A government afraid of opposition will go to dangerous lengths to silence & intimidate opposition.

The most annoyed about California slow vote counting seem to be journalists, pundits, & right wing hacks. What difference does it make if we know who advances to Nov today or next Friday? Should it take 30 days to count the votes, no. But AB 5 solves for that effective this year.

I’ll take slower results if it makes voting easier, more inclusive, increases turnout, and adds extra safeguards, rather than prioritizing fast results (just for the sake of speed).

Hydee was so zealous in her NIMBYism that, despite being Los Angeles' attorney, she regularly got the city into even more legal trouble. Now she isn't even making it to the general in a race where she's the incumbent. Bye!

Note that LA County's outstanding ballot numbers don't include the ballots that have been postmarked by Election Day but have not arrived yet. In 2024, in California, 2.5% of turnout came from those same ballots. Applying it to LA as a back-of-envelope: current count (1,395,987) plus the outstanding estimate (713,180) is about 2.11M received through Election Day. If the late-arriving tail is ~2.3% of the eventual total, that's roughly 50,000 additional countywide ballots layered on top of the 713k — meaningful, but not a game-changer at the countywide level. For the mayor's race specifically, scaling that ~50k by the City's ~37.6% observed share gets you somewhere around 18–19k additional mayor votes. So probably around 285k. But those were 2024 numbers, and it's possible we see a higher percentage of these late ballots this current election. We will keep updating these figures as more numbers come in.

Numbers I posted below from 2022 were where the mayoral election stood as of first thing Wednesday morning, so pretty much right now. So a large shift of roughly 12 points net. The same may not happen! But that’s why it’s too early for conclusions on Bass-Pratt-Raman.

RAND just dropped the most comprehensive study yet of Measure ULA. High-value transactions 31%🔽. Apartment production 30%🔽. Buildings that sold passed the tax through to tenants as higher rents. ~$452M in lost revenue to city, county & schools. ~16,000 construction jobs lost.

Reminder folks: California takes awhile to count and late counted ballots tend to be more Dem leaning (and will be more so this year given the fluidity of the Gov race). So NO hot takes this week. Practiced restraint from making calls, predictions, conclusions and takeaways.

Hard to feel sorry for Cornyn. He has been pandering to Trump since 2016, ten years. And would have continued to do so if he had won his primary. He were perfectly fine with going along with MAGAism up until he lost. Not how it works. Bye bye 👋

LA would be better off having a Bass-Raman run off. LA has structural, systemic challenges ahead & a spirited / competitive electoral debate is important. Pratt making it to the run off, lets the advancing Dem off the hook to lay out their realistic vision for the City.