On Saturday, June 20 of this year, the Los Angeles Mayoral election will take place. It is an open ballot election, which means that any candidate can run, so there is no primary election beforehand. If no candidate wins more than half of the vote, a runoff between the top two candidates will take place on Tuesday, Nov. 3. As of April 17, there are 14 candidates in the race, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The race starts amid feelings of dissatisfaction with the current mayor, Karen Bass, according to the Associated Press, as many citizens are upset with Bass’s handling of the Los Angeles fires, especially given that she was on a trip to Ghana when the fires broke out across the city. Other key issues in the race are homelessness and the city’s high cost of living. Candidates disagree over how to best manage both of these issues.
Current frontrunners in the race include incumbent Karen Bass; LA City Councilmember Nithya Raman; community organizer and Presbyterian pastor Rae Huang; entrepreneur and philanthropist Adam Miller; and reality TV star Spencer Pratt, according to the LA Public Press.
Some students in the Poly community have expressed appreciation of Bass’s handling of the fires.
Senior Lily Rose-Garcia shared, “I think they were handled pretty well because they had firefighters from Mexico come in.”
Junior Matilda Labrucherie said, “I don’t know if it’s the mayor’s job, but there was a bunch of funding that was taken away from the fire fighters right before the fires, so in terms of that, I think that was handled poorly.”
As for the cost of living, some Poly students seem to believe it’s beyond the control of the mayor.
“It’s pretty terrible, but I don’t think that can be attributed to the actions of the mayor. I feel like that’s higher up in the administration,” Labrucherie argued.
Just as the fires and other local issues impact the Poly, the result of the election will shape our community by determining how those problems are dealt with, even though Poly is located in Pasadena, which has its own mayor and city council.
Upper School History Teacher Avi McClelland-Cohen explained, “Local politics is always really important to pay attention to. Our daily lives are much more impacted by policy crafted at the city level than anything at the state or federal level.”