Could L.A.'s mayor win re-election by highlighting a Republican?

Reminder: We’re on semi spring break this week. Good thing there’s been no news to comment on! Just an attack on mail-in ballots by President Trump, an assault on birthright citizenship at the Supreme Court (which, it seems, the justices aren’t buying), and an ascension to the moon by a team of four astronauts.

The Los Angeles mayoral campaign is only gaining speed. L.A. Mayor Karen Bass is facing two strong challengers on her left, which raises the question of whether her campaign might pull a Schiff. That is, attacking conservative candidate Spencer Pratt to elevate him enough so that he ekes into the general election and she doesn’t have to face one of the progressives instead.

Journalist Jim Newton writes in a piece originally published by CalMatters that Democrat Adam Schiff used that strategy to boost Republican Steve Garvey when he was running for U.S. Senate against then-Rep. Katie Porter. It worked.

“Now, some Bass supporters are testing out the same idea,” he says. “In a social media post Sunday, Bass’ campaign highlighted her support from Latino leaders while simultaneously drawing attention to a Pratt post attacking her in Spanish.”

>MORE

No billionaires tell us what to do, but it still costs money to do this work. So, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription and support independent, home-grown journalism.

Upgrade to paid

From Cesar Chavez Day to Farmworkers Day

And, if you haven’t read enough about Cesar Chavez, check out this reprint of the column I wrote for the Boston Globe earlier this week explaining to non-Californians why the allegations of sexual abuse were a VERY BIG DEAL in the Golden State.

And if you still have an appetite for the topic, here’s a link to an op-ed in the New York Times from Los Angeles author Miriam Pawel, who wrote a biography of Chavez, explaining how the labor leader's secrets remained buried for so long.

>MORE

Noted With Comment

Out of tune: Spencer Pratt, the reality TV show celebrity running for L.A. mayor, hit a sour note with his campaign video courting Latino voters, says Los Angeles Times columnist Gustavo Arellano. In a city where Latinos are overwhelmingly of Mexican descent, his campaign uses “brassy salsa rhythms that are more Miami and Cuban than L.A,” rather than the more culturally appropriate “corridos tumbados, cumbias, Latin rock and pop.”

Bike lane envy: Alissa Walker, who writes about all things related to the upcoming 2028 Olympic games in her newsletter Torched, is in Paris this week, where she was stunned to find the city transformed into a bike-commuting paradise: “Since I've biked all around Paris for a total of three full days — which clearly makes me an expert — I can say this with confidence: Paris has made space for cyclists in a way that I simply have not seen in any other city.”

Water woes: The freakishly hot March melted California’s snowpack, and while it’s not a catastrophic moment for the state (we won’t run out of water this year, at least) it should be a wake up call, writes Peter Gleick, co-founder and a senior fellow at the Pacific Institute in Oakland, in the San Francisco Chronicle. “It is long past time to build a more resilient water system for the future that, as this year’s paltry snowpack attests, is fast becoming our present.”

The upside of pricey gas: UC Santa Barbara economics professor Kyle Meng argues in Capitol Weekly that California should not sweat high energy prices because they lead to positive climate change policies that help consumers in the long term, such as conservation and electric vehicle adoption. “Rather than turning to short-sighted measures to suspend California’s climate policies in response to Trump’s war, California should double down on these policies, recognizing that it is precisely these policies that break the state’s global oil dependence.”

Substack shoutouts

Polling limitations: Political strategist Matt Klink explains why you should take the new Loyola Marymount University poll showing a progressive surge in Los Angeles mayor’s race with a big grain of salt.

‘Blood and soil’ policy: “The effort to end birthright citizenship is not a conservative policy position in the traditional sense,” writes Republican strategist Mike Madrid on his Substack. “It is nativist. It is rooted in the belief, held by a small but organized ideological faction, that American identity is racial and ethnic — that citizenship is a matter of blood and heritage, not law or birth or oath.” An idea, he notes, that the “14th Amendment was written specifically to demolish.”