Mike, Godfrey, and guest co-host Jasmyne Cannick discuss the promise and perils of the LA mayoral runoff between Karen Bass and Nithya Raman. Plus, the fake controversy over California’s ballot counting process, and LA’s City Council is poised to ditch years of effort to reform the city’s charter.
Pratt, who promised to leave LA if he lost the mayor’s race, has apparently changed his mind. Friday afternoon he dropped a 3-minute video attacking Bass and Raman in his typical over-the-top fashion, and claiming he has a private recording of one of them making remarks that will force them to resign in disgrace
If you want to go deep on the data, Mitchell has launched a fascinating experimental website that combines LA County 2026 primary election results with voter-file data to provide detailed analysis of nearly every race, including precinct maps, demographic correlations, ecological inference modeling, and candidate-to-candidate voting pattern comparisons. Mitchell also offers a quick look at which mayoral and gubernatorial candidates came in first and second in each LA City Council district
The conservative attacks have spawned sadly predictable hand-wringing in places like the New York Times editorial board. Yousef Baig, the CalMatters opinion editor, responded to the editorial on Bluesky: “Red states are aggressively disenfranchising Black and brown voters for the third consecutive century, but sure let’s call for federal reforms because California is too slow”
This is the week the LA City Council must decide which charter reform proposals to put before the voters in November. At the moment, the body seems poised to defer most items, saying recommendations from the Charter Reform Commission need more study. Liz Chou in her daily Squawk Box newsletter, gets into it here and here
The reporting and analysis you hear in the show is put together by our rotating cast of producers and co-hosts every week. All opinions expressed on the show are solely those of co-hosts and may not represent the views of LA Forward
