What do the voters of Los Angeles County want?
Well, while they sometimes offer mixed messages, just like any other electorate made up of millions of individuals, one thing is clear: they are generally satisfied with the incumbent county supervisors.
All three supervisors on Tuesday’s ballot were well ahead for another four-year term by overwhelming majorities, even though two of them faced candidates with good name recognition and fairly large campaign war chests.
In early returns, Mitchell was overwhelming three challengers in her bid for a second term in District 2, with over 65% of the vote, and is assured to avoid a run-off. Mitchell told our editorial board she hopes her work on the board of supervisors is transformational. Toward this end, she supports a tax increase measure on the ballot in Los Angeles County as soon as this November. It is unfortunate that Mitchell faced opposition with little funding and little chance.
In District 5, the board’s one Republican, Kathryn Barger, showed that a moderate GOP candidate can both pick up labor support and win, also overwhelmingly, with almost 60% of the vote in a Democratic-majority California political district. Her main opponent, former Pasadena mayor and Assemblyman Chris Holden, was well-financed and had his party’s backing and the benefit of redistricting, so that some voters were new to her — and they returned her handily for her third and final term.
As of this writing, looks set to Janice Hahn serve her last four-year term after facing certainly the county’s best-known challenger in former Sheriff Alex Villanueva. That divisive figure’s swashbuckling rhetoric did garner him 30% of the vote, with Hahn “only” taking a bit under 55%. This is despite a renewed focus late in the campaign on Hahn’s nepotistic practice of hiring her son and daughter-in-law to high-paying county positions.
With the campaigning over, we hope the supes rein in any tendency to overspend and look for swift and practical ways to solve the overarching problems of homelessness and mental-health care in the county over the next four years.
District Attorney George Gascón probably feels lucky that he came out on top of a crowded field of opponents, many of them deputy DAs who nominally work for him. Gascón’s 21% plurality is no convincing mandate, and he was likely saved for the general election in November by the huge field of 11 candidates running against him. Even though he was the top vote-getter, the fact is over 78% of the voters chose someone else in the original balloting, with most of the opponents running on some version of going back to “tough-on-crime” agendas.
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The way he will campaign in the run-off is probably by reminding county voters that second-place finisher Nathan Hochman was until recently a Republican. Gascón needs to communicate better to voters how his vision of not over-incarcerating co-exists with keeping the public safe. So far, he and his communications team have done a terrible job of explaining any of this.
In the city of L.A., with the passage of Measure HLA, the city will now spend billions of dollars to create “road diets” which will make driving that much harder. On the council, we are pleased with the easy victories of incumbents John Lee and Imelda Padilla. Democratic socialist Councilmember Nithya Raman appears set for a run-off against the sensible Ethan Weaver.
We are also pleased with the re-election of LAUSD school board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin and are hopeful that Dan Chang, now in a run-off with UTLA-puppet Scott Schmerelson, can pull it off in November.