Mayoral Debate:
On Wednesday, May 6, Loyola Marymount University, alongside NBC 4, co-hosted a debate for the top candidates for Los Angeles Mayor and a debate for the top candidates for California Governor at the Skirball Cultural Center.
The day kicked off with the Mayoral debate between incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, Councilwoman Nithya Raman, and former reality TV star Spencer Pratt. The debate hit some of the primary concerns for many Angelenos, including wildfire response, homelessness, affordable housing, and public safety.
This debate came just hours after the drug raid in McArthur Park, in which over 15 people were arrested, a combined effort by federal, state, and local law enforcement.
Bass said the operations were “ordered by the feds,” but noted, “We have been working in collaboration because we were very well aware of the drug dealing that was taking place there,” she said. “What happened was an action that had been in the works for many many months.”
The Mayor used this example to express the undersupply of LAPD officers, while reemphasizing her desire to increase the size of the police force. Bass raised this interest as a point of contention between herself and Councilwoman Raman, who said she wants to keep the size the same, while working to reallocate resources to alleviate LAPD officers of tasks they are not fit to handle.
“I am not against paying police officers what they’re worth… what I am arguing against is bad fiscal management,” said Raman.
The debate also emphasized Mayor Bass’ response and preparation surrounding the fires in Los Angeles in January of last year — the same fires that Pratt said inspired him to campaign for Mayor. As a survivor of the Palisades fires, he continuously attacked Bass on the city’s lack of preparation ahead of the fires.
“The fire chief sent home a thousand firefighters,” Pratt said about Bass’ preventative measures, “There was supposed to be deployment and pre-deployment.”
Bass responded by pointing to the longstanding systemic issues of the city that inhibited prevention and response when the fires took place.
Bass’ inside safe program was also brought into the discussion, in which she strongly defended.
“Inside Safe is the only citywide program that has reduced homelessness two years in a row… It is a program that is working,” claimed Bass.
“This system is not fiscally sustainable,” Raman said in disagreement. “I don’t think anybody in Los Angeles right now can say that we are satisfied with spending extraordinary amounts of money on our homelessness response and getting only incremental progress.”
Gubernatorial Debate:
The second half of the day was a debate between seven of the top candidates for the Governor of California, set to replace termed-out Gavin Newsom. The candidates included Tom Steyer (D), Xavier Becerra (D), Steve Hilton (R), Chad Bianco (R), Katie Porter (D), Matt Mahan (D), and Antonio Villaraigosa (D).
The debate mostly concerned issues of affordable housing in the state, the accountability of insurance companies, and wealth taxes. However, much of the session was spent with candidates interrupting one another and including numerous personal attacks, limiting the potential scope of the last major debate ahead of the June primaries.
California’s homelessness crisis is one of the few areas of common ground that all candidates agreed upon. Yet, they all stood strong against the various approaches to addressing it.
Becerra, a frontrunner in the race, claimed homelessness needs to be addressed as a mental health issue, as much as it is about housing and affordability.
“It costs more to get people off the street than to keep them off the street,” Becerra said. He proceeded to discuss prioritizing preventive strategies over reactive responses to homelessness.
Steyer, the other Democratic frontrunner, addressed California’s housing affordability crisis, which has made it more difficult for people to live in the state.
“In order to solve our housing problems, we have to shorten permitting times,” said Steyer. He then pointed to higher-density housing near public transportation sites as a viable solution — similar to the recently passed SB79 bill allowing for such construction.
“I’m gonna close a corporate real estate tax loophole for $22 billion per year, that’s going to cover the cities and counties,” he said. Steyer claimed that this would make them willing to permit housing, since housing is currently an “unfunded liability.”
Hilton, similarly to Bianco, spoke in opposition to many of the democrats’ visions for California, pushing Californians to change its leadership. He considers the lack of progress in recent years to be attributed to Democratic leadership, and considers it “the definition of insanity” to continue to vote Democrat upon seeing few results.
Becerra, who was at the center of many of the personal attacks, pushed back against Hilton, taking pride in his tenure in Congress, as Attorney General, and as Secretary.
“You made private profit, I was doing public service,” Becerra said to Hilton.
While these remarks arose from questions surrounding homelessness and triggered a dispute between Becerra and Hilton, Villaraigosa chimed in.
“Are you proud that you pushed out over 85 thousand migrant children?… They were maimed, exploited, some were even killed,” Villaraigosa said to Becerra.
“I’m not sure what this has to do with homelessness, but cálmate Antonio, cálmate,” Becerra responds.
Following this interaction, the debate continued to dissolve into overlapping personal jabs at one another’s reputations and points of controversy, rather than discussing the topics at hand that would better inform voters of their respective policies.
This was one of the last opportunities for the candidates to participate in a televised debate ahead of the primary elections in June.
Photos: Jon Rou/LMU
