Los Angeles voters re-elected incumbent Democratic Mayor Eric Garcetti to a second four-year term on Tuesday in a huge landslide. Garcetti won 80.9% of the vote with 100% of precincts reporting, according to the Los Angles Times.
His closest competitor, former State Department official Mitchell Schwartz, won 8.2% of the vote, and a long slate of other candidates barely registered a response. Turnout in the election was abysmally low, estimated at 11.45% late in the evening Tuesday.
Aside from a small number of school board contests, few of the other races on the ballot in the local elections were competitive. Much of the attention surrounded two ballot measures, Measure H and Measure S. Measure H proposed raising sales taxes by 0.25% to provide additional funding to address the needs of L.A.’s homeless population. It passed with over two-thirds of the vote (and in areas of L.A. County outside the city limits itself, it was the only question on the ballot).
Measure S proposed a two-year pause in high-end real estate developments, on the dubious logic that stopping new buildings for the wealthy would help stop housing prices for rising for everyone else. It was proposed by liberal activist Michael Weinstein, who has also spearheaded efforts to impose condom mandates on pornography films in Los Angeles and statewide. On this occasion, Weinstein and Measure S fell short, indicating local residents want more housing, not less.
The only notable event of Election Night came courtesy of the Democratic Socialists of America, who led protests at Garcetti’s victory party and demanded that he do more to stand up to President Donald Trump, the Times reports.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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