The Voting Issue; November 2024

16 Wednesday Oct 2024

Written by redqueeninla in AD55 Newsletter, COLA, Culver City, Education, Follow The Money, LAUSD, Los Angeles County

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Assembly District 55, CA Initiatives, City of Los Angeles, Culver City, facilities bonds, Flip the House, Flip the Senate, Hold the Congress, LAUSD, LAUSD board elections, LAUSD1, LAUSD3, LAUSD5, Los Angeles County, Nov 5 2024 General Presidential Election, parent revolution, Santa Monica, Seat flip, Statewide measures, Swing states

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If atheism is a lack of “faith”, then politics is its nonsecular form. Spend your vote as you want to be. Safeguard your rights as an individual, the better to reflect the collective which comprises your society. For remember no matter how “terrible” that construct (with all due to Maurice Sendak’s brilliant nursery tale collapsing time and place, anniversaries and anchors), when “sailed back over a year and in and out of weeks and through a day[¹]”, it is your own supper that remains still-hot: Vote. Society needs you.

Construct your ballot here[²] via LAC’s website.

These are the 34 contests I will vote for. My choice is boldened in black, distinct from italicized options I have not selected:

1-4) Los Angeles Community College District

Seat 1: Hoffman[3], Manghera, Sims. The incumbent president is positively inspiring in her long-standing, unbroken dedication to LACCD, its students and administration.

Seat 3: Pearlman, Vela, Shapiro. Current incumbent Vela is focused on budgeting and present-day LACCD advocacy [4], which trumps the entitlement of retreading incumbency.

Seat 5: Henderson, Alaniz, Aula. Board president Henderson [5] Is a strong teacher, a strong advocate and not MAGA ~ the clear choice.

Seat 7: Iino, Payne. While her challenger focuses on old litigation and conspiracy-criticisms, incumbent Dr. Iino [6] is an AAPI teacher, administrator and community leader.

5) Assembly District 55

Cascio (R), Bryan (D). He has ably carried worthy legislation this term. My misgivings were short-sighted.

7-12) City of LA (CoLA) MEASURES

DD – CoLA Redistricting	Yes	An independent redistricting commission is vital.
HH – CoLA Charter Amendments (Governance, Appointments, Elections)[7]	Yes	Define and refine authority of certain City officials and departments.
II – CoLA Charter Amendments (Administration & Operations)[8]	Yes	Refine City interdepartmental and cross-District (CoLA<=>LAUSD) rules around parks, zoos, food service and sales, leasing.
ER – Ethics Commission Reforms[9]	Yes	Grant a modicum of independence to the City’s ethics commission
FF – Pension Parity for Law Enforcement	Yes	Equalize worker benefits by job type (law enforcement) across City departments.
LL – LAUSD Redistricting	Yes	An independent redistricting commission is vital.

13) LAUSD

US – Facilities Bond[10]

Yes

$9b to prevent 1200 roofs from falling: a good and imperative intervention. It’s why we have money.

14) District Attorney

Hochman (R); Gascón (D). He is not-Republican, BigData backers notwithstanding [11]. Amping up punishment and retribution [12] is as ineffective as it is unpopular.

15-19) Judges of the Superior Court

Office 39:	Turner[13], Napolitano.	A public defender with a perspective to broaden the perspective from the bench.
Office 48:	Rose, Wiley[14].	Both are worthy and admirably serve the public interest; the greater loss to their respective service would be from Rose’s removal.
Office 97:	Henderson, Ransom[15].	A pillar of community service who will leverage this broader platform for all the more good.
Office 135:	Huerta[16], Mac.	Another forced choice between admirable candidates
Office 137:	Herrera, Blount[17].	Academic experience from the obverse state of Texas is no match for the practical, legal value of child dependency court.

20-21) COUNTY MEASURES

G – County Board Reform		NO	LAC Board expansion and an ethics commission is a thing regardless; the measure binds a controversial and bad idea – the unchecked LAC CEO – with these incontrovertible commonplaces. Gratuitous electoral blackmail.
A – Homeless Services & Affordable Housing		Yes	Homelessness Hurts; whatever it takes for mitigation. Majority passes this voter-derived initiative.
E – Emergency Services	The tax doesn’t apply and so won’t appear on ballots in Los Angeles, Long Beach, Glendale, Pasadena and more than 20 smaller cities with their own EMS[18].

22-31) STATE MEASURES

2 – Schools Bonds	Yes	$10b among 9k public schools. A regressive bond funding paradigm, that must be passed all the same; progressive taxation would be better.
3 – Right to Marriage (Constitutional)	Yes	Codifies marriage equality in California’s constitution. Hedges against a future judicial debacle.
4 – Environmental Bonds	Yes	Environmental projects are important. Funding via bonds is regressive and compelled because: budget cuts; progressive taxation would be better.
5 – Public Housing & Infrastructure Bonds	Yes	Mitigates tyranny of the minority for the funding of public housing and infrastructure projects.
6 – End Involuntary Servitude in Jail	Yes	Does the elimination need justifying?
32 – Higher Minimum Wage	Yes	Raises a fulltime minimum wage worker into the “very low income” bracket[19].
33 – Allow Local Rent Control Laws	Yes	Enable jurisdictions to consider rent control; doesn’t enact it, just allows its consideration.
34 – Punish AIDS Healthcare Foundation	NO	A statewide proposition to shut down one nonprofit expressly.
35 – Share Medi-Cal Costs With Managed Care	Yes	Fraught healthcare politics forces ballot-box governing. Inadvisable, the catch-22 cannot eclipse provisioning for the poorest.
36 –Increase Drug & Theft Crime Punishments	NO	Hitting harder is ineffective and expensive; redirect this cost to social and education spending.

32) President & Vice President

Trump/Vance, Cruz/Garcia, Harris/Walz, Kennedy/Shanahan, Oliver/Maat, Stein/Ware. Fight for democracy. Fight cynicism and ennui. Vote for the People, not the plutocracy.

33) US Senate, Full term

Garvey (R), Schiff (D)[20]. AIPAC notwithstanding; it is what it is and it isn’t an R.

34) US Senate, Short term

Garvey (R), Schiff (D)

Select Other Races

Culver City is wholly embedded in Assembly District 55, to which you have elected me representative to the Democratic Party County Central Committee. The school board and city council races there are contentious in the extreme, but the full Central Committee voted to uphold our district delegation recommendations to LACDP: {Carlson/Lachman} for school board, and {Fish/McMorrin/Vera} for city council respectively.

I have grown to respect, admire and appreciate former fellow-AD55/4 elected LACDP rep Lindsay Carlson tremendously. I believe she will strive to prioritize governance for the “kids”, as is proper.

Even while there are present as always, allied and sometimes competing, “adult agendas” about as well. Not all are disqualifying; well-treated employees are also children’s classroom teachers, for example. Any school should be thrilled and honored to count among its parents one as engaging as Ahmadnia. And with a longer residency and time spent listening to constituents, it should become easier to parse this field of entangled, competing interests.

Hard work is a quality evident in Jeannine Wisnosky-Stehlin. Though not favored by the incumbent status of LACDP’s endorsed candidates, her service to the community is palpable, and impressive. Fish is likewise energetic and each de facto slate boasts exciting Latina representation.

There is a tricky two-step between evolution and revolution. Like urban renewal, it can be hard to disentangle replacement and displacement. As a non-resident, I only look in from the outside. There is little evidence of the national ennui that threatens our democracy. I hope this competition is productive and essential allies forestall the ideological rifts their campaigns threaten. November harbors true threats to repulse.

Our short attention span erases one of these threats in the form of a candidate for State Assembly District 54. That candidate’s nonprofit leadership [21] supported an ideology of (school) privatization at any cost [22], including lying, fraud, and social destabilizing in the form of deportation[23]. Some among us minimize the association [24], but the entanglement [25] lies somewhere between opportunism [26], profit [27] and the deep state [28] – where 2024’s top federal contributor-PAC [29] sent $82.5m to Republicans alone, from a Committee [30] fueled by a PAC coincidentally flashing the same verbiage [31] as propaganda filmed back in the I-was-just-doing-my-job-candidate’s salad days [32].

LAUSD is voting in the same pattern as LACCD, in odd-numbered districts:

Sherlett Hendy Newbill is a long-time favorite community-daughter and teacher-coach running in LAUSD1, now essentially unopposed following withdrawal by UTLA [33] – the teachers union’s – support for their candidate last March.

Scott Schmerelson in LAUSD3 is opposed by the deep charter-pockets of the Usual Suspects, libertarian and choice ideologues {Aaron, Angel, Bloomfield, Baxter, Bradley, Castrejon, Chang, Chernin, Corwin, Engelberg, Hession, Landecker, Landers, Lundquist, Melvoin, Mutchnik, Neuwirth, Petruzzi, Pipkin, Resnick, Tuck}, adherents {Gabriella CS, LA Fund; CPS Fund, LA Advocates for CPS}, Developers {Blackwell, Bishop, Galatzan, Holdorff Polhill, Hong, Luskin, Safran} and tech-investors {Bloomberg, Sosnick}.

Go Get ‘Em People. 75% of Chang’s personal contributors are high rollers, contributing 96% of the personal donation to his campaign. Hard to envision a clearer 99%:1% reveal of Schmerelson as the populist choice.

Karla Griego is the focus of UTLA’s advocacy in LAUSD5. While there are fewer big-name ideologues contributing personally to Griego’s challenger, those donations show little grassroots support. 67% of Griego’s challenger’s donations are high dollar amounts (>$200), and 97% of her personal donations come from them. 46% is comprised of support from Committees, Transportation LLCs, Unions and Peace Officers Associations. And the Usual ideological and nonprofit Charter Industrial Complex Suspects is present, if subdued: {Baxter, Bercovici, Campos, Chernin, Cubas, Dahan, Landers, Lundquist, Repenning, Resnick, Welinsky, Young, Zamora}.

In the LAUSD5 race between two teachers, with fewer contributing ideologues and Usual Suspects, no negative campaign spending has been reported to date and spending in support is approximately equal.

But ideological-nastiness shows in negative spending. Reflecting the longer list of Usual Suspects pitching into Chang’s Independent Expenditure Committee, while spending in his support is 2.5x that of Schmerelson, spending in opposition to Chang is also 2.5x higher than against Schmerelson. At three weeks from election day, this is expected to change.

I’m not sure why we have an economy if not to spend on our children. But this proxy dance among consultants parallels the ENPIC [34] (Nonprofit Industrial Complex) itself, spiriting dollars from our children’s use in the classroom, for distribution as ghastly entertainment among the adult political class instead.

We should afford our children more self-respect. Their education is serious business but not as surrogates for propaganda.

I’m scared about the power this plutocratic class will accrue with a Trump win in November. Please select among this steady stream of volunteering opportunities [35] to transform your doomscrolling into a model of positive belief in change [36]. Knock a door for your downstream candidate, or for the top of the ticket; color between postcard lines or text up a storm –please you just find how to do you. And if you need help tweeting your voice in the headlights, please don’t hesitate to reach out for encouragement from me. I will do what I can to find work in this election that suits your comfort level. Because things can always get worse, and the tug of war is playing out now: VOTE SOON!

p.s. – A couple other candidates I’m excited about. Sade Elhawary in AD 57. From her car she has been zooming in and listening to people for a whole year. She walks and works these streets and knows what’s there. Her perspective of understanding will be a boon to us, in Sacramento. Jessica Caloza in AD 52. I hear snark that her backers are so establishment she cannot be for “us”. But rarely have I seen a candidate listen so hard, remember so much, discuss it back so thoughtfully with such a broad diversity of us out here. I am excited for the prospects of her accessibility and smart, effective legislating.

And of course there are many seats with a combination of exciting candidate plus critical opportunity to flip the (or hold a wobbly) federal district: George Whitesides in CA 27. Ruben Gallego in AZ. Jessica Morse in CA 3. Will Rollins in CA 41. Dave Min in CA 47. Mike Levin in CA 49. Go here [37] to volunteer to walk or talk those districts.

The independent electoral jurisdictions of Santa Monica and West Hollywood have each their impressive candidates and entrenched slates. As with Culver City I am not resident and cannot vote there. And while through proximity I am familiar with these races and candidates, I prefer to defer to their actual constituents within. From afar I applaud these forthright and well-spoken women: Michelle Chambers in SD 35 and Pilar Schiavo in AD 40; Heather Hutt in CoLA CD 10 and Ysabel Jurado in CoLA CD 14.

When I write out all these courageous names, the sheen of vulnerability surrounding this election skims over just a little bit. Get out there, join me [38] and Do Something!

Others’ voting guides that I do appreciate:

LACDP [39]. LAist [40]. Kris Rehl [41]. Daniel Faigin [42]

[1] https://youtu.be/ALmNPxNehYE?t=315

[2] https://isb.lavote.gov/ballot

[3] https://ballotpedia.org/Andra_Hoffman

[4] https://davidvelaforlaccd.com/accomplishments

[5] https://www.build-laccd.org/people/nichelle-henderson/

[6] https://www.kelseyiino.com/

[7] https://laist.com/news/politics/2024-election-california-general-la-city-measure-hh-city-governance-appointments-elections

[8] https://laist.com/news/politics/2024-election-california-general-la-city-measure-ii-city-administration-and-operations

[9] https://laist.com/news/politics/2024-election-california-general-ethics-commission-reforms

[10] https://laist.com/news/politics/2024-election-california-general-lausd-facilities-bond