By Jim Newton, special for CalMatters
Jim Newton is an author and journalist who worked for 25 years as a columnist, editor, reporter and bureau chief at the Los Angeles Times. He teaches at UCLA and founded Blueprint magazine. This commentary was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.
Adam Miller is a serious candidate for mayor of Los Angeles. He has a real background in business, a commitment to philanthropy and experience in the city’s most pressing issue, housing the homeless.
His political profile resembles that of San Francisco Mayor Dan Lurie, whose tenure in California’s fourth largest city has drawn notice for his willingness to break, however subtly, from its most liberal impulses.
Los Angeles is five times the size of San Francisco. Its challenges are far greater and the stakes far higher. Here, Miller is running in the business-leader-turned-candidate lane that has produced mayors before, most notably Richard Riordan in 1993 and quite nearly Steve Soboroff, who unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 2001. Earlier this month, Miller picked up the endorsement of the Los Angeles Daily News, a feat that once would have placed him in the top tier of contenders, though it holds less weight today than in the past.
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Still, businessman-mayors and almost-mayors haven’t made much headway in Los Angeles over the past two decades. Developer Rick Caruso got clocked the last time he ran and was headed for a repeat before taking a pass on this year’s campaign. The city’s Republican base, traditionally the core for business-oriented candidacies, has evaporated, forming barely 15% of the city’s electorate today.
Miller is a Democrat, not a Republican, and could appeal beyond that sliver of city voters. His success in business — he founded an education technology company with more than 3,000 employees — and his creation of nonprofits to address disaster response and homelessness supply him with genuine credentials for the office he seeks.
But he remains barely at the edge of the city’s political radar — polling at under 10% — even as the race crashes into the final weeks of what will probably be the first of two rounds. On June 2, voters will elect the mayor of California’s largest city; if no candidate gets more than 50%, as seems likely, the two top finishers will go on to a runoff in November.
In a recent interview, Miller sized up his prospects optimistically. If he makes the runoff, he predicted that the city’s discontented voters — by some polls, more than half — will come to him, making him the winner.
Golden State staff
He suggested a similar path for one of his opponents, Councilwoman Nithya Raman, saying she, too, could consolidate the anti-incumbent vote if she ends up in a runoff with Mayor Karen Bass. But Raman would likely do so by coalescing a different set of voters, since she draws on support from the city’s left, mainly its growing number of Democratic Socialists.
Another opponent is Spencer Pratt, a temperamentally stunted contender whose scandal-infused memoir should disqualify him from this office. He would lose in a head-to-head battle with Bass, Miller said.
Miller is right about Pratt, who offers Bass her easiest route to re-election. But Miller underestimates the mayor’s strength against her other rivals. She’s vulnerable, no question, but she leads the field, brandishes a passel of endorsements from former Vice President Kamala Harris, to Sen. Adam Schiff, to Magic Johnson, and brings a strong citywide base to the campaign.
Still, Miller has a plan and a political lane.
“People want results,” Miller said, noting that his campaign has polled voters, asking if they would prefer a “strong progressive” or a “proven leader,” and found that in this cycle leadership trumps ideology.
“I come from the outside,” Miller said, “with extensive experience, with a lot of work in these exact issue areas.”
Mariel Garza
As he surveyed those “issue areas,” Miller was both insightful and nimble. Sitting among a group of unhoused people lined up for a meal and showers on a warm morning in Hollywood, he criticized the Bass Administration for solutions to that problem that he said were cumbersome and expensive.
The Bass Administration boasts of having reduced street homelessness by 17% over the past four years. Miller says he can do much, much better. “I think we should have a 60% reduction in street homelessness during my first term,” he said, “and I think we should see an 80% reduction in visible encampments.”
To do that, Miller proposes a kind of community wrap-around approach, with prevention, shelter, social services and housing all contributing to a reduction in those without housing. Overarching that work would be an infusion of technology to better track progress, to connect those in need of services with providers and to slot those who need housing into available spots.
In addition, he said, the city should track the problem more rigorously, abandoning the annual count that for decades has formed the basis for policy discussions around the issue and replacing it with real-time tracking, such as the platform developed by his organization, Better Angels.
Jim Newton
Pivoting to public safety, he acknowledged that violent crime in the city is down in recent years, but noted that few people are victims of violence. What plagues neighborhoods is property crime, burglaries, robberies, car break-ins. Those may not carry the same personal gravity as murder or assault, but they leave people in fear.
Miller didn’t mention James Q. Wilson’s “Broken Windows” theory, but he was speaking Wilson’s language, and it is one that was a major contributor to urban renewal a generation ago. Wilson postulated that property crimes and decay generated an atmosphere of neglect and that addressing those issues would bring down more serious offenses as well. To a remarkable degree, he was correct.
So, Miller is fluent in technology, dedicated to the city and conveys a seriousness of purpose, combined with a little tech bro swagger. The question for Miller, though, is whether he’s coming to the party too late to make the impact that he seeks.
If he had launched a year ago, he could easily be in contention now. But a late start gave Pratt — who has name recognition that comes from his turn as a bad boy on a reality TV program — the room to fire up the anti-Bass vote, and he now clogs up Miller’s lane.
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That creates a piece of political paradox: Pratt is outpolling Miller, with most surveys showing Pratt at around 15% to 18% and Miller at more like 3% to 6%. But Pratt has almost no chance of defeating Bass. A loudmouth Republican who squandered a fortune on crystals is not what Los Angeles is begging for in a mayor.
Miller, meanwhile, would stand a far better chance to win but is jammed up behind Pratt in the June voting.
That has stymied Miller, whose polling numbers were too low to earn him a seat in a recent mayoral debate and whose efforts may prove too little, too late to make it to the runoff in a crowded field.
That’s too bad, because he has something to offer this campaign: real ideas that belong at the center of the city’s discourse, win or lose.
Golden State staff
