Speaker 1: And very happy Thursday to you at twelve oh six
Speaker 1: in the West, It's the Phillip Show, mister Randy Weggs
Speaker 1: in Culver City. John, we all get tongue tied from
Speaker 1: time to time, but when you are a public servant
Speaker 1: and a public speaker on live television, you really want
Speaker 1: to make sure you don't confuse your tea's for your f's.
Speaker 2: So, yes, there were fire trucks that were broken, but
Speaker 2: there were also fire trucks that were out of use.
Speaker 3: WHOA. Obviously it was a misspeak, but it happened on
Speaker 3: live television and she said fire. You know what, She
Speaker 3: dropped the F bomb during the debate accidentally. But yes,
Speaker 3: so yes, there.
Speaker 4: Were fire trucks that were broken, but there were also.
Speaker 3: Fire Oh my, well, Katie Porter's working blue too? Why not?
Speaker 1: Karen Bass eight hundred two two two five two two
Speaker 1: two is jellphone number one? Eight hundred two two two
Speaker 1: five two two two. Well, last night was the first
Speaker 1: la mayoral debate where you had Nitthiya Raman, the socialist
Speaker 1: candidate for mayor, the incumbent, Karen Bass, and Spencer Pratt
Speaker 1: of reality TV fame all on the same stage together
Speaker 1: at the same time. And I've got to say, Randy,
Speaker 1: it was cathartic to watch that debate because he mopped
Speaker 1: the floor with those two.
Speaker 3: I don't know what the expectations were for Spencer Pratt
Speaker 3: going into this debate. I'm sure a lot of people
Speaker 3: who don't pay a lot of attention to what's going
Speaker 3: on just assumed that, you know, he's not really up
Speaker 3: to date on the issues outside of the fire. But
Speaker 3: he knew his stuff and he had a good answer
Speaker 3: for pretty much every single question. And not only that,
Speaker 3: but he handled himself really well. And neither Nythia nor
Speaker 3: Karen Bass even thought to try to go after him
Speaker 3: because they were so busy going after each other that
Speaker 3: at one point Spencer Pratt, who is a classy guy,
Speaker 3: goes to the moderators is like, you know what, she
Speaker 3: just attacked Karen Bass. Karen Bas should respond, I'll tell you.
Speaker 1: When I watched that debate last night, the first thing
Speaker 1: that jumped out of me is that those two, the
Speaker 1: two standard politicians, Karen Bass and Nitthia Rahman, walked into
Speaker 1: that debate assuming that he was stupid. They thought that
Speaker 1: they didn't have to do any homework and that he
Speaker 1: would fall on his face because he came from reality TV,
Speaker 1: so clearly the guy has to be dumb, which is crazy,
Speaker 1: because he's been out doing interviews everywhere, including here when
Speaker 1: he came in studio and I peppered him with questions
Speaker 1: for an hour, and the guy was well read.
Speaker 3: The guy had clearly.
Speaker 1: Been spending a lot of time thinking about solutions for
Speaker 1: the problems that face the city. I know there's an
Speaker 1: assumption that he's a one note Johnny and all he
Speaker 1: cares about is the fires because his home burned down
Speaker 1: in the Pacific Palisates fire. But you talk to him
Speaker 1: about homelessness, you talk to him about crime, you talk
Speaker 1: to him about the Olympics, you talk to him about
Speaker 1: any of those subjects, and he was up to date
Speaker 1: and well versed on all of it. And those two
Speaker 1: are so arrogant, and those two are so snobbish that
Speaker 1: they just looked down their nose at someone who appeared
Speaker 1: on reality TV in a past life.
Speaker 3: And assumed that he couldn't put two words.
Speaker 1: Together to save his life, and he showed up and
Speaker 1: made them both look like phones.
Speaker 3: The debate was of every debate I've had to deal with,
Speaker 3: and we've watched a lot of governor's debate. This was
Speaker 3: the most entertaining debate of the entire political season. I
Speaker 3: don't know if there's going to be another one before
Speaker 3: June second, but it was a thing of beauty.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's so funny to me because I
Speaker 1: mentioned before that they thought he was stupid, and I
Speaker 1: went to graduate school, and let me tell you, some
Speaker 1: of the dumbest people I've ever met have advanced degrees.
Speaker 1: Just because you are educated doesn't mean that you have wisdom.
Speaker 3: And speaking of which, and Nathia.
Speaker 1: Rahman came off looking like she has zero common sense
Speaker 1: at all. She is totally unaware of the world around her.
Speaker 3: She came off as completely not ready for prime time.
Speaker 3: I don't think she's ever had to do a televised debate.
Speaker 3: She's done some small all debates that are inside homeowners associations.
Speaker 3: But she looked like a deer in the headlights, and
Speaker 3: at one point got so rattled that she claimed that
Speaker 3: Spencer Pratt and Karen Bass were colluding against her. Idiot. So, Johnny,
Speaker 3: we got a lot of topics to cover. We're going
Speaker 3: to try to get to as much of this debate
Speaker 3: as we can before three o'clock. You want to talk fires, crime, homelessness,
Speaker 3: the budget, housing, reviving downtown Hollywood or other.
Speaker 1: Let's start with reviving downtown because that exchange was a humdinger.
Speaker 3: All righty take it away. Here is the NBC mayoral
Speaker 3: debate and Conan Nolan did a fantastic job, as he
Speaker 3: always does, and Colleen was also there.
Speaker 5: Downtown Los Angeles seems to be in a state of crisis.
Speaker 5: The high rises there, the office buildings are worked a
Speaker 5: fraction of what they used to be. That will impact
Speaker 5: the budget. By the way, you have a graffiti tower.
Speaker 5: You have a half a billion dollar bridge at six
Speaker 5: Street Bridge where somebody ripped out thirty eight thousand feet
Speaker 5: of copper, so it's in the dark.
Speaker 3: Yes, By the way, should just be the campaign at
Speaker 3: right here? Yeah?
Speaker 1: How could you be the mayor of all of this
Speaker 1: chaos and even expect four more years.
Speaker 5: You have restaurants Cole's at sixth and Maine, Clifton's at
Speaker 5: Broadway in eighth that survived the Depression, Prohibition and World
Speaker 5: War Two, but they can't survive the human thess outside
Speaker 5: the front door.
Speaker 3: They're closed. I have said it many times. Conan Nolan
Speaker 3: has zero bleeps to give and he is fantastic for it.
Speaker 1: Did I tell you I was on a flight with
Speaker 1: him one time and he wore an Indiana Jones at
Speaker 1: that's great.
Speaker 5: What is your plan for downtown? Can we afford to
Speaker 5: let it die? And israma will start with you? Oh
Speaker 5: you don't want to do that, all right? Let's see
Speaker 5: drunk man drive down an icy road. Would you agree
Speaker 5: to bring city workers back full time to the office
Speaker 5: in order to help sell the businesses?
Speaker 6: I think we do definitely need to bring city and
Speaker 6: county workers back. We bring in our office. We have
Speaker 6: people in the office three days a week in order
Speaker 6: to be able to address issues. There are some workers
Speaker 6: that should be in the office much more, and there's
Speaker 6: others that can be there three days.
Speaker 3: We think we're running out the clock here, Nathea.
Speaker 1: I love the fact that she has nothing to say
Speaker 1: about shutting down all the chaos. It's just making sure
Speaker 1: that the city employees still get to work from home
Speaker 1: two days.
Speaker 6: In the week that can be there three days a week.
Speaker 6: But absolutely that is not the only intervention that downtown needs.
Speaker 6: And right now, the lack of care that's being demonstrated
Speaker 6: in downtown La is part of our broken status quo.
Speaker 6: Downtown LA needs attention and it.
Speaker 3: Needs Boy, we're just talking in the most generalities possible.
Speaker 1: She's talking about downtown as if it's a child of divorce.
Speaker 1: They don't need more TLC. They don't need more attention.
Speaker 1: They need someone to go in there and clean it out.
Speaker 1: Downtown LA needs an enema.
Speaker 4: Real care.
Speaker 6: It needs more public safety officials on the streets. It
Speaker 6: needs work with businesses to ensure that businesses aren't just
Speaker 6: fleeing Downtown LA, that they're actually staying there. It needs
Speaker 6: regular cleanups, It needs real maintenance.
Speaker 4: It needs a strategy.
Speaker 6: Instead, what Mayor Bass has done is to dismantle our
Speaker 6: economic development department.
Speaker 3: We don't have a strategy to keep.
Speaker 6: Businesses here in Los Angeles, and we're watching as they
Speaker 6: walk away from this city instead of investing in it.
Speaker 6: That's the kind of investment that I want to encourage
Speaker 6: people to make by actually investing in a real economic
Speaker 6: development strategy for LA.
Speaker 3: Mister Brett, how do wrong wrong? Let's see if Spencer
Speaker 3: has a different answer. Mister Prett, how do we solve this?
Speaker 5: You want to bring workers back into the city full on?
Speaker 3: I mean, what's the solution for this problem, and he
Speaker 3: mentioned a lot of problems.
Speaker 4: What's your plan, Thank you sir. Well.
Speaker 7: First off, I was just talking to my friend Rachel,
Speaker 7: who works in downtown LA. Downtown is so unsafe now
Speaker 7: that they have to serve the food. All the employees
Speaker 7: have to eat inside.
Speaker 3: They can't risk going like the Kaiser in Oakland. Yes, exactly,
Speaker 3: like the kais are in Oakland.
Speaker 7: They can't risk going out. That's why all these beautiful
Speaker 7: restaurants are closing because it's so unsafe.
Speaker 3: So before we.
Speaker 7: Require city workers to go back into Eddie Billies, we
Speaker 7: need to enforce the laws on the street. Council one
Speaker 7: Ramen is talking about safety. Yet when animal rescue activists
Speaker 7: Rebecca Corey came in and said the dogs are being
Speaker 7: torturing abuse on the streets of Done and she walked
Speaker 7: out of the hearing.
Speaker 4: She doesn't care.
Speaker 3: That is true. And by the way, I've been doing
Speaker 3: a lot of talking with the animal activists that are
Speaker 3: talking about what's going on in skid Row and it's horrifying.
Speaker 3: Nithia Rahman at the debate the night before for the
Speaker 3: Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association, she was confronted by Joey Tuccio,
Speaker 3: who's the guy shooting all those videos in skid row?
Speaker 3: And she said, and she said this honestly, the first
Speaker 3: time I ever went to an La animal shelter was
Speaker 3: five days ago. Oh my, she don't care about nothing.
Speaker 7: She doesn't care about safety, she doesn't care about anything
Speaker 7: she's talking about. At least Mayor Bass pretends.
Speaker 3: To care everything I ever wanted in a mayor ol debate.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, if I could just inject this into
Speaker 1: my veins, I would, Ma Bas, can we.
Speaker 8: Afford And you've got a minute to answer this question?
Speaker 8: Can we afford to let downtown La die?
Speaker 4: Though? Absolutely cannot?
Speaker 3: Here comes mother Goose cannot.
Speaker 4: But is it a crisis situation at this point?
Speaker 3: Even Colleen's done? By the way, Karen Bass, I know
Speaker 3: that you're a mayor of a big city, but don't
Speaker 3: outdo my girl. Absolutely, absolutely, there's only one die.
Speaker 4: We absolutely cannot situation.
Speaker 8: It's absolutely it seems to be going the wrong way.
Speaker 4: So let me just tell you that we absolutely cannot.
Speaker 1: That's three times whoa. It's like machine gun fire.
Speaker 4: Downtown is the center of our city.
Speaker 3: Look, this is a very different situation than that debate.
Speaker 3: Between her and Crusoe four years ago. Because she is
Speaker 3: now a known entity. All of this happened on her watch.
Speaker 2: Downtown is the center of our city and it isn't.
Speaker 3: It really shouldn't be. It's a dump. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Whenever tourists come to La and stay with me, not
Speaker 1: one has ever said, take me to downtown LA.
Speaker 2: And it is an economic engine that absolutely needs.
Speaker 1: Again, you know what, she's flustered. She's flustered, and that's
Speaker 1: a crutch.
Speaker 2: You know absolutely that it absolutely needs to be attended to.
Speaker 4: We have a strategy that is working.
Speaker 3: We are working. No, it's not.
Speaker 1: On what planet is your strategy working? They're bums everywhere.
Speaker 1: It's like they're falling out of the sky.
Speaker 4: That is working.
Speaker 2: We are working with the downtown business associations. We are
Speaker 2: increasing public safety there.
Speaker 3: No, you're not another lie.
Speaker 2: That's why I did the Adaptive Reuse Ordinance, which allows
Speaker 2: for the office buildings that are vacant to be converted
Speaker 2: into housing.
Speaker 3: She did that last week, and she did it because
Speaker 3: she's running for mayor and she wanted to say she's
Speaker 3: doing something about the empty office spaces.
Speaker 2: And those conversions are taking place right now. That is
Speaker 2: why we have to deal with the street homelessness that
Speaker 2: is there.
Speaker 3: Skid Row's worse than it was three years ago. What
Speaker 3: planet is this dizzy broad living on the planet de Lulu?
Speaker 2: There needs to be massive intervention there. And then, of
Speaker 2: course there is the convention center and the convention center.
Speaker 3: Is nobody's going down to the convention center that's parked
Speaker 3: on Figaroa.
Speaker 4: And the convention center is a long term investment.
Speaker 3: Imagine you're a business, and are you're an organization, a
Speaker 3: trade organization, like let's say that you represent all the dentists,
Speaker 3: and you have to decide where are you gonna have
Speaker 3: your California convention? Are you gonna have it in Anaheim
Speaker 3: next to Disneyland or are you gonna have it in
Speaker 3: downtown LA next to murder in skid Row? Yeah?
Speaker 1: How long do you think it would take before all
Speaker 1: of the laughing gas was stolen out of the trunk?
Speaker 3: This is a true fact. Fresno does more convention business
Speaker 3: than the city of LA and making the building look
Speaker 3: prettier isn't going to solve that.
Speaker 2: And the convention center is a long term investment that
Speaker 2: we have to make in our city because the more
Speaker 2: people you have downtown, whether it's a convention, Are people
Speaker 2: coming downtown for concerts?
Speaker 3: Is they're all going to Englewood.
Speaker 1: Have you noticed that she has the algore affliction here
Speaker 1: where she talks to adults as if the assumption is
Speaker 1: that we all have brain damage. Well, she really talks
Speaker 1: down to us, doesn't she.
Speaker 3: She understandably does, because in order for her to be
Speaker 3: elected as mayor, a good portion of the electorate in
Speaker 3: La had to have had brain damage.
Speaker 2: If you're feeling down, if you're feeling blue, let's get
Speaker 2: help for you.
Speaker 1: That is quite something the way, and that would explain
Speaker 1: how she got elected in the first place. If every
Speaker 1: voter in the city of La was carried to term
Speaker 1: by Courtney Love, then the voting patterns would make sense.
Speaker 2: Is the way to make the city more safe and
Speaker 2: downtown more safe, and my number one obligation is to
Speaker 2: keep our city safe.
Speaker 4: Downtown is absolutely critical. Thank you all right?
Speaker 8: Moving toward I don't remember Ramen, would you like to
Speaker 8: respond to that?
Speaker 3: So Colleen had a brain fart there, and she's so
Speaker 3: used to just asking Ramen to respond because Ramen gets
Speaker 3: attacked by both of them every single time, and she
Speaker 3: has no good answers.
Speaker 8: To the mayor and what she's talking about that.
Speaker 6: I mean, look, I feel like we're having a theoretical
Speaker 6: conversation here about the direction of our city, which is
Speaker 6: being led.
Speaker 4: Currently by our mayor. Our mayor is.
Speaker 6: The CEO of the city. She sets the direction of
Speaker 6: this city. And if you are satisfied with the status quo,
Speaker 6: then I've got great news for you. The incumbent is on.
Speaker 3: The ballot, and so is one of the top members
Speaker 3: of the city council. Yeah, what do you do is
Speaker 3: your day job? Lady?
Speaker 6: What I'm here to say is that we need more
Speaker 6: urgency to respond to the issues right now. We need
Speaker 6: real plans, we need real efforts to make sure that
Speaker 6: we're keeping businesses here, that we're keeping workers here, that
Speaker 6: we're keeping residents in downtown LA. That is the strategy
Speaker 6: and effort that I want to bring to this role.
Speaker 3: Two weeks before she ran fact check true.
Speaker 7: YEP for election, two hours before the candidacy closed, she
Speaker 7: adorsed mayor of Bath. So, all of a sudden, now
Speaker 7: she's has all these problems with mayorbaths.
Speaker 3: They do photos together.
Speaker 8: We have so many more topics, and you know what,
Speaker 8: I know we're passionate. You're passionate about what we're talking about,
Speaker 8: but voters really want some concrete evidence here and they
Speaker 8: want people.
Speaker 7: To direct So she references me, I need to that
Speaker 7: that's supposed to be part of the rules.
Speaker 3: Debates are getting ugly this season. Oh I love it.
Speaker 3: Go ahead.
Speaker 6: I haven't been offered that that in a lot of
Speaker 6: this Nithia.
Speaker 3: You've got a chance respond to every single question debate.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm joining you there. Absolutely the.
Speaker 2: Absolutely the status quo and breaking up the status quo
Speaker 2: and dealing with the bureaucracy is exactly why I ran.
Speaker 3: And why she sounds exactly like Shang. Now the bureaucracy
Speaker 3: is real. She's checking all the boxes.
Speaker 2: And I started doing that by addressing homelessness, but also
Speaker 2: by bringing coalitions together to make sure that we can
Speaker 2: deal with downtown. Did you know that we are the
Speaker 2: only major city that does not have a comprehensive infrastructure plan.
Speaker 3: You're in charge.
Speaker 1: She's acting as if that's some sort of profound point.
Speaker 3: So it's been charge here.
Speaker 2: So it's been haphazard up until now. Left to the
Speaker 2: wishes of every single council member. I have instituted and
Speaker 2: started a comprehensive infrastructure plan and moving right away into
Speaker 2: replacing sixty thousand solar life.
Speaker 1: Thank you yeah and sending me a bill for them.
Speaker 1: Good job, Karen, eight hundred two two two five two
Speaker 1: two two. Easy telephone number one eight hundred two two
Speaker 1: two five two two two. If you'd like to email
Speaker 1: the show, you can do so at Johnny don't Like
Speaker 1: show at gmail dot com. That's Johnny don't Like show
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com.
Speaker 3: And Randy.
Speaker 1: If you want to listen to yesterday's show and find
Speaker 1: out just exactly what was said at the CNN hosted
Speaker 1: Gooblenatorial debate, that's easy to do.
Speaker 3: All you got to do is search for the John
Speaker 3: Phillips Show wherever you get your podcast, whether it's the
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Speaker 3: single day from noon to three and download all the podcasts,
Speaker 3: and you can listen to those podcasts and do something
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Speaker 3: you're cooking, Listen to the podcast while you're exercising. Listen
Speaker 3: to the podcast while you're frothing at the mouth watching
Speaker 3: heated rivalry on the couch.
Speaker 4: Why do you have to watch porn in the living room?
Speaker 1: Eight hundred two two two five two two two is
Speaker 1: telephone number one. Eight hundred two two two five two
Speaker 1: two two. It is our pleasure to welcome our next
Speaker 1: guest to the program. He is the opinion page editor
Speaker 1: for the California Post. You can follow him on x
Speaker 1: at Joel Pollock. Joel Pollock, Welcome.
Speaker 9: Thanks for having me on. Good to be here.
Speaker 1: Well, I've got to say, after watching last night's mayoral
Speaker 1: debate and the performance of Spencer Pratt compared to the
Speaker 1: incumbent mayor Karen Bass and the Socialist councilwoman Nitia Rahman,
Speaker 1: Spencer Pratt cleaned their clocks and it occurred to me
Speaker 1: as I was watching it unfold that the two standard
Speaker 1: politicians walked into that room with two beliefs that led
Speaker 1: them down the wrong road. One was that he was stupid,
Speaker 1: which he clearly is not. He's done more reading on
Speaker 1: the subject matter than they have. He's clearly thought about
Speaker 1: solutions more than they have, and he certainly was perfectly
Speaker 1: fine on his feet defending his positions on that debate stage.
Speaker 1: I also was of the belief that they walked into
Speaker 1: that room with the assumption that he was a one
Speaker 1: note Johnny who could only talk about the fires and
Speaker 1: had no knowledge about any other subject, which was clearly
Speaker 1: not true. The two things, the two assumptions that they
Speaker 1: bought into last night, I think caused them to get waxed.
Speaker 9: Your thoughts, well, I think the three Cannis did very
Speaker 9: you know, you could say they turned in very different performances.
Speaker 9: As you mentioned, Spencer was outstanding and for a number
Speaker 9: of the reasons you've suggested. One is that he showed
Speaker 9: knowledge of a variety of subjects in addition to the
Speaker 9: fire which you mentioned as well, very very impressive. He
Speaker 9: talked about policing, he talked about homelessess, and he had
Speaker 9: some very common sense solutions, which is that you simply
Speaker 9: enforced the law. You do not allow homeless people to
Speaker 9: camp out on the street, and you do not allow
Speaker 9: non citizens to vote. Very, very straightforward and comprehensive. He
Speaker 9: looked like he could be the mayor. That was the
Speaker 9: big hurdle he had to overcome because people had seen
Speaker 9: him as this scruffy social media guy, podcaster trying to
Speaker 9: sell a book, reality TV star, wears a T shirt
Speaker 9: and funny shorts, hanging out with his wife all the time.
Speaker 9: And here he puts on a suit, gets a shaven
Speaker 9: a haircut, stands behind a podium and he looks like
Speaker 9: a big city mayor. And it's not just looking the part.
Speaker 9: It's talking about a wide range of policies. The other
Speaker 9: thing he did, which was really important. I think this
Speaker 9: is sort of implied, and some of what said, he
Speaker 9: came at it with an intensity that made it absolutely
Speaker 9: clear if you were watching that debate, that he is
Speaker 9: the candidate for change. And it's interesting because Nitchia Rahman
Speaker 9: on the left, we'll get to her in a minute,
Speaker 9: but she is claiming she's the candidate for change. She's
Speaker 9: the socialist. She wants to move LA further in the
Speaker 9: direction of, as she would put it, social justice, not socialism,
Speaker 9: but maybe socialist in private moments, I don't know. Maybe
Speaker 9: she admits that she was once quite socialist in her
Speaker 9: political leanings, but she's not really projecting that intensity. Where's
Speaker 9: the energy, Where's the outrage, Where's the passion? And Spencer
Speaker 9: Pratt came across like someone who really wants to change things,
Speaker 9: and you can tell why immediately because he has suffered
Speaker 9: personally and that's motivating him. And look, it motivates a
Speaker 9: lot of us from Pacific Palaces. I mean, why did
Speaker 9: I join the California Post. It's for the same reason.
Speaker 9: I am passionate about rebuilding and also passionate about holding
Speaker 9: people accountable, and this is his way of doing it.
Speaker 9: I found it very competitive, so he did very well.
Speaker 9: Let's go to n Initia Ramen. She is trying to
Speaker 9: be the progressive alternative to Karen Bass. Although Karen Bass,
Speaker 9: who is basically a Cuban communist, it's hard to get
Speaker 9: much to the left her. But Robin just did not
Speaker 9: pull it off, and for a variety of reasons, but
Speaker 9: she just lacked the stage presence she needed. She lacked
Speaker 9: the passion. She has zor on Mamdannie's politics and policies,
Speaker 9: but lacks his charisma and his sense of outrage wherever
Speaker 9: he draws that from. I think he draws it from
Speaker 9: his hatred of Israel, which is sort of central to
Speaker 9: his personality and his politics. But Nitchie Ramen, I mean
Speaker 9: what motivates her. We didn't really get infensive why she's running,
Speaker 9: and she had to be on the defensive for various
Speaker 9: city council votes. Now, normally people just pivot from those
Speaker 9: attacks and they talk about what they want to talk about.
Speaker 9: She didn't really even do that. She was just on
Speaker 9: the back foot entire evening and as Trump might say,
Speaker 9: kind of low energy. So she didn't really convince anyone.
Speaker 9: She was passionate about the changes she's seeking. Karen Bass.
Speaker 9: And I'm going to say something that might disappoint you,
Speaker 9: but Karen Bass did not do well, but might have
Speaker 9: done well enough because she was the incumbent, and she
Speaker 9: admitted she had made some mistakes in the fires, and
Speaker 9: she took ining shots all night from both sides, but
Speaker 9: especially from Spencer Pratt. And yet she still looked like
Speaker 9: she was a mayor. She did not look like she
Speaker 9: was falling apart. She clearly understands, at least telling about
Speaker 9: how the city works or it doesn't work. She didn't
Speaker 9: have any new ideas, but she did at least sound
Speaker 9: like she knows who to call if she needs to
Speaker 9: get something done, and again, not someone who's achieved much.
Speaker 9: And Spencer really hit her over the issue of Hollywood,
Speaker 9: and you know, the mayor said, well, I've made it
Speaker 9: easier to get permits, and Spencer's like, everybody's leaving. What
Speaker 9: do you mean you made it easier to get permits.
Speaker 9: I mean you're sitting there. You've been in power for
Speaker 9: how long you haven't done anything to stop this problem
Speaker 9: of jobs leaving the city. So, you know, she couldn't
Speaker 9: make the case that she'd done a really good job,
Speaker 9: but she did make the case that she more or
Speaker 9: less knows how things are done. And I think that
Speaker 9: is going to be good enough for her political allies
Speaker 9: to stay with her. The big city unions and some
Speaker 9: of the standard Democrats, they're not going to jump ship.
Speaker 9: They didn't see her fold or collapse. It wasn't like
Speaker 9: that first debate of twenty twenty four when Biden looked
Speaker 9: like a deer in the headlights against Trump and suddenly
Speaker 9: all of his allies said, oh my god, we've made
Speaker 9: a terrible mistake. So I think Spencer is going to
Speaker 9: have to win by drawing new voters to the polls,
Speaker 9: people who don't normally vote in city elections, because if
Speaker 9: it's just a traditional electorate which is largely controlled by
Speaker 9: the unions. I do think that Karen Bass is going
Speaker 9: to cruise back into office.
Speaker 1: Rightly or wrongly, it seems like the playbook right now
Speaker 1: for California Democrats, whether it is Karen Bass running for
Speaker 1: reelection as mayor of Los Angeles or Javier Bsara is
Speaker 1: now trying to do this at the state level, is
Speaker 1: not to run on your record. It's not to run
Speaker 1: on I have improved your life. You're better off now
Speaker 1: than you were four years ago, or in the case
Speaker 1: of Besera, after eight years of Gavin Newsom and eight
Speaker 1: years of Jerry Brown, you're better off today. What they
Speaker 1: see aim to be doing is relying on that old
Speaker 1: Tom Bradley coalition. I guess in recent years you'd call
Speaker 1: it the Obama coalition, a multi ethnic coalition Liberals, blacks, latinos, Asians,
Speaker 1: gays and lesbians, and they just take the figurehead, whoever
Speaker 1: that may be at any given moment in time, and
Speaker 1: they run there. It's the figurehead of the coalition, but
Speaker 1: it's not the individual that's in charge. It's the coalition
Speaker 1: that's in charge.
Speaker 3: And if you just.
Speaker 1: Elect the figurehead of the coalition, then the coalition will
Speaker 1: be in charge of the city government or the state government.
Speaker 1: And that's a good enough argument for partisan voters, and
Speaker 1: that seems to be what they're both doing right now.
Speaker 9: Well, it's a little bit different. So Ken Bath, yes,
Speaker 9: she is a coalition leader, and you could even argue
Speaker 9: in twenty twenty two when she first ran for mayor
Speaker 9: that that was a strength because the problems she was
Speaker 9: elected to address, like homelessness, we require buy in from
Speaker 9: all different stakeholders in the city. So even though Rick
Speaker 9: Caruso had more passion and energy about it, and he's
Speaker 9: really the one who put that issue on the map,
Speaker 9: I mean, Karen Bass was not talking about homelessness until
Speaker 9: she had challenged from Rick Caruso. She had a skill
Speaker 9: set which was to be able to bring people together
Speaker 9: who might not normally do anything.
Speaker 3: About that issue.
Speaker 9: And look, she has wasted billions of dollars to help
Speaker 9: relatively few people, but at least she can say homelessness
Speaker 9: has started to decline over the last year or two,
Speaker 9: and that's what her campaign is really hanging their hopes
Speaker 9: on that they can at least say, well, it did
Speaker 9: get better. Now, is it better than it was when
Speaker 9: she took off his No? Is it better than it
Speaker 9: was two years ago? Yes, So you know she's able
Speaker 9: to say, let's keep the band together. You're right, Spencer's
Speaker 9: not really talking about coalition. He's doing more kind of
Speaker 9: management consultant team descends in the city and throws out
Speaker 9: all the rot I mean he wants to bring a
Speaker 9: team in. That means he's saying, look, I'm not an
Speaker 9: expert in all the stuff I need to know, but
Speaker 9: I'm going to bring in people, almost like a Doge operation,
Speaker 9: you know, come in and cut the fat and restore
Speaker 9: value to taxpayers, make sure that the people are working
Speaker 9: and the city services are there, and that kind of thing.
Speaker 9: You know, she's she's a very strong candidate only because
Speaker 9: she has the support of the public sector unions. Again,
Speaker 9: that is just the key. Now, what you're seeing at
Speaker 9: the state level is a little different because Democrats are
Speaker 9: so split at the state level that the unions are
Speaker 9: a little confused. You've got one in endorsing one one
Speaker 9: and using endorsing another. Sometimes unions are endorsing more than
Speaker 9: one candidate because there are so many Democrats that don't
Speaker 9: know what to do. So there may be some kind
Speaker 9: of surprise to think at at the governor's level. But look,
Speaker 9: Spencer's going to have to go outside of normal politics
Speaker 9: in LA. He's going to have to go to the
Speaker 9: valley and he's going to have to say, look, I
Speaker 9: know nobody votes from Ayra up here. You guys got
Speaker 9: to turn out. Here's the key when you have a
Speaker 9: disaster like the Palisades fire. You know, for most people
Speaker 9: in LA it was a sad moment, but not something
Speaker 9: that they felt particularly bad about. It was something that happened. Yeah,
Speaker 9: I probably had a cost for people in Brentwood and
Speaker 9: Santa Monica businesses losing local customers as Palisades residents scattered
Speaker 9: around the state in the country for a while. And yeah,
Speaker 9: I mean, you know, they blamed the mayor. People understood
Speaker 9: the mayor wasn't in town and so that was bad.
Speaker 9: But they don't really feel like it's happening to them. Yeah,
Speaker 9: we have bad roads, bad schools, and we don't have
Speaker 9: as many police, you know, but it doesn't really feel
Speaker 9: like it touches them yet. If you want to make
Speaker 9: the Palisades fire into an election issue that is effective.
Speaker 9: Then you have to explain to angeliaus why this could
Speaker 9: happen to them next. And I don't think he's done
Speaker 9: that yet. It doesn't mean he can't. He's still got
Speaker 9: time to make that case. And I do think that
Speaker 9: he's got a stronger chance of qualifying for the general election.
Speaker 9: So even if he doesn't win outright in this primary,
Speaker 9: you haven't seen the last Dispenser Pratt. He comes back
Speaker 9: to the general election. He's got to make the case that, look,
Speaker 9: what happened to me, what happened to my community could
Speaker 9: happen to any community in LA because of the disastrous
Speaker 9: way our city is run. And unfortunately sometimes it does
Speaker 9: take another disaster or two for people to figure that out.
Speaker 9: You don't want to wait for something like that to happen.
Speaker 9: You certainly don't want to hope for something like that
Speaker 9: to happen. So you've got to find another way to
Speaker 9: get the message out, and I think he can do
Speaker 9: it very creative with messaging. But that's the case. You
Speaker 9: have to make what happened to me should never happen
Speaker 9: to anyone else. Again, it could happen because none of
Speaker 9: the problems that led to it happening to me have
Speaker 9: been addressed.
Speaker 1: In politics, I always tell people to worry about the
Speaker 1: law of unintended consequences. We certainly saw that in twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen when Hillary Clinton decided that she rather run against
Speaker 1: Donald Trump than Jeb Bush or one of the other
Speaker 1: Republicans who was running that cycle more traditional Republicans. Last night,
Speaker 1: Nathia Rahman, I think correctly alleged that Mayor Bass and
Speaker 1: her team want to run in the general election against
Speaker 1: Spencer Pratt and not NiTi I Raman. Do you think
Speaker 1: that's true and do you think that's risky?
Speaker 9: I think it's true only because he's a Republican, you know,
Speaker 9: and the pattern in California is generally that the worst
Speaker 9: Democrat will beat the best Republican ninety nine times out
Speaker 9: of one hundred. But Spencer Pratt is different because although
Speaker 9: he's a Republican, what you know about Spencer Pratt is
Speaker 9: that he lost his house in the Pali States fire.
Speaker 9: Spencer Pratt was not running for office before he lost
Speaker 9: his house, and so this could be a little different. Again,
Speaker 9: he's got to generalize it. He's got to let people
Speaker 9: know this is about the other things that are failing.
Speaker 9: The police that aren't getting hired, the school's terrible, the
Speaker 9: World Cup which is a disaster, the Olympics that isn't
Speaker 9: getting planned, the delayed people mover at the airport, and
Speaker 9: the high speed rail that we're wasting money on, the
Speaker 9: home you know whatever. But he's got to just say, look,
Speaker 9: this is a general you're not safe anymore in this
Speaker 9: city with these people running it because they run it
Speaker 9: for themselves, they don't run it for you. And he's
Speaker 9: got to make that convincing. So I think, yes, there
Speaker 9: could be some unintended consequences. They think they won't face him,
Speaker 9: and then you know, CNN did this. I mean CN
Speaker 9: was accused at least of doing this. They were accused
Speaker 9: of boosting Donald Trump because they thought Trump would be
Speaker 9: easier for Hillary to be and then of course he wasn't.
Speaker 9: In fact, I thought of the time, he's the only
Speaker 9: one could be Hillary Clinton. And yeah, he tried to
Speaker 9: get too cute and too clever. In politics, sometimes it
Speaker 9: comes back to about you.
Speaker 1: In the old days in California, if someone was really
Speaker 1: screwing something up, the railroads, the oil companies, the Chandler
Speaker 1: family that owned the La Times would pull the plug
Speaker 1: on that person and they'd replace them with someone else.
Speaker 3: They really were a cabal that ran the state.
Speaker 1: Despite the fact that LA is a shell of itself
Speaker 1: and how it used to be, how powerful, how many
Speaker 1: industries were headquartered here, we still have a lot of
Speaker 1: money here. We still have a lot of industries here,
Speaker 1: We still have a lot of influential players here. You
Speaker 1: correctly mentioned that the World Cup's going to be a disaster.
Speaker 1: The Olympics are going to be a disaster. We're going
Speaker 1: to be humiliated on the global stage. Why do you
Speaker 1: think the stakeholders haven't pulled the plug on Karen Bash
Speaker 1: yet the way they would have in the old days, Well.
Speaker 9: Partly because they see the alternative as nithirana. I mean,
Speaker 9: what is happening in cities across America is that face
Speaker 9: with the failure of left wing policies, they're further left
Speaker 9: and they're not moving to the right. You know, thirty
Speaker 9: years ago, New York City chose Rudy Giuliani, and it
Speaker 9: saved itself because after Giuliani became Michael Bloomberg, and Bloomberg
Speaker 9: eventually became a Democrat. But you had responsible management, conservative
Speaker 9: management of these cities, and the cities improved, and the
Speaker 9: investors came back and even had a Republican running Sandie.
Speaker 9: I mean, there was a movement, but now in the
Speaker 9: opposite direction. And the left has convinced itself that the
Speaker 9: problem with left wing policies is that there weren't enough
Speaker 9: of them, kind of like the problem with communism is
Speaker 9: that we never practiced true communism, so we got to
Speaker 9: try it again. Right, So they're all looking at the
Speaker 9: possibility of a Zorn Mamdani and they're desperate to avoid that,
Speaker 9: and they feel that Republicans are discredited for whatever reason.
Speaker 9: And it's hard really to put your finger on what
Speaker 9: that is, either because cities have become so socially liberal
Speaker 9: that they'll never accept a Republican even if the Republican
Speaker 9: says they're pro choice or whatever, or because of Donald Trump,
Speaker 9: and he's just polarized the electorate to the point where
Speaker 9: Democrats and the sea voters just decide that he's the
Speaker 9: reason that they're in trouble until they don't want to
Speaker 9: have anything to do with anyone who supported him. And
Speaker 9: there is some of that, I mean, Trump arrangement syndrome
Speaker 9: is a real thing. But I also just think it's
Speaker 9: a generational thing in a way. Leanni, in that generation
Speaker 9: of more conservative mayors, they did too good a job
Speaker 9: because I think that the Mamdanni generation grew up with
Speaker 9: all these wonderful city services. They have no memory of
Speaker 9: when cities were really bad. They don't remember the lais,
Speaker 9: they don't remember crime on the subways in New York City,
Speaker 9: the Bernie Getz shooting people. They don't remember how bad
Speaker 9: things got under the Great Society of the LBJA years
Speaker 9: and the cities and all the decades of mismanagement that followed.
Speaker 9: And so they think that they have the wealth and
Speaker 9: the resources to withstand whatever sacrifices the Great New Age
Speaker 9: is going to demand of them. When they have to
Speaker 9: give up little pieces of their quality of living to
Speaker 9: get to their socialist utopia, they think they can afford it,
Speaker 9: and largely because it's been paid for by other people.
Speaker 9: A lot of these kids running for mayor running for office,
Speaker 9: they're private school kids. They're not from the places they
Speaker 9: are running to represent. You know, they just don't know anything.
Speaker 9: I mean, Mamdanni became a citizen in like twenty eight
Speaker 9: team I mean he's not like, Yes, he grew up
Speaker 9: in New York, but he went to private schools and
Speaker 9: he didn't live like other New Yorkers.
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 9: Romen moved to LA when I did. Basically, I'm not
Speaker 9: a native Angelina. I grew up in the Chicago suburbs.
Speaker 9: I love Los Angeles, have adopted it as my home.
Speaker 9: But you know, I picked a lot of my LA
Speaker 9: history from friends who would reminisce about things that happened,
Speaker 9: both good and bad. And it doesn't mean you can't
Speaker 9: run for office and can't do a good job, but
Speaker 9: it does mean that if you're going to make radical changes,
Speaker 9: people are I think entitled to ask where'd you get
Speaker 9: this idea? I mean, do you have any reasons? Do
Speaker 9: you have any reasonable.
Speaker 1: We're out of time, Joel, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: stopping by. Joel Pollack, opinion page editor at The California Post.
Speaker 1: You can get him online at Joel Pollock, The Fixed
Speaker 1: Califori Gowers. Next, don't you go anywhere