The truth about mayoral power in L.A.

Good morning, it’s Monday, September 21 and you can expect downright balmy weather in the mid 70s. 

Years ago, when I started as a beat reporter in the L.A. Times’ City Hall bureau, I spent a good portion of my free time reading my way through the paper’s City Hall archives. 

I had already covered Los Angeles local government on and off as a general assignment reporter for half a decade, but I was obsessed then by how much I didn’t know.

L.A. City Hall is a place where the publicly available facts seldom reveal what the hell is actually going on, and where what you see unfolding in various meetings and committees is only the tip of the iceberg. The real drama is below the waterline, often dictated by decisions, alliances and enmity forged years earlier. 

So I went spelunking through the archives, usually while eating my lunch on the 27th-story observation deck. The goal was to learn the history, but also to understand  (and maybe steal from) how my predecessors had done the job. Digging through the decades, I found myself particularly captivated by the work of Jim Newton — a journalist who had long since left the paper, but who’d covered the LAPD and Richard Riordan’s mayoral administration in the 1990s. Jim had a knack for reporting the news while boiling down the essence of things and unearthing the subterranean forces at play. 

I was thrilled when Jim — an esteemed journalist and author who  founded and edits Blueprint, a UCLA-based public affairs magazine — agreed to write about the mayoral race for us. His piece is about the election, but in typical Jim Newton fashion, it’s really about how L.A. works — or doesn’t.

The mayoral race has been uglier and meaner than many people expected, but it’s also had a fascinating running thread: the question of mayoral power, and how much authority L.A.’s mayor truly holds.  

The weak-mayor conventional wisdom gets important parts of the story wrong, Jim argues. (He also reveals that it’s long driven one particular former mayor nuts.)

Jim’s new piece for L.A. Material examines how much power the L.A. mayor actually has, how Mayor Karen Bass has wielded the office’s authority, and how Councilmember Nithya Raman might use it if she were to win.

MONDAY: Today is Yom Kippur, which means you have mere hours left to atone for the sins of 5786. And LADOT parking restrictions will be relaxed in certain swaths of the city. Also, it’s a no-school day for LAUSD. 

TUESDAY: The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opens to the public. Here’s our own Pablo Goldstein’s video tour and the L.A. Times’ guide to 11 “must-see” things.

Beyond L.A., world leaders are descending on New York for the U.N. General Assembly, with the centerpiece event beginning Tuesday. Major protests are expected when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives in the city later in the week. 

THURSDAY: It’s the final day of the WNBA regular season, with the Los Angeles Sparks hosting the Golden State Valkyries at Crypto.com Arena. 

The Spanish-language book fair LéaLA also opens Thursday at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes downtown.  

FRIDAY: Attention Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members… Friday is the deadline to sponsor new candidates for Academy membership before the annual membership review in the spring. (And a reminder that you don’t need to sponsor your Oscar-nominated friends — they are automatically considered.) 

SATURDAY & SUNDAY: It’s a big weekend at the Watts Towers, with the annual Day of the Drum Festival on Saturday and the Simon Rodia Watts Towers Jazz Festival on Sunday. 

And “Home of the Future, 1925–1985: Designing Domestic Utopias” and “The Kitchen and Its Discontents” — two new exhibitions exploring design in modern domestic life — open Sunday at LACMA’s Resnick Pavilion.

Sunday is also the final scheduled day of Major League Baseball’s regular season.

AI ‘KILL SWITCH’? Amid a broader moment of reckoning about the possibly imminent dangers of artificial intelligence, Gov. Gavin Newsom made headlines Friday when he issued an executive order on AI safety. One thing under consideration: requiring companies to develop a so-called kill switch for certain AI models. 

A FLURRY OF NEW LAWS: Newsom also signed a number of high-profile bills in recent days — including a package of election-security legislation, the state’s first standalone post-production tax incentive, and bills that will allow community colleges to grant more bachelor’s degrees. He also approved a budget trailer bill with a last-minute provision that effectively targets a controversial street safety project on Forest Lawn Drive near Griffith Park.

SPOTTED ON PCH! And that’s not all Newsom did this weekend: He also spent Friday night dining at Nobu Malibu alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Robert De Niro, per TMZ. 

DREAM JOB ALERT: The City of Los Angeles is accepting applications for a new curator for the Griffith Observatory, but you’ll need a Ph.D in astronomy, physics or planetary science.

RAMAN VS. BASS: The L.A. Times dropped big Q&As with both mayoral candidates this Sunday, complete with magazine-style portraits from their star photographer Christina House. Mayor Karen Bass said her biggest mistake in her office was being out of the country during the Palisades fire, and took more swipes at her ex-Fire Chief Kristin Crowley. Councilmember Nithya Raman told the Times her biggest fumble was how she handled Measure ULA reform, and tussled with the reporter about DSA co-governance. 

THE LEIMERT PARK RUN CLUB DRAMA: Gustavo Arellano has a nuanced column looking at the online firestorm that erupted earlier this month when a predominantly Latino running club planned a Sunday “takeover” of Leimert Park — and the broader racial tensions at play.

For today’s peek inside our member-only forum, @BoneDidion has a somewhat upsetting grocery store dispatch in the #weather-and-climate channel:

AND FINALLY… A poem to pair with your morning coffee: A poem to pair with your morning coffee: “Ne’ilah” by Marge Piercy.