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‘Put On Your Seatbelts,’ Peterson Says of Coming Election Fallout

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Mark Peterson, professor of public policy, political science and law, spoke to Elite Daily about the November 2018 midterm elections and the implications of a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives. Such an outcome would lead to an increase in investigations against Donald Trump and his administration and an end to Trump’s legislative agenda, he said. “It is possible some common ground will be found on some issues, such as investments in infrastructure, but even they will be caught not only in the vise of extraordinary partisan polarization and mutual distrust, but also the enormous constraints imposed by the erupting budget deficit and rapidly accumulating debt.” In a follow-up article, Peterson considered the stakes if the GOP had held on to a House majority. “A slender majority would mean that the Republicans would have to be extremely cautious about issues that divide their conference,” such as health care, he said.

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Yaroslavsky on O.C. Republican’s Reelection Bid

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ABC News spoke to Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, for its report on Orange County Republican Dana Rohrabacher’s bid for reelection to the House of Representatives. Rohrabacher, the article noted, is a staunch Reaganite who took an unexpected ideological turn in advocating closer ties with Russia. In the November 2018 midterm elections, he is one of several California Republicans scrambling to defend his seat. Observers noted that Rohrabacher’s longevity and conservative record give him a strong change of reelection.  “He’s been around for almost 30 years in Congress,” said Yaroslavsky, who has known Rohrabacher for decades. “Don’t underestimate him because he will fight.”

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Yaroslavsky Weighs In on the Ballot Battle Over Rent Control

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Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, shared his expertise on housing policy with several media outlets covering the November 2018 ballot measure that would give California cities more power to curb rising rents. “The state doesn’t do anything for renters. It does everything for property owners and developers,” Yaroslavsky told the Christian Science Monitor. “If we keep this up for another generation, we’re going to have far more homelessness than we do now.” The Monitor’s article on the fight over Proposition 10 cited the Los Angeles Initiative’s 2018 Quality of Life Index, which found that more than a quarter of L.A. County’s 10.1 million residents had worried about losing their home in the previous year. “These are the people who are a lost job or eviction notice away from winding up on the streets,” Yaroslavsky said.  The Monitor also cited a UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy working paper on the historical roots of the affordable housing crisis in Los Angeles. Yaroslavsky has also been quoted in Proposition 10 coverage from Bloomberg News, the Guardian and Curbed LA.

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A Midterm Upset Would Spark Big Battles, Peterson Says

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The website Elite Daily asked UCLA Luskin’s Mark Peterson to weigh in on the remote possibility that Democrats will reclaim control of the Senate in the November 2018 midterm elections. “I think it is first vital to emphasize what a shocker that would be,” said Peterson, a professor of public policy, political science and law. In the event that Democrats beat the steep odds against them, Peterson predicted big battles between the Senate and White House, particularly over judicial appointments and an overhauled legislative agenda that would face President Trump’s veto pen. He also said the chances are slim that a Democrat-controlled Senate would convict the president if he is impeached by the House. “That requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate, which could not be achieved without a significant number of Republicans joining in,” Peterson said. “Given our current politics, that would probably take not only a ‘smoking gun,’ but a ‘smoking bazooka.’ ”

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Scholars Gather at UCLA to Share Research, Plan Data Collection for 2020 Election

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Researchers from across the country visited UCLA Luskin for a second year on Aug. 8-10, 2018, to share information and formulate plans for the 2020 update to a landmark survey based on the U.S. presidential electorate. The inaugural effort, known as the 2016 Collaborative Multi-Racial Post-Election Survey (CMPS), was produced by a research collaborative co-led by faculty from UCLA. Among the conference speakers was Lorrie Frasure-Yokley, a UCLA associate professor of political science and African American studies, who was one of the event’s organizers and a co-principal investigator for the survey. Other speakers included co-principal investigator and conference co-organizer Matt Barreto, a UCLA professor of political science and Chicana and Chicano studies, as well as co-principal investigators Janelle Wong from the University of Maryland and Edward Vargas from Arizona State University. The 2016 survey was the first cooperative, multiracial, multiethnic, multilingual, post-election online survey in race, ethnicity and politics in the United States. Roundtable discussions focused on ways to improve the survey for the next presidential election, and participants filled a large lecture hall for two days centered around more than a dozen academic studies and reports derived from the 2016 data. For example, one presentation included UCLA alumnus Jonathan Collins of Brown University: “Was Hillary Clinton ‘Berned’ By Millennials? Age, Race, and Third-Party Vote Choice in the 2016 Presidential Election.” The workshop encouraged collaboration to strengthen the academic pipeline in the study of race, ethnicity and immigration through co-authorships and research opportunities, particularly for graduate students, post-docs and junior faculty.

View an album of photos from the conference on Flickr

CMPS conference

LPPI Co-Hosts Conference of Latino Elected Officials From Across the U.S.

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Elected officials from over a dozen different states, including state legislators, municipal and school district officials, gathered Aug. 3-5 at UCLA Luskin for a landmark conference co-hosted by the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative (LPPI). More than 60 elected officials were expected to participate in the first-ever National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) National Education Leadership and Public Policy Academy to learn about effective public policies that support Latino families and communities. NALEO Educational Fund and LPPI designed an innovative public policy curriculum to strengthen the governance capacity of Latino policymakers in the critical policy areas of education, economic development, criminal justice and immigration. “UCLA is ecstatic to partner with NALEO Educational Fund to empower Latino elected officials with the data and strategy necessary to address today’s most critical policy challenges and improve the well-being of Latinos from Connecticut to California,” said Sonja Diaz, LPPI’s executive director. The invitation-only intensive training featured modules created by LPPI faculty, with a cadre of national policy experts and practitioners from across the U.S. advancing evidence-based policymaking. Conference speakers included Diaz and her LPPI co-founders — UCLA Luskin Dean Gary Segura and Matt Barreto, professor of political science and Chicano/a Studies at UCLA — as well as LPPI-affiliated faculty such as Amada Armenta, who recently joined the faculty of UCLA Luskin Urban Planning. NALEO Educational Fund Executive Director Arturo Vargas also participated.

In Op-Ed, Gilens Cites 5 Reforms for Broken Policymaking in Washington

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In an opinion piece for the political news website The Hill, UCLA Luskin’s Martin Gilens, professor of public policy, joins co-author Benjamin I. Page of Northwestern University in proposing a set of reforms that would actually increase democratic responsiveness. They say their research indicates that the most important and most promising changes fall into five groups: 1. Give equal political voice to all citizens; 2. Curb the political power of money; 3. Democratize the electoral process; 4. Improve House and Senate representation of all citizens; 5. Overcome remaining sources of gridlock.

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Leap Refutes Trump’s Claim that ICE Liberated Towns from MS-13

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The tweets of Donald Trump are not known for factual accuracy, and Jorja Leap of UCLA Luskin Social Welfare told PolitiFact that his recent claims about ICE “liberating” towns from MS-13 and other gangs are an “outrageous” example of his tendency to exaggerate. “This is hyperbolic and misleading language,” said Leap, who is also director of the Health and Social Justice Partnership at UCLA Luskin. “Liberation is usually the terminology of military forces — as in, the Allies liberated France from the Nazis.”

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S.F. Chronicle: Trump Is Exaggerating Threat of MS-13, Leap Says

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In its coverage of the Trump administration’s claims that its policies prevent members of the Salvadoran gang MS-13 from entering the United States to commit crimes, the Chronicle turned to Jorja Leap of UCLA Luskin Social Welfare, who has studied MS-13 and other gangs. In reality, MS-13’s threat in Los Angeles, where the gang was born three decades ago, “is probably the lowest it has ever been,” Leap said. Constantly citing the danger of MS-13, as Trump has done, could backfire, helping MS-13 in recruiting. Leap said, “Along with being erroneous, he is giving them oxygen. Donald Trump is acting as a one-man publicity band for MS-13.” Leap also contributed to a recent visual storytelling piece about MS-13 by the New York Times. And she previously spoke to the L.A. Daily News about the search of a new Los Angeles police chief.

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Blumenberg Says Trump’s Welfare Reform Plan Misses a Key Piece: Transportation 

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UCLA Luskin’s Evelyn Blumenberg is quoted in a Washington Post article about whether a Trump administration order to toughen work requirements for welfare recipients overlooks a well-documented link between transportation and employment.  “Since the 1990s, things have become much more difficult for welfare recipients,” said Blumenberg, a transportation expert and professor of urban planning. “And I have not seen an upswell in movement for supporting the transportation part of this.” Cars play a key role in access to jobs that are “suburbanizing.” Blumenberg said, “It’s a touchy subject in transportation circles, where funds are focused on increasing access to public transit, even though poor people more than anyone need the flexibility and instant mobility of having a car.”

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