After the mayoral forum hosted by the Greater San Fernando Chamber of Commerce at Los Angeles Valley College, Annenberg Media caught up with three of the four candidates who attended.
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass reflected on problems with Executive Directive 1, while tech entrepreneur Adam Miller bashed Republican Spencer Pratt and Reverend Rae Huang responded to ads from the Los Angeles Police Protective League (LAPPL), a union, trying to boost her campaign to split progressive support.
Bass said that she is working to ensure L.A. is affordable for college graduates to stay in the city as they start their careers.
“I am going to do everything I can so that housing will be affordable by the time that they get out of college, which was the ED1 [Executive Directive 1],” Bass said. “So we have 40,000 units that are being fast-tracked but 6,000 that are under construction right now.”
But she said the initial policy later revealed unintended consequences that forced the city to revise it.
“One of the first policies I did which was Executive Directive 1 to fast track housing, as soon as I did the policy, about a month into it, discovered there were some problems with the policy, some glitches,” Bass said. “So we had to go back and we had to change it. It was going to lead to some outcomes that we had not planned for.”
Republican candidate and reality television star Spencer Pratt did not participate in the forum, instead attending a block party in South Los Angeles.
Miller, a self-described moderate Democrat, bashed Pratt as inexperienced when asked by Annenberg Media what policy differences the two have.
“He’s never run anything, he’s never managed anything, he has no operational experience and no ability to manage a large-scale budget,” Miller said.
Miller said the candidates largely agree on the city’s biggest issues, and he and Pratt agree that the blame should be placed “on the insiders who have been responsible for running the government for the last four years.”
But Miller said he and Pratt cannot agree on solutions because Pratt does not have any.
“He’s not put forth any actual solutions that could work for any of the problems,” Miller said. “Nor does he have any specific ways that he would eliminate waste or eliminate fraud nor does he understand transparency and accountability.”
City Councilmember Nithya Raman did not stay following her portion of the forum to take questions from the press. The LAPPL invested $100,000 to boost Huang’s campaign in a race where she and Raman are trying to appeal to similar progressive constituencies.
Huang said she would not drop out and that she liked the ads.
“They’re great ads,” Huang said. “They’re like, Rae believes in affordable housing I’m like ‘I do’ and they’re like Rae believes in unarmed crisis response and I’m like ‘yes,’ so I think it’s been helping me so they’re really bad at their job.”
Huang also defended her opposition to Section 41.18 of the Los Angeles Municipal Code, which bans homeless encampments within 500 feet of schools, saying she understands the fears but that law does not solve the problems. She said that laws in L.A. are crafted from the side of the privileged instead of those who need help.
“What we need to do is put all of our resources into getting people off the streets instead of moving them from street corner to street corner,” Huang said. “It’s a lot of money that we’re putting into sweeping people off the streets.”