Newsletter: Don’t despair, voters — L.A. residents struck major blows for good government

Good morning. It is Saturday, Nov. 16. Let’s look back at the week in Opinion.

If you seek hope at the end of this dismal election season, look no farther than Los Angeles. In passing a handful of reform ballot measures, voters here indicated they want stronger ethical oversight and more responsive leadership. Four election results in particular are worth noting — three for the city of L.A., and one for L.A. County.

For the latter, Measure G might be the most earth-shattering good-government ballot initiative you barely remember; The Times’ editorial board called its passage “the most transformative decision county voters have made in decades.” Three major reforms were packed into the measure approved by L.A. County voters last week: the establishment of an ethics commission by 2026, the election of a countywide chief executive starting in 2028 and the expansion of the Board of Supervisors from five members to nine in 2032. All three reforms are obvious necessities, but that last one is the easiest to illustrate with a personal, geographic anecdote.

I live in Alhambra, in a neighborhood just barely within Supervisor Hilda Solis’ District 1. If I walk north for 30 seconds, I cross into Kathryn Barger’s District 5 — and I would have to keep walking north, through Pasadena, Altadena, the San Gabriel Mountains, Palmdale and Lancaster, finally to somewhere in the Mojave Desert, to depart the vast, unwieldy district that Barger has the impossible task of representing.

More supervisors mean smaller districts with more responsive leadership. Good on L.A. County voters for helping themselves.

Then there’s the city of Los Angeles, home to a recent spate of humiliating corruption scandals. Voters there passed Charter Amendment DD, taking away City Council members’ power to draw their own district lines and giving it to an independent redistricting commission. Voters also passed Charter Amendment ER to strengthen the city’s Ethics Commission, and residents of Council District 14 ousted incumbent Kevin de León, who refused to resign after he was caught in a recording making racist comments with two other (now former) council members. “Two years after the leaked audio scandal rocked Los Angeles City Hall, voters finally had their say in this election,” said the editorial board. “And speak they did.”

A record number of teachers are leaving the job; this is one of them. Lauren Quinn, who taught high school English, says her reasons for quitting aren’t the oft-cited morale crisis in education or low pay, but the fact that she’s a parent herself. Teaching was once seen as a ministry-like calling for women in lieu of parenthood; though that’s no longer the case, many of the structural elements of the job from that bygone era remain.

What did the Asian American vote this year tell us? Historian James Zarsadiaz writes: “Asian Americans did back Kamala Harris, who received 54% of their vote, according to Edison Research exit polls conducted with a consortium of news organizations. Yet the 39% who supported Donald Trump — despite Harris’ South Asian background and efforts to solicit voters of color — reflect the decline of the Democratic Party’s grip on Asian American voters.” He says this change has been “brewing for years.”

Trump’s staggering win isn’t a landslide. Democrats, learn the lessons and move on. Columnist Jackie Calmes encourages Democrats to end the recriminations over what was really a close election and focus on the extremism that awaits this country without effective opposition to Trump. She reminds them that for all their “self-flagellation about seeming arrogantly out of touch with Americans ... voters in many cases took their side on ballot measures for abortion rights, a higher minimum wage and mandated paid leave, even in red states.”

As climate change worsens, so too will natural disasters. How do we pay for them? Erin Coughlan de Perez, a climate scientist at Tufts University, says the usual sources of funding for disaster response haven’t come close to meeting the needs of poor, hard-hit countries. She suggests ways of anticipating events and having funding in place before disasters strike, and developing “novel forms of insurance that can provide predictable financing for these changing catastrophes.”

Don’t forget the sordid history of mass deportation in this country. Trump “border czar” Tom Homan said in an interview that mass deportation can be carried out without separating families, because “families can be deported together.” USC professor Natalia Molina says this chilling comment brings to mind past deportation efforts that resulted in the mass expulsion of U.S. citizens, and “Donald Trump’s appointments are a stark reminder of how easily history can repeat itself when we fail to confront it.”

From our columnists

• Harry Litman: In Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump has chosen the anti-attorney general
• LZ Granderson: Trump’s election says a lot about trust in journalism
• Victorious Republicans are once again falling for the mandate trap

From guest contributors

• Evangelical Christians’ long road to Donald Trump
• Harris’ real error — not bros, not Biden, not the border
• Why an “honorable” discharge is a part of a dishonorable system

From the Editorial Board

• Abortion was on ballots across the country in this election. The results are encouraging
• L.A. County voters agreed to another tax to reduce homelessness. Let’s make sure it does

Letters to the Editor

• Stop the divisive shaming of white women for Trump’s victory
• Kamala Harris for governor of California? We need her back home
• I’m a doctor. This is what worries me about RFK Jr. in the Trump administration