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      Polly Klaas’s murder fueled the 90s crime panic. Her sisters fear ‘we’re repeating history’

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      Polly Klaas’s murder fueled the 90s crime panic. Her sisters fear ‘we’re repeating history’ Jess and Annie Nichol want to undo the harsh criminal laws passed after their sister was abducted: ‘We don’t want our pain to be used to punish anyone else’Annie Nichol was seven years old on 19 March 1994 when she was brought to the White House to talk to Bill Clinton.With a stuffed dolphin by her side, the girl spoke to the president about her 12-year-old sister, Polly Klaas, who had been abducted five months earlier from the family’s home in Petaluma, California, while Annie was sleeping nearby.Annie and Clinton watched footage showing how she’d since booby-trapped her room with bells and ropes to stop intruders.“Do you think I’m going to live to grow up?” television cameras captured her asking the president.“You’re a brave girl,” Clinton responded, adding that he was working to make sure people with “serious problems” would remain in prison.Today, Annie is tormented by the memory. Polly’s kidnapping and subsequent murder fueled a host of “tough on crime” laws and a powerful victims’ rights movement, which pushed America to have the highest reported incarceration rate in the world.The meeting at the White House, Annie said, was a reminder of how her family’s story was exploited to expand mass incarceration and racial inequality in America.What’s Prison For? Concise diagnosis of a huge American problemRead more“I had just lost Polly and someone had given me that question to ask, and it was a message that wasn’t mine. I was a scared kid who had been through something I couldn’t even begin to process. Being put in the position of going to the White House to be on this television program and seeing Clinton start crying, the shame of that experience still overwhelms me. I was the perfect person to be used like that. What’s more compelling than seeing this scared little girl?”Annie and her older sister Jess are now on a mission to reclaim their family’s legacy and undo the harsh legislation the tragedy that befell them sparked. They say they want a different criminal justice system, one that focuses on preventing violence; accountability, treatment and rehabilitation for people who cause harm; and care and services for survivors.Their message is urgent, the sisters say, as growing concerns over crime in cities across the US since the pandemic have led to familiar calls for more punitive responses from pundits and some politicians facing midterm elections.“There’s the trauma of losing Polly and then there’s the trauma of how her death was used to punish other people,” Jess said. “We don’t want our pain to be used to punish anyone else … We’re on the precipice of repeating a really terrible history. And we don’t want people to make the same mistake.”On the evening of 1 October 1993, Polly was playing a board game at home with two friends when a stranger broke in and snatched her, leaving the two other girls behind.Jess and Annie, aged 12 and six at the time, recall fragments of the aftermath: the reporters camped outside their door, the “Polly, we love you” T-shirts worn by everyone in town, their visits with Winona Ryder, who grew up in Petaluma.Two months after the abduction, the kidnapper led authorities to Polly’s body.Polly’s story led to panic. American media covered every twist in the investigation of the “slumber party that became a nightmare”. Commentators argued the “age of innocence had been lost” and that “the 12-year-old’s awful fate drove home the disturbing message that youngsters are not safe even in their own bedrooms”.By 1994, voters in California had approved the Three Strikes and You’re Out law, which, inspired by the extensive criminal record of Polly’s killer, established life sentences for all felonies if the defendant had two prior convictions for serious or violent offenses.Versions of the law, which also doubled the sentence length for second strikes, were adopted in 23 other states. In September 1994, Congress passed the notorious federal crime bill, sponsored by then senator Joe Biden, which included a three strikes sentencing provision.In California, Three Strikes contributed to an explosion in the state’s prison population. More than 7,500 people were sentenced to life in prison within the first decade after it passed, nearly half of them for non-serious and non-violent offenses.‘America could be truly free’: John Legend on his fight to overhaul the criminal justice systemRead moreAnnie remembers adults trying to comfort her by talking about locking people up, including an officer who held her hand to the wall of the building where the man who killed Polly was incarcerated: “He said, ‘Look how thick these walls are. Don’t you feel safe?’”Marc Klaas, Polly’s father (but not Jess and Annie’s), had advocated for three strikes laws. But as the sisters grew older, they became increasingly uncomfortable with the California legislation and their connection to it.“Since I was 13, I knew it was wrong, and it was stressful to see newspapers on the table for many years, and I kind of stopped looking,” recalled Jess, now 41, on a recent morning in Annie’s backyard. With the sensationalized media and celebrity support, she added, “It didn’t feel right getting attention for Polly’s death and being known and validated for that, and I was repulsed by my own internal identity with it.”In 2019, Jess watched 13th, Ava DuVernay’s documentary on the history of racial inequality in the US, which featured Polly’s story: “When I saw the sequence from slavery to our current mass incarceration crisis, with Polly’s face right there as one of the major reasons incarceration took off in the 90s, I was stunned.”“A lot of people see this history as something that is separate from themselves, but in our case we have a really deep connection to this crisis,” Annie, now 35, added. “It’s such an injustice that the sum of Polly’s life was turned into this harm for others. The story that was told about Polly was used to pass these incredibly terrible laws, and it always felt like a distortion of the truth.”Jess cold called the ACLU of California in 2019, telling a receptionist she and Annie wanted to talk about the law passed in their family’s name and see if there was anything they could do to help repeal it.The sisters felt some initial apprehension about speaking publicly. They had long been intensely private in part out of a desire not to feed the true crime genre obsession with Polly. They were also aware of their privilege as white survivors whose story had received intense attention and were wary of taking up space while the vast majority of victims of violence are people of color whose cases never make headlines.They also weren’t sure their voices would matter, a doubt Annie partly attributes to the way the criminal legal system operates: “There is this kind of paternalistic dynamic in the justice system, which co-opts victims’ stories and claims to represent them without actually listening to them or asking them what they want. It’s, ‘We’re going to handle this for you and solve this problem. And now we fixed it’. It leaves victims feeling disempowered. And for a while, we felt powerless.”The ACLU connected the sisters to policy experts at Stanford university, and they began to learn more about Three Strikes: that it was originally proposed as the “street sweeper” law, but was deemed too extreme until Polly’s death; that it had been disproportionately applied to defendants with disabilities and mental illness; that some people have received two strikes for the same incident; that defendants got life sentences for stealing pizza and baby shoes; and that research had repeatedly suggested there was no evidence that Three Strikes reduced crime or deterred violence. Today, 45% of people serving life sentences with three strikes in California are Black, while Black residents make up only 6.5% of the broader population.In 2020, after the uprisings sparked by George Floyd’s murder, the sisters started meeting with other crime survivors who were disenchanted with America’s criminal justice system.One of them was Tinisch Hollins, who lost two of her brothers to violence and serves as executive director of Californians for Safety and Justice, a survivors’ advocacy group. Hollins grew up in San Francisco and remembered when her mother made her watch news reports about Polly so she would be aware of the potential for abductions.“The terror that my mother had when she called me to watch the news of Polly Klaas was the same kind of terror that friends and family had when they talked about loved ones who had been arrested and were potentially going away to prison forever. There was this looming possibility that you could become a victim of the system in the same way you could become a victim of crime.”The sisters came to view Three Strikes as a symptom of systemic problems and started publishing op-eds advocating for an alternative approach to justice.They also launched A New Legacy, a podcast named after their hopes to chart a different legacy for Polly; they interview people fighting to undo mass incarceration, including people previously imprisoned under Three Strikes.“There’s an underlying assumption that the thing that victims want is the harshest sentencing for the people who caused harm. And that’s really the only option,” Jess said. “It’s this revengeful ‘eye for an eye’ culture. I’ve come to realize we don’t really have a ‘department of corrections and rehabilitation’. It’s a ‘department of punishment and revenge’.”Jess and Annie’s advocacy is coming at a pivotal moment. While crime levels remain below the historic highs of the early 1990s, the pandemic has seen devastating spikes in gun violence across the US, and polls have shown that Americans report feeling less safe.Why America overlooks those most hurt by gun violence: ‘Black people are seen as expendable’Read moreSome police officials, pundits and media crime reporting have placed the blame on reform efforts, including “progressive prosecutors” who have sought to reduce incarceration, the “defund the police” movement and efforts to dismantle cash bail so people aren’t jailed because they can’t pay a fee.There’s no evidence any of these reforms have caused crime or violence to increase – and there is research suggesting the contrary – but in the lead up to the midterms, Republicans and some Democrats have argued for an increased police presence, expanded punishments and a rollback of reforms.“Hearing the kind of fear-based rhetoric that is taking over headlines and that politicians are spouting is so familiar with what we grew up with,” Annie said. “It would be so easy to fall back on all these failed solutions just because there were rising crime rates during a pandemic when people didn’t have safe places to go, school programs were shut down, and people lost their jobs and homes. These pro-incarceration agendas tend to exploit people’s fears and make people imagine really terrible things. But arguably the worst thing that could ever happen to a family happened to us. And if we can imagine a better future then I think that’s something everyone can imagine.”They’re not alone among survivors. The children of a murdered pastor in Tennessee recently opposed prosecutors’ decision to charge the 15-year-old suspects as adults, saying it’s not what her mother, an activist, would have wanted; the woman who helped create the sex offender registry after her son was abducted has since argued it has gone too far and is ineffective; and some murder victims’ relatives have argued against the death penalty and in favor of the defendants’ release after years behind bars.Jess and Annie have been talking to survivors about what they actually need and want; their family had access to financial support, but they’ve met many survivors of color who were denied victim compensation from the state, including victims of police killings, who aren’t considered eligible. Many survivors fall into financial crises amid grief and the aftermath of violence and need time off or relocation help.Survivors also want prevention. The sisters said they would like to see the US reallocate a significant portion of the estimated $180bn that the country spends on police and prisons each year toward community resources, including violence intervention, mental health care, restorative justice and services for survivors, such as faith-based programs or trauma therapy: “Unaddressed trauma is one of the major root causes of crime and violence in this society, and it absolutely supports public safety to provide these services to survivors,” Annie said.Annie said she has also heard stories of survivors finding peace in forgiving the people who hurt them. But she is not one of them: “It’s easier for me to feel hatred than compassion for the person who killed Polly. At the same time, I know that before there was a man who did unfathomable harm to our family, there was a boy who was hurt and abused and neglected and abandoned by the social structures that were supposed to help him. And I would rather have a system that would help and protect that child from becoming someone capable of murdering a little girl than one that only seeks to punish him after taking our sister’s life.”Speaking out has provided some catharsis for the sisters after years of struggling to process their trauma.“I was in hiding for so long,” Jess said. “And it has been incredibly healing to come into this work and share our story and advocate for something that matters rather than hiding from shame of the aftermath of Polly’s kidnapping. For us there’s a full-circle healing coming out. It’s wonderful to be in service.”They also hope people think more critically about the impact of true crime and media sensationalism: “There is healing in reclaiming agency over our story, because for the longest time it felt like it wasn’t ours,” Annie said.But as Polly’s name continues to be invoked, in podcasts, videos or by politicians and advocates, there’s one part of their story the sisters are keeping to themselves: their memories of Polly. It’s all they have left of her.TopicsCaliforniaUS crimeUS politicsUS prisonsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      LA city council members defy calls to resign after racist recording, setting up power struggle

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      LA city council members defy calls to resign after racist recording, setting up power struggleMagic Johnson joins in with citywide denunciations of De León and Cedillo, but council is powerless to expel them The Los Angeles city council appears to be headed for a long and bruising power struggle, as two councilmen resist widespread calls for their resignation amid a racism scandal and state investigation.‘We ain’t done dancing’: Los Angeles festival brings Black community togetherRead moreA week since the president of the city council, Nury Martinez, resigned over crude and racist remarks she made during an October 2021 meeting with other Latino leaders, two other councilmembers present at the meeting have refused to step down, despite Democratic leadership – up to Joe Biden – calling on them to do so.On Wednesday, Magic Johnson, the superstar athlete, philanthropist and one of the city’s most respected celebrities, added his voice to the calls for their resignation, tweeting: “Let the city heal and move forward! The people of Los Angeles voted you in the position, and now they are calling for you to resign.”Activists from Black Lives Matter Los Angeles pledged to hold a 24/7 protest outside one of the councilmember’s houses until he agrees to resign.We have a long history of Black & Brown #Solidarity…because smashing white-supremacy benefits us all. @kdeleon betrays that history and must #ResignNow. #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/cQJQe3kjFv— #BlackLivesMatter-LA (@BLMLA) October 16, 2022
      Rise and shine. @blmla embarks on first full day of 24/7 encampment in front of LA Councilmember Kevin de Leon’s Eagle Rock home. LAPD is keeping a close watch. pic.twitter.com/QySJQBJnXo— Proud Member of The Blacks (@Jasmyne) October 16, 2022
      But that councilmember, Kevin de León, a brash, longtime power player in California state politics, disclosed in media interviews on Wednesday that he would not step down but wanted to take a leave from council meetings to attempt to restore his reputation. The city council president, Paul Krekorian, called that unacceptable.The standoff is unfolding even as there seem to be few hard rules about personal conduct and consequences for public officials. The council already has stripped De León of much of his power in an effort to pressure him to resign, but it has no authority to expel members.De León also could face a recall election if he refuses to resign, a measure some progressives in Los Angeles have been advocating.The remaining councilmember who participated in the meeting, Gil Cedillo, is already scheduled to leave office in December, after being defeated by a young progressive challenger, Eunisses Hernandez, in a primary election earlier this year.The uproar began with the release nearly two weeks ago of a previously unknown recording of a 2021 private meeting involving De León, two other councilmembers and a powerful labor leader, all Latino Democrats, in which they schemed to protect their political clout in the redrawing of council districts during an hourlong conversation laced with bigoted comments, with particularly demeaning remarks about Black, Indigenous and gay politicians and local residents.The conversation focused on the relative lack of Latino political representation in a city where nearly half of the residents are Latino, but documented Los Angeles’ most powerful lawmakers talking in derogatory terms about the “Blacks” and about Indigenous people from Mexico, as well as comparing the Black son of one of their colleagues to a monkey.The blunt backroom talk has prompted conversations about racism and colorism among Latinos in the United States, while also highlighting the enduring American scandal of political gerrymandering, in which voting districts are drawn and redrawn to protect the political power of individual incumbents.Disclosure of the recording has been followed by days of public outrage and protests, including a march of hundreds of Oaxacan Angelenos demanding the resignation of the Latino leaders who disparaged Indigenous people.A sign of more trouble came from two Black developers working on a downtown project who said in a letter to the city council that they could no longer work with De León, whose district includes the project that would be anchored to two hotels.The developers, R Donahue Peebles and Victor MacFarlane, called for his resignation and wrote that De León had been dismissive of their proposal, meeting with them just once over a two-year period.Democratic consultant Steve Maviglio said it is possible for De León to survive, but he must make sincere apologies and win back his constituents’ trust. That would start with small private meetings with business leaders, or coffee with community groups; any larger event would attract protests.He pointed to former Virginia governor Ralph Northam, who survived calls for his resignation after a picture surfaced from his 1984 medical school yearbook showing a man in blackface standing next to someone in a Ku Klux Klan hood and robe. The Democrat initially acknowledged he was in the photo and apologized, then reversed course, saying he was not in it.One person unlikely to lend a sympathetic ear to De León will be the state’s most powerful Democrat, Gavin Newsom. The governor and the councilman, who was once a Democratic leader in the state senate, have had strained relations for years that worsened when De León embarked on a failed attempt to oust Senator Dianne Feinstein in 2018.TopicsLos AngelesRaceCaliforniaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      in Elections

      The Mess in Los Angeles Points to Trouble for Democrats

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      Democrats in cities across America are having trouble holding their coalitions together.In Los Angeles, the battle is over power in the form of representation on the City Council; in San Francisco and New York, it’s over affordable housing and access to public schools; across the nation, it’s over tough versus tolerant criminal prosecution and lenient versus punitive approaches to homelessness.These tensions are, in turn, aggravated by white gentrification and have one thing in common: limited or declining resources, with shuttered businesses no longer paying taxes evident on downtown streets. An absence of growth prevents elected officials from expanding benefits for some without paring them for others.Political tensions between African American, Hispanic American, Asian American and white communities in Los Angeles are now on full display as a result of the publication of a secretly taped conversation that exposed the crude, racist scheming of three Hispanic City Council officials and a Hispanic labor leader — who were, in the main, angling to enhance their power at the expense of Black competitors.These zero-sum conflicts epitomize the problem for liberals struggling to sustain a viable political alliance encompassing core minority constituencies.“In general, conflict among groups is more likely to emerge when resources are scarce,” Vasiliki Fouka, a political scientist at Stanford, and Marco Tabellini, a professor at Harvard Business School, said by email, in response to my inquiry about Democratic intraparty tensions. “This is especially true when groups perceive each other as different and have different priorities and preferences.”Fouka and Tabellini, authors of the 2021 paper “Changing In-Group Boundaries: The Effect of Immigration on Race Relations in the United States” noted in their email that “when the size of the pie is growing, everyone enjoys larger benefits and groups are less likely to view each other as competitors.”“Education,” they added,is a case where we have recently seen such zero-sum dynamics. One example is the controversy over the admissions system of Lowell High School in San Francisco — from selective criteria based on grades, which led to higher representation of Asian and white students, to a lottery system that increased admissions of Black and Latino students. That case ended with the recall of school board members, due to pressure exerted largely by Chinese American voters. The San Francisco case demonstrates that political power is key for settling disputes and allocating resources across other battlegrounds like education and housing.The City Council redistricting process in Los Angeles epitomizes “I win-you-lose” politics. Fifteen districts of equal population must be drawn every 10 years within the confines of a city with rapidly changing demographics. The gains of one group almost inevitably come at the expense of another.Nearly 60 years ago — in 1963 — Los Angeles became “almost a parable of rainbow politics,” Harold Meyerson, editor at large of The American Prospect, wrote last week in “L.A. Backstory: The History Behind the City Council’s Racist Tirades.”That year, Meyerson explains, three Black Democrats, including Tom Bradley, a former police lieutenant, won seats on the City Council. In 1973, Bradley was elected mayor, winning the first of five elections with a multiracial, multiethnic coalition that kept him in office for a record 20 years.In order to maintain this bloc, “a delicate dance ensued,” Meyerson continues:Since the 1960s, the three of the city’s 15 council districts located in and around heavily Black South Central had been informally designated as Black seats, and Latino political leaders agreed not to contest them, even as the Black share of the city’s population shrank from 15 percent in the 1970 census to 8 percent in the 2020 census, and even as the city’s share of Latinos rose to 48 percent in 2020.I asked Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles, about the history of racial and ethnic politics in Los Angeles as well as the current situation. He wrote back by email: “Between 1900 and 1949, there were no City Council members who were African American, Latino, Jewish or Asian American.” In 1949, Ed Roybal became the first Hispanic member of the council and held his seat until 1962 when he successfully ran for Congress, Sonenshein noted. But “then there was a long hiatus with no Latino members until 1985, all during the heyday of the Bradley Black-Jewish coalition.”Now, according to Sonenshein, “there are three African American and four Latino ‘seats’ on the council,” with the strong possibility of a fifth Hispanic seat depending on the outcome of a Nov. 8 runoff. Black Democrats have held three council seats every cycle since 1963 despite the sharp decline in the African American share of the city’s electorate, the result, Sonenshein wrote, of “a long-term Black-Latino détente and at times strong alliance.”I asked Sonenshein about the all-or-nothing element of redistricting in Los Angeles, and he replied that the unusually strong powers held by the City Council make the competition for seats particularly intense:The conflict is further enhanced by the unique nature of the L.A. council. It is certainly the most powerful council in any city with a mayor-council system. The relatively small size of the council and the visibility of the council as the most public-facing institution in the city government make each seat immensely valuable. L.A.’s growing stature as a key political force in California and even national Democratic politics causes state legislators to consider abandoning their seats when a council position opens up. (Can you imagine that happening in N.Y.C. or Chicago?)Conversely, Sonenshein argued, there are two factors mitigating conflict: “strong incentives in communities to build and maintain progressive cross-racial and cross-ethnic coalitions on the Tom Bradley model and crosscutting elite political alliances that link together members in different communities.”Sonenshein described the current situation in Los Angeles as themirror image of the 1990s. As the Latino population grew in the 1980s and 1990s in what was then known as South Central Los Angeles, there was considerable intergroup tension at the street level. Jobs, housing, services, all played a role. It took a while for those tensions to bubble up to the political level.David Sears, an emeritus professor of psychology and political science at U.C.L.A., emailed his response to my query about racial and ethnic politics in Los Angeles:The zero-sum character of redistricting surely exacerbates intergroup conflict. In L.A., such conflicts are barely below the surface in general. Especially Black-brown. Latinos have moved into historically Black neighborhoods in large numbers in L.A. and now generally outnumber Blacks. City Council representation has not adjusted to reflect that change. Black-brown political coalitions do form but they can be evanescent, with the tensions generally sub rosa rather than displayed out in public.In peaceful times, Sears wrote, “the theory of ‘common in-group identity’ argues that coalitions can form around a common superordinate identity. One example would be the Democratic Party in the California legislature,” where there are “lots of pressures to bind the coalition together — e.g., maintaining a supermajority.”Sears cautioned, however, that “subordinate group identities can sometimes fracture that common identity when subordinate group identities are made salient, as in redistricting (or ticket composition) decisions. The current controversy is a textbook example of these dynamics.”Sears pointed out possible future developments. On one hand, he again mentioned “lots of pressures to bind the coalition together.” At the same time, however, he noted:Centrifugal pressures include upward mobility among Latinos, who are rapidly moving into being small-business entrepreneurs. The younger generation is getting a lot better educated: e.g., the numbers of Latinos admitted to U.C.L.A. are rising rapidly. And intermarriage with whites is very common in post-immigrant generations.“Expect more ethnic conflicts,” Sears concluded,despite the incentives for coalition building. The fragmentation of neighborhoods leads to fragmentation in the schools. Many lighter-skinned Latinos have an easier road of it than African Americans in terms of upward mobility. I believe that broken families are still much more common in the Black community, which has its costs.Redistricting is a redistribution of political power, and political power determines the allocation of crucial resources. Cecilia Menjívar, a professor of sociology at U.C.L.A., emailed me her analysis of the role of scarcity in the struggle for power:Ethnic conflict does not happen in a vacuum of other social forces, especially material resources such as income and especially inequality — absolutely and relative — in personal income but also resources such as housing and school funding, etc., which varies quite a bit by place, neighborhood, etc. This is important because it’s not just income and material resources but increased inequality — the uneven distribution of resources that shapes perceptions about a sense of scarcity that groups (and individuals) perceive.Income and access to resources and benefits are all key, Menjívar continued, “but inequality, the uneven distribution and access to resources and society’s benefits, is absolutely vital to consider here because it is perceptions of unequal access, unequal distribution of benefits, etc., that I see more than income distribution alone.”Along similar lines, Betina Wilkinson, a political scientist at Wake Forest University, emailed me to say that her survey and focus group data “reveal that for some Blacks and Latinxs, social, economic and political opportunities are zero-sum since they feel that their sociopolitical power and struggles are comparable to those of the other minoritized group, that there are limited resources and opportunities and thus that the other group poses a threat to them.”Limited economic opportunities granted to Black and Hispanic Americans, Wilkinson argued,along with many employers’ deep-seated racism against Blacks and favorability toward Latinxs prompts some Blacks to regard Latinxs as economic threats. What matters is perceptions. Perceptions of one’s sociopolitical standing and perception of the opportunities and resources that one and one’s group has to move up the socioeconomic ladder.Karen Kaufmann, a lecturer at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at U.C.L.A., argued in a 2007 paper, “Immigration and the Future of Black Power in U.S. Cities,” that biracial and multiethnic coalitions in Los Angeles and other cities have produced only modest gains for minorities in patronage and set-aside contracts, posing little threat to the white establishment:Scholars assume that Blacks and Latinos would obviously be individually and collectively better off if they governed in unity. This perspective assumes that minority mayors and legislators are particularly responsive to poor urban communities, especially in contrast to white-led administrations. This assumption, regardless of how reasonable it appears, is not a matter of fact. The preponderance of evidence to date suggests that minority representation does quite little to advance minority interests above and beyond policies and programs that already exist under White regimes.Since “minority-specific rewards in the realm of local government are largely inelastic,” Kaufmann argued, “Blacks and Latinos have powerful incentives to compete with one another for control of these resources.”To the extent “that the pool of minority benefits such as government jobs, appointments, contracts and redistributive monies will not be appreciably larger under a minority-led regime than it is under a White-led government,” Kaufman continued, “minority groups will be better off as the most powerful minority in a coalition with Anglos than as the second most powerful in a minority-led administration.”For Black and Hispanic Americans, according to Kaufmann, “the impetus for political inclusion is not so much about opening up new sources of minority opportunity as it is about controlling those already established. From this perspective, the absence of minority coalition building at both the elite and the mass level generally constitutes rational, group-interested behavior.”A series of Public Opinion surveys of Los Angeles residents conducted by Loyola Marymount University in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2022 suggested a recent deterioration in race relations in the city.The Loyola study found a sharp drop in optimism concerning race relations in 2022. For example, from 2017 to 2022, the percentage of Los Angeles residents saying race relations had improved fell from 40.6 to 19.3 percent. The percentage saying relations had worsened grew from 18.0 to 38.5 percent.Similarly, the percentage of resident saying riots were likely to happen in the near future grew from 40.8 in 2015 to 64.7 percent in 2022. From 2019 to 2022, the percentage of residents saying racial and ethnic groups were getting along well fell from 72.4 to 61.2 percent.Los Angeles and cities everywhere can look forward to constrained budgets restricting spending on everything from schools to housing to street repairs to policing. These limits drive relentless competition, foment resentment and ravage coalitions.in “Nury Martinez’s Racism Feeds Into Black Angelenos’ Worst Fear. It’s Us Versus Them,” Erika D. Smith, a Los Angeles Times columnist, describes the brutal realpolitik in the covertly recorded conversation I mentioned earlier, which included Nury Martinez, then the City Council president:It wasn’t just a forum for swapping the kind of racist remarks and “jokes” you might hear at a Trump rally. It was ostensibly convened to talk about the redistricting of City Council seats that was happening at the time. But it very quickly veered into strategies for manipulating district maps to deprive Black people of political power and provide it to Latinos instead.The controversy in Los Angeles raises a key question: Is the City Council debacle an exception or is it a warning sign that the bitter, if often submerged, battles involving intraparty competition — part of the package of tensions continually inflamed by Donald Trump — will further endanger Democratic prospects this year and in 2024?The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      in Elections

      Bernie Sanders, Fearing Weak Democratic Turnout, Plans Midterms Blitz

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      Senator Bernie Sanders is planning an eight-state blitz with at least 19 events over the final two weekends before the midterm elections, looking to rally young voters and progressives as Democrats confront daunting national headwinds.Mr. Sanders, the Vermont senator who in many ways is the face of the American left, is beginning his push in Oregon on Oct. 27.“It is about energizing our base and increasing voter turnout up and down the ballot,” Mr. Sanders said in an interview. “I am a little bit concerned that the energy level for young people, working-class people,” is not as high as it should be, he said. “And I want to see what I can do about that.”The first swing will include stops in Oregon, California, Nevada (with events in both Reno and Las Vegas), Texas (including one in McAllen), and Orlando, Fla. The second weekend will focus on Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.And while Mr. Sanders will appear in battleground states where some of the most hotly contested Senate and governor’s races are playing out — Nevada, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania — it is unclear which if any of the statewide Democratic candidates that Mr. Sanders is rallying voters to support will actually appear alongside him.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With elections next month, a Times/Siena poll shows that independents, especially women, are swinging toward the G.O.P. despite Democrats’ focus on abortion rights as voters worry about the economy.Georgia Governor’s Race: A debate between Gov. Brian Kemp and Stacey Abrams produced a substantive hour of policy discussion. Here are five takeaways.Aggressive Tactics: Right-wing leaders are calling on election activists to monitor voting in the midterm elections in search of evidence to confirm unfounded theories of election fraud.Jill Biden: The first lady, who has become a lifeline for Democratic candidates trying to draw attention and money in the midterms, is the most popular surrogate in the Biden administration.Mr. Sanders maintains an impassioned core following and is one of the biggest draws on the stump for Democrats nationwide. But Republicans have used Mr. Sanders as a boogeyman in television ads in many races across the country and even some moderate Democrats have concerns that his campaigning in swing states could backfire.Mr. Sanders brushed off a question about whether his presence on the trail might be used to attack Democratic candidates.“They’ve already done it,” Mr. Sanders said. “They’re going to have to respond to why they don’t want to raise the minimum wage, why they want to give tax breaks to billionaires, why they want to cut Social Security. Those are the questions that I think these guys do not want to answer. And those are the questions I’m going to be raising.”Throughout the tour, he plans to hold events with a mix of House candidates, a mayoral contender and liberal organizations in an effort to turn out core Democratic constituencies.He plans to appear with the congressional candidates Val Hoyle of Oregon, Greg Casar and Michelle Vallejo of Texas, Maxwell Alejandro Frost of Florida and Summer Lee of Pennsylvania. He is also expected to appear with Representative Karen Bass of California, who is running for mayor of Los Angeles, according to a Sanders aide..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.As part of the tour, Mr. Sanders will headline rallies organized by the progressive groups NextGen and MoveOn. He is an invited speaker at the events and it’s not clear if Democrats who are running this year will also appear.Mr. Sanders said he planned to focus on an economic message in pitching Democrats in 2022. Asked to assess how his party was doing in selling itself to working-class voters, he replied, “I think they’re doing rather poorly.”“It is rather amazing to me that we are in a situation right now, which I hope to change, where according to poll after poll, the American people look more favorably upon the Republicans in terms of economic issues than they do Democrats,” he said. “That is absurd.”A top priority for Mr. Sanders this year has been electing Mandela Barnes, the Democratic Senate nominee in Wisconsin. Mr. Sanders has allowed the Barnes campaign to use his name to send out fund-raising emails, reaping at least $500,000, according to a Sanders adviser.It is not clear if Mr. Barnes will appear alongside Mr. Sanders, who is planning at least three events in the state the weekend before the election, in Eau Claire, LaCrosse and Madison, the state capital and heart of Wisconsin’s progressive movement. A spokeswoman for Mr. Barnes declined to comment on his plans.But when Politico reported this month that Wisconsin Democrats were planning possible events with Mr. Sanders, Matt Bennett, the co-founder of Third Way, a centrist group, wrote on Twitter: “I desperately want Barnes to win, so I ask again of his campaign: Why would you do this? Why????”Despite the political challenges facing Democrats this year, Mr. Sanders said he was buoyed by the next generation of liberal leaders poised to come to Capitol Hill.“When Congress convenes in January,” he said in the interview, “there are going to be more strong progressives in the Democratic caucus than in the modern history of this country.” More

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      Biden Tries to Reassure Voters on Health Care Costs Before Election

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      At an event in Southern California, the president says his administration is working to keep costs down and warns that Republicans will drive prices higher if they gain power.LOS ANGELES — President Biden on Friday tried to reassure Americans stung by high inflation that his administration was working to keep health care costs down, promising a community college audience in Southern California that he was committed to doing even more.But his remarks in Irvine, Calif. — the first of two West Coast speeches devoted to health care costs — come just days after government data revealed that overall inflation remains high as voters prepare to go to the polls for midterm elections early next month.Surveys show that Americans are deeply frustrated by the impact of sharply higher prices on their pocketbooks. They are expected to rebuke the president and his party in the elections, with most analysts predicting that Democrats will lose control of one or both chambers in Congress.Speaking to a friendly audience, Mr. Biden argued that Republicans would drive prices higher if they gained power. He noted their opposition to his efforts to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices, which he said would force prices down for medication for millions of seniors. And he said Democrats had pushed through price caps on critical drugs like insulin.“If Republicans in Congress have their way, it’s going to mean the power we just gave Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices and other costs over time goes away — gone,” Mr. Biden said, standing in front of signs that said “Lowering Costs for American Families.” “Two-thousand-dollar cap on prescription drugs goes away — gone. The $35 month cap on insulin for Medicare is gone.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With less than one month until Election Day, Republicans remain favored to take over the House, but momentum in the pitched battle for the Senate has seesawed back and forth.A Surprising Battleground: New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country. For Democrats, the uncertainty is particularly jarring.Arizona’s Governor’s Race: Democrats are openly expressing their alarm that Katie Hobbs, the party’s nominee for governor in the state, is fumbling a chance to defeat Kari Lake in one of the most closely watched races.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but members of his party have learned to tolerate his behavior.Mr. Biden’s three-state, four-day trip is also intended to boost the fortunes of Democratic candidates by using the presidential bully pulpit to highlight the party’s accomplishments. On Wednesday in Colorado, he stood next to Michael Bennet, one of the state’s two Democratic senators, to announce a new national monument — a key campaign promise for the embattled lawmaker.In Los Angeles on Thursday, Mr. Biden hailed the use of money from his infrastructure legislation to help complete a new subway line. During his remarks, he made certain to single out Representative Karen Bass, a Democrat who had fought for a provision that directs jobs on the project to local workers.“Local workers can be first in line for these jobs thanks to Karen,” Mr. Biden said. “I really mean it, Karen. Thank you very much.”At the community college in Irvine, Mr. Biden focused his attention on health care — and on Representative Katie Porter, a two-term Democrat running for re-election in a key swing district in Orange County.Ms. Porter, who is facing Scott Baugh, a Republican former state assemblyman, pushed for the drug pricing measure. At the event on Friday, Mr. Biden singled her out, crediting the success of Democratic legislation to her efforts to fight on behalf of her constituents..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.“That’s why Katie’s leadership and the work of the Democrats in Congress was so consequential,” he said. “Katie, I’m not just being nice because I’m in your district. It happens to be true. No, no. I mean, you’re a fighter. You’re decent. You’re honorable and everybody respects you.”Friday’s event at the Irvine Valley Community College was an official one, not a campaign rally. But Ms. Porter used her time at the podium to assail Republicans.“Every single Republican in Washington voted against patients, against families and against taxpayers,” she said. “In the Senate, Republican politicians voted to limit how much Americans can save on prescription drugs and to prevent all patients from getting insulin. And House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy has vowed that next term it’s his priority to return Big Pharma its unchecked power to charge patients whatever it wants.”She called that a “slap in the face” to the Californians she represents.Republicans sought to portray the president’s efforts to bolster candidates’ prospects as in vain. “Joe Biden is the last person Democrat candidates want to see on the campaign trail,” Michael McAdams, the communications director for the National Republican Campaign Committee, said after the event, noting reports that Democrats recently shifted money away from some California districts to candidates who need help more.“His policies are so unpopular House Democrats are being forced to abandon spending in California districts he won by double-digits,” Mr. McAdams said.Friday evening, Mr. Biden was scheduled to fly to Portland, Ore., a liberal community where the Democratic Party would not normally need the help of the sitting president. But Mr. Biden is hoping to help boost the fortunes of Tina Kotek, the Democratic candidate for governor.Although the state has not elected a Republican leader in decades, polls suggest that Ms. Kotek is in a tight, three-way race with Christine Drazan, the Republican candidate, and Betsy Johnson, a former Democrat who is being financed by Phil Knight, the co-founder of Nike. The White House is hoping that a visit by Mr. Biden will help underscore the party’s commitment to her.Republicans predicted that the president’s trip will not prevent their party from grabbing the top electoral prize in the state.“Joe Biden’s disastrous policies continue to hurt Oregon families, and there has been no bigger fan of his out-of-touch approach,” said Kaitlin Price, a spokeswoman for the Republican Governors Association, citing Ms. Kotek, Ms. Johnson and Kate Brown, the state’s current Democratic governor.“This last-ditch effort from national Democrats is proof of their hysteria as they watch Christine Drazan take hold of once deep-blue Oregon that is desperate for change,” Ms. Price said. More

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      A California measure would tax the rich to fund electric vehicles. Why is the governor against it?

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      A California measure would tax the rich to fund electric vehicles. Why is the governor against it?Proposition 30 would raise up to $5bn annually to help buy zero-emission cars, trucks and buses; Newsom calls it a ‘Trojan horse’ Two years ago, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, issued an executive order banning the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035.This year, he’s opposing a ballot measure to fund the transition to electric vehicles – siding with Republicans and against fellow Democrats, environmental groups, firefighters and labor unions.The governor’s counterintuitive position could be a political gambit. It may also doom the measure; support for it appears to have dropped starkly after Newsom cut an ad against it.California wants everyone to drive EVs. How will low-income people afford them?Read moreThe measure, Proposition 30, would hike taxes by 1.75% on those earning $2m or more annually, raising between $3bn and $5bn annually to subsidize households, businesses and schools; buy zero-emission cars, trucks and buses; fund infrastructure to charge electric vehicles; and bolster wildfire prevention efforts.Proponents of the measure, including the coalition of environmental and labor groups that developed it, say the tax would provide urgently needed funds to hasten the transition to zero-emission vehicles, and reduce the disproportionate burden of pollution on low-income, minority communities across the state. According to the American Lung Association, which has endorsed Prop 30, the US could save 110,000 lives and $1.2tn in public health costs by 2050 if it swaps gas-powered vehicles for zero-emissions cars.Newsom, and the proposition’s opponents, claim it is a corporate carve-out for Lyft, the ride-hailing company that has backed the measure and helped fund its campaign.“Prop 30 is being advertised as a climate initiative,” Newsom says in an advertisement against Prop 30. “But in reality, it was devised by a single corporation to funnel state income taxes to benefit their company. Put simply, Prop 30 is a Trojan horse that puts corporate welfare above the fiscal welfare of our entire state.”The message left some of the organizers and activists who helped write the measure stunned.“It’s just false,” said Denny Zane, the founder and policy director at Move LA, a public transit advocacy group that helped develop the proposition. Lyft joined the effort to promote the proposition after environmental groups and policymakers came up with the idea, he said, but the company did not “devise” the proposition.Overhauling the transportation infrastructureLyft has given more than $15m to support the measure and funded signature-gathering to get it on the November ballot. Though it wouldn’t benefit directly from the proposition, it and other rideshare companies face a 2030 regulatory deadline to transition the majority of their fleets to EVs. Prop 30 could help Lyft drivers, who are responsible for providing their own cars, purchase zero-emission vehicles.“It’s absurd to say we’re granting some sort of carve-out specifically for Lyft,” said Bill Magavern, the policy director for the Coalition for Clean Air, a statewide organization focused on air pollution issues.Proponents of the funding measure point out that the $10bn that Newsom’s budget has already allocated to EV subsidies and infrastructure would help Lyft drivers in the same way. And funds from Prop 30 would ultimately be funneled to the California Air Resources Board, the California Energy Commission and Cal Fire, the state’s firefighting agency, which would allocate the money to various programs.Newsom argues that California’s tax revenues are “famously volatile”, and the measure would make the state’s finances even more unstable. A wealth tax, the governor says, wouldn’t be the best way to fund the programs Prop 30 seeks to support. Moreover, he has noted that the state has already budgeted $10bn for electric vehicles specifically, and $54bn toward climate adaptation broadly.But environmental and transportation experts say even such massive investments won’t be enough to transition the state’s transportation infrastructure.Magavern and other environmental advocates instead see the governor’s stance on the proposition as a capitulation to wealthy donors. “You’ve got billionaires and their allies who don’t want to pay their fair share of taxes,” Magavern said.Among the biggest donors to the “No on 30” campaign are William Fisher, hedge fund manager and Gap Inc director, and billionaire venture capitalist Michael Moritz, according to public records. Investment firm founder Mark Heising, who contributed the maximum allowable amount to Newsom’s 2022 re-election campaign, also contributed $1m to oppose Prop 30.Joining these donors, Newsom, and anti-tax Republican politicians is the California Teachers Association, which opposed the measure because it circumvents a 1998 mandate that a minimum of 40% of the state’s budget goes to public education.Opinion columnists and political experts have conjectured that Newsom’s siding with teachers and his traditional enemies – the Republicans – could help bolster the governor’s political future. Though Newsom has repeatedly denied he has any intention of running for president, his recent national-facing campaign ads have stirred up speculation to the contrary. Newsom’s position on Prop 30 could easily fit into a presidential pitch that he walks the line between California progressivism and nationally appealing moderation, those columnists and experts have argued, and that he doesn’t blindly side with his own party and sometimes works with Republicans and business interests. The governor’s campaign did not respond to detailed questions regarding the political implications of this opposition to the proposition. “Prop 30 is fiscally irresponsible and puts the profits of a single corporation ahead of the welfare of the entire state,” the governor said in a statement.Meeting the state’s zero-emission goalsCalifornia will have to make major investments if it wants to live up to its clean energy goals.As more electric vehicles hit the road, the state has set targets to build an additional 170,000 public charging stations over the next three years. And California would need to invest in fortifying its already shaky electrical grid system.“The governor did support record levels of investment in this year’s budget, which is great news, it’s what’s needed,” said Don Anair, an expert in zero-emission transportation technologies and infrastructure at the Union of Concerned Scientists, which supports Prop 30.But it’s unclear how much will be invested in electric and zero-emission vehicles in subsequent yearly budgets, including after Newsom leaves office, Anair said. “We need a long-term, large-scale source of revenue to meet the state’s goals.”The need for investment now is urgent, Anair added. Even if the state phases out gas-powered vehicles by 2035, the cars, buses and freight vehicles already on the road now, or bought over the next few years will remain on the road for decades unless California incentivizes and subsidizes the purchase of zero-emission options.One limitation of the proposition is that it doesn’t specify subsidies for e-bikes and other programs to steer commuters away from cars altogether. Even electric cars are far less efficient than walking, biking and public transportation – they are energy and resource-intensive to build, and encourage urban sprawl. The mining of cobalt, lithium and other rare elements required to build EVs has raised environmental and human rights concerns.In coming years, even more investments in public transit and urban infrastructure, as well as improvements in how EVs are made, will be required in order to truly address the climate crisis.The proposition “is not going to solve all our transportation problems”, Anair said. But for now, transportation remains the largest source of greenhouse emissions in California. “So zero-emission transportation is critically important,” Anair said. “Climate change is already having impacts and the sooner we can start reducing our emissions, the better.”TopicsCaliforniaGavin NewsomElectric, hybrid and low-emission carsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      California to investigate LA redistricting after leak of officials’ racist remarks

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      California to investigate LA redistricting after leak of officials’ racist remarksThe former president of the LA city council, Nury Martinez, resigned on Wednesday after widespread calls for her departure California’s attorney general said on Wednesday that he would investigate Los Angeles’ redistricting process, as three city councilmembers face calls to resign after a recording surfaced of them using racist language to mock colleagues and constituents while they planned to protect Latino political strength in council districts.The move by Rob Bonta, a Democrat like the three councilmembers, comes amid growing calls to address the way politics can influence the redrawing of district maps after the census count each decade.“My office will conduct an investigation into the city of LA’s redistricting process,” Bonta said, without providing many details. “We’re going to gather the facts, we’re going to work to determine the truth and take action as necessary to ensure the fair application of our laws.“It’s clear an investigation is sorely needed to help restore confidence in the redistricting process for the people of LA,” he added.Bonta said the results could bring civil or criminal results. “It could lead to criminality if that’s where the facts and the law dictate,” he said. “There’s certainly the potential for civil liability based on civil rights and voting rights laws here in the state of California.”Bonta’s investigation comes days after the leak of audio recordings of an October 2021 meeting between the three Latino members of the city council and a labor leader sparked disbelief across the city and prompted calls to investigate the redistricting process.The discussion between the then city council president, Nury Martinez, the council members Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo, and the labor leader Ron Herrera centered on protecting Latino political power during the redrawing of council district boundaries, known as redistricting.Biden calls for resignation of LA city council members over racist remarksRead moreThe recordings document the political leaders crudely discussing the power dynamics behind the redistricting process. But they also recorded Martinez mocking the young son of her fellow councilmember Mike Bonin, calling Indigenous immigrants from the Mexican state of Oaxaca ugly, and making crass remarks about Jews and Armenians.Martinez on Wednesday resigned from the city council, after she had previously stepped down as its president and announced she was taking a leave of absence.De León and Cedillo have apologized, but have so far resisted calls to give up their seats, despite intense pressure to do so, including from Joe Biden.Bonta on Wednesday spoke in Los Angeles while the council itself was trying to conduct business nearby, possibly to censure the three members, none of whom were in attendance. But the board was unable to operate because a crowd of protesters outside. Demonstrators inside shouted “No resignations, no meeting.” The acting council president eventually announced that there was no longer a quorum and adjourned the meeting.The council cannot expel the members; it can only suspend a member when criminal charges are pending. A censure does not result in suspension or removal from office.A city council meeting the previous day – the first since news of the recording broke – was interrupters by demonstrators filling the chambers, demanding the council members’ resignation.In emotional remarks at Tuesday’s meeting, Bonin said he was deeply wounded by the taped discussion. He lamented the harm to his young son and the fact that the city was in international headlines spotlighting the racist language. “I’m sickened by it,” he said, calling again for his colleagues’ resignations.“Healing is impossible as long as you remain in office,” Bonin said in a tweet directed at the trio on Wednesday. “Resign. Now.”In one of the most diverse cities in the nation, a long line of public speakers at the meeting said the disclosure of the secretly taped meeting brought with it echoes of the Jim Crow era and was a stark example of “anti-Blackness”.There were calls for investigations and reforming redistricting policy.Many of the critics also were Latino and spoke of being betrayed by their own leaders.Candido Marez, 70, a retired business owner, said he wasn’t surprised by the language used by Martinez, who is known for being blunt and outspoken.“Her words blew up this city. It is disgraceful,“ he said. “She must resign.“Calls for the council members to resign have come from across the Democratic establishment.Biden’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said Tuesday that the president wanted Martinez, De León and Cedillo to resign.“The language that was used and tolerated during that conversation was unacceptable, and it was appalling. They should all step down,” Jean-Pierre said.The US senator Alex Padilla, the outgoing mayor, Eric Garcetti, the mayoral candidates Karen Bass and Rick Caruso and several members of the council have called on the three members to depart.California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, has stopped short of doing so, denouncing the racist language and saying he was “encouraged that those involved have apologized and begun to take responsibility for their actions”.TopicsLos AngelesCaliforniaRaceUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Will Gavin Newsom run for president – and could he win over the Democratic base?

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      Will Gavin Newsom run for president – and could he win over the Democratic base? The California governor insists he’s not running – but his recent moves suggest national aspirationsGavin Newsom has paid for billboard banners in Mississippi, Texas and several other Republican-run states in the lead up to the November midterms. The California governor’s campaign has aired TV advertisements in Florida, and he’s challenged the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, to a nationally televised debate.No, he’s not running for president. At least, not officially.Newsom easily trounced a recall effort last year and is expected to coast into re-election in November. With a healthy lead in statewide polls and a hefty $24m in his campaign fund, Newsom is using the opportunity to raise his national profile – and maybe bask a bit in the presidential buzz surrounding him.He has insisted that he has “subzero interest” in being president, and he reiterated the point during a talk last week in Austin, where he was billed to speak “on what the nation’s most populous state” could teach the other 49.“I cannot say it enough,” Newsom said. “I never trust politicians, so I get why you keep asking.”But denial is the tradition of pretty much every politician who has flirted with chief executive ambitions. Why else is he touting his visits to the White House (to “meet with national leaders” and pick up an education award) and speaking engagements in New York (to amplify his climate policies)?“Yeah, he’s definitely running for president,” said Dan Schnur, a politics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has advised Republican candidates. “The only question is whether he’s running in 2024 or 2028.”With Joe Biden suggesting that he will probably run for re-election, Newsom might have to wait his turn. In any case, “Newsom is setting a course for higher office, after his tenure as governor,” said Sonja Diaz, director of UCLA’s Latino Policy and Politics Institute. Nearly every California governor since the second world war has harbored presidential hopes, but Newsom could just as well be auditioning for the Senate seat that the 89-year-old Dianne Feinstein might retire from soon, or perhaps some other national position in Washington DC.It’s not just Newsom’s campaign that has raised chatter about his national aspirations. Opinion columnists, political consultants and activists have also closely watched his gubernatorial priorities and vetoes – and wondered about his motivations.California governor’s ad campaign offers help to women in anti-abortion statesRead moreDiverging at times from his own professed policy ideals, Newsom has attempted to walk the line between California progressivism and nationally appealing moderation. He pushed to keep open the state’s last nuclear plant, going against an agreement devised with environmental groups years ago. He successfully championed a controversial program to force unhoused people into mental health and substance abuse treatment, over the objections of civil rights leaders, disability activists and healthcare professionals. And last month, he vetoed a bill that would have allowed for supervised injection site pilot programs in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Oakland – backtracking on his own support for such measures to prevent overdose deaths. “I have long supported the cutting edge of harm reduction strategies,” he said in a veto message, but he said the bill “could induce a world of unintended consequences”. Ultimately, he kicked the can down the road, directing the health department to research “best practices” for such programs.“A centrist Democrat who needs to win swing voters in the general election can’t sign legislation creating government-run drug sites,” Schnur said. Based on his personality, his business-minded background and his policy track record, Newsom isn’t likely to inspire the party base the way progressives like Bernie Sanders could. “So his opportunity lies in really presenting himself as a center-left alternative,” Schnur said.Newsom’s office declined to comment on this story but directed the Guardian to news releases and public comments explaining his reasoning for vetoing legislation. His re-election campaign also did not respond to the Guardian’s queries.Having risen to political prominence from the Bay Area, backed by some of San Francisco’s wealthiest families, Newsom will have to expand his circle of advisers, consultants and surrogates – to better understand and reach across the state and country, Diaz said.As a career politician who rose from San Francisco parking and traffic commissioner to mayor to lieutenant governor to governor, and as a multimillionaire businessman, with a chain of wineries, restaurants, nightclubs, hotels and shops stretching across northern California, Newsom has benefitted throughout his career from his close ties with the Gettys, politically well-connected heirs to an oil fortune.And so far, Newsom has had to face few – if any – truly competitive political challenges. Currently, he has the backing of 52% of registered voters, compared with 25% who favor his challenger, Brian Dahle, a conservative state senator. Even during his recall election last year, when California voters showed signs of losing faith in Newsom amid a devastating surge in the Covid-19 pandemic and escalating economic woes, the governor was able to easily retain his seat – and defeat conservative and rightwing challengers who inspired even less faith in voters.In many ways, Newsom has made much more of an effort than many of his predecessors to elevate Latino, Black and Asian American leaders, and to engage with the state’s vast geography of cultures and experiences, Diaz noted. But in a national race, Newsom may have to do more to convince voters, especially voters of color and working-class voters, that he really sees and understands their challenges and the legacy of inequality that they have to contend with, she said. So far, even the governor’s well-intentioned policies amid the pandemic exacerbated racial and economic disparities.Although Newsom ultimately signed a farmworker labor bill to ease union voting, his initial hesitancy threatened to alienate California’s large unions, agricultural workers and their families, and other essential workers. In a rare moment of intervention, Biden has urged Newsom to sign the measure, which would ease farmworker union voting, as did the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, Newsom’s longtime Bay Area ally.The pressure came after Newsom’s office issued a statement last month suggesting that he would veto the measure, and the governor declined to personally meet with United Farm Workers representatives who organized a march from the San Joaquin Valley all the way to the capitol.“In the state with the largest population of farmworkers, the least we owe them is an easier path to make a free and fair choice to organize a union,” Biden said, just before Labor Day.The statement is in line with Biden’s broader support for unions. “But it’s not hard to imagine that the president wanted to remind the governor to wait his turn,” Shnur said.TopicsGavin NewsomUS politicsCaliforniafeaturesReuse this content More