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Isaac Bryan MPP ’18 Elected to California Assembly

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Isaac Bryan MPP ’18 is the newest member of the California Assembly. Bryan took his seat May 28 after winning a special election to represent the state Legislature’s 54th District, which includes Westwood, Culver City, Baldwin Hills and parts of South Los Angeles. “I didn’t get here by myself. I carry with me the passion, the dreams and the hopes of an entire community,” Bryan said after he was sworn in by Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon. Bryan most recently served as the public policy director of the UCLA Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies. In 2020, he co-chaired the campaign for Measure J, which allocates nearly $1 billion of Los Angeles County’s annual budget to address racial injustice through community investments and alternatives to incarceration; the measure passed with 57% of the vote. While at UCLA Luskin, Bryan was named a David Bohnett Foundation Fellow in the office of Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and also worked with the Bunche Center’s Million Dollar Hoods research project, which documents the fiscal and human costs of mass incarceration in Los Angeles. In a UCLA Luskin profile, Bryan shared glimpses of his personal journey to becoming an advocate for criminal justice — and now, at age 29, the elected representative for the community surrounding UCLA. “Los Angeles, in my mind, is the city for innovation, the city for trying new things, and if you can solve a problem in Los Angeles, you can take it everywhere else,” Bryan said in a video accompanying the profile.

 

Yaroslavsky on What’s Next for Mayor Garcetti

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Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, weighed in on Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s future political prospects in a piece by Politico. An early supporter of President-elect Joe Biden, Garcetti served as a national campaign co-chair, helped to vet vice presidential candidates and serves as a co-chair of the committee planning the upcoming inauguration. While many presumed Garcetti would land a spot in the Biden administration, he did not, and the mayor has confirmed that he will stay put in City Hall as Los Angeles grapples with pandemic-induced health and budget crises, homelessness and a rise in violent crime. Some observers say Garcetti’s next career move is likely to be a mid-term appointment in the Biden administration. “This is not a time to write Eric Garcetti’s obituary,” Yaroslavsky said. “Biden remembers his friends, and Garcetti is his friend.”

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Diaz Appointed to Commission to Redraw City’s Electoral Map

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Sonja Diaz, executive director of the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative at UCLA Luskin, has been appointed to the commission that will redraw Los Angeles City Council district boundaries to ensure that constituents are fairly represented. “As a fourth-generation Eastsider, I am humbled to serve the city as we seek to uphold diverse communities’ fundamental right to elect their candidates of choice,” said Diaz, a civil rights attorney with extensive experience in voter protection efforts. “I’ve focused my career on advancing equitable policy solutions, and redistricting is a critical component to ensuring front-line communities have leaders that will fight to keep them safe, housed and visible in the new decade.” As part of the redistricting process, which takes place every 10 years after the U.S. Census is completed, commissioners closely analyze demographic data and offer members of the public opportunities to weigh in. Their proposal for a new electoral map for Los Angeles must be submitted to the City Council by June 2021. Diaz was appointed to the commission by Councilman Kevin de León. “Sonja has long been an advocate for equity in Los Angeles, using her voice to protect the civil rights of countless Angelenos,” de León said. “As we redraw the invisible lines that unite our diverse districts into a cohesive city, Sonja’s leadership and deep knowledge of the Voting Rights Act will be critical to ensuring more equal and reflective representation … for the entire city of L.A.”

 

Peterson on Campaigns Reshaped by COVID-19

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The Los Angeles Times spoke to Public Policy Professor Mark Peterson for a story about new strategies local candidates are using to get out the vote during a time of pandemic. Many candidates have replaced door-knocking and big rallies with virtual town halls and car caravans with signs and honking. Instead of traditional campaign stops, some have hosted community service projects, such as handing out food, diapers and masks emblazoned with the candidate’s name. Peterson said that it’s unclear how the ongoing pressures of the pandemic will shape decisions about local candidates, including whether voters will hold incumbent politicians accountable for L.A.’s handling of the COVID-19 threat. He also noted that the campaign timetable has been affected by the push toward early voting due to postal delays. People “may vote quite early, before you’ve even had a chance to reach them,” Peterson said.

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Yaroslavsky on ‘Governance Mess’ in L.A. County

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Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, spoke to the Los Angeles Times about continuing vitriol between the county’s sheriff and Board of Supervisors. Discord dates back to the election of Sheriff Alex Villanueva in 2018. Most recently, Villanueva has come under fire for using a slur against Supervisor Hilda Solis in a public address. In challenging Solis’ comments about police brutality against people of color, Villanueva said, “Are you trying to earn the title of a La Malinche?” The term, used to demean a woman as a traitor or sellout, refers to a historical figure in Mexican culture. Solis called the comment “highly unprofessional, inappropriate, racist and sexist.” Yaroslavsky, a longtime public servant in Los Angeles, said the ongoing antagonism could stifle good policy. “It’s a governance mess. And the people are the ones that will be hurt in the end,” he said.

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Parking Is a Money Pit, Manville Says

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Associate Professor of Urban Planning Michael Manville spoke to The Real Deal, a real estate news site, about a Los Angeles Planning Commission proposal to eliminate required parking spaces in new downtown housing developments, with the goal of creating more room for housing and decreasing the number of cars on the road. Manville said this policy is in line with cities such as San Francisco and Portland, which have begun easing downtown parking requirements. If eliminating parking requirements becomes the standard, business would improve for developers, he said. “As a conservative lender – and most institutional lenders are conservative – you might not loan on something that’s not the market standard,” he explained. But a developer with non-institutional funding who builds housing without parking spaces would spur more of this kind of development, he said. In the long term, eliminating parking requirements would lower the cost of development because “parking is a money pit,” Manville said.

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Yaroslavsky on Race to Succeed Ridley-Thomas

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Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, spoke to the Los Angeles Wave about the upcoming race to succeed county Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas. Term limits will force Ridley-Thomas to give up his 2nd District seat on the powerful Board of Supervisors. If no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote in a March primary, the top two vote-getters will face off in November. Of the eight candidates who have emerged so far, the three with the highest chance of winning the election are Los Angeles City Council President Herb Wesson, state Sen. Holly Mitchell and former Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jan Perry, according to Yaroslavsky. Perry, who has already raised more than $500,000 for the campaign, has “surprised some people with the amount of money she’s raised,” he said. “I think it’s going to be a horse race.”

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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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