Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Friday, Oct. 7. Ben Oreskes here, coming to you reside from Los Angeles, where a mayoral debate between the candidates to interchange Mayor Eric Garcetti just wrapped up.
Rep. Karen Bass and businessman Rick Caruso met for a second debate Thursday night, hosted by KNX Radio. I’ve been covering this race closely for the paper together with several colleagues and followed the rap session between the candidates live. Throughout the event, we were writing up quotes of alternative barbs and exchanging our own tidbits of research via Slack.
Longtime Times reporter Jim Rainey was within the studio with the candidates and happened to take a seat next to Caruso’s wife, Tina. He tell us the temperature within the room was cool, however the candidates weren’t. He messaged they were “all smiles as they awaited the opening bell” and “greeted one another warmly.”
Then the lights went up, and the attacks were unleashed. The moderators covered a bunch of topics and, perhaps most interesting for readers not here in Los Angeles, sought to get the candidates to put out a unifying vision of how they’d run the town. After all, homelessness dominated much of the conversation, but topics like the dimensions of the LAPD and the cyberattack on the Los Angeles Unified School District got here up as well.
A lot about this race has been historic, and it was evident within the answers on stage. Bass could be the primary female mayor of Los Angeles if elected, and Caruso has shattered spending records because the polls have tightened. The mall operator has poured about $70 million into his campaign since jumping into the race.
Bass has raised gobs of cash too — though the quantity pales as compared with what Caruso has spent. Her campaign has raised $6 million through the last filing period; as well as, she’s benefited from hundreds of thousands of dollars in support from outside groups that don’t coordinate together with her but run ads publicizing her resume and attacking her opponent. Just this week, Hollywood executive Jeffrey Katzenberg donated $1 million to Communities United for Bass for LA Mayor 2022, pushing his total contributions to the group to about $1.85 million. This support helps her keep pace somewhat in her quest to represent the town.
Throughout the debate, Caruso and Bass were asked concerning the prospect of hosting a historic event — the Olympics, headed to Los Angeles in 2028 — and whether it could break the budget.
They each said that they believed the event wouldn’t drive the town into debt and that they’d tap their respective connections to Olympics organizers and federal officials to make it run easily. Caruso took the chance to speak again about his desire to wash up the town. For much of the controversy, he blasted Bass as one other establishment politician who had didn’t stem the town’s crises.
“We’re going to have an enormous lens on the town of Los Angeles. Do we would like it looking prefer it looks now?” Caruso asked. “Do we would like the homeless, the encampments, the crime, the dirt, the graffiti? We’ve got the World Cup coming, and we’re going to place this on the world stage. We’d like to get it cleaned up. ”
Bass was more aggressive than I’ve ever seen before, calling Caruso a liar with unrealistic plans — to handle homelessness or grow the dimensions of the LAPD — that sound good on paper but that she said were unattainable.
“Once you mislead people and say that you just’re going to do these expensive things that you realize good and well you may’t do, that creates the cynicism inside voters,” she said to her opponent. “So although you’ve never been elected to office, unfortunately, you’ve got been displaying a number of the worst tendencies of what they are saying about elected officials.”
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And now, here’s what’s happening across California:
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Cannabis culture abroad. Many hours from Bangkok, down a winding road dotted with ornate picket spirit houses, past fields of drooping tapioca plants and across a bridge over the inky green River Khwae, a white-paneled constructing sits in a clearing. Painted on one side is a graffiti-style mural: Snoop Dogg smoking a joint. If all goes to plan, the rapper from Long Beach won’t be the one connection to California on this patch of wilderness — one among Thailand’s largest legal cannabis farms. The owners are awaiting approval to import seeds from Humboldt Seed Co. to crossbreed Thai and Californian marijuana. Los Angeles Times
Plus: President Biden on Thursday pardoned all individuals convicted on federal charges of straightforward marijuana possession, a move that the White House estimated would affect greater than 6,500 people nationwide. Los Angeles Times
L.A. STORIES
A money infusion in your pockets. The Golden State will send tax refunds to about 23 million Californians starting today to assist them navigate rising costs resulting from inflation. California will spend $9.5 billion as a part of the “Middle Class Tax Refund Estimator” program, with one-time payments starting from $400 to $1,050 for couples who filed jointly on their 2020 state income tax return and $400 to $700 for many who filed individually. Los Angeles Times
Meet the Cardinal Divas. Greater than 3 million views and 104,000 likes streamed in on the video of Princess Lang dancing within the front row on the Coliseum with a newly formed majorette team during USC’s football game against Fresno State. A vivid smile lighted up her face. “The Cardinal Divas of SC are UP NEXT,” the tweet said. Learn more about how the dance group is shaking up Trojan culture. Los Angeles Times
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POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT
What Nancy Pelosi means to San Francisco. “As Pelosi strides confidently toward her 18th reelection, there’s a widespread sense essentially the most powerful and consequential politician San Francisco has ever put forth is nearing the tip of an extended, storied profession. Though she bats away talk of retirement, the prospect of her departure summons mixed feelings in a city where the Democrat has turn into nearly as much of a fixture as Coit Tower or the Golden Gate Bridge,” Times columnist Mark Z. Barabak writes. Los Angeles Times
Statewide snapshot of homelessness. A latest evaluation shows that the variety of unhoused people in California increased during the last three years by at the least 22,500, to 173,800. It’s the primary such statewide snapshot of the homelessness crisis for the reason that start of the pandemic. CalMatters
Duking it out within the Valley. While the L.A. mayoral race has been grabbing attention, Bob Hertzberg and Lindsey Horvath have been battling it out for a seat on the county Board of Supervisors, “upping the rhetoric by criticizing one another’s experience levels and differences.” Los Angeles Every day News
CRIME, COURTS AND POLICING
Members of a Merced family who were abducted have been found dead. A farmworker reported the invention of the bodies on Wednesday evening, Merced County Sheriff Vern Warnke said. Deputies arrived on the scene shortly after, followed by detectives, who determined the stays were those of 8-month-old Aroohi Dheri; her mother, Jasleen Kaur, 27; her father, Jasdeep Singh, 36; and her uncle, Amandeep Singh, 39, who were taken at gunpoint Monday from the family business. Los Angeles Times
Drama in Sutter Creek. On the last minute, officials canceled a highschool football game near Sacramento, leaving parents and players on each teams mystified. In the next days, the district’s superintendent, Torie Gibson, announced that she had placed three staff members on leave and alerted law enforcement of some allegations from a “disturbing” chat thread involving a majority of the football team. She noted that officials are “very limited in what could be shared with the general public.” Jessica Garrison reports that many locally said the chat was titled: “Kill the Blacks.” Los Angeles Times
HEALTH AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Scary stuff. With the Colorado River in crisis and reservoir levels continuing to say no, some California water agencies are planning to significantly reduce the quantity they take from the river starting next 12 months, Times staff author Ian James reports. The goal could be to scale back about 9% of the state’s total water allotment from the river for the following 4 years, through 2026. Los Angeles Times
CALIFORNIA CLTURE
Which state gets to put claim to writer Joan Didion, Recent York or California? A latest exhibition concerning the famed essayist will open Tuesday on the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. “I just thought it was a tremendous place for her. I believe she was a uniquely California person,” the show’s curator said of Didion. The Recent York Times
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CALIFORNIA ALMANAC
Los Angeles: 81 and cloudy. San Diego: 73 and partly cloudy. San Francisco: 69 and partly cloudy. San Jose: 82 and partly cloudy. Fresno: 95 and sunny. Sacramento: 94 and sunny.
AND FINALLY
Today’s California memory is from Douglas Jaap:
In 1989 I used to be vacationing within the Venice Beach area when rollerblading was cool. Wearing my blades, I set off along the beach path toward an area behind Muscle Beach where all of the cool hipsters frolicked showing off their blading skills. As I approached an incline I increased my speed, and to stop I needed to fall over. Embarrassed and dusting myself down, I heard the guy standing next to me remark: “Great entrance, dude.” Only in California, I believed. It was a cool thing to say and makes me smile and consider those hot, sunny days by the beach.
If you’ve got a memory or story concerning the Golden State, share it with us. (Please keep your story to 100 words.)
Please tell us what we will do to make this text more useful to you. Send comments to essentialcalifornia@latimes.com.
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