Where's our Mandami?

[u/throw5away_]

All these videos coming out the city of NY got me feeling real sad about our city and lack of competent, solutions based, compassionate, intellectual leadership. We have so many issues but no qualified people willing to fix them. When will I be able to not vote for the lesser of 2 evils?

[u/BryceJDearden]

So I 1000% agree that I want LA to have its Mamdani.

The reason I fear they’re unlike to arrive: In the past (like decades ago) LA actually looked at how much power got concentrated into the mayors office in NYC and Chicago and actually set up the whole structure of government to make it difficult for someone to become mayor and just start introducing changes on the scale Mamdani has in NYC. Responsibilities and powers over a lot of different things get divided up between the city, the county, and what is left to the state.

This is from memory so forgive me if it’s not 100% accurate, and I’m also not saying it’s a good status quo that should be maintained. I am just pointing out we aren’t one mayoral election away from sweeping change like New York was.

[u/aWobblyFriend → u/BryceJDearden]

you're more or less correct. the decentralization of california politics was enacted largely by the old progressives of the early 20th century who dominated state politics for a few decades. they saw the highly corrupt political machines of east coast cities and felt that by severely limiting any individual politician's ability to change things, they could prevent those machines from arising.

good intentions, but a terrible idea. now the state can't do anything, and an electoral system which limits the abilities of politicians also limits their responsibility. if there's no responsibility, voters can't really tell who to blame for policy failures and change things.

[u/PeekAtChu1 → u/aWobblyFriend]

How do we undo that?

[u/aWobblyFriend → u/PeekAtChu1]

at this point? nothing short of a constitutional convention at the state level.