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Segura on Misguided Assumptions About Latino Voters

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UCLA Luskin Dean Gary Segura spoke to the Los Angeles Times about shifts in Democratic campaign strategies to win the Latino vote. After the reversal of Roe v. Wade, many Democratic candidates are emphasizing abortion rights, discarding the conventional wisdom that the Latino electorate is too socially conservative to be receptive to the platform. “These incorrect assumptions have lasted for a long time, and they have been incorrect for a long time,” said Segura, who has conducted extensive polling research. Political strategists who previously concluded that predominantly Catholic Latino voters would remain staunchly opposed to abortion rights missed nuances among the electorate. While individual voters may have personal convictions against abortion, many draw the line at government intervention that curbs the rights of the people.

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Yaroslavsky on Shifts in the L.A. Mayor’s Race

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Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, spoke to CBSLA News about a new poll showing Rick Caruso and Karen Bass leading the pack in the contest to become Los Angeles’ next mayor. After an early media blitz, Caruso’s poll numbers have tripled, with 24% of respondents expressing their support, just ahead of Bass’ 23%. Yaroslavsky said the trajectory of the race will shift as other candidates step up their marketing campaigns. “Karen Bass hasn’t been on television at all. Kevin de León can’t be discounted, hasn’t been on television at all. … So, it will change, I’m sure, in the weeks ahead,” he said. The race also stands to tighten as undecided voters make their choices as the June 7 primary nears, he said. “Most people don’t know all that they want to know about the candidates. Forty percent don’t know enough to make a decision at this point or they are withholding their judgment until they hear more.” 

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Diaz on Mobilizing Latino Vote in L.A. Mayor’s Race

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A Los Angeles Times story about a poll showing Karen Bass and Rick Caruso in a dead heat in the L.A. mayor’s race looked to Sonja Diaz, executive director of the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, for context. If the June 7 primary leads to a contest between U.S. Congresswoman Bass and billionaire developer Caruso, the election would be marked by stark divides of ideology, race and geography. Caruso has already spent millions on television and digital advertising, including on Spanish-language TV and radio stations and on websites such as YouTube. Still, more than half of Latino poll respondents said they didn’t know Bass or Caruso well enough to form an opinion of the candidates. “Latinos are going to be late deciders,” Diaz said. “The fact that they’re undecided, in order to change that, there’s really going to have to be money and tailored messaging.”

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Diaz Debunks Myths of the Latino Electorate

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Sonja Diaz, director of the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, joined an episode of Latino USA to discuss the role of Latino voters in Arizona. For the first time since 1996, Arizona flipped blue in the 2020 presidential election. Diaz pointed to Arizona as an example for campaigns to follow on “how to recruit Latino voters and why they need to start today.” While the Latino electorate is often misconstrued as a monolith, Diaz explained that “the 2020 election brought to bear the diversity, the complexity and the myriad of interest groups that characterize the Latinx electorate.” She criticized “political pundits [who] continue to act like they know about these voters who they deem Hispanic” when in fact “Latinos are both mystic and incomprehensible to all of them.” Diaz concluded, “The victory on Nov. 3 was because of the work of Latino mass mobilization in response to failure of policy in so many key states.”

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Lens on Governor’s Struggle to Meet Housing Goals

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Michael Lens, associate professor of urban planning and public policy, was featured in a Los Angeles Times article describing Gov. Gavin Newsom’s lack of progress on his goals to tackle California’s housing crisis. While Newsom’s campaign platform included plans for the construction of 3.5 million new homes by 2025 and a Marshall Plan for affordable housing, critics have pointed out that the state still faces a shortage of 1.7 million affordable rental homes. Newsom’s largest success so far has been a new statewide cap preventing large rent increases, and he argues that he remains committed to fixing California’s housing problems. Nevertheless, the state’s homelessness crisis has become even more pressing since Newsom took office. “It seems like a pretty meaningful failure — either a failure of commitment or a failure of effort,” Lens said. 

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Callahan on Small-Scale ‘Green New Deal’ Debate

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Colleen Callahan, deputy director of the Luskin Center for Innovation, spoke to the Los Angeles Times about an L.A. City Council runoff election that highlights the debate over the “Green New Deal.” John Lee and Loraine Lundquist are vying for the seat representing the northwest San Fernando Valley — site of the massive Aliso Canyon methane leak that pushed thousands of people out of their homes. Lundquist has endorsed Mayor Eric Garcetti’s package of environmental proposals; Lee says the mayor’s plan is too costly, and his supporters have called Lundquist’s agenda “extremist.” The Valley campaign is “a little bit of a microcosm of what’s happening on the national stage around the Green New Deal,” Callahan said.

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Yaroslavsky on the Impact of a Garcetti Endorsement

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Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, was quoted in a McClatchy article about the potential impact of a political endorsement by L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti.  The mayor has appeared at campaign events with some of the Democrats vying to be their party’s 2020 nominee for president, but he is reportedly torn over whether to endorse one before California’s March 3 primary. In a tight race, Garcetti’s endorsement “could make a difference,” Yaroslavsky said. “It would be a one- or two-day headline, and it could give somebody momentum.” An endorsement would be valuable in Los Angeles’ notoriously expensive media market and could solidify interest from donors and organizers, the article noted. Yaroslavsky said the fluid nature of the primary “may be one of the reasons he’s holding out. Maybe one or two of his favorites fall by the wayside and then he doesn’t have to alienate anybody.”

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Diaz on Trends Shaping the 2020 Campaign

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Sonja Diaz, executive director of the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative at UCLA Luskin, spoke to Minnesota Public Radio about voting trends shaping the 2020 presidential campaign. “Voter turnout in 2020 is slated to reach the highest it’s been in decades, and this includes a surge of new voters, which will potentially produce the most diverse electorate in this country’s history,” said Diaz, citing research conducted by LPPI and other organizations. Minority populations are growing steadily in existing and emerging battleground states such Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia and Texas, she said, and “that’s where 2020 could be decided.” Diaz also weighed in on continuing threats to the democratic process. “We’re going into an election where there have been massive attempts by states to roll back access to the ballot box,” she said, but added that election officials across the country are working resolutely to protect their voting protocols from interference.

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Former Congresswoman Discusses Path to Political Office

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Mimi Walters, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 2014 to 2019, shared her personal pathway to political office, “From Orange County to Washington, D.C.,” at a noontime talk May 9 to an audience that included graduate students and undergraduates from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. The Republican former lawmaker, who represented California’s 45th district, also served previously in both the California State Senate and State Assembly. Walters talked about what it took to win campaigns from student government in high school to a seat on her local city council in Laguna Niguel to state and federal seats. For Walters, success has come through preparation that included volunteer work, participation in and support for other candidates, and fundraising. “I said, ‘If I really want to do this, I better learn how to campaign.’ So I got involved in other people’s races. I worked on other people’s campaigns. That is how I learned how to run a race.” She added, “The other thing … when you go and volunteer for somebody’s campaign and you someday want to run, they remember.” Navkaran Gurm, a first-year pre-major in Public Affairs, said he was impressed by Walter’s talk and how candid she was about what is required to seek elected office. “It was a good intellectual exchange. She gave us the facts and inside look at the life of a politician,” Gurm said.