Hey, everyone from KQED in San Francisco.

This is Political Breakdown.

I'm Lesley McClurg.

I'm in today for Scott Shafer.

And Marisa Lagos.

Today on the Breakdown, the race for Los Angeles Mayor is headed to a runoff between two Democrats and some expect it to be a knife fight.

The candidates, mayor Karen Bass and council member Nithya Raman share many of the same policy goals.

So the battle may be less about ideology and more about potentially Bass's record, maybe Raman's call for change, and basically the arguments each side makes about who should lead the city.

But first, we're gonna talk to KQED Politics, Correspondent Guy Marzorati, about what's been on the plate for governor Gavin Newsom.

Welcome Guy.

- Hey.

- So it's getting a little bit hot between Trump and Newsom.

Not surprising, but it just got a lot hotter this week with a probe.

The DOJ is investigating.

Newsom.

Newsom came out with this news basically.

What are they investigating?

- Well, there's still a lot we don't know about what they're potentially investigating.

You're right, it was a unique move by Newsom to come out and kind of announce this by himself.

And to date, we really only know officially like one side of this, right?

Newsom and his team are talking about what the investigation they feel is going on.

The Department of Justice and the Trump administration have not publicly said anything official about this.

There are multiple outlets reporting that at least one of the things that federal agents might be looking into is the taxes of Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the first partner.

But as far as Newsom and and the governor's office, they've painted this picture of really over the last week, a lot of investigations ramping up, federal agents contacting friends, family of Newsom and his wife.

And specifically they've highlighted their theory that they believe the bank records of Newsom and his wife are being look into.

They, from what they've learned, the governor's office of what people have been asked by federal agents.

They feel like a lot of the questions you would have to know something about credit card records, bank records to be able to inform those questions.

So that's how they're viewing this, this investigation that still we have a lot to learn about From where we stand today.

- How unusual is it for someone who's being investigated to come out and be like, Hey, I'm being investigated.

-Yeah, it, It's very unusual.

I it, but it fits in with I think the way Newsom has approached his relationship with Trump and with conservatives writ large as he's risen to kind of the top of democratic party politics, which is like always have the first foot forward, always kind of punch first and don't be reactive, don't be caught on your back foot.

And you see this really, I think in the way he came out with this investigation portraying himself as being a target of the president.

Politically, there's been nowhere better for Newsom than being Trump's op over the last year, whether that's in the ICE raids in Los Angeles, the Prop 50 campaign, like the, his polls, his kind of perception among voters does best when he's creating this contrast with Trump.

Clearly there's a lot of risks.

If there is a, you know, real investigation and stuff that that's being looked into and stuff that might become unearthed.

There's definitely risks there.

But I think setting that aside to what we know now, things have gone well for Newsom and just kind of putting himself out there and saying, look, Trump is targeting me.

And I'll just add a second piece of the politics here that I think is interesting coming out and saying, you know, Trump is doing this to my wife.

I think there's some politics there for Newsom too.

You think, I think thought back to the 1992 Democratic, you know, nomination process between Bill Clinton and, and Jerry Brown, Jerry Brown spent a lot of time attacking Hillary Clinton and her business dealings.

They finally got on a debate stage together and Bill Clinton said, you should be ashamed of yourself for going after my wife.

Like that.

That was seen as like, oh, that's a good moment for him.

I think there's some of the politics here going on like that for Newsom, He mentioned that he's gonna maybe run for president in 20.

Yeah.

Coming up, which was an interesting move.

It seems like he's trying to use this as an opportunity for his own fame and spread and attention.

How has this gone when Trump has looked into other political opponents?

He's done this on several occasions with other folks.

Yeah, and I think one thing to watch here is Newsom's team believes that at some point there's a grand jury that's has been in panel to be looking through this information either for subpoenas or maybe ultimately for the Trump administration to pursue a potential indictment.

And I think the politics of that is interesting to watch.

I talked to Laurie Levenson, who's a, a former federal prosecutor this week, and she pointed to the Letitia James Case Attorney General of New York.

Trump had had pursued, the DOJ had pursued an indictment with the grand jury.

And what Levenson was saying is that used to be a slam dunk.

You would have federal prosecutors go to grand jury and get the indictment they were looking for.

That didn't happen in that case.

Is that a sign of jurors, you know, people around the country maybe looking at these kind of pursuits of indictments, a little bit more skeptically coming from the DOJ and under Trump, given the fact that it's been one political opponent after the another that's kind of come in the cross hairs.

Is there any evidence that we have that connects potentially either like the, the taxes of Jennifer Siebel Newsom with Dana Williamson, who is the chief of staff who was getting caught up with some fraud allegations?

Do we have any sense that anything's connected or that he might have a dirty record that they can find?

No, I mean, not in terms of, I can't think of the connection there, but it is interesting, I guess Newsom's team's theory of the case is that the Department of Justice and and federal agents first pursued the line of inquiry around Dana Williamson.

And specifically one of the things that Dana Williamson, who was Newsom's former chief of staff, admitted to, was lying to federal agents about passing information around this one investigation of a video game company, Activision Blizzard, that the state was looking into.

They were former clients of Williamson's.

And the way that Newsom's team has it is the, the Trump DOJ first looked to try to get Williamson to give information about Newsom.

And Williamson's own lawyer said that, that they first came and tried to ask for connections to the Governor.

Newsom's team has said, oh, well they hit a dead end there.

That's why they've moved on to these other issues.

We'll see if that's the case, if they, you know, if that's the kind of path they choose, if they're, if this is something more of a fishing expedition or if separate from Activision Blizzard, separate from Williamson, there are other real things that the DOJ is investigating tied to either Newsom and or his wife.

- Gotcha.

Also on Newsom's plate this week is the billionaire tax it qualified for the November ballot.

Remind us exactly what it is and how it would work.

- Yeah, so this would be a one time 5% tax on, on the wealth of billionaires in California.

It stirred up, I would say, more conversation and controversy than almost any measure I can think of before it even made it to the ballot.

And in California, you have to remember, even if something qualifies, it can still come off the ballot.

So we now have one more week until the ballot is set, which is one more week for potential negotiations to maybe get this off the ballot.

There's one healthcare union that's pushing this wealth tax.

There's other unions that are opposing it.

There's a lot of high profile Democrats starting with Newsom that are opposing it.

And it's also just one of a few very high profile tax measures that are making their way towards the November ballot.

You not only have the Billionaire tax, you also have measures that were introduced specifically to counter the Billionaire tax.

You have a tax increase of California's current income taxes going towards the ballot.

You have the anti-tax measure pushed by business groups.

It almost feels like having all these planes in the air might make it easier to land one compromise, given that there's so many different leverage points that are out there.

But that's gonna be the challenge, right?

For Newsom in this next week, he doesn't want the billionaires tax on the ballot.

Can he find a way with these different leverage points to land some kind of deal?

Or are we gearing up towards what would be the most expensive piece of what would likely be the most expensive tax measure campaigns we've ever seen in California?

- And just to be clear, why does he oppose it?

- He feels like this for a few reasons, but I think one that Democrats have, have kind of agreed on is they don't like this setup of where the money would go.

This money would go by and large towards healthcare to the exclusion of other state priorities, namely education.

There's also fears, oh, well, is this gonna get caught up in litigation?

Has it already been damaging to push people out of California?

The tax is retroactive, so there's no, like looking forward, it, it would, if you lived here in the beginning of the year, the tax would apply to you.

But I still think there is some sentiment that this is anti-business or kind of a deterrent to tech growth in the state.

And Newsom's, you know, been pretty vocally against it.

- The legislature also passed on Monday, passed a budget.

There's still some negotiating that can happen until the end of the month.

What are the issues that are still on the table between the legislatures and Governor Newsom?

- Well, they passed it so they could get paid, - Right.

And there's that June 15th deadline.

They had to pass a a budget.

This is not the final budget, this is not the final spending plan.

This is, they passed their framework and then now the real negotiations begin.

And to a large extent, you see the legislature pushing back against some of Newsom's healthcare cuts.

Newsom really wanted to land a balanced budget for this year.

And the next focused around cuts to Medi-Cal.

I think a lot of folks in the legislature are looking at the budget outlook and saying, Hey, if this anthropic IPO, if this Open AI IPO turn out the way we think it is, we may not have a real budget problem next year.

So why are we going ahead and committing ourselves to these kind of cuts?

So, you know, putting in asset limits for seniors on Medi-Cal to charging more premiums for undocumented residents on Medi-Cal.

Why are we going ahead with these kind of steps if we might just be, you know, six months away from a windfall - To be determined.

Thank you so much, Guy.

- Yeah, my pleasure.

- We're gonna turn now to the Los Angeles Mayor's race.

The candidates who won the primary are Mayor Karen Bass and council member Nithya Raman.

They are both Democrats, so it's gonna be really interesting to see how they differentiate from each other.

They're both quite progressive.

We are joined by Mike Bonin.

He is a former Los Angeles City council member who now leads the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at California State University in Los Angeles.

Welcome, Mike.

- Glad to be here.

Thanks.

- So again, we've got Karen Bass, who is the mayor of LA right now against the city council member Nithya Raman.

What message do you think the city sent the electorate is sending by the primary results?

The fact that we have two Democrats out front and these two Democrats?

- Well, I think the electorate was sending somewhat of mixed messages.

I think they were sending a message of, of dissatisfaction with the mayor, right?

I mean, two thirds of the electorate, even though she came in first two thirds of the electorate voted for somebody else.

But they're also saying that they want somebody who understands government, right?

The two people that made it into the runoff are, are people who are in office and, and who understand government.

So they, they wanted a different direction, but they didn't want to go as far as, you know, our notorious reality TV star candidate Spencer Pratt.

- So you just mentioned though, this is not good results though, for Karen Bass.

Two thirds of the electorate did not vote for her.

She's an incumbent.

How unusual is that and and what does that mean, do you think, going forward?

- That's, it's really unusual.

I mean, nobody has ever left the office of mayor of Los Angeles more popular than when they went in, right?

Everybody leaves under a cloud of public dissatisfaction.

But that usually happens in year six.

With Mayor Bass, it happened in, in year three, and it really happened in January of, of year three, right around the fires.

It's when her polling went from pretty high to to, to pretty low.

And she really hasn't recovered from that from, in any substantial way.

And voters have sort of used her as sort of a proxy for their dissatisfaction with a number of issues.

And, you know, she's, she's got an uphill fight, - We should say there, that she was outta the country right.

For that, for the beginning of the fire.

And that's why that didn't go well.

- That's, that's, that was the initial part, right?

She was outta the country when the fires hit.

She was traveling in Africa for a visit that she was sent on by, by President Biden.

And, but when she came back, there was a lot of criticism about how the city handled the fires.

There was criticism from the then fire chief who she later fired saying that the mayor and the council had let them down by not funding them well enough.

And then there's frustrations from the people who live in Pacific Palisades, which is in the city, as opposed to Altadena the other fire zone, which is not in the city feeling that the recovery and the rebuild is just not going fast enough.

- We should say that too, Spencer Pratt, who didn't end up making it, he lost his house in the fire and made that a big part of his campaign against Bass.

How bad do you think that hurt her?

- Oh, I think it, it, well, it, it hurt her, but she was also trying to help him, right?

He, he was the candidate she wanted in the runoff because in the runoff against Spencer Pratt, while she'd still get hit by the fires, it would've been an easy race to frame.

It would've been, you know, a a a seasoned democratic elected official in a heavily democratic city against somebody who is, you know, MAGA coded, MAGA supported, you know, with a tacit endorsement from Donald Trump.

And, and that's a race I think she felt confident would've played to her strengths.

She could have ran a, a, a partisan campaign in a non, for a non-partisan office and, and prevailed.

- Let's turn then to Nithya Raman.

So you were on the council member with her between 2020 and 2022.

What do you think of her strengths and what do you think, what kind of campaign do you think she's gonna run?

- Well, I've, I've, I've known Karen Bass for about 30 years, and I, I've known Nithya for about six years now.

And I've worked with Nithya and with Karen in different capacities, and both of them are very smart, principled, elected officials.

And so they, they both bring that to the race.

My hope would be that we would have a lofty conversation about housing policy.

I don't think we're gonna have anything near that.

I think it's gonna be a nasty slug fest.

What what Nithya brings is she brings a strong base among renters.

She has been the, the, the chief advocate for renters winning huge new policies to protect them from eviction.

And she brings a base of, of progressives of, of a younger generation of progressives.

And she's a real policy wonk.

I mean, she, she, she knows how to get, get, sort of, enter up to her elbows in a policy and try to come up with something that, that fixes a problem.

- We've seen her, and correct me if I'm wrong, but tend a little bit or move a little bit to more conservative, you know, she came out swinging in 2020 with defund the police, her stances on policing seem to be becoming more conservative, her stance around homelessness as well.

Do you think that's an ideological switch internally or do you think that's for politics and for votes?

- I, I, I, I think it, it is, it, it's a little bit of a, of a sort of a, a reality check that, that most elected officials get when they, they, they, they campaign in, in, in poetry and then they govern in, in, in prose.

And the sort of, you know, the window of possibility of what you can do in office is smaller than you imagined from the outside.

And so you, you try to make sort of compromises and you try to make deals to get things done.

What's interesting though, is Mayor Bass is subject of, of, of the same critique, right?

Both of them are, are, are progressives of different generations from different backgrounds with, with sort of different priorities.

But both of them have faced criticism for moving to the center once they've been in office.

Mayor Bass is actually, you know, she, she was trying to avoid having a reelection against her first campaign opponent, billionaire Rick Caruso.

And so she spent a lot of time in, in, in her first four years, you know, moderating and trying to head that off.

And it, ironically, it opened up a space on the left for Raman to get in and, and challenge her from the left.

But there's people on our farther left here in Los Angeles who think that both of them are too moderate.

- You said that you're expecting a slug fest Yeah.

Between these two candidates, which is interesting considering that they were allies, right?

Bass even endorsed Nithya's reelection, Bass helped Raman during a tough reelection in 2024.

So what happened to this alliance?

- Yeah, I mean, and, and Ramen supported her when she ran for mayor against Rick Caruso.

It, I I'm always surprised when people are surprised when an elected official runs against another elected official with sort of, you know what they do, right?

It's like you, you, you can't be surprised that that one quarterback is, is playing against another quarterback on, on, on a Sunday.

It's just, it's the nature of things.

And friends run against friends all the time.

This was a case where the mayor definitely had an opening on her left and she was coming up to the filing deadline and it looked like she wasn't gonna have a very serious challenge.

Everybody was underestimating Spencer Pratt at the time, and Raman made a decision to, to get in.

And she seems to have done it very, very quickly.

I mean, most of her campaign team was unaware.

I mean, it was really sort of a 48 hour decision.

And that's sort of uncharacteristic of, of, of her, she's actually a very cautious, studious decision maker usually.

- How do you think these two candidates are gonna differentiate between each other given that they are similar?

- Yeah, I mean you're, you're essentially what we essentially have now is the equivalent of a democratic primary for a non-partisan office.

And Los Angeles is about 70% democratic.

So you know that, that, that for most of the population, but it creates a, a dynamic where small differences are going to be magnified and people are going to make what is not a particularly significant difference on issues seem like a a a matter of life and death.

And it's inevitably gonna get into sort of a, a personality slug fest, right?

What's been interesting is that Bass, as soon as Raman made it into the runoff, started hitting Raman for not being supportive enough of police hiring and for not being aggressive enough about cracking down on homeless encampments near schools and parks.

So against Pratt, she would've run as sort of the, the liberal against the MAGA in this race.

She seems to be, you know, positioning herself as the, the sort of center right candidate against the, the progressive candidate.

And that's confusing to a lot of people because we've all known her for 30, 40 years as a progressive.

Whereas Raman, Raman struggle in, in the runoff is going to be, this is a struggle for both of them is articulating a vision for the city, right?

We can have a slug fest and it's not going to animate the voters.

People want to hear what you want to do for the city, how you gonna make the city better?

And in the primary Raman was really in the weeds on issues.

She was talking about, you know, fine points of policy and, and, and hiring.

And in her 2020 campaign, which was sort of an insurgency, unseating an incumbent.

When she got elected, she was, you know, she was our AOC or she was our Zohran Mamdani of, of, of that era.

And she really had a vision for the city.

This, this race, if it's done right by the voters, will be two competing visions for the city.

But right now it looks like it's gonna be a, you know, a a a name calling, finger pointing thing.

- We were just speaking there about Nithya Raman and Mayor Karen Bass.

- I wanna turn now to the candidate that didn't make it to the final Spencer Pratt.

This is a reality TV personality star, leaned heavily more conservative.

What was his campaign trying to capture and what does it reveal about the mood of LA voters, how it all went down?

Well, Pratt did an amazing job crafting a narrative and steering the conversation in the runoff.

People really underestimated how his ability, his background in reality television would give him a, a a a political skillset.

And, you know, he talked about being the victim of a fire and how the city had failed him.

He lost his home, but he managed to connect that to the, the fears, the frustrations and disappointments of lots of other people who feel like the city has failed them, they don't have enough police, or the homelessness isn't being solved quickly enough, or that, you know, there's a zoning decision in the neighborhood they don't like, or what whatever issue somebody may have.

He managed to sort of universalize a connection and he really gave voice to a, a very angry, frustrated segment of the electorate that's smaller than it is nationally, but it was a similar dynamic that, that, that, that Trump did.

And what was interesting is that, you know, when Raman got into the race against Bass, she was hoping to be the anti-establishment candidate, right?

She was on the city council, but you Bass is all the institutional support labor, the business community, all the political endorsements.

And you, you couldn't out- outsider Spencer Pratt.

And so, you know, now her struggle is to try to re regain that mantle of outsider contrary to Bass because she couldn't claim it when she had Spencer Pratt in the race.

- Where do you think that anti-establishment vote is gonna go?

That that anti-establishment vote is gonna have a really hard time.

The anti-establishment vote will, some of it will stay home, I think.

Some of it will go for Raman because she's more of an outsider and you know, she's starting to say, you know, the establishment is, is with the mayor, all the unions, the business community, every political endorsement, I answer to the people, she answers to the establishment.

So that's what, what, what she's gonna be trying to stress.

But the, the, the sort of MAGA element of it that, that was with Pratt, because of his conservative views, they're gonna have a really hard time because they've disliked the mayor, but they really do not like the idea of a candidate backed by the Democratic socialists of America getting elected.

That that's just not something they can wrap their heads around.

So it it, it's a tough one for them.

- So there might be some folks staying at home, like you said, - Maybe some folks staying at home.

I imagine a lot of folks will write Pratt in in November as well.

- Got it.

So you've said that Raman was really out meeting with voters.

She was doing a lot of small events, you know, kind of canvassing on the ground, whereas Pratt was really loud on social media and really trying to gather, gather a lot of media attention, obviously, where he's probably a lot more comfortable.

How valuable do you think that more traditional shoe leather kind of campaigning is, and do you expect her to follow that going forward?

- Oh, I expect she will follow that.

I mean, I think, I think it, Los Angeles politics has been in a, in a large way, reshaped by the, the campaign that Nithya Raman won in 2020.

Un seeding an incumbent.

You, he had mail, he had money, he had endorsements, she did, you know, grassroots door knocking.

And she explained to people why the city matters to them and why they should care.

And she got a lot of new people to vote.

And that's sort of how she campaigns.

So you'll have two different ground operations.

These will both be two candidates with ground operations.

The mayor has a lot of grassroots support in, in, in certain communities, particularly in the Black community.

And she will have labor as ground forces getting voters out to the polls.

But Raman has sort of a, you know, a homegrown network of folks who, who don't live and breathe politics, who volunteer for her campaign.

So it'll be an interesting dynamic 'cause it'll, it'll matter who gets out the vote and they both have an ability to do it.

- What do you think Nithya Raman's gonna be saying to in those meetings?

What do you think she's gonna be going on?

What's her kind of straightest path to victory?

- So her, her, her message is, this city is broken, and I understand your frustrations.

I I will bring a greater sense of urgency to the city's problems than the current administration.

That'll be her message.

The, the, the, the, the incu there, the, the existing mayor, Bass, is going to say, we have made significant progress.

It has been slow going, but it takes a long time to solve these problems.

Stick with me.

- What do you think the attacks are gonna look like?

Starting with Nithya Raman, what do you think she's gonna attack Bass on?

- She is gonna be attacking Bass for mainly her, her main line of attack has been a huge raise that the mayor pushed for the police union, members of the police union a couple years ago.

Raman claims that it essentially bankrupted the city and has put the city in dire fiscal straits.

And it's part of the reason that streetlights don't get fixed and streets don't get repaved.

And the city is in such a, a, a state of disrepair.

And the mayor is gonna paint Raman as she claims, you know, effectual ineffective, doesn't get along with people and too far to the left on a few issues.

- Nithya Raman has also framed Bass as kind of being the pay to play politics, kind of a status quo that voters rejected.

Do you think that argument has resonated?

- I I think it's too soon to tell if it's, if it's resonated right?

I mean, it, it's, it's in a primary where we have multiple candidates, it's easy for people to, to, to vote against the mayor when they're dissatisfied with the mayor, they have multiple choice.

In a runoff, it's a very binary decision.

So, you know, people will often go, a lot of folks vote for who they're enthusiastic about and others vote for the lesser of two evils.

And there may be some people who don't particularly like the job Bass has done, but will find her to be a safer bet than, than than Raman.

And then there's others who just can't abide another four years of the existing mayor.

And they're gonna, they're, they're gonna go with Nithya.

- Well, we often know that people vote for whoever is more likable.

Do you have a sense of which candidate is going to be, resonate more with voters in terms of just like, this is the person I wanna have a beer with?

- It that, that's a very good question.

They are both very likable, but in, in different ways, right?

Bass has been like a community organizer for a very, very long time.

She formed a multiracial organization.

She's comfortable in all sorts of, of, of segments of the city, but she's not a particularly dynamic personality.

She's very, you know, temperate and, and, and very calm.

She doesn't sort of light up a room most of the time.

Raman doesn't sort of light up a room the same way, but she's capable of inspiring a crowd a little bit more.

And she is a very, very good one-on-one with people.

So I don't know that either one of them is let's go out and have a beer.

But they might be, we'll go out and have a glass of wine with either one of them.

I don't know that they're, they're, they're, they're sort of a beer crowd.

- Fair enough, fair enough.

Maybe a cup of coffee.

Right?

That is Mike Bonin.

Mike, thank you so much.

- My pleasure.

- A note before we wrap, we will not have a show tomorrow in honor of Juneteenth, but we will be back next Tuesday with Marisa Lagos.

That's a wrap for Thursday, June 18th.

Political Breakdown is a production of KQED.

Our engineer today is Christopher Beale.

Our producer is Izzy Bloom.

Thank you both.

Our video team is Alex Tran, Jim McKee, Matt Morales, Kate Lowpensky, and Vivian Morales.

I'm Lesley McClurg.

See you next time.