Nithya Raman Just Won. She’d Better Start Running for a Second Term.
GELFAND’S WORLD - Allow me to take just one little paragraph of satisfaction (OK, call it gloating) to mention what has happened in terms of control of the U.S. Senate. As a tv analyst pointed out, the senators who were elected Tuesday won’t come up for reelection until the next president comes up for reelection in 2032. Tuesday’s election makes a Democratic trifecta (control of the presidency and both houses of congress) a lot more likely in 2028.
To change the subject . . .
If you follow Los Angeles politics, there is one thing that you ought to notice. It’s something that is not entirely explicable but should be of serious interest to Nithya:
We have a tendency to kick incumbents out after one term It’s not a hard and fast rule, but consider that two City Attorneys (Trutanich and the current incumbent Hydee Feldstein Soto) and two Mayors (Hahn and Bass) were recently rejected for reelection.
That’s not the way effective political machines are run.
Consider Richard J. Daley, who was the mayor of Chicago for 21 years. His son, Richard M. Daley, was mayor for 22 years.
Contrast that with Karen Bass, who featured in the closing ceremonies of the Paris Olympics alongside Tom Cruise, who works in a state which overwhelmingly sides with her Democratic party, and which currently enjoys a reasonably safe economy and the absence of war or epidemic disease.
I mean, what do you have to do to lose your reelection campaign?
I’ve tried speculating in a couple of previous columns, but I wonder if anybody really knows the answer, particularly when we try to guess why voters would bother to think enough about the City Attorney election even to vote against her. I mean why? Was this the revenge of everyone who got a speeding ticket, or just a random No vote in order to protest about Something? Who’s to say?
But Nithya ought to be thinking about such things if she intends to avoid that second term hex that is now not uncommon in Los Angeles elections.
In a previous column, I pointed out that Bass failed to get out ahead of predictable problems like the increase in electric bills. Just like governor-elect Becerra ought to get out ahead of gasoline taxes, Raman should get out ahead of the city’s financial failure. She also needs to get control of the city’s financial concerns that will derive from the 2028 Olympics.
And to provide for her easy reelection in 2030, Nithya ought to downplay the subject of homelessness, the brick wall that Karen Bass ran into repeatedly during her 4 years. There are ways to make the lives of homeless people better without throwing away billions of dollars. Some of it is debatable – should we supply sanitary facilities and hot food to the homeless on skid row? – and should we saturate the area with offers of mental illness treatment? Or should we offer the same upgrades in some other place, far out of town? All Nithya has to say is, “We are going to improve things, but we don’t have to become the world’s biggest landlord to do so.”
Addendum: The failure of some Republican gerrymanders
In a Blue Tsunami election, it is possible for a gerrymander (designed to add an extra Republican seat) to end up with the election of a Democratic candidate. This actually happened in a few seats this time around. But it doesn’t mean that those seats will stay Democratic in 2028. It is still necessary to fix the system. California showed one approach to doing so when we passed Prop 50. A similar approach applied across the entire country would help to solve the problem. Where California pairs itself with Texas to even that score, a state like New York could pair itself with Florida. Illinois could pair itself with North Carolina. The calculus is simple – wherever and whenever you steal a district, we will steal a district. The default ought to be that districts are fairly and honestly drawn. Perhaps Texas will move towards some such system and then California can go back to its previous system.
Addendum: College Football
An LA Times columnist says that UCLA is the best team and should be rated Number One right now. Let’s just say that I remain a tad skeptical, but when their quarterback connected on 75 yard touchdowns on two consecutive passes, I had to notice that something is different.
We are now in an era where college football coaches can import large numbers of experienced players including a top quarterback in the off-season, without any of the limits that used to exist. (Remember when a UCLA player who wanted to move over to USC was required to sit out an entire season?) The only thing that any coach needs is a group of alumni who are willing to pay out the twenty or thirty million dollars it takes to pay the NIL fees that college football players will cost for a competitive team.
I suspect that people will eventually become a bit cynical about college football’s newly professional nature, but for the moment it remains fun to watch.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
