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Yaroslavsky on L.A.’s ‘Confounding Election’

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Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, spoke to media outlets including Governing and the Financial Times about the contest between Karen Bass and Rick Caruso to become L.A.’s next mayor. While housing, homelessness and public safety have been central issues in the campaign, the leaked audio of City Council members using racist language has become a wild-card factor. The recording contributed to “a sense that the city is broken,” Yaroslavsky said, but he added that it’s not clear whether voters will be motivated to “kick out the bums” or stay home out of cynicism. “You have a city that has changed and a population that is willing to elect people that don’t necessarily look like them — and then this happens, and the danger is that people revert back to their camps,” he said. “It’s really one of the most confounding elections I can remember.” Yaroslavsky also spoke with CBS Los Angeles about the impact rainy weather could have on voter turnout.

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Wachs on Local Ballot Measures to Raise Funds for Road Projects

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Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning Martin Wachs spoke with Transportation Today about local ballot initiatives aimed at securing tax dollars for funding road projects. With federal funding in decline, this type of ballot initiative — known as  LOST for “local option sales tax” — could be on the rise. Wachs cited a study showing that most of the transportation measures put before voters in 2018 were approved. Successful LOST measures have several things in common, including citizen audits, flexibility within limitations, and an end date that puts voters in charge of whether or not it’s renewed, said Wachs, a scholar at the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA Luskin. The article also cited Jeremy Marks MURP ’20, who said a database has been created to provide planners and other interested parties free, comprehensive information on every LOST measure put before California voters.

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Yaroslavsky and Newton on Power of Endorsements

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A Long Beach Post article on upcoming local elections called on two UCLA Luskin experts to weigh in on the power of political endorsements. The public is thirsty for authenticity, and that can be more meaningful than prominent backers, Los Angeles Initiative Director Zev Yaroslavsky said. “The landscape is littered with insurgent candidacies that have prevailed and surprised a lot of people,” said Yaroslavsky, a former Los Angeles city councilman and county supervisor. Unions that offer endorsements often mobilize their members to campaign for candidates, which could make a difference in a low-turnout area, public policy lecturer Jim Newton added. But the impact of endorsements is limited, he said. “It really is an instance where voters have the last word,” Newton said. “In the end, voters can say ‘no’ to that.”

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