Ask Rick Caruso or Meg Whitman: In California, having wealth doesn’t guarantee you will win an election.
Or you can just ask Jon Regardie, a veteran L.A. journalist who has covered spending in local elections for years. In a piece for Golden State, he notes that Caruso’s losing campaign for mayor in 2022 spent an astonishing $109 million compared to Karen Bass’ $9.8 million.
The trend extends to statewide races, where several wealthy gubernatorial candidates had money to burn but still lost.
Elizabeth Aguilera
Mountains of trash
The San Gabriel Mountains may not be Yosemite, which has drawn much of the attention over the Trump administration’s neglect of public lands. But they are right up against L.A. County’s 10 million residents, and they’re pretty damn majestic in their own right.
If you spend much time there, you’ve probably marveled at the snow-capped peaks and cursed at all the litter left behind by others.
Noted, with comment
The World Cup on ICE
Mexico’s L.A.-based hospitality zone for the upcoming World Cup (the first match in Los Angeles is set for June 11) sits close to the federal Metropolitan Detention Center, where residents swept off the street by President Trump’s masked immigration agents are taken. In a powerful piece for Torched.la, Alissa Walker asks if L.A. leaders have a plan to keep soccer fans safe from the deadly, encroaching American police state.
Trump's man in L.A.
After the killing of Alex Pretti in Minnesota on Saturday, Trump administration officials took to social media to repeat lies about what bystander videos clearly show. One of them was Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in L.A. Los Angeles Times columnist Gustavo Arellano, writes: “When history looks back at all the cowards, sycophants, apologists, enablers, henchmen and other miscreants that made Trump possible, the bootlickers will have a starring role.”
Oscar Garza
A different era of disagreement
Joel Fox and Joe Mathews didn’t agree on much at all, but they were longtime colleagues and close friends. Mathews, a syndicated columnist for Zócalo Public Square and member of Golden State’s advisory board, penned a moving tribute to Fox, the Pepperdine University professor and California taxpayer advocate who died earlier this month.
Where water should go
Readers in Southern California might have noticed them around the L.A. metro area, especially in places immediately downslope of local mountains: “spreading grounds” where stormwater is captured and held long enough for it to seep into underground aquifers. The replenishment of these aquifers and others around California has taken on new urgency as climate change makes reservoir storage less reliable. Writing in the Sacramento Bee, Jim Peifer explains the importance of “water banking” – another way of prioritizing aquifer replenishment – as global warming alters Sierra Nevada snowmelt patterns.
Jim Newton
Haley Ellis
