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Gilens on Trump, Musk and Conflicts of Interest

A Washington Post story on tech billionaire Elon Musk’s outsize influence on the incoming Trump administration cited UCLA Luskin’s Martin Gilens. Musk became an outspoken Trump supporter less than six months ago and spent $277 million to back Republican campaigns in this election cycle. Now, he’s playing an unprecedented role in shaping Trump’s administration, weighing in on Cabinet picks, joining meetings with heads of state and, this week, sparking a showdown on Capitol Hill by attacking a spending bill that would forestall a government shutdown. Musk is also the target of multiple government investigations and party to many lucrative government contracts. His business empire’s dependency on the government creates a conflict of interest, said Gilens, a professor of public policy, social welfare and political science. “It’s kind of a perfect storm, in the sense that he’s unelected and in a seemingly very influential position,” he said, “so that’s problematic to begin with.”


 

 

‘People-Powered’ Campaign Elevates UCLA Luskin Alum’s Election Bid Bryan ‘Bubba’ Fish wins Culver City Council seat after knocking on doors — lots of them

By Stan Paul

Bryan “Bubba” Fish, a 2024 master of public policy graduate from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, is one of the latest Luskin grads to become an elected official, winning a Culver City Council seat in the November election.

Following graduation in June, Fish didn’t have time to rest on his laurels or take a vacation. The 33-year-old, winner of the “booked and busy” title by his fellow graduates, stepped out of Royce Hall in cap and gown, diploma in hand — in the middle of a competitive campaign that overlapped with the last two quarters of his public policy studies.

While juggling all of that, Fish, who concentrated on urban policy in his graduate studies, also worked in government affairs at the Los Angeles Department of Transportation before moving to his current job as a transportation deputy for Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn.

“As soon as I graduated, the campaign really ramped up. I basically got no break — the campaign just took over everything,” Fish said. He’s grateful now to be focused on work and serving as a council member.

Fish described his campaign as “people-powered,” with a lot of canvassing neighborhoods and knocking on doors. He recalls a politics of policymaking course led by UCLA Luskin Associate Professor Darin Christensen, where he saw a number of studies that showed “what works in policymaking and what doesn’t … and how do you know what really moves the needle in an election.”

Fish takes the oath of office at a Dec. 9 ceremony.

There is little evidence that the cavalcade of flyers dropping through mail slots during campaign season does much, Fish said. But “there’s a ton of evidence that walking and the candidate specifically meeting people is what moves the needle, and that’s what we did,” he said. “I walked every single weekend since March — so 32 weekends in a row.”

He ended up knocking on thousands of doors and making plenty of personal contact. Of the 20,000 doors his campaign reached, Fish said he personally accounts for a fifth, or 4,000: “I think it made all the difference. … We literally met so many people, and they shared our vision.”

Fish said he’s thankful for the classmates who helped out with his campaign, adding that he wished he had had more time to spend with them while at UCLA.

“They were really wonderful and supportive,” he said. “A lot of them came to my kickoff, and some of them came to the election night party, too.”

The new councilman, who was sworn in on Dec. 9 at Culver City Hall, said he ran on three main priorities, including housing for people of all incomes.

“We have built very little housing in Culver City” — only 400 multifamily units in a city of 40,000 people — since before he moved to California in 2009, he said. Fish grew up in Houston and came west on a scholarship to the University of Southern California, where he majored in film and TV production.

Fish is currently a renter in the city he now represents. He says when he came to Culver City, he got really involved: “I created Culver City Pride here, the first Pride celebration in the city’s history, and I got really involved in housing advocacy here, trying to get more affordable housing in the city because the city has built so little housing.”

His second priority is mobility — specifically creating healthy streets and climate resiliency across the Los Angeles region, which is also a top concern for him as a transportation professional. He focused the third prong of his campaign on public safety.

“We saw this backlash in California,” Fish said, referring to a rolling back of criminal justice reform and return to “a philosophy that has failed time and time again, expanding prisons, doubling down on incarceration. It hasn’t served us.”

And, he said, “We saw our leadership, our council majority for the last couple of years, not really relying on policy as a science, not really relying on data to make certain decisions. It was more about reacting.”

Fish is interested in creating a budget that is “rooted in care” and says Culver City is at the precipice of creating new systems that he is excited about, such as a mobile crisis team, “health and housing professionals that will go to you.”

“I’m so grateful to Luskin for giving me the tools that I needed to run a successful campaign and make change,” said Fish, adding that his connection to faculty and classmates were key to his run.

I don’t think I would have won without them,” he said. “I don’t think I’d be in a position to do what I hope to be able to accomplish.”

Read about other UCLA Luskin Public Policy alumni elected to office in November.

UCLA Luskin Public Policy Alumni Elected to Office

Four UCLA Luskin Master of Public Policy alumni have turned their records of civic engagement into successful bids for public office. The following MPP grads were elected or reelected in November:

  • Isaac Bryan MPP ’22 won reelection to his seat in the California State Assembly and will continue to represent District 55 in Los Angeles.
  • Bryan “Bubba” Fish MPP ’24 is the newest member of the Culver City City Council.
  • In Colorado, Lindsay Gilchrist MPP ’12, won a seat in the state House of Representatives.
  • Guadalupe “Lupita” Gutierrez MPP ’23 is the first Latina elected to the Waterford City Council in Stanislaus County, California.

 

Mixed Results on Housing Initiatives

An LAist article on local and state ballot measures addressing housing and homelessness called on UCLA Luskin’s Michael Lens and Shane Phillips for perspective. The latest returns show that more than 56% of L.A. County voters supported Measure A, which increases sales taxes to fund homeless services and new affordable housing development. However, Measure H, the initiative that first established the tax back in 2017, drew 69% support, noted Phillips, a researcher with the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. The dip in support may signal fatigue with funding homelessness efforts through the ballot box. Lens, a professor of urban planning and public policy, weighed in on Proposition 5, the state initiative that would have made it easier to pass affordable housing bonds. Angelenos joined other Californians in voting Prop. 5 down, perhaps because they found the initiative confusing. “A lot of times the default, I think, goes to ‘no’ because you’re suspicious if you don’t fully understand something,” Lens said.


 

U.S. Governance Challenges Put Election Integrity at Risk, Report Finds

With two weeks to go until the U.S. presidential election, a new analysis highlights critical governance challenges that threaten the efficacy of the American political system.

“Declining democratic accountability means that the power of the American people’s voice will be diminished — both in terms of electoral voice and the power of social institutions to check elected officials once in office,” according to the report authored by researchers from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, the Los Angeles-based Berggruen Institute and the Hertie School in Berlin, Germany.

Based on data from the latest Berggruen Governance Index, the report finds that both democratic accountability and state capacity have sharply declined in the U.S. since 2015.

Particularly in key swing states such as North Carolina, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia, declines in democratic norms — including curtailment of voting rights in some instances — could lead to “critical consequences for electoral integrity,” the authors caution.

The report also notes that an “outsized role of money in politics” has been exacerbated by landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have removed limits on electoral spending and increasingly marginalized the voices of average citizens.

Regarding state capacity, the report finds a broad and steady erosion since 2000, occurring across the sectors of fiscal capacity, coordination capacity and delivery capacity. Weakened state capacity negatively affects the U.S. government’s ability to respond to crises or natural disasters. This can lead to popular anger and increasing frustration with government efficacy, the report says.

— Democracy News Alliance

Read the full story

Read the report


 

Gilens on the Role of Money in U.S. Elections

UCLA Luskin’s Martin Gilens was a guest on the UC Institute of Global Conflict and Cooperation’s “Talking Policy” podcast on the role of money in U.S. elections. Gilens, a professor of public policy, social welfare and political science, and the author of “Democracy in America? What Has Gone Wrong and What We Can Do About It,” addressed how Americans feel about the current political system. “People are just … very unhappy with the state of our politics. They think the parties would rather fight against each other than work together to address America’s problems,” Gilens said. “And frankly, they’re right about that.” Gilens said Americans are extremely disillusioned, which is not new. “Our policy has, in many dimensions — whether it’s regulation, taxation and so on — shifted in ways that are beneficial to business and to owners and to the rich, and harmful to the middle class and to the poor.”


 

Affordable Housing Aspirations and Hurdles

UCLA Luskin’s Michael Lens spoke to CalMatters about Vice President Kamala Harris’ pledge to build 3 million affordable homes in her first term if she is elected president — and how a similar campaign promise made by California Gov. Gavin Newsom has fared. Harris’ plan includes tax incentives, an “innovation fund” to finance construction, repurposing federal land for housing, streamlining the permitting process — “all of the stuff we talk about at dorky academic conferences,” said Lens, a professor of urban planning and public policy. But as Newsom found, transforming the housing market from the top is difficult, thanks to pricey land, high construction costs, onerous regulations and community resistance. California officials are pushing to clear regulatory hurdles, with modest impact so far but the promise of a faster pace of home construction in the future. “That’s a precursor to making a lot of these things work,” Lens said. “We have to make housing more allowable in more places.”


 

Gilens Book Honored for Its Enduring Influence

UCLA Luskin’s Martin Gilens has received the Aaron Wildavsky Enduring Contribution Award from the public policy section of the American Political Science Association (APSA). The award, given in recognition of scholarly work that has made a lasting impact on the field of public policy over the years, honors Gilens’ “Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy.” The 1999 book, which sheds light on myths and misconceptions about welfare policy, public opinion and the role of the media in both, has been “profoundly influential,” APSA organizers said. They cited the book’s “rigorous analysis and insightful arguments, which have significantly advanced our knowledge of the intersection between public perception, race and policy, shaping both academic discourse and practical policy considerations.” The prize was presented this month at APSA’s annual convention in Philadelphia. Gilens, a professor of public policy, political science and social welfare at UCLA, has published widely on political inequality, mass media, race, gender and welfare politics. He is author of “Affluence & Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America” and co-author of “Democracy in America?: What Has Gone Wrong and What We Can Do About It.”


 

A Closer Inspection of Trump’s Comments on Immigration

A Los Angeles Times article about Donald Trump’s statements about actions he would take if reelected asked UCLA Luskin’s Chris Zepeda-Millán to weigh in on the former president’s comments on immigration. Trump has said he will “seal the border” with a physical wall, “carry out the largest deportation operation in American history,” order the military to attack foreign drug cartels and do away with birthright citizenship. While there is debate about whether to take the candidate at his word or chalk up his comments to populist rhetoric, Trump’s recent comments are his way of “doubling down on getting the most racist white Americans out to vote,” said Zepeda-Millán, associate professor of public policy and co-author of “Walls, Cages, and Family Separation: Race and Immigration Policy in the Trump Era.” Zepeda-Millán’s research shows that most Americans did not support Trump’s first-term immigration policies, and those who did held the “most racist views,” including general discomfort with growing Latino populations.