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[ GELFAND'S WORLD ](https://mail.citywatchla.com/gelfand-s-world)
# Well, It’s Over…
November 05 2026
Written by Bob Gelfand.
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GELFAND’S WORLD - Well, it’s over and Karen Bass has conceded. This completes a cycle in which voters have expressed their annoyance over the status quo. When you see both conservative candidates (all those congressmen) and liberals (Karen Bass) go down in the same election, it signifies widespread but diffuse anger. Anybody and everybody who can be blamed is in the line of fire. But there is a common thread running from the White House to the Los Angeles City Hall, and it concerns the simple act of deciding how to govern.
In a word, is the elected leader for good government or for rewarding his/her friends and political allies?
An aside: Tuesday’s election should be considered in regard to the long-ago pronouncements of the late Charles Peters, the founder of a publication called the Washington Monthly. Peters was a liberal who favored activist government that works to improve society – but as Peters pointed out, such governments must be made to work effectively and efficiently. You don’t just create a new department to solve homelessness or make broken streets whole. You have to make that department work.
I have my own corollary to this rule which I will get to presently but first let’s notice the similarity between what is happening in our Los Angeles city elections and what happened in the national blue wave we have been watching unfold. (I tend to think of it as a blood bath.)
In both cases, we have been watching the voters react negatively to the failure to get things done. In the case of our mayor, it has been the failure to make progress in all manner of issues while promising to vanquish the problem of homelessness. At the national level, it is the failure to return the nation to optimistic economic vigor combined with increasing inflationary pain.
In each case, the voters didn’t look for reasonable explanations for failure. They just punished those who might have anything to do with the problem. Two years ago, it was Joe Biden who was blamed (I think unfairly, but I only have one vote).
One other thing of interest: It wasn’t just rising prices (gasoline being particularly visible) or the Iranian conflict. Exit polls found that voters were aware of the level of corruption in this administration and reacted accordingly.
In the old days, the political class assumed that the voters had a strong level of Puritanism, to the extent that being divorced was considered a pretty strong bar to running for president. It took somebody like Ronald Reagan to break that particular ceiling, and Trump demolished it entirely. No, it’s not sexual or social Puritanism in the modern day, but it became clear that insider trading and theft and giving aid and comfort to our national enemies was taken seriously by enough voters to make a difference.
Yes, I am happy that enough voters were turned off by misconduct and simple dishonesty to turn a lot of rascals out of office. But I would continue to argue here that what is driving people bonkers is the simple lack of competence by those entrusted to run our governmental institutions.
So how does this principle relate to those we elect, whether it be the president or the mayor?
In a word, it all goes down to whether the mayor or governor or president appoints competent people to manage the work. This principle applies across ideologies and across party lines. Even corrupt political machines learned (at least at one time) that they had to deliver city services. The same goes for more or less clean modern governments: If you don’t pick up the trash (or plow away the snow) and pump water and keep the level of crime down, you are not going to be around for the next term.
Right after Karen Bass took over as mayor, I pointed out that at least in one case, her appointment was somebody who knew absolutely nothing about the department or its role, but had been involved in the mayor’s campaign. This is not the way to govern if you want to have enthusiastic support from people like me. And by the way, Villaraigosa was even worse in making that same appointment back in his day.
No, you have to make a serious effort to find and appoint competent people to all those important jobs. This seems pretty obvious. If we are going to own and operate huge plants to generate electricity and if we are going to maintain networks of wires and poles to distribute the electricity to you and your neighbors, then we need to hire people to manage. And those managers will oversee hundreds of individual operations and the people who will execute them, ranging from linemen to inventory clerks to those who will directly oversee the clerks and linemen and billing offices.
And that’s just one part of one of the city government’s agencies. Beyond that, there are departments to maintain sanitation and public safety and fire prevention and buying food for the animals in the zoo and that favorite topic for political columnists, the upkeep of our streets and highways. We do love to type about potholes.
That’s because these things are important to the civilized life, and a failure in any one element leads to difficulties in living that civilized life.
The voters obviously felt that Karen Bass and Donald Trump have failed us in getting things done.
Let’s consider what is involved in the process of hiring people who are competent.
It’s a three-fold problem.
The first is, of course, basing hiring on competence rather than just using the system to give out well paying positions to your friends and political assistants. I used the words “of course” in the previous sentence, but it’s amazing how often this principle is ignored.
The next part of the problem is for the top ranked person (the mayor or governor or president) to keep careful watch over whether the job is getting done to a satisfactory level. This involves (to borrow a word that Nithya Raman likes to use) picking the right metrics. What, for example, are the right metrics to apply to the as-yet-not-in-service Airport People Mover? It’s not hard to recognize at least a few: Is it within budgeted cost? Was it completed on time? Did it pass all the designated safety tests? Does it fulfill its designated requirements in terms of delivering this many people each trip, and does it complete its designated number of trips in every ten minute interval?
This is one place where the current mayor and the current president have fallen down on the job. You have to recognize that there is a job to be done by you as mayor, and you have to learn how to do it. In the case of the people mover, the initial requirement is the recognition that the airport needs highly competent management and the next requirement is the determination to make sure that the job is being done.
But the mayor’s job requires something in addition. It requires the temperament to be demanding and to replace people who aren’t doing the job satisfactorily. And real management for a mayor is to replace the weak link before the fire has started and before the people mover is years behind schedule.
One other corollary: If a job is important enough to exist, then it is important enough to be filled with somebody who is competent.
Trump’s tariffs are a special case of this whole competency argument, because they succeeded in damaging the very thing (the national economy) that the president claimed to be helping when he put them into action. Obviously, Donald Trump is not competent in modern economics and he shouldn’t be trying to mess with an economy that does better without ruinous tariffs.
Good luck to our next mayor. If she wants to start thinking about her plans for reelection, she ought to begin by taking a close look at the city’s needs, what it will cost to supply them, and who is competent to do the work.
There is one small exception to everything I’ve said above. Every successful candidate makes some appointments from among the pool of people who were involved in the campaign. But those appointments should be based on the demonstrated intelligence and competence of those people. And this can be where reelections fail right from the start: It is important to recognize that competence in political campaigning does not necessarily reflect competence in running a government department. The ability to deliver the vote in the valley does not necessarily mean that you should sit on the DWP commission or oversee the Port of Los Angeles.
Nithya has her work cut out for her. She has to deal with a City Council which openly and rudely dissed her over her committee appointment just a few months ago. She will have to deal with openly resentful victims of last year’s fires. She will have to deal with the city’s failure to develop a coherent policy with respect to the homeless. If she is brave enough, she will make clear that there is going to be a moratorium on salary increases until the city’s financial situation is improved.
**Addendum: The View from the Balcony**
Ordinarily I would be mentioning the new L.A. Opera production of Carmen, but it has been a busy and eventful week. Good voices, but sets that are way too busy – bad enough to take away from the overall effect of the performance. This was the view not only of myself, but of the two people sitting next to me and one additional audience member from the row above. The role of Micaela was particularly well sung by Kathleen O’Mara.
*(**Bob Gelfand** writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at )*
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