I Heard It Through the K Line

Scott, Mike, and Godfrey go long on Metro’s greenlighting of a major regional transit expansion – the northern extension of the K Line – and the politics that almost derailed the action. Plus, what recent polls say about LA Mayor Karen Bass’s reelection chances, and political attacks that backfired in the race for City Controller and Council District 9. Metro’s approval of the K Line northern extension promises to fill a missing link in the region’s network, connecting Hollywood Bowl, West Hollywood, Cedars-Sinai, and the Grove, different rail lines, as well as major bus lines, by 2040 The project was approved after a dramatic week of negotiations, protests, and public advocacy, with transit advocates warning Bass was trying to delay or kill the project. Bass strongly objected to the characterization but her public statements only exacerbated the fears Bass tried to calm the residents of Lafayette Square, a historically Black neighborhood worried about the impacts of tunneling, comparing the K Line to the history of nearby Sugar Hill, an affluent Black neighborhood that was devastated by the construction of the 10 Freeway Although Bass and Supervisor Lindsey Horvath – one of the project’s biggest champions –  reached a kumbaya moment and jointly claimed credit for progress on the project, it felt like yet another chapter in an ongoing feud between the two public officials LA Material: “Why is everyone so mad about Metro’s K Line extension vote?”  New polls in the mayor’s race show Bass struggling in her bid to win a second term. A poll from LMU’s Center for the Study of Los Angeles put Nithya Raman in first place by nearly two-to-one, with the mayor only .4% ahead of community organizer Rae Huang. The poll’s methodology was controversial, and many decried it as an outlier UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs released its own poll, showing Bass with 25%, ahead of Spencer Pratt with 11%, Raman with 9% and Huang and Adam Miller with 3% each. The Luskin poll showed 40% undecided Jim Newton on the potential Bass-Pratt runoff at CalMatters: “Top-two race in Los Angeles makes strange political bedfellows” When Controller Kenneth Mejia’s campaign qualified for and received public matching funds, challenger Zack Sokoloff said he was exploiting a loophole in the program’s rules and tried to block Mejia’s access to the funds. Liz Chou of LA Reporter talked to Zokoloff’s campaign consultant The LA Times published a story about CD 9 candidate Esturado Mazariegos’s 2009 arrest on a gun charge – a story opponent Jose Ugarte had been hinting about on What’s Next, Los Angeles last fall – but Mazariegos shared an emotional story about how the arrest was a turning point in his life and prompted him to turn to activism and public service As election season heats up, be sure to listen to subsc