Mike Madrid on the Establishment vs. Populist Throwdown in the LA Mayor’s Race

[00:00:10] Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Blue City Blues, a podcast featuring smart guests talking about the problems facing blue cities and how to fix them. And those guests tend to be skeptical of political orthodoxies. I'm David Hyde with Sandeep Kaushik and Sandeep today I woke up with this earworm in my head, that song Los Angeles by the band X. I don't know if you remember the band X from back in the day, back in our youth.

[00:00:35] Back in the day, I saw X like two years ago in a summer concert series at Marymoor Park here and outside of Seattle. Wow. You know, I mean, I'm an old man in my lawn chair, like kind of, you know, with my knees too quick to get up, but they still rock, man. I am a big X fan, right? I mean, I will say this, that that first record, which came out in the early 80s when I was in high school and Los Angeles, right? The record.

[00:01:03] Um, uh, I did not know how good a song, the door song soul kitchen was until I heard X's sort of amphetamine fueled version of that song. And I still like speak in secret alphabets, David, man, uh, learn to forget. Right. So we, we lived in Portland. I drove up to bumper shoot with my girlfriend in 1985 because her brother was this cool dude who like wrote for the rocket. He had some other job, but he had all these like 45s.

[00:01:32] The old Seattle music paper, the rocket. Yeah. And we slept on his floor and went to bumper shoot, which, which was pretty much empty and, uh, including X. And the reason I bring it up, of course, is that we're going to be talking about Los Angeles with political consultant, Mike Madrid, an expert on California and national politics and Latino voting trends. He's the author of the Latino century, also well known as an anti-Trump Republican who co-founded the Lincoln project. Mike Madrid. Thanks so much for joining us.

[00:01:59] Fellas. It's great to be with you, man. Love that. That's probably one of the better introductions I've ever had on a podcast. This is going to be a lot of fun. We're kind of blown away by your resume, Mike. I mean, you're, you're, you know, uh, uh, fixture in the sort of California, you know, political scene and, um, active on, on, uh, in any number of forums, but certainly on social media, which is where I first sort of sort of picked up on your stuff. But then, um, the book is, is, is, is, is amazing.

[00:02:29] So anyway, there's a lot to talk about, but. And you were just telling us you were debating at the Oxford union. So. Yeah. I just got back from London. There you go. Jet setting. 24 hours ago or whatever. Um, yeah. I mean, like I, I, I try to keep it interesting, keep a lot of things, you know, by the way, I don't know if you guys know this or not, but for about 15 years of my early career, I was the public affairs director for the league of California cities.

[00:02:51] And cities are very deeply entrenched in my political DNA, just the whole concept of local government and what governance has been and city planning and why cities do what they do. And I'm also halfway through a book that kind of explores four generations of Madrid, Latino men in Los Angeles and what that has meant. Oh, wow. And so LA is a real fascinating place, uh, as it is for, for a lot of thinkers over the years, but I'm looking forward to the conversation today. So, yeah, let's get into it, man. Um, uh, LA mayor's race.

[00:03:21] We've been fascinated with this race since it seemed like kind of a sleepy race at the beginning until right before filing Nithya Raman, an LA council member, an ally of the incumbent mayor, Karen Bass, who had just two weeks previously endorsed her, suddenly kind of shocked the entire LA and California establishment by kind of at the last minute jumping into the race against, um, against Bass.

[00:03:48] And, you know, we had Melanie Mason, who's the California bureau chief for Politico on to kind of just talk about the, the, the soap opera and the politics of ramen getting in. And this is before then, since then there was this kind of, at least on social media, boom lit around Spencer Pratt, right?

[00:04:07] The reality TV star Republican who, um, you know, got in there and just, uh, after the Palisades fire had burned down his own home and was just harshly critical of Bass and LA governance and homelessness and camp and crime, all of that stuff. And then he had this kind of just huge wave of attention that got paid to him and his campaign. And it just seems like a fascinating race. And so, so Mike, let's just start off.

[00:04:33] Like, where do you, as we're taping this on Sunday, it seems to me like, even though it's not a done deal yet, it seems pretty clear that Bass, the incumbent is coming through. And ramen, even though she's right now in third place is going to end up in second place in this race. But how do you, how do you see where things stand right now in the, in the, in the mayor's right? Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I mean, let me kind of set the stage a little bit at the 30,000 foot level, a little bit, maybe more than, than you did very well.

[00:05:03] You, Karen Bass finds herself as a very unpopular incumbent. LA has got a lot of problems. I mean, we'll explore that the direction, the right direction, wrong track is really, really upside down for her. And it has been for some time. And the fires in the Palisades, a little over a year ago now, really brought to home, not just the fact that this could happen, but the incompetence in terms of handling it afterwards.

[00:05:25] And it really, it really illustrated sort of a California problem and a blue city problem, which is we've so layered so many levels of bureaucracy and process and committees and permitting. And you can't get back to normalcy even, let alone build and go forward and create, which is what cities often are for us. But there was just a lot of overwhelming level of frustration.

[00:05:51] Now, most of this frustration was concentrated on the West Side, as we call it, very wealthy area of Pacific Palisades. But let's keep in mind, that wasn't the only community that burned down. That's the one that gets the lion's share of the attention because these were rich, white, second, third homeowning people who had, you know, that California dream.

[00:06:09] But we also saw, you know, the burning down of black and brown homes in, you know, at the foothills area as well that were separate from the Palisades. And so it brought up a lot of these questions about California and California's burning and rebuilding and what we do and who government serves and doesn't serve.

[00:06:32] And that's where you see the emergence of sort of this Spencer Pratt character, this, you know, a reality TV star known for being kind of a pain in the ass and leans into this moment where there's this frustration with Hollywood kind of imploding, the industry of Hollywood going away, his house burning down, folks of means who can't even make it work in Los Angeles anymore.

[00:06:57] And he really, I think, captures the zeitgeist of the moment, certainly on the West side of this real frustration of what Los Angeles is and it's become. And Bass has just had this extraordinarily difficult year, which brings on a challenge from the right and the left. For the most part, yes. Particularly unpopular.

[00:07:20] And to me, I was reminded really closely of 1993 for a couple of reasons. The first is, if you remember 1993, and I think the three of us probably do. I was a young political consultant at the time doing my first races. You know, Bill Clinton is the president and there's a sort of backlash against incumbency that brews not just in Los Angeles, but in New York.

[00:07:45] And both New York and Los Angeles elect Republican, moderate Republican mayors, Giuliani and Richard Reardon. Look at New York last year. They go with a Democratic socialist. There's an anti-incumbent. They're upset with Eric Adams. They're pissed off at Cuomo. The Democratic establishment has never been, you know, as unpopular since 1993. But rather than going for a moderate Republican, they go with a Democratic socialist named Zoran Mamdani. Los Angeles is poised to do the exact same thing.

[00:08:15] And will that happen? I don't know. We'll talk about the contours of that race. But I think, and again, I'll stop droning on and on here. We'll get into a real discussion because I want to hear what you guys have to ask rather than me just kind of lecturing here. But I do believe that the Pratt phenomenon, which became a global thing. And by the way, there's a lot of these right-wing influencers that live in the Palisades. And a lot of people close to Trump live in the Palisades.

[00:08:41] So the fact that Pratt was getting the traction on social media like X and Facebook and these kind of right-wing platforms was not surprising at all. He was all being elevated by the algorithms that they were pushing. That's the way it works now. And so he becomes a social media phenomenon but extremely limited to this bubble. And what's so weird is to see so many people on the West Side absolutely convinced.

[00:09:07] Spencer Pratt himself convinced he was going to win over 50% in this primary. Now, I was on MSNBC and talking to a lot of people saying this guy's not going to get anywhere near where Caruso got in the last election. He's a Republican in a city that is 16% Republican. Trump is at historic lows. He's running a MAGA playbook. Donald Trump weighed in to support him. This isn't going anywhere.

[00:09:32] Now, I thought he would probably get to the runoff and then he would get destroyed in a runoff between Bass and Pratt, which is what Bass wants to run against the right-wing Republican. But it doesn't look like that's going to happen. This challenge to the left, not just similar to what happened in New York, is likely to happen in Los Angeles. I wanted to ask about these AI ads because, if nothing else, they were super entertaining for those of us. And certainly turned your race into a very Hollywood kind of a contest.

[00:10:00] This one showing him as a Superman character. And he's saving Los Angeles, which is this dystopian hellscape. And it's got Mayor Bass as the Joker, just like so over the top. And then this other one, this just seemed really weird with the four women in the locker room after Pilates class confessing that they're going to be voting for Pratt. So kind of tapping into that, like, we can't admit that we're actually dissatisfied with homelessness policy or the direction things are going.

[00:10:28] Now, whether or not they or anybody else is going to be voting for Pratt sounds like probably not. But I'm curious about just like, OK, he's not going to get through. But what impact did they do? They have a positive impact if you're Raman and kind of taking down Bass a little bit.

[00:10:42] I think one of the takeaways, not only of the L.A. mayor's race campaign, but of the California gubernatorial race, which we can talk about later, too, was how siloed social media truly is and how different that is from the 2016 contest when Donald Trump first got elected, where it was ubiquitous and social media was tipping into and driving.

[00:11:09] We saw we saw that on the Lincoln Project, fellas, is our social media content was what was driving the popular content on the cable news and broadcast shows. It tipped into prop culture. That doesn't happen anymore. What happens is your algorithm. And these became very big. I was in London, like I said, 48 hours ago with a bunch of Republicans from from the United States. And they were all saying, oh, the Spencer Pratt ads are amazing. This is really cool. This is going to happen. I was like, this is not going anywhere.

[00:11:36] But the fact that these East Coast Republicans are tapped into this tells you how that silo works is all these Republicans are watching this. And because they're feeding their own story narrative back to themselves, they were absolutely convinced, too, that this is a juggernaut. This is going to be huge. This is going to go somewhere. Donald Trump was, too. Guys, he's doing worse than Donald Trump did in 2024 right now in a lower turnout election. That says a lot about a lot.

[00:12:06] And so, look, is there an anti-incumbent sentiment? Yes. That's why Nithya Raman jumped in from the left. That's why Spencer Pratt from the right jumped in. But you have to remember, campaigns are always about the choices before you. They're not the candidates or ideas that you want. They become a choice of what you actually have to write or pull the lever on on the ballot. And Karen Bass, I think, is in a stronger position than most people think.

[00:12:32] She certainly would have beaten the snot out of Pratt if he would have gotten through, which is why she was elevating him. They were trying to push him up to get him. They were seeing the same polling of what I'm saying. It's not just Mike Madrid saying this. The real polling was saying that this guy's not that popular. Let's get him. And Karen Bass would have stomped on him. Nithya Raman's a harder consideration. But I wouldn't count Karen Bass out quite yet. So even if he had the whole Pilates vote, that wasn't going to be a no? He probably did.

[00:13:01] That's what I'm saying. That ad was interesting because it's obviously these kind of rich white ladies. That's what it was. And he's like, I've got the like. Yeah. I was like, is this going to help him or hurt him? Yeah. It was funny. You had all these people. There's kind of jokes going around saying, I can't believe that he didn't get any votes in Santa Monica or Beverly Hills or West Hollywood. Those aren't cities in Los Angeles. Those are separate cities that can't vote for mayor.

[00:13:29] That's where his base of support was on the west side. None of those are cities. Right. I got to say, I think probably the only person crying harder than Spencer Pratt after each of the vote drops that we've been getting recently in the mayoral count is, I assume, Karen Bass. Right. I mean, you know, as you were saying, Mike, even any remotely competent campaign strategist. Right.

[00:13:52] I do campaigns here in Seattle and Washington state would tell you that Bassner camp would have, you know, you know, given their right arm to run against Pratt in the general election as opposed to as opposed to Raman. And, you know, L.A. is a deeply blue city, as you say. And and yet it looks like now it's going to be Raman. And I hear what you're saying about don't count Bass out in this race. But, man, right now I would favor Raman to win this.

[00:14:22] And the reason I say that, I pulled some polling from from March of this year in that race. Karen Bass's approval rating in that poll was 24.4 percent, which was less than one percentage point higher than Donald Trump's in L.A. He was at 23.5. She was at 24.4. Now, his disapproval was way higher. Right. There were a lot more people that were neutral on her. So his net approval, his was a lot worse.

[00:14:49] But nonetheless, her affirmative approval rating, 20 under 25 percent. That is that is an absolutely kind of, you know, dead woman walking incumbent mayor. You're absolutely right. And I look, I'm not going to defend Karen Bass, but as a political professional as well as you are, you have to remember the Democratic Party is sitting at historically bad numbers right now, even though Donald Trump is also sitting at historically bad numbers. The question is why, and they're for very different reasons.

[00:15:17] A lot of the energy that is sucking down these Democratic base voters is the energy that is essentially moving to the Democratic socialists is moving to the left. That's why they wanted Pratt is because, you know, Nithya Raman's voters were not going to vote for Spencer Pratt. They were going to come back, come back to Karen Bass, and she would have won in a cakewalk. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're all going to be sticking with Nithya Raman. And remember, Raman's not winning here. She's not winning.

[00:15:46] She's not coming in the top vote spot. The question becomes, what does Pratt's vote do? Vote for the Democratic socialists? I'm not convinced that that's the case. Maybe you say they don't vote. I think 85 percent of them do vote. And if you get 85 percent of the Pratt vote for Bass, which is likely where it's going to go, she's not in a bad position. Now, having said that, the polling that you've also looked at shows that Raman is beating her by like seven points. Not close. The energy is there. I think the odds are with Raman.

[00:16:16] But like I'm saying, that doesn't mean this race is over. I want to ask about Raman because the case that she's making for herself in some ways seems to be, I can fix things. Like, I'm the pragmatist. But how does she square that with being a Democratic socialist in the minds of Los Angeles voters? It seems like in some ways, Mondami did that in New York, here in Seattle. Katie Wilson, I don't think that was the case that she was making.

[00:16:42] But we did get a Democratic socialist elected when people were unhappy with the incumbent. Right, Sandeep? So she pointed to Little Saigon, our open air drug market, and said about the incumbent mayor, this is your fault. Like, this is unacceptable. She made the case. But it's kind of like, I'm a Democratic socialist. And as a Democratic socialist, I'm going to make government operate more effectively and more efficiently. It's a case that, you know, political consultants can make. But is it a case that voters are going to believe? That's the question that I have.

[00:17:12] That's a great question. And again, I would need to look kind of at the polling. I hate to kind of punt the answer. But this is a serious question because it actually sets the strategy of whether you can win or not. So let's walk through this tape a little bit. You just pointed out in Seattle, right? The theory of the case was saying this government is not being competently run. You can see it with your own eyes. You can feel it when you walk down the street. Are you tired of that?

[00:17:38] That's the sentiment of a voter and a city that has already gone through this two-part determination of unsteating an incumbent. The first determination is you have to say, are we ready for a change? And clearly that was the case in Seattle. Then the question becomes, is the alternative better than the person that we have here? And taking on an incumbent is hard because you have to meet both of those thresholds.

[00:18:00] When you're the incumbent defending, you have to just stop that voter sentiment on either one of those to win re-election. I think Karen Bass is facing both of those. And so the question becomes, do you take the Mom Donnie route? Where even though you don't have a whole lot of specific policy specifics, you do say things like free buses, free groceries, rent control, right? And leave it at that.

[00:18:28] He did say, we're going to do a luxury tax, which he did, right? And he was saying, we're going to do some of these policies and we're going to make this work. But you're not getting into, I think, much more philosophical discussion or debate than that because he didn't need to. He's running against Cuomo. My God, could you think of a worse candidate to run against? And Bass is probably not terribly much more popular than a Cuomo was in New York.

[00:18:51] And so I don't know that you need to have a robust policy platform right now if you accurately and capably demonstrate kind of what Donald Trump said, which is, what do you have to lose? Like, it ain't going to get worse than this. What are we going to do, burn your house down and not let you rebuild it? Have 150,000 homeless people on the street? Like, can I get that bad? It's already that bad. It's worse.

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[00:20:08] That's bluecitypodcast at gmail.com. And send along show ideas, guest ideas. Sandeep and I would really appreciate that as well. Okay, back to the show. Yeah, I mean, when Raman came out of the gate, when she first announced, like one of the things she said, she went right at this, I think, keying off the sense that the Palisades fire was totally mishandled, that it exposed the incompetence of governance.

[00:20:37] You know, the reservoir was empty, so they didn't have water to put out the fires. And Bass was off in Ghana at the time. Right. She had promised to not leave the city while she was mayor. She was off, you know, on a trip to, you know, Africa at the time. These devastating fires are happening in the city.

[00:20:58] So, Raman, one of the first things she said when she came out of the gate was she pointed and, like she said, like, why is it that when, like, streetlights go out in kind of neighborhoods that are afflicted with crime and stuff, we can't replace the streetlights in, you know, some reasonable, competent amount of time. Like, what's wrong with the basic execution of government under Karen Bass, right? That seems to me a potent argument to make after the Palisades fire. That is the most potent argument when you're challenging an incumbent.

[00:21:27] As we say, it's really hard to lose office as an incumbent. It's pretty hard. What you have to do, kind of like we did with the Lincoln Project, you know, you let a once-in-a-century pandemic get out of control. Like, that's the indictment on you. Gray Davis, former governor of California, gets recalled because the lights literally go out. As long as the lights are on and the trains are running on time, you should not have a problem getting reelected. Well, the lights are out, Sandeep, as you just pointed out. The water's not there for a fire.

[00:21:57] Like, the basics of, like, civilization are collapsing. That's when an incumbent is particularly vulnerable. And, frankly, I don't think it's ideological. I think, you know, is it a DSA or a Democrat? Obviously, the MAGA stuff, you know, is an exception. I don't think that's ideology either. That's a weird kind of cancer. But that's something different. I think that we're at this point where there is the case for change is clearly there.

[00:22:26] And the question becomes, do you run this competency in government campaign or do you just attack, attack, attack and lean into that 24% disapproval? My opinion is just attack. Don't put yourself at least too far out there by saying, here's the policy proposals that I would do to fix it. Because that changes the whole battlefield. That lets Bass back in. Just run a damning indictment.

[00:22:53] Condemn her on water, on the fact that lights are out, that there's tents on the street, that there's the Pratt argument. Run a Pratt campaign. You're just not running from the right. You're running from the left. And I think that should be enough to win. Let me ask about the counterattack from Bass, right? Because where I think Raman is probably most vulnerable is on, as you say, the Pratt stuff.

[00:23:14] On the scale and kind of dystopian look of unsheltered homelessness on the streets of L.A., street disorder, rampant open public use of hard drugs, you know, those arguments. And Raman, you know, Democratic Socialist, she was a defund the policer. Yes. She was a – now she's moderated a little bit on some of that stuff.

[00:23:40] But I think she's still got vulnerabilities, including on, like she says, like we shouldn't sweep encampments even when they're close to schools or playgrounds. And, you know, so let me ask you about that. Like what do you see as Bass's sort of counter to say Raman's too fringe for L.A.? Well, I would make her just completely own that. I don't care whether she's moderated or not in the last couple of weeks. You want to say defund the police? Just go pound her on that. You can't be for defunding the police in a big blue city.

[00:24:10] I mean, that's just absurd. Everything comes unwound. She also came out with this proposal to ban, you know, backyard barbecue grilling. Good luck with that in L.A. Like go talk to Latino communities about that. I mean, that ain't gonna happen. So – and Latino voters I think are going to be a very pivotal part of this race, incidentally. So look, if I'm Bass, yeah, I would have been chomping at the bit for Pratt. That's who they wanted. But there's a lot of material to work with here too.

[00:24:37] And like I said, if she's changed her position, then let's hear about why she's changed her position. And the more that she's explaining on these policy positions, the more she's losing or bringing the race back into contention. So Bass's objective is to just bloody her up as much as possible by showing her to be kind of really far to the left, which she candidly – there's a lot of material to work with there. I've got two. You mentioned the Latino vote. So I want to ask you to follow up on that.

[00:25:03] But before we let Rahman go, I wanted to ask – like you and Saindeev have both spoken about the anti-incumbency mood in Los Angeles. We had it in Seattle. We had it in New York. But what about – like are we going to then say democratic socialists are really having a moment and this is really going to be an issue moving forward for the Democratic Party in blue cities and elsewhere? What do you make of the DSA as a movement in blue cities?

[00:25:31] I mean probably not at the federal presidential level, but what do you think? I think so much of this is really about populism as opposed to the standard right-left ideology and the anti-institutionalism that exists.

[00:25:44] And that's why I really wanted to really drive home the comparison between 1993 and the current moment is when you're in a very strongly democratic city, a one-party town, which a lot of these big, big cities are and are becoming more so, the questions become less about ideology and more about competence. And look, unfortunately – and we can debate and discuss this all we want, but as a Californian, it's not Mike Madrid saying this.

[00:26:10] This is the Ezra Klein's of the world saying California just doesn't work and Los Angeles is more California than California. L.A. is broken. L.A. is a mess. I'm going to be moving there in September to teach in USC. I'm nervous about it. I'm going to live in downtown L.A. I'm from there, guys. I have 50 years. I know that city. I love Los Angeles. It's broken. L.A. does not work. So we can say that's ideology or not. I don't think that it is. I think it's just competence.

[00:26:38] And I don't know that one mayor can fix that. It's just a culture that's been set in. And so I think too much is brought into the rise of the DSA compared to moderate Dems or corporate Democrats. I think that's really kind of like navel-gazing, especially online or in these certain circles. I hate this idea of yimbyism. I think it's just – I think it's ridiculous.

[00:27:00] All of these ideas are just – they're these silly rehashed ideas that have been around forever, and we try to put a different veneer on them to make them cool and hipster and lefty. Yimbyism is 1980s developer Republican. That's what it is. Build. Build. You know what I mean? Like I can't afford – but what happens is you get people that want to live in their cities and realize, oh, I can't because it's a playground for the very wealthy now. And that's what yimbyism is.

[00:27:30] And sorry to get off topic, but like those things really drive me crazy because that's where ideology does replace competence. And these purity tests in politics get over – the job of a city is to just make sure that there's a safe park, a cop's going to show up when you need him to, and the trash gets picked up. It's like the most unsexy thing to create a livable space and allow people to do what they do, which is create themselves, build themselves.

[00:28:01] That's my love of cities and studying of thousands of years of metropolises. So I don't think that this is ideological at all. What scares me is that the DSA tends to be forcing its ideological square peg into the functional blue or round hole that Democrats have traditionally occupied and made government work. And it's not working anymore.

[00:28:27] Here's one of the things that's really struck me as just – I don't know whether it's weird or – but it's certainly noteworthy. And I'm very curious, Mike, your insights about this, which is that we all know – we were just talking about it. Bass is super wounded, right? She's never really recovered after the fire. Her approval numbers are in the toilet. The wrong track in the city is way off. The city is broken. All of that stuff, right?

[00:28:49] Yet the entirety of the California – not just the LA but the California Democratic establishment has just rallied to her from the moment Robin got in, including the three DSA council members, the three other ones, all endorsed Bass in this race. They're all kind of hitching their wagons to kind of defending Karen Bass against – and so it goes to your question – your comment that maybe this isn't really ideology.

[00:29:18] And it's more about like outsider insurgent versus like the establishment and the status quo. And they're like, we know Karen Bass. We get her. We don't know what Robin's going to do. And she's going to disrupt our cozy, you know, setup here. And so – or speak to that. Like what is going on with you? Well, that's exactly it. No, you nailed it. That's what I'm saying. This is really more about populism. And there's this sort of bastardization of the idea of populism where people go, oh, it's left-wing populism or right-wing populism.

[00:29:48] There's no such thing as left-wing populism or right-wing populism. Like that's not what populism is. It's literally not ideological. You can't have left-wing populism. You can't have right-wing populism. Populism is anti-establishment. It's anti-institutionalism. That's all that it is. It's not ideological. And so when you're in a populist moment, as I believe we are, Sandeep, what you said is exactly right. It's insider versus outsider. It's haves versus have-nots.

[00:30:15] It's people who have confidence and trust in the system and those that do not. And as institutions are collapsing, and boy, if big cities aren't the home of institutions and they aren't working and serving anymore, they become the attack point. So, yes, you start to see the establishment start to circle the wagons around others who are of the system. The system is going to defend itself at all costs, at all costs, because everybody's vested in it.

[00:30:40] And once you start to see a moment where that gets toppled, like a Donald Trump at the federal level or within the Republican Party, nobody knows what the future is going to bring. And that uncertainty is not something that anybody in politics wants. They want a hierarchy. And so that's why I think you're going to see a vicious attack on Rahman coming up. And I think you're going to start seeing even a lot of folks on the left coming out and saying, yeah, Karen Bass hasn't done a great job, but she's going to be really bad.

[00:31:10] Right? Like that's the message that you're going to hear coming from the Bass campaign. A little bit crap, but that's essentially what it will be. Yeah. And I guess we all hope when the election's over, whoever wins, that it's more about competence and good governance than ideology, whether it's New York or Seattle or Los Angeles or any other city. You mentioned the Latino vote. I mean, there's no single Latino vote, but you brought it up. And I'm just wondering, how does it factor in?

[00:31:36] It's about half of Los Angeles identifies as Latino or Hispanic, something like that? Yeah, about half. I mean, the voters will be a little bit less, but not much, you know, mid-30s range. But remember, Rick Caruso won the Latino vote, which, you know, Rick was a former Republican. He was running his, you know, guy. Law and order, developed mall developer, ran against the past four years. He was running against Cuffs. I mean, my God. Like, what are we talking about here?

[00:32:02] And yeah, so he does extremely well with the Hispanic vote, with this messaging. This is the vote that has been moving to the right. These Hispanic dense precincts were some of the biggest shifts towards Trump. And really, better accurately said, away from the Democratic Party as opposed to the Republican Party. These are these populist voters. They've had it. They're done. This doesn't work. The system doesn't work. And can't ramen tap into that? That's where the ideology starts to say she's limited.

[00:32:30] When you start to say we're going to micromanage your life when the city can't micromanage its own affairs. Like, before you start coming after my gas-grilled barbecue, can't you make sure that there aren't three tents on my sidewalk when my kids walk out to school in the morning? How about start there? Like, let's be a little bit more relatable. And that, I think, is going to be a real problem, like I said, on the left. I think you're going to have two very unpopular choices.

[00:32:56] But as I mentioned earlier in the podcast, campaigns are about the choices before you. They're not the choices you want. It's the choices of the two people that you've got to hold your nose and pull the lever behind one of those. Latinos are this growing, aspirational, working-class voter. It's a working-class culture. It's very pro-growth in a state and in a city that has suffocated itself to the point where, again, back to these Yimby's.

[00:33:24] You know, these are basically all these wealthy white hipsters, Asians that are kind of like, we just want to have our own place and let's create our own niche where we can build density housing in the communities that we want and let everybody else suffer. And that's the way that you survive in California and Los Angeles. I mean, we're spending $900,000 to put up each tiny home for the homeless? Like, what happened? What happened? And the answer is 30 years of nonsense happened. Got to unravel it.

[00:33:55] So you're saying the Latino vote here is really going to be – in L.A. is going to be – Central. Up for central and kind of up for grabs. It's up for grabs. It's absolutely going to be determinative. And it's not going to be the west side. It's not even going to be the east side, east L.A. Like, that vote is largely locked down. It's going to be middle-class, aspirational Latinos in the San Fernando Valley. That's going to determine the outcome of the race. Bass is going to command the African-American vote.

[00:34:21] In the south central area, Rahman will do quite well in a lot of the homes on the west side that are neighbors to the Pratt voters. Right? Like, these wealthy communities on the west side. It's like you got the Spencer Pratt person living next door to the Nithya Rahman supporters. To the Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren lover. Yeah, yeah. These are the areas that Bernie did really well. These are the areas where Bernie Sanders did really well. And then in the middle, you've got these San Fernando Valley homes, which are middle-class renters or first-time homeowners.

[00:34:52] Latino, overwhelmingly Latino, who are like, I don't like any of you guys. I don't like any of this. And that's going to be that anti-incumbent sentiment that Bass is going to have to really push Rahman out of the center on. And that's going to determine who wins. The race will be won or lost in the San Fernando Valley with the margins. Can I ask about Matt Barreto? He used to be a pollster. He is a prominent pollster, kind of in the same business and area of expertise as yourself. I wouldn't say that. More of a lefty. More of a lefty. Yeah. And he used to be at the University of Washington.

[00:35:22] I'm just curious, what do you think he gets right? What do you think he gets wrong about the Latino vote in California? Matt Barreto gets most Latino issues completely wrong nationwide. I think he's been largely discredited. I talk about it in my book. The good thing about him is he's finally come around to the methodologies that I prescribe in the book because I'm very specific on why he's missed so badly for so long.

[00:35:45] I mean, he was in charge of the Latino vote for Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris, the three worst Latino campaigns in Democratic Party history. There's a reason why. It wasn't just bad timing. And so, yeah, I think his own party now has realized this is just fundamentally wrong. He's been called out on national publications. He's lost a lot of clients and business.

[00:36:14] He's not employed by anybody in California. There's a reason for that. And that he's coming around. I mean, everybody deserves a second chance. He is learning. He's now following actual practitioners and not trying to impart this academic wisdom. But, you know, he's got a lot of lot to make up for his reputation. It's really damaged with political professionals and reporters and academics. Now, it's just like this stuff just has been wrong for over a decade. Yeah.

[00:36:43] And I mean, there was a piece in The Atlantic right after the 24 election, you know, looking at why Democrats get Latino voters so long. And the villain in that piece is Matt Barretto. Yeah. Yeah. That's where it came from. Yeah. And like it was decades. It was like it's been going on for years. And the inability for white progressives to call out a Latino person who was clearly, you know, the emperor had no clothes. It wasn't new. It had been going on for a long time.

[00:37:11] And they would say, oh, no, we're the only ones who understand it. And then the math would show on Election Day. The actual results were wildly, wildly wrong. And he would say, well, you don't understand math. Like literally that would be his answer. And they would keep getting worse and worse and worse. And that was honestly, that's why I wrote a book is because I burned down my relationship with the Republican Party gladly. And I knew the Republicans, the Democrats were like so buying into their own bullshit orthodoxy that these guys had spewed for a decade.

[00:37:40] I wrote a book saying you're going to if Donald Trump wins, it's going to be with a record share of the Hispanic vote. And here's why. And I articulated it. I literally said, here's why you're being led wrong. Here's the methodology that you need to do with your survey work. Here's why you're overemphasizing things like immigration at the expense of the economy, which every poll is showing by four to one is what the issue is, except for Matt Barrettos. And I think they finally got the message.

[00:38:10] Like you said, The Atlantic wrote a scathing piece. A lot of other pollsters, Democratic pollsters, not just Mike Madrid saying this, were just like, he's been discredited. So nobody goes away entirely in this business. But he's got a lot of fixing to do. And I think he's doing it. I mean, I think he's doing it. I hope for his sake he is, for his own reputation. Yeah. Well, I mean, we had a Democratic Party that for years was like, the way we're going to win the Latino vote is by talking about open borders.

[00:38:40] That's where it came from. That's where it came from. You know, it's this sort of white progressive Disneyland sort of stuff about. And that's somehow going to get us all these Latino voters. And obviously you go right at that in your book, right? The Latino Century, which is really the kind of definitive book, I think, about Latino voting patterns. Thank you. And we'll link it in the show notes.

[00:39:02] But Mike, you basically say in the book, neither party really speak to or get Latinos and what they care about and what they're focused on. So explain, explain where both parties kind of get. Yeah. Thanks, Andeep. And again, look, your listeners need to know I'm not a partisan. I don't care. Like, I couldn't care less about the future of the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. I don't care.

[00:39:31] You work now for candidates on both sides, right? I mean, you work out in R. Yeah, or none. The main area of my focus and career is working on advocating and giving Latinos a voice. Because what I found in my career were these professional partisans, who we just talked about one, who tells the parties what the parties want to hear. And that has created a massive, massive gap in our democracy where there is nobody advocating for the Latino voice. That's what I'm focusing my career on.

[00:40:00] And it's very clear what Latinos are saying that they want. And it has been for 30 years. So, you know, it's funny because I was talking with somebody just yesterday. Soledad O'Brien, you know, former CNN host, does documentaries. She was interviewing me one time and she said, you sure don't sound like a Republican. And I said, well, you know, understandably, she said, you don't sound like a Democrat either. And I said, no. And I said, I sound like a Latino. And she goes, yeah, that's exactly it. I'm like, yeah, that's exactly right. It's this isn't partisan.

[00:40:27] Latinos are the least partisan and the least racially polarized group of any ethnicity in America. We're the last true swing voters because Democrats. And I think, like I said, they're finally getting past this phase where they're focused on open border solutions and, you know, this crazy lefty stuff on, you know, immigrant rights. Not that I don't support a lot of those positions, but that's not where Latinos are at.

[00:40:56] And then you've got the right, which is kind of this, you know, drop the hyphen, be white, you know, leave your ethnicity at the door kind of nonsense. And nobody is talking about the concerns that Latinos have or have had either party. And I've worked at the highest levels of both parties. Like I've talked to the White Houses in both parties, talked to the leadership of the RNC and the DNC. And I can tell you quantifiably, neither party grasps this.

[00:41:25] And it's not that complicated. You just have to follow accurate data. So that's why I wrote the book. That's what the Latino century is, because it explains why this dramatic historic rightward shift is going to be followed up on equally historic shift back. It's not voting for either party. It's voting against the party in power. You don't see black or white voters moving to these numbers even close. The white and black working class have what we call a delta, which is a change percentage

[00:41:54] in the single digits. Like you don't see 10 point shifts. You don't even see five point shifts in most instances. With Latinos, you're seeing like 35 point swings in Texas or Passaic County, New Jersey, or the Inland Empire in California or the East LA. Or like with Rick Caruso, they might just shift right back to a Karen Bass or a Nithya Raman. These are the voters that voted for Eric Adams in New York City before they voted for Donald Trump. And now they're voting for Zoran Mamdani.

[00:42:21] There's no ideological strain there. It's just pure anti-institutionalism. And it's because both parties have completely failed to understand where the fastest growing segment of the vote is. And whoever is able to figure it out will be the dominant party for the next generation in American politics. On the Blue City side, sort of the Blue City intellectual side or public policy side, we

[00:42:46] mentioned Matt, but why have progressives or liberals gotten the Latino vote so wrong? What went wrong? When did it go wrong? How did it go wrong? Because we're always interested in that here on Blue City Blues, digging up the past and taking a look at it. Yeah, you have to understand where the Democratic Party is today. And this is where the California governor's race gets very interesting. There's two key pillars to the Democratic Party, the coalition. It's wealthy white progressives that have high home ownership rates and a larger than the

[00:43:15] national average of college degrees. Kind of the Tom Steyer billionaire vote in California. If you look at where Tom Steyer won, he won in San Francisco and in Marin County and in Santa Barbara County, where there's a very large concentration of rich, white homeowners who have college degrees or advanced. That coalition has dominated national politics in the Democratic Party. This is the derided cultural elite.

[00:43:43] And what happened was you had a lot of people, professional consultants who would sell those guys what they wanted to hear, which made them a lot of money. Didn't mean it was true because it wasn't true quantifiably. That's where that Atlantic article just lays it all bare because the other coalition are people of color who have lower home ownership rates, lower rates of college degrees and are the working class. And this coalition has only one thing in common.

[00:44:12] The main thing is they don't have anything in common economically. Anything. And they have very little in common culturally. So what is it, guys? This is a real question. I'm going to ask both of you. What is it that wealthy, white, college-educated progressives have with working class people of color? What is the glue that holds them together? Higher progressive tech. Progressive taxation is the only thing, in my opinion.

[00:44:41] Well, I mean, maybe some economic populism, but mostly it's that they don't like the white identity politics of the Republicans. They don't like Republicans. That's it. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. They both hated Republicans up until 2024. Yeah. Where Latinos specifically, but even black men and a lot of Asians said, you know what? We're tired of these guys. They've been saying this for 30 years. Things are going to get better. It never gets better.

[00:45:10] We've been promised this environmental and jobs balance. And all these Latino pollsters are saying Latinos love all this environmental gobbledygook. Well, you know what? We did all the environmental stuff for 30 years in California. You know what we didn't do? The jobs piece. We did not do the economy piece at all. We never even talked about it, by the way. So what happened was they finally voted with their feet and said, I may not like this guy. We know who he is.

[00:45:39] But shame on me if I vote after 30 years for the same stuff. I know exactly what I'm going to get. And that's why you saw this, like I said, right where shift happened in 2024. But fellas, it had been happening for the better part of a decade. They've been leaving the Democrats for 10 years. And so finally it gets to 50% and it becomes unavoidable. And those consultants that we were just talking about who were saying, don't believe the math. Don't believe the science. Latinos are, you know, they're black and brown people.

[00:46:09] They will always be Democrats. They're Democrats by birth. And white progressives believe that shit. And so that's what happened. That is literally what happened. If you don't believe me, put the link to the Atlantic article in your comments. That's what happened. And so now they wake up and they're like, oh my gosh, you know, now it's like, oh, well, you get what you should have. You're getting all deported. They're going to deport your family and all this kind of really, you know, ugly rhetoric that's coming from the left that I used to hear from the right. And Latinos will come back.

[00:46:39] They're going to come back in big numbers. But that doesn't mean that they like the Democratic Party at all. It doesn't mean that the Democrats have somehow solved their problem. And that's the real danger heading into 2028. Yeah. All you've got is you're not Donald Trump. It's not very much. It's no lasting, you know, Democratic majority as we've had. You can't build a party with that, David. That's exactly right. Yeah. I'm I'm I mean, obviously, I think Democrats are going to do well in the midterms. Right. I mean, Trump's are so bad. And you're right.

[00:47:06] All these groups that that, you know, young men to write shifted 30 points between 20 and 24 towards towards Trump and the Republicans. But, yeah, the Latino vote, obviously, the other one. They and they seem to be, you know, young voters or, you know, Trump is basically in some kind of like toxic, self-destructive threefold with those voters right now. But I, too, I'm worried about 2028 because I'm I'm 100 percent with you, Mike. I think the Democratic Party has real fundamental problems. They don't know who they are.

[00:47:36] Yeah. They paper over all the time with with anti-Trump stuff or, you know, the fact that we win in blue cities and therefore, you know, everything's great. Look at our exciting win when AOC wins a deep blue district in Brooklyn or, you know, or Monty wins in New York City or Katie in Seattle or whatever. And, you know, my favorite stat about this is in 92 and 96, when Clinton won those two

[00:48:04] campaigns, 3,100 counties in the United States, he won about half of them. When Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, he won 750 counties. Wow. About half of what Clinton won. And Hillary Clinton, when Joe Biden wins in 2020, when she wins the popular vote in 16, they're winning about 430 counties. I mean, the party has increasingly retreated. Yeah. You know, out of huge swaths of the country. Right.

[00:48:33] Including lots of areas where Latino like the Texas border or Florida or the only group that Democrats have been winning with increasingly is wealthy, white, college educated women. That that's the party. That is the party. And that they're losing everybody else. And like I said, they're not a working class party anymore. And that's that. They're not really not even close to one. And that's not Mike Madrid saying that. That's the voter. They're saying that.

[00:49:02] And that's what's so crazy is because what animates the average voter is kind of like this Tom Steyer race. It's all about climate change. And I'm not saying it's not real. Of course, it's real. I'm not saying that the impacts aren't massive. But you can't tell people for 30 years that you can do the environment and jobs and not do the jobs piece and expect them to be OK struggling while your communities are making massive amounts of wealth. And you don't care.

[00:49:30] Like you don't care about a gas tax when you're driving an electric vehicle. You don't you don't care. You know, the spotted owl is how the Democratic Party lost the white working class in Oregon and Washington over 30 years. And we had counties here before Trump that had voted for the Democrats dating back to FDR and the New Deal. Yeah. Solid Democratic, like 20. Working class coastal. Working class coastal areas more than almost anywhere else in the country. And, you know, there's a lot that went into the fact that Trump wins and everything else.

[00:49:59] But part of it was the Democrats had promised. Look, when we take away these timber jobs, there will be jobs. There's going to be work. And just then they're like, oh, shoot, we're looking. We're paying attention to something else. They just kind of. You just nailed it. That's what they cared about. The Democrats care more about the spotted owl than they do about our community. And that's why I am hopeful about what just happened in California is you do have. I mean, check this out. This is kind of fascinating. You're going to have a governor, Javier Becerra, who is the son of immigrants, Latino working class.

[00:50:29] Alex Padilla, my good friend, U.S. Senator, son of immigrants, Latino working class. The pro tem of the Senate, Monique Limon, daughter of immigrants, Latino working class. Speaker of the Assembly, Robert Rivas, son of immigrants, Latino working class. That's very different than 10 years ago when it was California was Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Jerry Brown, Nancy Pelosi. Everybody was from not just one area. They were from the same damn city.

[00:50:58] The wealthiest, whitest city in California defined the culture of the Democratic Party and blue cities. That's we've entered a new chapter and it's all going to be about class economics more than ethnicity. That's why this focus, this obsessive focus on immigration and open border policies has been so destructive because Latinos don't believe that, let alone everybody else who clearly doesn't.

[00:51:26] But you got to focus on paying the rent. You got to focus on building an economy for for people that don't have a college degree that can make it that can succeed. And we have not done that in a lot of blue cities. We certainly have not done that in California. And are and are Democratic socialists going to do that in in these blue cities? You would know better than I. I mean, I don't know. Look, Mom Donnie's not doing bad. Right. Right. So. Right. And Katie Wilson's doing some positive stuff here. Yeah. So look, I mean, I'm agnostic on this.

[00:51:56] I'm not ideological at all. I don't care if you do a good job and you're a socialist. Great. Exactly. You're a libertarian capitalist. Great. Like, but someone's got to talk about what the middle class wants and needs. And neither party is doing that. Let me ask about the Govs race because you brought it up. Right. You know, and obviously Javier Becerra is, you know, coming in first. Looks like he's going to face off against against Hilton, the Republican. But maybe Tom Steyer is still not quite resolved. It'll be Hilton. Yeah, it'll be Hilton.

[00:52:25] The window's closed pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. Which means, you know, it's a Democrat, California, a Democratic state. Javier Becerra is going to be the next governor of California. How did he end up doing so well? Why did he win? And yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, in some ways I would say Becerra, maybe the most status quo of all of the major candidates. He's nailed it. Yeah. And like I said, look, there was nobody. And look, this is the first California governor's race I haven't been involved in in 30 years.

[00:52:51] Well, the good part about that is I know everybody on all sides of the race. My best friend was, you know, Tom Steyer's communications guy. You know, I was talking to the Becerra people on the daily. I was talking to Swalwell's people when he was around every day. Oh, yeah. Everybody's polling. Nobody was showing not just Javier Becerra winning, but he was also nobody's second choice in the polling. But what happens is he didn't even make that debate, right? There was that whole blow up over the debate. And then all the candidates. I'll get to that in just a second.

[00:53:20] It's a really important point. You're making a really important point. But what happens is when Swalwell implodes, it happens really quickly and spectacularly. And the race, the first poll that comes out three or four days afterwards is a YouGov poll. And it shows that Becerra gets basically 100% of Swalwell's vote. Everybody moved in that direction. And so immediately I call the Becerra campaign. I'm like, what would you guys do?

[00:53:50] And they're like, we don't know. And I was like, what do you mean you don't know? Was your polling showing that? And they're like, we haven't done any polling. We can't afford polling right now. And I was like, but they did say a couple of interesting things. Their social media handles tripled in size. Like everyone was going over there. And the second thing was he said, we've got this rally that we're trying to get 200 people in LA to go to. It's now over 2,000 RSVPs five days later. And I go, is it the unions? Did you get union turnout?

[00:54:19] They're like, we don't have any union endorsements. And I was like, that's crazy. So I hired my own film crew. Get this. Flew down from Sacramento to LA because I wanted to go see this because it's not often you get to do a live focus group with hundreds of people that were with Swalwell and are now with another candidate. And nobody was asking them why. There's such a small press corps now because of the way newspapers work. I basically had free reign to talk to all of these voters, hundreds of them.

[00:54:47] And what they were saying overwhelmingly, by the way, it was only 40% Latino. Very, very diverse audience. But it was all middle class people. And what they were all saying was it was his experience. And I was like, well, what does that mean? You know, is it his attorney general experience, his congressional experience? And they were saying something really interesting. They said, no, he was a construction worker. He comes from, he represented East LA. What they were talking about was his life experience.

[00:55:17] They weren't talking about his political experience, which is a pollster. I was like, oh my God, this is why you do focus groups. You go and talk to these guys. They're going to tell you stuff that you hadn't even imagined. And it's that relatability combined with the competence. They were tired of the flash of the Eric Swalwell ubiquitousness on cable news. It's like, I just want somebody to make the damn streetlights come on to your earlier points. I just want the trash picked up.

[00:55:45] I just want, when a fire breaks out, we put it out. How about that? And that's, I think people, as I shared with an LA Times reporter, I think we're at the phase in American history where people want authentic authenticity, not performative authenticity, right? It was just, there's Trump fatigue syndrome is completely set in. People are tired of this guy. And sorry to join on, but one other quick point, this is really important. Oh yeah. Eric Swalwell started to dominate the field because he was the most anti-Trump figure.

[00:56:15] That's why. But notice his collapse coincides with Donald Trump's collapse in the polls. People aren't afraid of Donald Trump right now the way they were five or six months ago. Like his numbers are so bad. They just view him as this feeble, old, incompetent guy. And let's move on past him now. You don't see like the No Kings rallies getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. People are just like, of course we're going to throw this bum out. But what are we going to replace him with?

[00:56:44] And that's, for the moment, that's Javier Becerra. That I think characterizes why he's consolidated the vote. Mike, thank you so much for coming on. This is a super interesting, fascinating. As you can tell, like, you know, I'm up here in my kind of perch up here in the Pacific Northwest. And I'm obsessed with Blue City politics in California, but also just the statewide politics. I mean, California is a big stage, right? And to have someone of your stature come on with us to, like, break it all down. Super fun. I really, really enjoyed the opportunity.

[00:57:14] I appreciate the invite, man. I'm going to have to fly up there and we'll have some good seafood and some good beer and hang out in Seattle. Show me the place. We'll take you up to the San Juan. If you haven't been up to the Netherlands, you've got to come up. I'll follow wherever you guys lead, man. I'm always up for a good adventure. That would be great. Okay, that's it for another edition of Blue City Blues. I'm David Hyde with Sandeep Kaushik. Sandeep, you can now find us on Substack on YouTube. It's frightening. You have to look at our faces. I know. We're actually kind of coming into the 21st century. Slightly.

[00:57:43] We don't have great backgrounds yet, but that's probably coming. And we're also on Patreon for folks who want to donate. Those things are all new. And thanks, everybody, so much for listening.