When refusing to RSVP is ruthless campaign strategy.

Good morning, it’s Thursday, April 2 and you can expect the kind of not-too hot, perfectly pleasant weather that makes anything feel possible.

In today’s newsletter, the Supreme Court hears Trump’s birthright citizenship case and an inside look at a Mar Vista restaurant saga. But first, making sense of a campaign finance fracas.

Four years ago, Kenneth Mejia burst into L.A. City Hall with an insurgent campaign for city controller that steamrolled his well-funded, establishment opponent and put klieg lights on the oft-ignored role. Mejia put up billboards calling out the city’s outsize spending on policing, and galvanized grassroots support on social media. 

Now, the young leftist upstart is the incumbent, and Mejia is fending off a reelection challenge from real estate executive Zach Sokoloff, a well-financed political newcomer with deep establishment ties. Mejia has been a controversial figure at City Hall, and Sokoloff has argued that he would work more collaboratively and audit the city more effectively.

But the campaign to be L.A.’s next paymaster and auditor has grown combative in recent days. The controversy stems from the relatively arcane provisions governing the city’s matching funds program for candidates, and raises questions about, of all things, the very nature of an RSVP.

Let’s back up for a moment. Nearly a decade ago, the city of L.A. beefed up its program for matching funds — a system that allows candidates who meet certain criteria to collect public money for their campaigns. Candidates can get $6 for every $1 they raise from city residents, up to a cap.

Proponents say the program levels the playing field and limits the influence of private money in politics. Opponents argue taxpayer money shouldn’t fund campaigns, especially when the city’s finances are in peril. Nonetheless, the program exists and is doling out cash.

Mejia applied for matching funds. Sokoloff — who has outraised Mejia roughly 5-to-1 — did not. 

City rules require candidates to participate in a debate (or, if their opponents decline to debate, a town hall) to get that matching cash. 

But Sokoloff ignored multiple debate invitations. Mejia campaign manager Jane Nguyen said she suspected Sokoloff was deliberately trying to block them from accessing matching funds by keeping them stuck in debate limbo. 

Yes, said Sokoloff campaign consultant Rick Taylor, that was exactly the point. 

The rules required a written refusal; by ghosting debate invites, Sokoloff could theoretically block his rival’s campaign from accessing hundreds of thousands of dollars. (The money would be better spent on city services, Sokoloff’s campaign argues.)

And then last week, Sokoloff and his campaign alleged the city did them dirty by secretly changing the rules of the matching funds program less than three months before the primary, so that ghosting an invitation now counts as a “no” RSVP.

Documents provided by Sokoloff’s campaign show the rules did change, albeit minutely: the City of Los Angeles Candidate Guide — an 84-page Ethics Commission pamphlet — originally required a written debate refusal to advance to a town hall and receive funds.

The pamphlet now adds: “or failed to respond to a reasonable invitation to debate.” It’s unclear when the new language was added. 

The City Ethics Commission declined to comment. 

The fact that the City Ethics Commission seemingly tweaked the rules “in the middle of the game” to close the loophole is “the most outrageous thing I’ve ever seen in my career,” said Taylor, a decades-long veteran of L.A. politics.

Nguyen, Mejia’s campaign manager, found the Sokoloff campaign’s accusations of city malfeasance to be equally outrageous. 

“It’s very telling about his approach to this,” Nguyen said. “This guy has all of the money in the world. He has donations from so many billionaires. And he’s trying to block a grassroots candidate who clearly doesn’t have as many wealthy donors from unlocking matching funds.”

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President Trump’s war on birthright citizenship appeared to meet a relatively skeptical reception in the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday, even with Trump in the public gallery. (The norm-shattering president chose to attend oral arguments at the High Court, making him the only sitting president known to do so.)

At issue is whether the president can restrict birthright citizenship to exclude the children of temporary visitors or unauthorized immigrants. But court-watchers at the major papers deemed the justices unlikely to side with the president, based on their comments Wednesday. 

Also in attendance Wednesday: John Eastman, the former Orange County law school dean and Claremont Institute senior fellow who’s been integral to promoting once-fringe notions about the limits of the 14th Amendment, which defines national citizenship. 

When it opened in March of last year, Beethoven Market — a stylish Cal-Ital restaurant on a quiet residential corner in Mar Vista — was celebrated as the kind of walkable neighborhood restaurant Los Angeles needed.

A year later, the city has put the restaurant’s permission to sell liquor on hold, the dining room’s centerpiece bar is half empty, and the bartenders and many other staff members have quit to find other jobs.

“It was a joy box,” said owner Jeremy Adler, the restaurant's owner. “I want that feeling again. I miss it so much.”

The neighborhood, meanwhile, remains bitterly divided about what happened — a rift that once again exposes how Los Angeles’ bureaucracy can confound business owners and residents alike. The saga of Beethoven Market reveals how a flight of new business-friendly regulations that seemed like solid regulatory ground were actually a liquefaction zone.  And it shows how the city often struggles to balance its larger policy goals with the needs of small groups of property owners. Meghan McCarron has the story in our latest L.A. Material exclusive.

AN L.A. STRIP MALL FIGHTS BACK: A meat market owner sued Dr. Oz for defamation after he pointed to her sign in a viral video about hospice fraud.

ALL THINGS IN FLUX: A Buddhist meditation hall at a remote Central California Zen center near Big Sur burned down as practitioners were nearing the end of “a sequestered, three-month meditation program in which they had been contemplating the impermanence of existence,” AP Religion writer Deepa Bharath reports. 

WHEN THE GOVERNOR CALLS YOU GAY (DEROGATORY): California Governor and nascent social media edgelord Gavin Newsom has leaned into a new tactic online as of late: His press office is needling critics by suggesting they are gay or effeminate. Some allies have condemned the posts as homophobic. But Newsom’s team argues that the posts were actually written by gay staffers, and are meant to bait the right by “mocking their hypocrisy.”

CALIFORNIA GIRL: Figure-skating sensation Alysa Liu filled out the state tourism board’s questionnaire, including her favorite “Golden State splurge” (Universal Studios Hollywood), her favorite shopping spree destination (Haight Street in San Francisco) and the biggest California misconception (that everyone surfs — she’s “never surfed in my life”). 

THE TEHACHAPI HERITAGE GRAIN RENAISSANCE: The Angel unpacks how a group of Kern County farmers turned California-grown grains into a cause célèbre of dozens of L.A.’s best bakers, pastry chefs, brewers and distillers.

GOOD AS HELL: The singer Lizzo reported for  jury duty at the federal courthouse in downtown L.A., where she posted a fit check filmed in a courtroom bathroom.

For today’s peek inside our subscriber-only Discord server, a radiant freeway moment from @hyde in #pics-and-video:

AND FINALLY… A poem to pair with your morning coffee: “How Everything Was in the End Resolved in California” by Charles Foster.

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