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Los Angeles voters appear ready to fire Mayor Karen Bass (D). They just aren’t replacing her with Spencer Pratt. That’s California for you!
A new UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll for the Los Angeles Times has City Councilwoman Nithya Raman (D, DSA) leading Bass 39% to 28%, with fully one-third of likely voters still undecided.
California is not secretly conservative. Los Angeles is not secretly Republican. And voters who reject Karen Bass are under no obligation to replace her with someone to her right.
The mayor’s numbers are dreadful. Nearly two-thirds of likely voters view her unfavorably. Bass has spent much of the year absorbing blame for homelessness, housing costs, and her response to the Palisades fire.
So much for the idea that Los Angeles voters are content with failure. They aren’t. They may simply have a very different idea of what should come next.
Raman is not offering Los Angeles a conservative correction. Far from it. She comes from the activist left and has the backing of the Democratic Socialists of America. She polls especially well among younger voters.
Bass has a strong left-wing pedigree of her own, but she has been around long enough to become establishment: Sacramento, Congress, City Hall.
Raman represents something newer.
A Democrat electorate can decide that a Democrat mayor has failed without becoming Republican. This should not be difficult to understand. Somehow, it remains difficult.
I have been making versions of this argument for a long time.
In 2014, after another statewide Republican drubbing, I wrote a column for the Sacramento Bee asking, “Hypothetically Speaking, How Can California Republicans Win Again?” (Sadly, not online — turns out the internet is not forever.)
My answer was not: Move left. My answer was: Move.
Move into neighborhoods. Into schools. Into communities Republicans had largely stopped contesting. Talk to voters in English and Spanish. Focus on local problems.
“For a minority party to become a majority,” I wrote then, “it cannot merely oppose. It must propose.”
I also warned against fatalism.
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Of course Republicans were out-funded and out-organized. Of course much of the press disliked them. So what?
Two years later, after Donald Trump won the presidency while California voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton, I wrote another column called “Take California, Please.”
California had just legalized recreational marijuana, elected Kamala Harris to the Senate, extended high income-tax rates, tightened gun laws, raised cigarette taxes, and approved more borrowing.
In short, California voted like California. It still does.
Today, Democrats constitute nearly 45% of California’s registered voters. Republicans are just under 25%. No Party Preference voters make up nearly 23%.
Los Angeles is cerulean blue.
Even Richard Riordan, the lone Republican mayor during the city’s long Democrat era, was no conservative in the contemporary sense. The dude was a Catholic who called himself “pro-choice.” Come on.
The mystery is not why Democrats keep winning. The mystery is why conservatives keep acting surprised.
Spencer Pratt, to his credit, seems to understand part of this better than some of his loudest supporters. After losing the June primary, Pratt recently told followers that Los Angeles “had its chance for a candidate of change.”
Then he blamed them.
“A lot of you just stayed home,” Pratt wrote. Others voted for another candidate. “I told you to get ten of your friends to vote, and you didn’t do it.”
Notice what he did not say. He did not say the election was stolen.
Some of his supporters have been happy to say that for him. Pratt’s explanation was less comforting: His supporters did not turn out enough voters.
Now 63% of Pratt’s June voters remain undecided between Bass and Raman.
The revolt against Bass is real. It is not a conservative revolt.
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Pratt has another message for Californians: “Vote for governor, you still have a shot.” Yes, but it’s a long one.
Karen Bass has a rather different view.
In a recent interview, Bass declared the race effectively finished. “Our governor’s name is Xavier Becerra,” she said. “You don’t need an election on November 3. A Republican cannot win in this state.”
The gall of the woman! Of course California needs an election.
But forget the swagger for a moment and look at the arithmetic behind it. The latest PPIC poll has Becerra leading Republican Steve Hilton 60% to 38% among likely voters.
Those numbers should look familiar. Gavin Newsom beat Republican John Cox by nearly 24 points in 2018. Four years later, Newsom beat Brian Dahle by more than 18.
Those elections did not require cheating. Those are landslides.
I don’t like that any more than most Blaze News readers do. But I am not going to tell you California is secretly Republican because I wish it were. It isn’t.
California is a mostly blue state with vast swaths of red and millions of conservative residents.
Pratt’s response to Bass was revealing in another way. One-party dominance, he argued, teaches politicians that they do not have to earn votes. Give them a loss occasionally, he said, and perhaps they will try harder next time.
There is an old political truth in there. Competition disciplines parties. Long periods of dominance can breed complacency.
But California conservatives have their own problem. Sorry, friends. We are a despised minority.
Democrats have spent decades cultivating unions, ethnic communities, neighborhood groups, renters, homeowners, public employees, donors, activists, and candidates. The democratic socialist left understands this perfectly well. The DSA does not merely post about Nithya Raman. Its volunteers knock on doors.
Online enthusiasm is something else. X is not a precinct operation. A viral post is not a voter file. Ten thousand furious replies are not 10,000 ballots. As Spencer Pratt learned the hard way.
The work of politics isn’t easy. It’s tedious. It’s local. It requires endless hours nobody applauds and conversations with people who may dislike you before you open your mouth.
California is not secretly conservative. Los Angeles is not secretly Republican. And voters who reject Karen Bass are under no obligation to replace her with someone to her right.
You are not required to like California as it is. I sure don’t.
But before anyone can explain its politics, much less change them, there is one unavoidable requirement: See the place clearly.
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