 35.

To be clear, Medi-Cal rate increases aren’t a bad thing. Despite California’s high cost of living, Medi-Cal reimbursement rates rank 32nd nationwide, which has led to many providers refusing Medi-Cal patients. Many smaller practices and providers in underserved areas depend on Medi-Cal rates to continue operating, but they won’t necessarily be the ones receiving rate increases if Prop 35 passes. Many individual doctors donated to support Prop 35, but many of the measure’s largest backers are massive corporate providers, including some owned by private equity firms. Kaiser is the top financial contributor to the largest PAC supporting Prop 35.

You may have seen that Planned Parenthood supports Prop 35. Planned Parenthood serves many Medi-Cal patients and would certainly benefit from rate increases. Again, that’s not a bad thing. But that’s not the only reason Planned Parenthood supports this measure.

Prop 35 would establish a politically-appointed advisory committee with 10 members, including one slot that’s essentially guaranteed to Planned Parenthood (i.e., “One member that represents family planning and reproductive health providers on a statewide basis.) The Governor, Speaker of the Assembly, and Senate President would appoint committee members to represent specified interests (e.g., private hospitals, private ambulance providers, commercial Medi-Cal plans, labor, and more).

Planned Parenthood has framed this as an opportunity to improve and expand services, but the organization is already a powerful player in Sacramento. The greater problem is that corporate interests will be overrepresented on this advisory committee, which excludes any representation for patients or community health workers. I’m a union member and vehemently pro-labor, but I’m also worried about the potential appointment of a labor organization like the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), which supports Prop 35, to this committee. NUHW leadership has a shady history of lobbying for legislation like SB770, a bill that nurses’ unions opposed because it sabotaged CalCare. Even representatives from nonprofits will represent well-funded, politically connected organizations, leaving many types of community stakeholders voiceless.

While those unrepresented voices don’t have the millions in political spending that hospital chains or health insurers can throw at ballot initiatives, they’ve spoken up about the devastating impacts Prop 35 would have. While Prop 35 would provide funding increases for some providers and programs, it would eliminate funding increases for others. This graphic from California’s Official Voter Information Guide helps illustrate those changes for Fiscal Year 2025-26.

Funding for programs like continuous Medi-Cal coverage for children up to five years old, community health workers, and long-term support is on the chopping block. Some of these programs are eligible for potential increases in the long term, but that funding is not guaranteed. In 2023, the federal continuous coverage requirement for Medicaid ended, which could lead to an estimated two to three million Californians leaving Medi-Cal. And since the health plan tax is based on the number of enrollments, that revenue could drastically decrease, leading to long-term underfunding.

More importantly, many people can’t afford the impact that even one year of cuts could have. Many disabled people and their families depend on Medi-Cal-covered services like private duty nursing (PDN). Due to low Medi-Cal rates on PDNs, providers already can’t afford to hire enough nurses to meet the needs of thousands of families. Not only does Prop 35 fail to fund PDNs, it would also eliminate a 2026 Medi-Cal increase that lawmakers approved in this year’s budget. This is just one aspect of Medi-Cal that Prop 35 could make disastrous for vulnerable people, but the well-resourced organizations behind this measure do not care.

Critics worry that Prop 35’s changes in spending will derail other funding in this year’s health budget bill. Prop 35 restricts the legislature’s budget flexibility, requiring a 75% vote to amend how revenue from this tax is dispensed, which the Western Center on Law & Poverty warns could result in cuts to safety net programs. If you really want to get in the weeds, this CalMatters article covers how Prop 35 could more broadly jeopardize Medi-Cal funding: “the federal government under both the Biden and Trump administrations has warned California that its tax on health plans to fund Medi-Cal services takes unfair advantage of a loophole in federal regulations. The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services intends to close that loophole, regulators wrote in a letter to California officials late last year.”

Worth noting: CalCare would improve rates for providers, create actual universal health care access for Californians, eliminate all of this stupid bureaucracy, and drastically reduce costs. In 2022, health insurers skimmed a whopping $241 billion in revenue from California’s health care system, doing nothing but sabotaging patients’ quality of care. We do not have to accept this! If you’re interested in joining the fight for healthcare justice, check out groups like Health Care For Us, Hollywood For CalCare, and Socialists for CalCare in the “Get Involved” section at the end of this guide.

Prop 36

NO - Prop 36 is a redux of the disastrous “tough on crime” legislation that made California the mass incarceration capital of the world. More specifically, it would reverse the reforms that 2014’s Prop 47 instituted to reduce mass incarceration—and add new penalties for drug use.

Three strikes laws, sentencing enhancements, mandatory minimums, and a War on Drugs. These are the policies that decimated Black and brown communities in the 1980s and 90s. Research shows these policies are harmful and ineffective in reducing crime.

Some background: In 2011, the California prison system incarcerated ~156,000 people—nearly twice as many as it was designed to hold. In Brown v. Plata, the U.S. Supreme Court decided this violated incarcerated people’s Eighth Amendment right, which protects against cruel and unusual punishment. Determining this overcrowding was the primary cause of inadequate medical and mental health care, SCOTUS ordered California to reduce its prison population by 46,000.

To comply with this ruling, save money, and improve the prison system, voters passed Prop 47 which reclassified some nonviolent offenses as misdemeanors (e.g., shoplifting, theft, and check forgery up to $950; personal use of most illegal drugs up to a certain threshold).

Prop 47 successfully saved the state more than $800 million and led to historic drops in crime. It also reduced recidivism, racial disparities, and the number of people incarcerated in the state by more than 40,000 (although the prison system is still at 118% capacity as of September 2024). That had a real impact because incarceration often causes irreparable harm to families and can make it next to impossible for someone to find a job or apply for an apartment. And because mass incarceration is deeply racist. Black people make up 5% of California’s population but represent 28% of the population in state prisons.

Even a decade after Prop 47’s implementation, about 1 in every 49 Black adults in California is locked up in jail or prison at any given time. That’s not a figure the state publishes, but you can calculate this statistic from data released on state prison and county jail demographics (where Black people make up 28% and 20% of these populations respectively) and general population demographics (Black people make up 5% of California’s population). If Prop 36 passes, even more Black people will be incarcerated. That should be more than enough to get anyone who does not see Black people as subhuman to vote no.

Every prosecutor pushing this ballot measure understands its human cost, but they do not care. District attorney’s offices are among the most racist forces on the planet. 1 in 49 Black adults in cages. If you vote yes on Prop 36, you are directly supporting systemic racism. Full stop.

In terms of the broader population, 1 out of every 204 adults in California is locked up in a jail or prison at any given time. That’s not even counting ICE detention facilities. No one should be okay with this. Our jails are overcrowded and plagued with human rights abuses. We’re already paying double the tuition of a major private university to cage each person. Meanwhile, the Governor says we can’t afford to pay for health care, school repairs, or projects to address the climate crisis. This is beyond abhorrent. Mass incarceration is a blight on humanity.

What would Prop 36 do?

Create a three-strikes law for shoplifting, increasing misdemeanors to felonies punishable by up to three years in prison.
Creates a three-strikes law for drug possession, increasing misdemeanors to “treatment-mandated felonies.”
Cuts $100 million annually in funding from existing programs for mental health and drug treatment, recidivism reduction, school dropout prevention, and victim services.
Requires sentencing for certain felonies (e.g., drug dealing) be served in state prison.
Elevates certain nonviolent misdemeanors (e.g., theft, property damage) to felonies if committed by groups of 3+ people.
Adds a mandatory sentencing enhancement of up to three years when 2+ people “take, attempt to take, damage, or destroy any property” during a felony, regardless of the value or whether it was intentional.

First, “organized retail theft” is a term that was largely manufactured by the National Retail Federation. Many sensationalized news stories about smash-and-grab robberies cited statistics that the lobbying group publicized. However, the NRF was forced to retract its claims in 2023 after its statistics were thoroughly debunked.

Only 0.1% of shoplifting cases involve six or more people, and the state is already spending $267 million on an Organized Retail Theft Task Force. (Won’t somebody think of the CEOs!) Also, robbery, residential burglary, and grand theft are already felonies, punishable with long prison sentences. Prop 36 just increases the severity of the charges and lengthens sentencing, both of which would increase mass incarceration.

Relatedly, the Economic Policy Institute found that wage theft costs U.S. workers $50 billion each year, an amount that far exceeds all robberies, burglaries, and motor vehicle thefts combined. The combined valuation of three corporations backing Prop 36 exceeds $1 Trillion.

Proponents of Prop 36 have blamed rising inflation on the “rapid increase in retail and cargo theft.” In reality, economists found that more than half of 2023’s inflation surge was due to companies artificially increasing prices, resulting in record-high corporate profits.

Unless you’re Lucille Bluth (RIP), you’ve noticed how expensive food has become in recent years. Unfortunately, the amount provided by CalFresh hasn’t increased to keep up with greedflation. In fact, the Biden administration terminated enhanced benefits for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients in March 2023, slashing food stamps by $80. Now, the maximum amount a person can receive from CalFresh is $291 per month.

Prop 36 would change the law so that someone who steals a sandwich three times could be charged with a felony and sentenced to three years in state prison.

Through mutual aid organizing, I’ve spoken with an increasing number of unhoused people who have shared that they depend on shoplifting to prevent themselves from starving. Sometimes they get arrested, but they do it again. What other choice do they have? A lot of people would rather see them die or rot in a cell than acknowledge this reality. Unfortunately, we don’t have a measure on this ballot to enshrine access to food as a human right.

This is the quiet part of Prop 36. It’s an attempt to remove poverty from public view by filling cages with poor people, who our government has failed.

Language in the bill attempts to blame California’s increase in homelessness on Prop 47: “Since the passage of Proposition 47 in 2014, homelessness in California has increased by 51%.” What it fails to mention is that the median rent in California has increased by 115% since 2014 while the median household income has only increased 18%. In San Francisco, the median rent is $3,474. Loss of income—not drug use—is the largest contributor to homelessness. Prop 36 includes no money for housing, shelter, or treatment, and research shows that increased incarceration directly correlates with increases in homelessness.

365 party girls vote no on 36—it makes bumpin’ that a felony! If approved, someone could be sentenced to jail or state prison for possessing a small amount of “hard drugs,” including cocaine. It would also allow judges to sentence people convicted of drug dealing to state prisons instead of county jails, making family visitation significantly more difficult, especially in a state the size of California. Prop 36 would add the word “fentanyl” to a bunch of laws, but this doesn’t close any loopholes around fentanyl because there aren’t any. The DEA already categorizes it as a Schedule II narcotic, and any illegal activities involving fentanyl can be prosecuted like any other Schedule II narcotic. This is political theater to get voters on board and back a new War on Drugs. Also,

Supporters have touted the “treatment-mandated felonies” component of this measure most. People found guilty of certain types of drug possession with two or more prior drug convictions would be forced to enroll in a rehabilitation program. Failure to enroll and complete the program would lead to three years in prison. Prosecutors are especially proud of a stipulation that would dismiss charges upon completion of treatment.

There are a few problems with this plan, starting with the fact that the average number of attempts to successfully resolve a drug or alcohol problem is 5.35. “Treatment-mandated felonies” would set people up for failure—and for imprisonment. Many rehab programs have long waiting lists, and 22 counties in California don’t have any treatment facilities. Insurance providers, especially those that typically enroll low-income people, have limitations that restrict the amount of time a patient can spend in rehab. MediCal only covers 30 days.

In addition to the $100 million that Prop 36 would directly cut from existing programs annually, it would drastically inflate county and state costs associated with increased arrests, prosecution, and incarceration. That would result in even bigger budget cuts to education and health care.

One more thing you should understand is how plea bargains will play a role in Prop 36. You probably know that a plea bargain is ostensibly an arrangement between a prosecutor and defendant in which the defendant pleads guilty in exchange for more lenient sentencing and/or the dropping of other charges.

What you might not know is that 95% of state convictions are the result of plea bargains. Our very broken court system doesn’t have the budget or bandwidth to give everyone a fair trial, so prosecutors stack a bunch of enhancements to put pressure on defendants (and their attorneys) to plea out. It’s a practice that prizes efficiency over fairness or innocence, and it’s led to innocent defendants agreeing to plead guilty, sometimes on the advice of their own lawyers.

This database includes dozens of exonerated people who falsely plead guilty, and studies estimate that between 4-6% of people incarcerated in US prisons are innocent.

Plea deals exacerbate racial inequality, with Black defendants more often subject to prosecutors stacking charges, especially in drug cases. Because, once again, our criminal system is extremely racist in many pernicious and overt ways. I’ll say it one more time: 1 in every 49 Black adults in California is locked up in jail or prison.

In 2020, the Republican-backed Prop 20 made a similar attempt to reverse Prop 47’s reforms that failed with 38% of the vote. Unfortunately, Democratic leadership has taken a hard right politically in recent years and joined Republicans in supporting Prop 36. Now that the conservative Supreme Court is aligned with their values, Democratic leadership doesn’t have to worry about another federal intervention, re: human rights abuses in California’s prison system.

Several police organizations and Traci Park (LA’s second most conservative City Councilmember) endorsed this measure. As of this writing, $11.5 million in PAC money has been spent in support of Prop 36 with major contributions from Walmart, Target, Home Depot, In-N-Out, the retail lobby, and cops. Worth noting: An Anaheim police officer ran a woman’s license plate number so that he could stalk and rape her after seeing her at an In-N-Out. For whatever reason, In-N-Out has remained silent on this matter and has refrained from making donations to any PACs working to end police violence. Also worth noting: Home Depot profits from prison labor in its supply chain and knows it. To learn more, here’s a press conference from a statewide coalition of grassroots organizations opposing Prop 36.

US SENATE

Note: California voters once again have two Senate races on their ballots, which are confusingly for the same seat. When Senator Dianne Feinstein died in September 2023, Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Laphonza Butler as California’s temporary replacement in the U.S. Senate (even though Butler was no longer a California resident.) Here’s what’s up:

Short term: A special election will determine which candidate replaces Butler and serves the remainder of Feinstein’s original six-year term (ending January 3, 2025).
Full term: This is for the subsequent six-year Senate term (2025-31).

No recommendation - Adam Schiff gained national fame for his role in Trump’s impeachment. Then social justice groups thwarted his quiet bid for California Attorney General when the position was vacated by Xavier Becerra’s appointment to Secretary of Health and Human Services. Why? Schiff’s record is littered with support for several major racist policies that have increased criminalization and mass incarceration. Schiff has authored bills that:

Created a Department of Juvenile Justice to administer prisons for kids.
Established “boot camps” for kids who committed certain offenses during school time.
Made it easier to terminate parental rights (i.e., family separation).
Allowed “truant or disobedient” kids age 14+ who are wards of the court to be punished with incarceration in a secure facility when they aren’t in school.
Would have increased the racist practice of trying kids age 14+ as adults. A staggering 61% of children transferred to adult courts are Black.
Would have allowed the fingerprints of minors who had been arrested to be entered into a federal database.

Schiff has accepted nearly $1 million in pro-Israel PAC money. He has repeatedly expressed his unwavering support for America to continue sending money and weapons to Israel, which has aided in the slaughter of at least 42,000 Gazans in the past year. That might mean something to a person who isn’t a war profiteer/career-long supporter of systemic racism—but not Adam Schiff. He consistently votes to increase military spending, and he’s well compensated for those votes with major campaign contributions from weapons manufacturers.

Schiff is the #1 recipient of corporate real estate money of any candidate running for Congress in the entire country. Schiff co-sponsored Medicare For All, but he’s since fallen silent on the issue—likely due to large donations from health insurance giants like Blue Shield. After amassing hundreds of thousands of dollars from Big Oil over the course of a decade with no significant challenge to his seat in the House, Schiff finally signed the no fossil fuel money pledge for the first time…last year.

Schiff hired Lis Smith as a senior comms advisor on his campaign. Smith previously worked for disgraced former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who propositioned, forcibly touched, and sexually harassed several of his former employees. A report from the New York Attorney General exposed Smith’s role in covering up Cuomo’s history of sexual harassment and assault, including reports of Smith gloating about her successful smearing of his victims on television. There’s a special place in hell for people who profit from covering up sexual violence—and for those who knowingly hire them.

Schiff and his allies spent a fuck ton of money to elevate his Republican opponent Steve Garvey in the primary. Why? To obfuscate the fact that both of his Democratic challengers were significantly more progressive than he is rather than owning up to his shitty politics. And guess what? Schiff’s “strategy” boosted Republican voter turnout across California so much that his MAGA opponent placed first in the partial/unexpired primary race—ahead of Schiff, Barabara Lee, and Katie Porter. Garvey has no chance of winning this run-off, but the conservative surge that Schiff’s machinations helped create could have major consequences for important ballot measures, down-ballot races, and control of the House.

PRESIDENT

If every 2020 Biden voter in Los Angeles County, San Diego County, and San Francisco County dropped dead, Kamala Harris would still win California by nearly a million votes. Trying to persuade a California resident to vote for or against any presidential candidate will not change that outcome, and I won’t be doing that.

Many people (including me) fear a second Trump presidency. Trump is a violent authoritarian, a rapist, and a demagogue. Every time he speaks, he says something overtly discriminatory. We collectively experienced four unrelenting years of Trump and know what that looks like, so I’m not going to review his policies. (He published 20—one unhinged sentence each). I’m writing this entry with the understanding that you’ve been exposed to thousands of hours of horrific shit that Donald Trump (and J.D. Vance) have said and done. But to sum it up in pop culture terms, a second term would mean…Trump and it’s the same but there’s even more megalomaniacal white nationalism so it’s not.

I want to share some of my most vivid memories of the Trump presidency:

I remember him downplaying the severity of COVID and undermining scientific findings. I remember his “tough-on-crime” policies, support for the death penalty, and militarization of police. I remember the rape allegations, the misogyny, and Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony at the Kavanaugh hearings. I remember Trump withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accords and eliminating environmental protections. I remember his piss poor response to hurricanes devastating Puerto Rico. I remember Trump rescinding protections for trans people. I remember Charlottesville and “very good people on both sides.” I remember him vetoing a resolution to end assistance to Saudi Arabia in its assault on Yemen, leaving hundreds of thousands to die and millions more to starve and suffer. I remember the racism toward immigrants: the Muslim ban, family separation, ICE deportations, kids in cages, “Build the wall!”

A common refrain this election season suggests that defeating Trump is about saving democracy. The damage that he, Senate Republicans, and the right-wing movement inflicted on America’s courts has already impacted the rights of hundreds of millions of people. Their actions killed a pregnant teenager in Texas this week. Attempting to overturn election results, he incited an insurrection but faced no tangible consequences. A functioning democracy would not allow this. I would argue that ours is already mortally wounded.

Far-right think tanks successfully re-shaped the Supreme Court and have designs for expansion into the Executive Branch. Corporate interests control both the Republican and Democratic Parties at every level of government, and we have no legitimate path to overturn Citizens United. Partisan sabotage has created complete gridlock on any meaningful action to address our many urgent crises. In recent years, Democrats shifted right on several issues in a vain attempt to build bipartisan support with a party led by fascists. All of these occurrences, including Trump’s rise to power, are symptomatic of conditions that will continue to erode this nation long after Trump is dead.

I genuinely fear a second Trump presidency. I also genuinely fear the Democratic Party’s rightward shift, and I want to explain why.

In 2019, Kamala Harris launched her campaign for the 2020 presidential election. Harris was just two years into her first term as the junior Senator from California, where she had previously been elected Attorney General and San Francisco District Attorney. As a prosecutor, Harris mocked progressive stances on criminal justice. And like all prosecutors, the policies she adopted perpetuated cycles of harm that disproportionately targeted families of color. Under Harris, the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office prosecuted 1,900 marijuana charges even though Harris later admitted she smoked weed. Harris has since come out in favor of decriminalizing marijuana, but this contradiction is a recurring theme throughout this election. Who does the law really apply to, and who is exempt? Who do we count as human, and who are we fine with sacrificing in the name of “pragmatism”?

Harris has proven malleable to these questions over the arc of her career. As California Attorney General, Harris fought efforts to grant early parole to people incarcerated for non-violent convictions, arguing this would impact cheap prison labor. But in 2020, Harris published robust progressive proposals to end mass incarceration. Now, her platform fails to make any mention of incarceration.

If you’re interested, you can compare Harris’s 2020 policies with her 2024 platform, which perhaps most notably abandoned support for Medicare For All.

In 2019, Harris told the ACLU: “I will direct all federal agencies responsible for providing essential medical care to deliver transition treatment.” In October 2024, an NBC news reporter asked Harris, “Do you believe transgender Americans should have access to gender-affirming care in this country?” Harris answered: “I believe we should follow the law.” Prosecutors, including conservative LA District Attorney candidate Nathan Hochman, regularly use this argument to defend the results of their harmful actions. Until 21 years ago, it was the law to arrest consenting adults for sodomy in a private residence. Marrying a child (i.e., legalized statutory rape) is still “the law” in 37 states. “The law” also includes the 176 anti-trans bills that states have passed since 2021. As president, Harris could pass executive orders to protect vulnerable trans people. Joe Biden did. I understand conservatives use trans rights as a wedge issue and worked overtime to demonize trans people. Refusing to defend them is political cowardice.

I remember a common refrain from Trump’s presidency: “No human being is illegal.” Personally, I think the most jarring area of Harris’s policy reversals has been immigration. In January 2021, Biden ended Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy, which targeted undocumented adults with criminal prosecution and led to mass family separations. However, Biden’s own policies have continued the practice of family separation. Biden attempted to end Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” program, but while this move was being challenged in court, Biden reversed course and voluntarily expanded the program in June 2021. Similarly, Biden expanded the Trump administration’s use of Title 42, a mass border expulsion policy disguised as a “public health measure” in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, to effectively close the southern border to migrants, including those seeking protection from persecution or torture without allowing them to claim humanitarian protection as federal law requires. The Biden administration rebranded “kids in cages” in cages as “Migrant Facilities for Children” and is on pace to match the Trump administration’s number of deportations. No one should be okay with this.

Since becoming the Democratic nominee, Harris has continued Biden’s rightward shift on immigration and declined to state support for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). In 2019, Harris tweeted: “We should do something about the actual emergencies that plague our nation—like climate change or health care access—not playing politics in order to build a wasteful border wall.” In an October 2024 CNN town hall, Harris tried to spin her complete reversal on this issue, claiming she thought Trump’s approach to building the border wall was stupid while referring to the wall itself as a “good idea.”

Like Trump, Harris has expressed unequivocal support for Israel amid its genocidal campaign against Gazans. Unlike Trump, Harris called for a ceasefire in March 2024. However, Harris has not made any meaningful steps as Vice President or as the Democratic nominee to advance a ceasefire. With at least 43,000 Gazans dead, Harris remains committed to unconditionally supplying Israel with weapons and money to fund its genocide. Even Italy’s fascist Prime Minister has condemned Israel’s war crimes. Another common refrain from the Trump presidency? “I don’t know how to make you care about other people.”

During the vice presidential debate, Tim Walz said the quiet part out loud: “The expansion of Israel and its proxies is an absolute, fundamental necessity for the United States to have the steady leadership there.” Israel’s desire to settle Gaza, as it has done in the West Bank, comes at an incalculable human cost. (If you aren’t familiar with these efforts, John Oliver did a crash course on this topic that I strongly recommend).

Harris has repeatedly stated that she will ensure America has the “most lethal” military in the world. Meanwhile, leading defense contractors are expected to rake in $52 billion in 2026—almost doubling their 2021 cash flow. Who deserves funding? Who deserves poverty? Who are we willing to sacrifice to continue feeding the war machine?

Harris’s continued emphasis on commanding the “most lethal” global power should not sit well with anyone who cares values human life, or the future of this planet. The U.S. military has the largest carbon footprint of any institution on the planet. I should also mention that on top of the devastating human cost, Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza and war crimes in Lebanon are having an immense impact on the climate catastrophe.

The climate platform Harris published during her 2020 primary campaign was significantly longer and more detailed than any of her other published policy areas. While her current platform touches on her environmental accomplishments, it fails to offer a single specific proposal. Her campaign refuses to answer questions about whether Harris still supports many of the climate policies from her 2020 primary platform.

In 2019, Harris stated, “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking.” In addition to massive carbon emissions, fracking releases methane, which increases global warming at a rate 86x higher than carbon dioxide. In 2014, new fracking wells released at least 5.3 billion pounds of methane. In August 2024, Harris stated that she would not ban fracking and would not change her position despite the rapidly escalating climate crisis. When pressed by the interviewer, Harris bragged about casting “the tie-breaking vote that increased leases for fracking as Vice President.” That same month, U.S. oil production hit a record high. That’s largely thanks to the Biden administration being among the friendliest to domestic fossil fuel production in history. I’ve seen many liberals mock conservatives for climate denial online this election cycle, but adopting policies that expedite the rise in global temperatures is climate denial in action.

Harris has expressed increasing support for AI and crypto technologies, which have put an enormous tax on the power grid. To meet this energy demand and save face, Big Tech companies have bought up nearly all available green energy, leaving other industries unable to meet their climate goals. Every time you use A.I., you waste a massive amount of energy and deplete water to cool servers. This is having a major impact on climate acceleration. As global temperatures rise, scientists continually discover new factors that aren’t factored into climate models. The carbon sink (e.g., trees and land’s ability to absorb carbon) is failing. The system of currents that circulates the Atlantic Ocean is on the verge of collapse. These disastrous events create cascading effects that require constant updates to climate projections. And those projections tell us we’re out of time. The climate crisis is already here. It’s made landfall. It’s going to get much worse, and our government is not prepared to respond.

I fear that a second Trump presidency will result in a swift fascist takeover. I also fear the fascist creep that Democrats helped advance over the past four years. (Please read about cop cities. This is fascism happening now.)

If you come away from this thinking…but Trump is worse! I won’t argue with you. To quote his running mate, Donald Trump is America’s Hitler. That does not absolve anyone else of the harm they cause. I simply ask that you be honest about Biden’s presidency, who Kamala Harris has shown herself to be, and what consequences her policies would have for this planet and the people on it.

I believe voters forming parasocial relationships with politicians is extremely unhealthy for democracy. A political candidate isn’t a feuding pop star you stan online or a morally complicated character on your favorite TV show. Elected officials do not care about your well-being—at least not when it’s politically inconvenient. Elected officials are not your friends—least of all any presidential candidate who aspires to become the figurehead of Empire.

If reading these criticisms of Democrats made you think…but Republican sabotage blocked progress! Then we agree—this system is incapable of serving the people. And voting will not change that! Electoral politics will not save us.

I don’t write any of this from a place of nihilism, but I want to make clear: No one is coming to save you. Not Kamala Harris. Not The Squad. Not some miraculous scientific breakthrough. We have to save ourselves.

We are socialized our entire lives to believe that voting, specifically in presidential races, is our greatest power. I strongly disagree.

As a California resident, your vote in this race is extremely diminished by the population of our state, by the electoral college, and by immense amounts of dark money.

I obviously believe voting is important, hence this 100+ page guide. But please understand that your greatest power is the action you take.

Regardless of who wins this race, collective action is the only way many people will survive corporate greed, fascism, and the climate crisis.

This is the seventh voter guide I’ve written. I used to write this guide because I wanted to explain how our government works. Now, I write to explain how our government does not work. Or more accurately, how it’s designed to not work for us. How it’s designed to perpetuate oppression, exploitation, and corruption. Voting will not change that. It’s up to you to act.

I’m asking you to get involved. Go to the “Get Involved” section at the bottom of this document right now. If you learned something in this guide that made you angry, take a few minutes to browse through and see if there’s a group doing something about it. Then join!

These crises seem insurmountable, but together, we are powerful. Find your power.

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

RESOURCES

LA County Registrar of Voters

How to Vote in LA If You're Unhoused

LA 101 Guide

A collaboration between LA Forward and Inclusive Action for the City to help you understand how our local government works so you can take control of the systems and policies that shape your community.

LAist’s Voter Game Plan

Ballotpedia

CAMPAIGN FINANCE TOOLS

Federal

FEC - Campaign Finance Data

Search campaign contributions for U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives races.

Open Secrets

Analysis of federal candidates’ campaign finances.

California

California - Quick Search

Search campaign contributions for California Assembly Senate, Supreme Court, and executive office races.

Ballot Measure Contribution Totals

Search contributions in support/opposition of state ballot measures.

Cal-Access

Everything in the above tool, plus Superior Court Judge candidates—with the added bonus of a vastly inferior user experience.

Transparency USA

Provides information about money in state politics.

Open Secrets

Analysis of state candidates’ campaign finances.

Los Angeles

Los Angeles County - Campaign Finance Reports

Search campaign contributions to LA County Board of Supervisors, LA Sheriff, and LA County Assessor candidates.

Los Angeles City - Election Totals

Search campaign contributions to LA Mayor, City Controller, City Council, City Attorney, and LAUSD candidates.

Note: If you live in a municipality other than LA City, contact your city clerk/visit their website for campaign finance information on your city’s candidates.

CANDIDATE VOTING RECORDS

Federal

U.S. Congress Voting Records

California

California State Legislature Voting Records

Courage Score

Tracks how members of the State Assembly and Senate vote on important bills and the influence of big money on incumbents.

Los Angeles

LA City Council Voting Records

LA County Board of Supervisors Records

LOCAL NEWS + POLITICS

Independent & Public News Outlets

LA Public Press

Nonprofit local journalism that interrogates systems of power while supporting those trying to build a better Los Angeles.
Subscribe / Donate

LA Taco

Covers local news, food, culture, and community.
Paid subscription

LAist

Part of Southern California Public Radio, a member-supported public media network. Their mission is to explain LA through great local news.

Capital & Main

Nonprofit reporting on economic, environmental, and social issues in California.
Donate

Boyle Heights Beat

Nonprofit news organization serving the communities of Boyle Heights and the Eastside.
Donate

Street Views LA

Autonomous newspaper published by unhoused community members, mutual-aid organizers, and activist allies in Los Angeles.

KPFK 90.7 FM

Progressive media outlet challenging corporate media perspectives.
Donate / Listen live / Audio archives

Local Reporters

Liz Chou

Twitter / Instagram / LA Public Press reporting

Lexis-Olivier Ray

Twitter / Instagram / LA Taco reporting

Carla Green

Twitter / LA Public Press reporting

Phoenix Tso

Twitter / Instagram / The Tenant Association podcast / LA Public Press reporting

Jon Peltz

Twitter / Instagram / LA Public Press reporting / Knock LA reporting

Alissa Walker

Instagram / Report Forward series / Torched series

Cerise Castle

Instagram / Twitter / LA Public Press reporting / Knock LA reporting

Kate Cagle

Twitter / Instagram

Josie Huang

Twitter / LAist reporting

Ben Camacho

Twitter / Instagram / Knock LA reporting / Newsletter

Joey Scott

Twitter / Website / LA Public Press reporting / Knock LA reporting

Sean Beckner-Carmitchel

Twitter / Knock LA reporting

Jacob Woocher

Twitter / Knock LA reporting

Nick Gerda

Twitter / reporting on LAist

Mariah Castañeda

Twitter / LA Public Press reporting

Meghann Cuniff

LA Public Press reporting / Newsletter

Mark Kreidler

LA Public Press reporting / Capital & Main reporting

Amanda Del Cid Lugo

Twitter / LA Public Press reporting

Local Watchdogs

Unrig LA

Website / Twitter / Instagram

People’s City Council

Twitter / Instagram / Podcast

LA Candidate Watch

Twitter

Jamie York

Twitter

GLOSSARY

Basic income - A regular cash payment to members of a community without a work requirement or other conditions.

CalCare - Despite healthcare spending in the U.S. far exceeding other high-income, industrialized countries that offer a publicly financed single-payer system, we consistently report

worse health outcomes and disparities among vulnerable populations. CalCare is a proposed single-payer health care coverage system in California for all residents, regardless of citizenship status. By streamlining payments and lowering per-capita health care spending, CalCare guarantees quality health care and long-term care without creating barriers to care or out-of-pocket costs.

Community land trust - Nonprofit organizations that keep housing permanently affordable by removing it from the speculative market and holding it in a trust in perpetuity. Additional reading, and a horrifying follow-up piece.

Community schools - A local engagement strategy that creates and coordinates opportunities with its public school to accelerate student success. It serves as a vehicle for hyper-local decision-making that responds to the unique needs of each community.

Environmental racism - The institutional rules, regulations, policies, or government and/or corporate decisions that deliberately target certain communities for locally undesirable land uses and lax enforcement of zoning and environmental laws, resulting in communities being disproportionately exposed to toxic and hazardous waste based upon race. Environmental racism is caused by several factors, including intentional neglect, the alleged need for a receptacle for pollutants in urban areas, and a lack of institutional power and low land values of people of color. It is a well-documented fact that communities of color and low-income communities are disproportionately impacted by polluting industries (and very specifically, hazardous waste facilities) and lax regulation of these industries.

Food desert - Geographic areas where residents’ access to affordable, healthy food options (especially fresh fruits and vegetables) is restricted or nonexistent due to the absence of grocery stores within convenient traveling distance.

Green New Deal - The Green New Deal is a congressional resolution to mobilize every aspect of American society to 100% clean and renewable energy, guarantee living-wage jobs for anyone who needs one, and implement a just transition for workers and frontline communities—all in the next ten years.

Harm reduction - A set of practical strategies and ideas aimed at reducing negative consequences associated with drug use that include safer use, managed use, abstinence, meeting people who use drugs “where they’re at,” and addressing conditions of use along with the use itself. Harm reduction is also a movement for social justice built on a belief in, and respect for, the rights of people who use drugs.

Housing First - A strategy that provides permanent housing to unhoused people without preconditions because housing is a critical first step towards addressing other underlying issues (e.g., it’s much more difficult to find a job when you don’t have an address and reliable place to sleep and shower).

Indexed minimum wage - Indexing the minimum wage to inflation means adjusting it automatically to keep pace with the rising cost of living so that minimum-wage workers do not lose purchasing power each year.

Latine - Non-gendered alternative to “Latino.”

Just transition - A just transition moves our economy off of fossil fuels, and toward clean energy, while providing just pathways for workers to transition to high-quality work with integrity. A just transition leaves no worker behind. Workers impacted by climate policies must receive financial assistance, education or training, and a job that provides a family-sustaining wage, healthcare, retirement plans, and a voice on the job.

Mass incarceration - Despite making up close to 5% of the global population, the U.S. has more than 20% of the world’s prison population and spends $80B on incarceration each year. Since 1970, our incarcerated population has increased by 500%—two million people in jail and prison today, far outpacing population growth and crime. It’s no surprise that people of color—who face much greater rates of poverty—are dramatically overrepresented in the nation’s prisons and jails. These racial disparities are particularly stark for Black Americans, who make up 38% of the incarcerated population despite representing only 12% of U.S. residents.

NIMBY (Not in my backyard) - A typically affluent person who objects to the development of something they perceive as unpleasant (e.g., a shelter, affordable housing, public transit) in the area where they live, especially while raising no such objections to similar developments elsewhere.

Single-payer healthcare - Also known as “Medicare for All” on a federal level or “CalCare” at the state level. A system in which a single public or quasi-public agency organizes healthcare financing, but the delivery of care remains largely in private hands. Under a single-payer system, all residents of the U.S. would be covered for all medically necessary services, including doctor, hospital, preventive, long-term care, mental health, reproductive healthcare, dental, vision, prescription drug and medical supply costs. The program would be funded by combining our current, considerable sources of public funding (such as Medicare and Medicaid) with modest new taxes based on ability to pay. Over $500B in administrative savings would be realized by replacing today’s inefficient, profit-oriented, multiple insurance payers with a single streamlined, nonprofit, public payer. Premiums would disappear, and 95% of all households would save money. Patients would no longer face financial barriers to care such as co-pays and deductibles, and would regain free choice of doctor and hospital. Doctors would regain autonomy over patient care.

Social housing - Community-owned, rental housing provided at below-market rates with rent charged according to either at-cost or income-based formulas. Social housing is permanently off the private market: in some cases, it can be owned and operated by municipal governments or nonprofit housing providers. In other cases, as with limited-equity cooperatives, land trusts, or mutual housing associations, residents may own a stake in their homes at subsidized rates, but they cannot sell them for exorbitant profit. Social housing is a successful model that exists in several other countries.

Wage theft - Wage theft occurs when an employer doesn’t pay an employee the benefits they’ve earned (e.g., wages, benefits, sick pay, lunch breaks). Wage theft is one of the most costly crimes in America, but one of the most subtle. From 2017 to 2020, a total of $3 billion dollars was recovered in stolen wages, which is just a fraction of the overall cost of wage theft. Wage theft often goes unreported either because employees are not aware of what they’re owed or because they fear retaliation.