How about some good news for Friday night out of Los Angeles:
Rep. Karen Bass has widened her lead to more than 6 percentage points over developer Rick Caruso in the Los Angeles mayor’s race, according to results released Friday by the county Registrar-Recorder’s office.
Bass has 42.9% to Caruso’s 36.3%, with a vote margin of more than 40,000, the results show.
Caruso initially led Bass by 5 percentage points after the June 7 election. But that order flipped as hundreds of thousands of vote-by-mail ballots were processed by county workers in subsequent days.
Friday’s updated results also boosted several progressive candidates, including one who appears to be on the path to beating a two-term Los Angeles city councilman.
Most of the remaining ballots will be counted by Tuesday, when the next update will occur, said Registrar-Recorder spokesman Michael Sanchez. County officials estimated that 74,100 ballots countywide remain to be processed, a fraction of the 1.57 million votes counted so far.
This is great new not just because I want Bass to become my next mayor, it also rebukes a lazy political pundit narrative:
With only a fraction of the votes counted in California’s low-turnout, off-year primary elections, The New York Times confidently declared last Wednesday What It All Meant: voters had rejected progressives and their vision of criminal justice reform in favor of tough-on-crime candidates.
“Election results in San Francisco and Los Angeles were the latest signs of a restless Democratic electorate that remains deeply unsatisfied and concerned about public safety,” the subhed of the Times’ story read, referring to the recall of San Francisco’s progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin and the early lead of billionaire Los Angeles mayoral candidate Rick Caruso.
Heiress Nellie Bowles, the descendant of a California land baron, took it a step further, claiming that San Francisco had become a “failed city” under progressive leaders because they failed to sufficiently criminalize poverty and drug addiction.
The San Francisco district attorney recall, a well-funded campaign that began before Boudin took office in California’s 12th most populous county, was never a good proxy for statewide sentiment. Although Boudin’s ouster is a blow to the progressive prosecutor movement, it is not necessarily indicative of broad rejection of his policies, which are more popular than he is.
And by the following week, with more mail-in ballots counted, the notion that California voters had resoundingly embraced a more carceral approach to governance started to fall apart. This wasn’t surprising in a state where every registered voter receives a mail-in ballot. People who vote by mail tend to lean progressive and because they have until Election Day to put their ballot in the mail, many of their votes will not be counted until days or even weeks later. County election officials have until July 8 to report official results to the Secretary of State.
In Los Angeles, the state’s most populous county, Caruso is now in second place, behind the more progressive Karen Bass, despite spending $39 million of his own fortune. Caruso, a longtime Republican who recently became a Democrat, campaigned on hiring an additional 1,500 police officers to the country’s most lethal law enforcement agency and forcibly removing people from homeless encampments. Although Bass also called for a much more modest increase to LAPD staffing, she promised to fund programs to help people find jobs, housing, food and transportation, warning, “Los Angeles cannot arrest its way out of crime.” Under California’s top-two primary system, Caruso and Bass will compete in a runoff election in November.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who oversees a law enforcement agency overrun with deputy gangs, currently has less than 32% of the vote, leaving him vulnerable in the runoff if his challengers unite behind a single candidate. Villanueva unexpectedly ousted the incumbent sheriff in 2018 by portraying himself as a progressive, but once in office he worked to cover up misconduct within his agency, pushed a recall of reformist District Attorney George Gascón, and railed against the “woke left.” Although several of Villanueva’s eight challengers have positioned themselves as reform-minded, many activists remain skeptical and have been wary of throwing their weight behind anything other than getting rid of Villanueva.
FYI, Bass came out against Villanueva’s re-election last month.
Let’s keep up the momentum to make history in November:
The
Los Angeles mayor's race has pitted Bass against real estate developer Rick Caruso in a runoff to replace term-limited Mayor Eric Garcetti, CNN projects. If elected, Bass would become the first woman and the first Black woman to lead America's second-largest city.
Bass served in the California State Assembly prior to her time in Congress. In 2008, she made history as the first Black woman to serve as speaker of a state legislature, according to her congressional biography.
The six-term congresswoman currently represents California's 37th District. She has championed efforts to shape public policy in areas such as child welfare, foster care and prison reform. She chaired the Congressional Black Caucus for two years and helped to lead
policing overhaul efforts after the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd in 2020.
Health and Democracy are on the ballot this year and let’s get ready to keep California Blue. Click below to donate and get involved with Bass and her fellow California Democrats campaigns:
Gavin Newsom for Governor
Eleni Kounalakis for Lt. Governor
Karen Bass for Los Angeles Mayor
Robert Luna for Los Angeles Sheriff
Kermit Jones for Congress
Adam Gray for Congress
Rudy Salas for Congress
Christy Smith for Congress
Asif Mahmood for Congress
Will Rollins for Congress
Robert Garcia for Congress
Jay Chen for Congress
Katie Porter for Congress
Rob Bonta for Attorney General
Shirley Weber for Secretary of State
Malia Cohen for Controller