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Though the race will have no particular personal impact on me (I have not lived in the city of Los Angeles for six decades, and my wife and I left California a quarter century ago), I find the anti-Pratt ad by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, and the responses to the ad, interesting and (in a weird sense) amusing.
Former reality television personality Spencer Pratt is running for mayor of Los Angeles, emphasizing the failures of current mayor Karen Bass. I think the Los Angeles mayor’s election is officially considered “nonpartisan,” but Mr. Pratt is considered the Republican and current Mayor Bass and candidate Nithya Raman are considered Democrats, if not Socialists or Communists.
The union-funded anti-Pratt ad is interesting because of what it indicates the left (or at least labor unions) thinks the public prioritizes. According to the ad, residents of Los Angeles should vote against Mr. Pratt because Mr. Pratt OPPOSES:
- “taxpayer money to build brand new houses for our unhoused neighbors,”
- “social workers” rather than police officers to deal with rampant crime, and
- power to unions, not to taxpayers.
So the ad assumes the Los Angeles public FAVORS:
- “taxpayer money to build brand new houses for our unhoused neighbors,”
- “social workers” rather than police officers to deal with rampant crime, and
- power to unions, not to taxpayers.
Does the union really think that working residents of Los Angeles who struggle to afford any housing, the kind that comes with a roof and four walls, in the most expensive housing market in the United States believe they should pay for “brand new housing” for homeless people? Does the union really think that law-abiding residents of Los Angeles consider the solution to rampant crime and violence is more “social workers” and fewer police officers? Does the union really think that Los Angeles residents believe that the unions draining municipal coffers really should have more power to take control and money away from taxpayers?
And finally, how many residents of Los Angeles really think Los Angeles, under current political leadership, is “on the right track”?
All of the commentary I have seen speculates that most voters are likely to see the ad as presenting reasons in favor of a vote for Mr. Pratt, rather than reasons to vote against him. This I find amusing.
Discussion (15)
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It's an own-goal by these people. They lack the self-awareness needed to realize why what they want is bad for the average Angeleno.
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Bass is literally a communist.
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And she was apparently on then-candidate Joe Biden's short list of potential vice presidential candidates. Which is why I never believed Mr. Biden's claims to be "moderate."
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He's basically come out of nowhere. Purely as a phenomenon, he's the Mamdani of the west coast Right. The only comparison I can make is William F. Buckley's quixotic campaign for NYC mayor in 1965; it made the contest entertaining.
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I was just out of college when the Kent State deaths occurred (May 1970), and the violence scared a lot of us. Just for the heck of it, when I saw a notice up publicizing a meeting to talk about the event and a possible local response, I went to the meeting.
Turned out it was a bunch of campus and off-campus radicals plotting violence. Two featured guests at this little confab were two women who belonged to the Venceremos Brigade, and had recently returned from harvesting sugar cane in Cuba. They talked up graphic rhetoric around murdering police officers. I left in a state of shock, but my eyes were opened!
Edited: to correct date of Kent State shooting
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