00:00:00
Speaker 1: And a very happy Monday to you.
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Speaker 2: At twelve oh six in the West, it's the Giant Phillips Show, broadcasting live from Cairo in Seattle. So just in case I feel the need to drink a couple of cappuccinos and throw a sock eyed Sam And it's some tourists from Iowa. You know why, mister Randy Wggs in Culver City, John, we have a fast moving brush fire in Simi Valley in Ventura County. There is a major mandatory evacuation zone pretty much everywhere south of Royal one hundred and eighty four acres so far, and at least one structure has been destroyed. All right, So that, of course is a developing story that we are keeping our eye on. If it gets worse, we will definitely bring all the latest details to you right here on the program. Eight hundred two two two five two two two is telephone number one. Eight hundred two two two five two two two. Well, Randy, thank you so much for sitting in for me last week. Will I was on vacation and look, it's possible for me to be out of state and Canada not to go to war with Iceland.
00:01:08
Speaker 1: It was the first time in a very long time that you went on vacation and no major news broke outside of this Baccaria clip. By the way, this is a profile piece. This is not a gotcha piece, right, you meet America's sweetheart. Outside of that, it was a relatively we had plenty of things to talk about, but it wasn't like any earth shattering campaign changing news.
00:01:36
Speaker 2: And of course, the election is still going on. Ballots went out at the beginning of the month. Voting is going on right now as we speak. You can vote all the way until election Day, which I believe is what June the second Tuesday.
00:01:49
Speaker 1: Yes, it's two weeks from tomorrow, and we're actually going to be broadcasting live on election Night from seven to nine pm on kab D, KSFO, and KMJ all at the same time. We'll be in southern California, Northern California, and the Central Valley with whatever election returns we get at eight o'clock on election night.
00:02:17
Speaker 2: And if you're curious as to how I'm filling out my ballot, my ballot is online at both KABC dot com and KSFO dot com. If you want to go ahead and take a look and see how I voted. Now, as ballots are being collected, we now know who is voting and who isn't, and Randy, you're keeping an eye on those numbers.
00:02:40
Speaker 1: In the state of California. As of today, four percent of ballots have been returned, and I'm one of them. I'm one of the ninety six percent that's going to vote at some point this week. Get on with that. Well, I know what I'm doing, but I got to set the wife down. We have to explain to her what all the races are. She's too busy to deal with any of this stuff. So we'll get it done this week and then I'll put that thing in the box and then I'll be one of this four percent five percent. Now, when it comes to the breakdown by party, this is where it gets interesting. Obviously, there is a major advantage for registration for the Democrats, but you have four percent of Democrat ballots returned at about three hundred and seventy one thousand. You have six percent of Republican ballots returned at about three hundred and thirty four thousand, despite having half the amount of registration numbers. And then, of course, my people, the NPPs no party preferencers always underperforming with just three percent.
00:03:45
Speaker 2: And when you compare these numbers to where they were in twenty twenty two, which is the last midterm election in California, at this moment, in twenty twenty two, the Democrats were at fifty four percent of the ballots return Now they're at forty one percent. At this point in twenty twenty two, the Republicans were twenty six percent of ballots returned. They're now thirty seven percent, Meaning Republicans are overperforming what they did four years ago by eleven points and Democrats are underperforming by thirteen points.
00:04:20
Speaker 1: Now, when it comes to the City of Los Angeles, where everyone is paying attention to this mayor's race, it's getting more attention nationally than the California governor's race, the city of la is at two percent of ballots returned. Of the two point two million ballots that were sent out to the City of Los Angeles, fifty five thousand have come back.
00:04:47
Speaker 2: Now we're going to get into this in more detail later on in the program with Barbara Stone in the Fixed California Hour, but just taking a cursory glance at these numbers, a couple of things up and pop out at me. Number one is Spencer Pratt has a real chance at making the runoff in Los Angeles. If these numbers hold and Republicans keep turning in their ballots at the rate that they're turning them in, and Democratic participation falls off a cliff like it looks like is happening right now, Spencer Pratt has a lane to get into the top two. In fact, at this point, I would say he's a favorite.
00:05:29
Speaker 1: To be in the top two. Well, the betting markets have it at like eighty percent that he's making the runoff, or whatever you want to take into consideration with that stuff. Of the two percent of ballots return, it's two percent of Democrats with twenty seven thousand, four percent of Republicans with fourteen thousand. But in the city of La Republicans are one fourth of the amount of registration that the Democrats have, and the Note party preferencer is at two percent with thirteen thousand ballots now statewide. As you look at these numbers.
00:06:01
Speaker 2: The lesson that I learn is that a Democratic lockout in November is still a possibility. And I know a lot of people in the audience disagree with me, and I received many of your emails. I looked at them this morning, all the emails that came in when I was on vacation, and you're urging me to reconsider and to stop advocating for Republicans to vote for Bianco because he is the second polling Republican running for governor right now, to try to create a democratic lockout, many of you believe that it's only possible to get one Republican on the November ballot. Looking at these numbers, I'm here to tell you are wrong. Last time around, Republicans in the primary generated something like thirty nine or forty percent of the total vote in the general election. Let's say when it was who was it the last time it was Avenuwsome and Brian Dolly. I think Brian Dolly did thirty nine or forty percent something like that. Right now, Republicans make up thirty seven percent of the ballots. That is, assuming that they get no votes at all from the Independence, which we know is not going to happen. Republicans so far the cycle have been polling well with the Independence. I think Hilton was the top performing candidate overall with independent voters. So Republicans could end up getting not thirty nine percent or forty percent of the total electorate, but maybe something like, I don't know, forty three, forty four, forty five percent of the primary electorate could end up voting for a Republican. If you split those numbers between the two candidates, you have a Democratic lockout. Republicans are over performing so far. And these aren't polls. This isn't so I'm kind of forecast. This isn't Scott Rasmussen or John Zogby or someone like that looking at a poll and saying, okay, based on our modeling, this is where we believe the elector it is. These are physical ballots that have been returned. These are real numbers. And I'm telling you right now the Democratic Party has a problem. They are giving their people no direction as to how to vote, no direction.
00:08:35
Speaker 1: I can't tell you the.
00:08:36
Speaker 2: Number of people, number of Democrats in my own personal social network who have contacted me, of all people saying who should I vote for? Because they have no clue what to do. And the fact that Gavin Newsom and Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris and all the shot callers in the Democratic Party have refuse to endorse one of these candidates. Makes it so that everyone has to do their own research and everyone has to figure out who they like and who they don't like. Well, most voters are sheep, and what they do is they don't live, breathe, eat, sleep politics like us political junkies do. Most people just know. In California, the average person, the average voter is a Democrat or a Democratic state, and they know they generally speaking, line up that way. And when the party tells them to go vote for Kamala over Donald Trump, that's what they do because that's what they're told to do. And when the party tells them to vote for Gavin over Brian Dolly, that's what they do because that's what they're told to do. Well, now they have no one telling them what to do. They don't know what to do, and so the answer is not to vote. Well, that's fine by me. Take a powder, take a pass, go Netflix, and chill. And that's what they're doing right now. So there is a unique opportunity right now for Spencer Pratt in Los Angeles in particular, even in a deeply blue city, a city that has not elected a Republican mayor since Dick Reardon back in the nineteen nineties after.
00:10:27
Speaker 1: The La riot.
00:10:28
Speaker 2: Now has a real opportunity to make the November ballot and the two Republicans running for governor, they have a real opportunity at locking the rest of those jackasses off the November ballot. Now is the time to go for broke, because let me tell you, if it ends up being Javier Bessera versus Steve Hilton, the shot callers who are all going to step in and go vote for Bessera over Hilton and the sheep are going to do it because they now have someone telling them what to do.
00:11:05
Speaker 3: Scrub it.
00:11:07
Speaker 1: But right now they don't know what to do.
00:11:11
Speaker 2: And I don't see anyone stepping in between now and the election and changing their mind. And it might even be too late at this point. I know Gavin Knew some claims. He said in an interview this weekend that he has a plan if he believes that the Democrats are going to get locked off the November ballot, and it's something he's closely monitoring, which means their people are telling them that's a real possibility.
00:11:41
Speaker 1: Don't forget.
00:11:42
Speaker 2: That's why the California Democratic Party put that poll online and They updated it every single week because they are scared to death of being locked off the ballot. That's them talking. It's the California Democratic Party saying their data says that's a real possibility. That's Galvin Newsom biting his fingernails because he knows that's a real possibility. I do not understand why so many people. I saw Laura Ingram put something out on Twitter. Now's the time not to play around. Everyone vote for Steve Hilton, so we make sure to get one person on the November ballot.
00:12:28
Speaker 3: Wrong.
00:12:31
Speaker 2: That's fine if you want to make sure to get someone on the November ballot but lose the election. Let me tell you something. When you have an election like this, it's a zero sum game. You don't get anything. If you come close, you don't get anything if you make sure that you put your candidate on the November ballot. You only get something if you win, and you need to play to win. If you don't play to win, you will lose. And in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by wide margins, it's not often where some fluke of an opportunity presents itself that gives you an opportunity to win. Stop thinking like losers. Start thinking like winners. And if you're thinking about how to lose with dignity, you're part of the problem. Stop thinking like that. If you're given the opportunity through their inability to field a credible candidate and this fluky top two system to take something to take back power because there is a power vacuum, then go for it. That's how it works. The definition of politics is who gets what when, we're how and why? And if you're the guy in the chair, you make those decisions. If you're not the guy in the chair, you get nothing. And now is the opportunity to instead of trying to fight over crumbs and fight over I guess bragging rights or something.
00:14:26
Speaker 1: Go for the win.
00:14:31
Speaker 2: I don't know when, if, or ever another opportunity like this will pop up. It's not often that it happens. Sometimes you just have to wait for a perfect storm. And if you get that perfect storm and you're prepared, you can exploit it. Dick Reardon had no business winning the LA Mayor's office in the nineteen nineties. LA was a d blue city back then, but because of the Los Angeles riots and because of all of the chaos that that produced and people were afraid and crime was high, and Los Angeles was a city.
00:15:16
Speaker 1: That was on the bubble.
00:15:19
Speaker 2: He was able to come in in that environment, in that unique situation and pull off an upset. Well, right now there is a storm of bruin for the Democrats and they know it. And it's so odd to me. And maybe this just comes with being a winner and they win so many elections they can see it and Republicans can't. But it's just bizarre to me how up to so many Republicans are When the clouds are parting, they could walk right through and they have an opportunity to take the brass ring, and they start coming up with excuses as to why they shouldn't do it. It is unreal to me. But maybe it's something that's deep in the psyche of a winner to identify threats, and it's deep in the psyche of a loser to just find ways to make sure that they don't experience success.
00:16:23
Speaker 1: I don't know when people send me these.
00:16:27
Speaker 2: Emails saying, you know what, you're suggesting the top two and blocking the Democrats from the November ballot, it's unlikely to work. Well, yes, that's true, but it is your only chance. It is your only opportunity if you want to win.
00:16:45
Speaker 1: This is it.
00:16:47
Speaker 2: There is one lane, there is one game, there is one play, and you could choose not to do it for whatever reasons that you don't want to do it for. But just understand that you're making And as I look at these numbers, I don't see anything that scares me. I see things that make me more optimistic. If the Republican voters can split their vote fifty to fifty, you got a chance. And I think the Paul Mitchell model had it as high as twenty six or twenty seven percent the last time I paid attention. But let me tell you, given these numbers, it's probably higher.
00:17:28
Speaker 1: Right now.
00:17:30
Speaker 2: Eight hundred two two two five two two two is a telephone number one eight hundred two two two five two two two. If you'd like to email the show, you can do so at Johnny don't like show at gmail dot com. That's Johnny, don't like show at gmail dot com. And Randy, you're monitoring the mail bag.
00:17:48
Speaker 1: Samuel writes in it, Johnny, don't like show at gmail dot com. John, I love your program and appreciate your optimism. But the chances of a Republican winning this year's governor's race is the same as the Angels winning the twenty twenty six World or even their division. Boy, We're bad this year.
00:18:05
Speaker 2: Eight hundred two two two five two two two is a telephone number one eight hundred two two two five two two two. And Randy, if you haven't downloaded the podcast yet or subscribe to the podcast yet, that's something that's a great way to start off your week. On this Monday, search for The John Phillips Show.
00:18:24
Speaker 1: Wherever you get your podcast, whether it's the Apple podcast app, iHeart, Spotify, search for the John Phillips Show, hit subscribe. You could download all the episodes. You could do a Google on the YouTube. You can get the free KABC app or the free KSFO app, get the KMJ now app. Because we're on in the Central Valley Saturdays at noon, so many different ways to listen live to what we're doing here every single day from noon to three. And you can download all the podcasts, including ones from last week where I was here solo covering this nonsense. By the way, this is a profile piece. This is not a gotcha piece, right, and Randy, we're gonna be live on election night. How exciting is this? Mark your calendars. June second, Election Day, John and I are coming back in for a night shift broadcasting live on seven ninety KABC in Southern California, eight ten KSFO in the Bay Area, and KMJ in Fresno for a live election recap show from seven to nine PM. Will be here. The polls close at eight o'clock and if there are any results that we can give out, we'll give them to you, covering every race that matters going on in the state of California in this June primary.
00:19:44
Speaker 2: In the meantime, what do you say we make a couple of listeners very happy.
00:19:47
Speaker 1: Oh, they're going to be really happy. I am jealous about this one. Seven ninety KABC welcomes the twenty first annual La Winefest at the Los Angeles Equestrians Center in Burbank Saturday, June thirteenth and Sunday, June fourteenth. Tickets are on sale now at Lawinefest dot com. But right now, collar number nine at one eighty eight seven ninety five two two two gets a pair of general admission tickets to Sunday June fourteenth. You must be at least twenty one years old to win tickets furnished by the La Winefest Good luck dialing.
00:20:27
Speaker 2: So for the last week, I've been on vacation in Alaska around a lot of people who don't live in California. And when they find out that I live in California, and they find out that I do what I do for a living, they weren't asking me about the dubiedatorial election. They weren't asking me about Gavin Newsom. They were asking me all about Spencer Pratt. And when they would talk to me about Spencer Pratt, it would be essentially three different points. One is have you seen his ads? It's all over my social media feed. They're fantastic. Number two is does he have a chance to win? And number three is how could you elect that horrible woman in the first place?
00:21:13
Speaker 1: You mean, this horrible woman.
00:21:15
Speaker 4: If you're feeling down, if you're feeling blue, let's get help for you.
00:21:20
Speaker 1: That would be her. Karen Bass is in trying to get reelected mode. So she's finally sitting down and doing some one on one interviews after no more debates will ever happen. After that first debate between Karen Bass Spensher Pratt and Nythia Raman. They all pulled out at the same time of the debate that was supposed to happen last week, So now here is her opportunity to get her face in front of the voters. She sat down with ABC seven in Los Angeles and it did not go great. You don't say.
00:21:56
Speaker 5: And today we are wrapping up our week long conversations with the top candidates running for Los Angeles mayor. We're doing it with the incumbent and the front runner in the race, Mayor Karen Vass.
00:22:07
Speaker 1: She is running for us, although front runner is still like undecided because she's the front runner at about thirty percent, which is real low for the incumbent, and the last poll from Inside California Politics has Spencer Pratt at twenty two percent right behind her.
00:22:23
Speaker 5: She is running for a second term and she is talking about what she has accomplished while in office and what she wants to do with another four years. So let's go over to our political reporter Josh Haskell with another conversation.
00:22:34
Speaker 6: Josh Philip, thank you so much. We have incumbent Mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Vass here, she's running for reelection. Thank you so much. For joining us, Mayor, let's get right into it. When I interviewed you at the one year anniversary of the Palasheads.
00:22:48
Speaker 3: Fire, you told me that you were a little.
00:22:50
Speaker 6: Surprised that so much of the anger about the fire is still directed solely at you.
00:23:01
Speaker 1: Well, she was in charge, and we found out thanks to that CBS reporter's new book, that she definitely knew about the winds and also didn't tell anybody in her office where she was going when she went to Ghana.
00:23:13
Speaker 2: I wonder privately, though, how much she thinks the anger should have been directed at Gavin and not directed at her.
00:23:23
Speaker 1: You think there's some bad blood between those two.
00:23:26
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, because if you really trace things back, if Gavin and the state wouldn't have told the LAFD to stand down and they could have just put the fire out, none of this would have ever happened. So I guess, if you go back far enough, in her mind, all of this is Gavin's fault.
00:23:49
Speaker 6: And it seems like that anger has now encompassed other problems facing the city, homelessness, Hollywood production, crime, all directed at you.
00:23:58
Speaker 1: It's almost like every single metric in this city is worse than it was four years ago.
00:24:06
Speaker 6: How do you convince such an angry electorate that you deserve four more years.
00:24:10
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, it's super important that I explain about the accomplishments that have been done.
00:24:15
Speaker 3: The fact that homelessness is down.
00:24:17
Speaker 1: Nope, who is believing that it's not down in my neighborhood, it's not down. At the off ramp of the ten freeway dividing Culver City in Los Angeles, that's still there every single day. No part of this city looks any better than it did four years ago.
00:24:35
Speaker 2: No. In fact, not only are there more people living on the streets, it's dirtier than it ever has been.
00:24:43
Speaker 3: Seventeen and a half percent two years in a row.
00:24:45
Speaker 4: It's the first time we've seen a decline in street homelessness. Around the country, homelessness went up eighteen percent.
00:24:52
Speaker 3: Crime is down, Nope.
00:24:56
Speaker 1: What planet is this woman living on. We just had three weeks of every single night burglaries in the San Fernando Valley, and when they announced an arrest, there was another burglary that night in the San Fernando Valley.
00:25:14
Speaker 4: Sixty year low in terms of our homicide rate. We go through spikes here and there, and when we do we respond aggressively.
00:25:22
Speaker 1: So is that because we've got more police on the streets taken down the gang members, or is that because doctors have gotten really good at treating bullet wounds. So her answer is, well, you know, big cities are going to have these problems. We're doing better than everyone else.
00:25:37
Speaker 4: We go through spikes here and there, and when we do, we respond aggressively. But also the alternatives so that you don't always have to have a police officer.
00:25:47
Speaker 1: Oh, we're still on that nonsense.
00:25:50
Speaker 2: Go to any other big city in the West, or any other big city in the country for that matter, outside of maybe the city I'm in right now, Seattle, Portland, maybe Oakland. No city looks as bad as Los Angeles right now. Not Dallas, not Miami, not Denver, not any of those cities, Not New York, not Boston. Los Angeles is appalling right now compared to all the other big cities in the country.
00:26:23
Speaker 1: We both recently were just in San Francisco. Outside of the tenderloin, San Francisco looks a hell of a lot cleaner than it did two years ago.
00:26:32
Speaker 2: No Los Angeles looks dirty all over the place. It doesn't matter if you're in South LA, you're in Hollywood, you're in Venice. There is trash everywhere. There are people living on the streets. There are RVs that are parked where homeless people are living in. They're dumping their trash on the streets. No one is blowing the whistle. And all of this is going on on Karen Bass's.
00:26:56
Speaker 4: Watch, increasing the hiring of police, building forty two thousand units of affordable housing, because we know that the number one issue in our city was four years ago and it is today is affordability. The part that we can control in the city is the cost of housing, and all of.
00:27:16
Speaker 2: Them housing went up. Yeah, it's very expensive to live in.
00:27:19
Speaker 4: La And all of that has taken place under my watch. I want to make sure that we can move forward and complete what we started and prepare our city for a very successful games, which I know we will have.
00:27:33
Speaker 1: Do you see the story that all the projected hotel traffic that we're supposed to get for the World Cup is way below expectations. Yeah, Well, would you want to come here to watch a soccer game? Well, especially when you can go to because they're being played all over the continent. Ed you go to Toronto, you go to Kansas City and they're going to be cheaper and it's going to be safer.
00:27:54
Speaker 2: Well, just wait until that new stadium pops up in Las Vegas, right across the freeway from the football stadium. Las Vegas is going to get all of this because you can stay on that one boulevard, Las Vegas Boulevard, and you can walk to the stadium and you can gamble and you don't have to worry about being accosted by a bomb. Yeah, but you have to go see the a's and we still got.
00:28:20
Speaker 1: Our Oakland A's baby. Now you out.
00:28:22
Speaker 2: Eight hundred two two two five two two two is a telephone number one eight hundred two two two five two two two fixed California Hour coming up after the news at one, Professor barber Stone joins us, All right, let's go back to La Mayor carrying bass and or sit down with ABC seven on homelessness.
00:28:41
Speaker 6: I know that street homelessness is down, but roughly forty percent of those who have gone through inside Safe have ended up back on the street. What is being done to address that?
00:28:51
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, the number one thing that has been lacking is the services. So once we get people off the street, making sure that we are us why they fell on the street. To begin with, Josh, sixty percent of the people and Insight Safe have remained housed.
00:29:07
Speaker 1: I think she's a glass f fulk got a mayor.
00:29:11
Speaker 2: Okay, So she gives them motel rooms and rundown baits motels like situations. They light the motels on fire, they destroy the rooms, and they use the motel room to store some of their stuff, and they still participate in what's going on in the encampments on the streets because that's where the drugs are and that's where the fun is.
00:29:35
Speaker 1: Yep, it's a raving success.
00:29:38
Speaker 4: I think it's really important to build on that success.
00:29:42
Speaker 3: But what LA needs to do.
00:29:43
Speaker 4: In the next four years that I plan to accomplish is building out a more cost effective system to deal with people when they get off the street and not put them into permanent housing immediately. You can't go from a tent into an apartment and expec to function on your own.
00:30:01
Speaker 6: Also on homelessness at the Pantry, earlier this week, you were talking about comprehensive health care for the unhoused, and you talked about how many of the unhoused because of their meth use, lose their teeth.
00:30:13
Speaker 3: That's right?
00:30:15
Speaker 6: Who would pay for the dental care for the unhoused?
00:30:18
Speaker 1: Free teeth for all the meth heads? It's Karen Bess two point zero.
00:30:23
Speaker 2: Wait, with all of the problems facing the city, which she wants to spend our money on, is dental implants for crackheads?
00:30:32
Speaker 1: Yes? What do you think all that medical cost is for? Well?
00:30:39
Speaker 2: How about this? How about breast implants for the hookers? That would be good for business.
00:30:45
Speaker 6: Who would pay for the dental care? So for the unhoused?
00:30:48
Speaker 4: When I say comprehensive health care, it's actually what people can get from medical.
00:30:53
Speaker 1: The problem medical If you're homeless and you rotted your teeth away with meth, you get free. I wonder if they have to go down to algadonus too.
00:31:06
Speaker 4: The problem is is that the linkage isn't made with the people and the services in a system. Well, it's we already pay for it. It's already paid for it's the linking.
00:31:17
Speaker 1: No, we don't.
00:31:20
Speaker 2: If we paid for it, they wouldn't need new teeth, now, would we would they?
00:31:25
Speaker 1: Well, they're not paying for it.
00:31:28
Speaker 3: Well, well, it's.
00:31:30
Speaker 4: We already pay for it. It's already paid for. It's the lead.
00:31:33
Speaker 1: Think of it the next time you get paid, John, a small portion of your paycheck is going towards free teeth for meth heads.
00:31:43
Speaker 2: You know, I realize that she's not the savviest of the politicians, But if you are treading water, let's say, as you run for reelection, hagging your hat on this is probably not a great idea.
00:32:01
Speaker 3: It's already paid for.
00:32:02
Speaker 4: It's the linkage that hasn't happened.
00:32:04
Speaker 6: The reaction reaction to that, though, was why isn't the mayor doing more to address the meth use in the first place?
00:32:11
Speaker 3: What are you doing to address the drug use?
00:32:14
Speaker 1: So we don't pay for dental care?
00:32:16
Speaker 2: And what do you think that waiting room would look like at that dentish office if you put all the meth heads in there and you just put a pile of Highlights magazines on the table in front of them.
00:32:28
Speaker 3: Pay for dental care and let me just take one hundred percent.
00:32:31
Speaker 4: Let me just tell you that when I came in, we start even though it is not the city's role to provide healthcare, it is the county.
00:32:39
Speaker 3: That was not enough for me.
00:32:40
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound like locking arms.
00:32:44
Speaker 3: That was not enough for me.
00:32:45
Speaker 4: I said, we have to provided ourselves. So we took lawsuit money from tobacco and we established contracts with drug related organizations, substance abuse organizations.
00:32:58
Speaker 1: No no, no, no, no, no no. What she's talking about is harm reduction. It's money from the tobacco lawsuits that's going towards homeless healthcare Los Angeles to pass out math pipes.
00:33:11
Speaker 2: How about this, Instead of spending money to fix the teeth of the crackheads, why not take the money away from the woman who's giving them the needles and the tinfoil and the crack pipes and everything else.
00:33:26
Speaker 1: Wouldn't that be cheaper?
00:33:28
Speaker 4: Yeah, and so some of those people we can refer to a drug treatment program. The issue with dental is is that you want people to be productive. You want them to have a job. You want them to no longer need public assistance.
00:33:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, but don't you want them to stop doing the meth before you give them the free tiefs? Yeah?
00:33:47
Speaker 2: I don't care if they have the best grill in town. If they're on meth. Guess what, the airline isn't hiring them to be a pilot.
00:33:59
Speaker 4: So while some one is in interim housing waiting for permanent housing. Lets us help them get their act together so they will be successful and down the line we'll not need public assistance at all.
00:34:11
Speaker 1: How's that working out?
00:34:16
Speaker 6: Is the current size and hiring rate of the LAPD sustainable?
00:34:19
Speaker 4: No?
00:34:20
Speaker 3: Well of the current size. No, we need to have.
00:34:23
Speaker 4: More police officers because for Los Angeles we have a relatively small department.
00:34:29
Speaker 3: And you know what, you're gonna pay one way or another. You're going to pay an.
00:34:32
Speaker 4: Overtime costs and you're certainly going to pay in a compromise of quality of life of individuals who say the police don't respond.
00:34:40
Speaker 1: Well, I wonder why nobody wants to work for this department. Karen. That's a head scratcher.
00:34:46
Speaker 3: And here we have the games coming up.
00:34:49
Speaker 4: You know, we had a couple of spikes, We had some robberies in the valley and we aggress some.
00:34:54
Speaker 1: It was like three dozen in two weeks.
00:34:57
Speaker 2: How many additions to the crime blotd or did we make just from crime in the valley.
00:35:04
Speaker 3: And we aggressively responded to that.
00:35:07
Speaker 4: And when those bikes have occurred, we have been able to eliminate the cause meaning catch to people that are involved in crime.
00:35:14
Speaker 2: Nope, I get it that we're a democratic state in la is a democratic city. How can anyone vote for her?
00:35:25
Speaker 4: So we need to continue to grow our police department. But one thing we cannot do is allow the department to shrink any further. And hopefully the city council will approve the money that was put in the budget to hire police officers.
00:35:40
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that.
00:35:41
Speaker 6: So much of your strategy getting things done at city Hall has been this idea of locked arms. Yes, just collaborate, but especially lately, there's been a number of instances where members of the city Council have voted against some of your proposals, and some city council members won't even enforce forty one eighteen.
00:35:58
Speaker 1: Are you reaching up, Nithia, you're former supporter.
00:36:05
Speaker 6: Are you reaching a point where you sort of have to go at it your own? Or you're growing more and more frustrated with the fact that the city Council is just not always endorsing what you want to do.
00:36:16
Speaker 2: No.
00:36:16
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, that's our democratic process. But let me just explain that I feel in general I work very well with the council members.
00:36:24
Speaker 3: Of course, we have differences.
00:36:25
Speaker 1: How about the one that's running against you, and.
00:36:29
Speaker 4: Of course to get something done, if I need to work around them, you better believe it. But I don't think that that's going to happen this time in the budget. I think the council realizes that we cannot save money based on the back of our public safety. We cannot compromise public safety.
00:36:47
Speaker 6: Why do you think someone like reality TV star Spencer Pratt is doing well in this race?
00:36:54
Speaker 4: Oh, I think he's tapping into the anger and frustration that people have. I think he's doing but I think we're a celebrity.
00:37:01
Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait wait wait anger at who? Anger at her? That's right,
Speaker 1: And a very happy Monday to you.
00:00:02
Speaker 2: At twelve oh six in the West, it's the Giant Phillips Show, broadcasting live from Cairo in Seattle. So just in case I feel the need to drink a couple of cappuccinos and throw a sock eyed Sam And it's some tourists from Iowa. You know why, mister Randy Wggs in Culver City, John, we have a fast moving brush fire in Simi Valley in Ventura County. There is a major mandatory evacuation zone pretty much everywhere south of Royal one hundred and eighty four acres so far, and at least one structure has been destroyed. All right, So that, of course is a developing story that we are keeping our eye on. If it gets worse, we will definitely bring all the latest details to you right here on the program. Eight hundred two two two five two two two is telephone number one. Eight hundred two two two five two two two. Well, Randy, thank you so much for sitting in for me last week. Will I was on vacation and look, it's possible for me to be out of state and Canada not to go to war with Iceland.
00:01:08
Speaker 1: It was the first time in a very long time that you went on vacation and no major news broke outside of this Baccaria clip. By the way, this is a profile piece. This is not a gotcha piece, right, you meet America's sweetheart. Outside of that, it was a relatively we had plenty of things to talk about, but it wasn't like any earth shattering campaign changing news.
00:01:36
Speaker 2: And of course, the election is still going on. Ballots went out at the beginning of the month. Voting is going on right now as we speak. You can vote all the way until election Day, which I believe is what June the second Tuesday.
00:01:49
Speaker 1: Yes, it's two weeks from tomorrow, and we're actually going to be broadcasting live on election Night from seven to nine pm on kab D, KSFO, and KMJ all at the same time. We'll be in southern California, Northern California, and the Central Valley with whatever election returns we get at eight o'clock on election night.
00:02:17
Speaker 2: And if you're curious as to how I'm filling out my ballot, my ballot is online at both KABC dot com and KSFO dot com. If you want to go ahead and take a look and see how I voted. Now, as ballots are being collected, we now know who is voting and who isn't, and Randy, you're keeping an eye on those numbers.
00:02:40
Speaker 1: In the state of California. As of today, four percent of ballots have been returned, and I'm one of them. I'm one of the ninety six percent that's going to vote at some point this week. Get on with that. Well, I know what I'm doing, but I got to set the wife down. We have to explain to her what all the races are. She's too busy to deal with any of this stuff. So we'll get it done this week and then I'll put that thing in the box and then I'll be one of this four percent five percent. Now, when it comes to the breakdown by party, this is where it gets interesting. Obviously, there is a major advantage for registration for the Democrats, but you have four percent of Democrat ballots returned at about three hundred and seventy one thousand. You have six percent of Republican ballots returned at about three hundred and thirty four thousand, despite having half the amount of registration numbers. And then, of course, my people, the NPPs no party preferencers always underperforming with just three percent.
00:03:45
Speaker 2: And when you compare these numbers to where they were in twenty twenty two, which is the last midterm election in California, at this moment, in twenty twenty two, the Democrats were at fifty four percent of the ballots return Now they're at forty one percent. At this point in twenty twenty two, the Republicans were twenty six percent of ballots returned. They're now thirty seven percent, Meaning Republicans are overperforming what they did four years ago by eleven points and Democrats are underperforming by thirteen points.
00:04:20
Speaker 1: Now, when it comes to the City of Los Angeles, where everyone is paying attention to this mayor's race, it's getting more attention nationally than the California governor's race, the city of la is at two percent of ballots returned. Of the two point two million ballots that were sent out to the City of Los Angeles, fifty five thousand have come back.
00:04:47
Speaker 2: Now we're going to get into this in more detail later on in the program with Barbara Stone in the Fixed California Hour, but just taking a cursory glance at these numbers, a couple of things up and pop out at me. Number one is Spencer Pratt has a real chance at making the runoff in Los Angeles. If these numbers hold and Republicans keep turning in their ballots at the rate that they're turning them in, and Democratic participation falls off a cliff like it looks like is happening right now, Spencer Pratt has a lane to get into the top two. In fact, at this point, I would say he's a favorite.
00:05:29
Speaker 1: To be in the top two. Well, the betting markets have it at like eighty percent that he's making the runoff, or whatever you want to take into consideration with that stuff. Of the two percent of ballots return, it's two percent of Democrats with twenty seven thousand, four percent of Republicans with fourteen thousand. But in the city of La Republicans are one fourth of the amount of registration that the Democrats have, and the Note party preferencer is at two percent with thirteen thousand ballots now statewide. As you look at these numbers.
00:06:01
Speaker 2: The lesson that I learn is that a Democratic lockout in November is still a possibility. And I know a lot of people in the audience disagree with me, and I received many of your emails. I looked at them this morning, all the emails that came in when I was on vacation, and you're urging me to reconsider and to stop advocating for Republicans to vote for Bianco because he is the second polling Republican running for governor right now, to try to create a democratic lockout, many of you believe that it's only possible to get one Republican on the November ballot. Looking at these numbers, I'm here to tell you are wrong. Last time around, Republicans in the primary generated something like thirty nine or forty percent of the total vote in the general election. Let's say when it was who was it the last time it was Avenuwsome and Brian Dolly. I think Brian Dolly did thirty nine or forty percent something like that. Right now, Republicans make up thirty seven percent of the ballots. That is, assuming that they get no votes at all from the Independence, which we know is not going to happen. Republicans so far the cycle have been polling well with the Independence. I think Hilton was the top performing candidate overall with independent voters. So Republicans could end up getting not thirty nine percent or forty percent of the total electorate, but maybe something like, I don't know, forty three, forty four, forty five percent of the primary electorate could end up voting for a Republican. If you split those numbers between the two candidates, you have a Democratic lockout. Republicans are over performing so far. And these aren't polls. This isn't so I'm kind of forecast. This isn't Scott Rasmussen or John Zogby or someone like that looking at a poll and saying, okay, based on our modeling, this is where we believe the elector it is. These are physical ballots that have been returned. These are real numbers. And I'm telling you right now the Democratic Party has a problem. They are giving their people no direction as to how to vote, no direction.
00:08:35
Speaker 1: I can't tell you the.
00:08:36
Speaker 2: Number of people, number of Democrats in my own personal social network who have contacted me, of all people saying who should I vote for? Because they have no clue what to do. And the fact that Gavin Newsom and Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris and all the shot callers in the Democratic Party have refuse to endorse one of these candidates. Makes it so that everyone has to do their own research and everyone has to figure out who they like and who they don't like. Well, most voters are sheep, and what they do is they don't live, breathe, eat, sleep politics like us political junkies do. Most people just know. In California, the average person, the average voter is a Democrat or a Democratic state, and they know they generally speaking, line up that way. And when the party tells them to go vote for Kamala over Donald Trump, that's what they do because that's what they're told to do. And when the party tells them to vote for Gavin over Brian Dolly, that's what they do because that's what they're told to do. Well, now they have no one telling them what to do. They don't know what to do, and so the answer is not to vote. Well, that's fine by me. Take a powder, take a pass, go Netflix, and chill. And that's what they're doing right now. So there is a unique opportunity right now for Spencer Pratt in Los Angeles in particular, even in a deeply blue city, a city that has not elected a Republican mayor since Dick Reardon back in the nineteen nineties after.
00:10:27
Speaker 1: The La riot.
00:10:28
Speaker 2: Now has a real opportunity to make the November ballot and the two Republicans running for governor, they have a real opportunity at locking the rest of those jackasses off the November ballot. Now is the time to go for broke, because let me tell you, if it ends up being Javier Bessera versus Steve Hilton, the shot callers who are all going to step in and go vote for Bessera over Hilton and the sheep are going to do it because they now have someone telling them what to do.
00:11:05
Speaker 3: Scrub it.
00:11:07
Speaker 1: But right now they don't know what to do.
00:11:11
Speaker 2: And I don't see anyone stepping in between now and the election and changing their mind. And it might even be too late at this point. I know Gavin Knew some claims. He said in an interview this weekend that he has a plan if he believes that the Democrats are going to get locked off the November ballot, and it's something he's closely monitoring, which means their people are telling them that's a real possibility.
00:11:41
Speaker 1: Don't forget.
00:11:42
Speaker 2: That's why the California Democratic Party put that poll online and They updated it every single week because they are scared to death of being locked off the ballot. That's them talking. It's the California Democratic Party saying their data says that's a real possibility. That's Galvin Newsom biting his fingernails because he knows that's a real possibility. I do not understand why so many people. I saw Laura Ingram put something out on Twitter. Now's the time not to play around. Everyone vote for Steve Hilton, so we make sure to get one person on the November ballot.
00:12:28
Speaker 3: Wrong.
00:12:31
Speaker 2: That's fine if you want to make sure to get someone on the November ballot but lose the election. Let me tell you something. When you have an election like this, it's a zero sum game. You don't get anything. If you come close, you don't get anything if you make sure that you put your candidate on the November ballot. You only get something if you win, and you need to play to win. If you don't play to win, you will lose. And in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by wide margins, it's not often where some fluke of an opportunity presents itself that gives you an opportunity to win. Stop thinking like losers. Start thinking like winners. And if you're thinking about how to lose with dignity, you're part of the problem. Stop thinking like that. If you're given the opportunity through their inability to field a credible candidate and this fluky top two system to take something to take back power because there is a power vacuum, then go for it. That's how it works. The definition of politics is who gets what when, we're how and why? And if you're the guy in the chair, you make those decisions. If you're not the guy in the chair, you get nothing. And now is the opportunity to instead of trying to fight over crumbs and fight over I guess bragging rights or something.
00:14:26
Speaker 1: Go for the win.
00:14:31
Speaker 2: I don't know when, if, or ever another opportunity like this will pop up. It's not often that it happens. Sometimes you just have to wait for a perfect storm. And if you get that perfect storm and you're prepared, you can exploit it. Dick Reardon had no business winning the LA Mayor's office in the nineteen nineties. LA was a d blue city back then, but because of the Los Angeles riots and because of all of the chaos that that produced and people were afraid and crime was high, and Los Angeles was a city.
00:15:16
Speaker 1: That was on the bubble.
00:15:19
Speaker 2: He was able to come in in that environment, in that unique situation and pull off an upset. Well, right now there is a storm of bruin for the Democrats and they know it. And it's so odd to me. And maybe this just comes with being a winner and they win so many elections they can see it and Republicans can't. But it's just bizarre to me how up to so many Republicans are When the clouds are parting, they could walk right through and they have an opportunity to take the brass ring, and they start coming up with excuses as to why they shouldn't do it. It is unreal to me. But maybe it's something that's deep in the psyche of a winner to identify threats, and it's deep in the psyche of a loser to just find ways to make sure that they don't experience success.
00:16:23
Speaker 1: I don't know when people send me these.
00:16:27
Speaker 2: Emails saying, you know what, you're suggesting the top two and blocking the Democrats from the November ballot, it's unlikely to work. Well, yes, that's true, but it is your only chance. It is your only opportunity if you want to win.
00:16:45
Speaker 1: This is it.
00:16:47
Speaker 2: There is one lane, there is one game, there is one play, and you could choose not to do it for whatever reasons that you don't want to do it for. But just understand that you're making And as I look at these numbers, I don't see anything that scares me. I see things that make me more optimistic. If the Republican voters can split their vote fifty to fifty, you got a chance. And I think the Paul Mitchell model had it as high as twenty six or twenty seven percent the last time I paid attention. But let me tell you, given these numbers, it's probably higher.
00:17:28
Speaker 1: Right now.
00:17:30
Speaker 2: Eight hundred two two two five two two two is a telephone number one eight hundred two two two five two two two. If you'd like to email the show, you can do so at Johnny don't like show at gmail dot com. That's Johnny, don't like show at gmail dot com. And Randy, you're monitoring the mail bag.
00:17:48
Speaker 1: Samuel writes in it, Johnny, don't like show at gmail dot com. John, I love your program and appreciate your optimism. But the chances of a Republican winning this year's governor's race is the same as the Angels winning the twenty twenty six World or even their division. Boy, We're bad this year.
00:18:05
Speaker 2: Eight hundred two two two five two two two is a telephone number one eight hundred two two two five two two two. And Randy, if you haven't downloaded the podcast yet or subscribe to the podcast yet, that's something that's a great way to start off your week. On this Monday, search for The John Phillips Show.
00:18:24
Speaker 1: Wherever you get your podcast, whether it's the Apple podcast app, iHeart, Spotify, search for the John Phillips Show, hit subscribe. You could download all the episodes. You could do a Google on the YouTube. You can get the free KABC app or the free KSFO app, get the KMJ now app. Because we're on in the Central Valley Saturdays at noon, so many different ways to listen live to what we're doing here every single day from noon to three. And you can download all the podcasts, including ones from last week where I was here solo covering this nonsense. By the way, this is a profile piece. This is not a gotcha piece, right, and Randy, we're gonna be live on election night. How exciting is this? Mark your calendars. June second, Election Day, John and I are coming back in for a night shift broadcasting live on seven ninety KABC in Southern California, eight ten KSFO in the Bay Area, and KMJ in Fresno for a live election recap show from seven to nine PM. Will be here. The polls close at eight o'clock and if there are any results that we can give out, we'll give them to you, covering every race that matters going on in the state of California in this June primary.
00:19:44
Speaker 2: In the meantime, what do you say we make a couple of listeners very happy.
00:19:47
Speaker 1: Oh, they're going to be really happy. I am jealous about this one. Seven ninety KABC welcomes the twenty first annual La Winefest at the Los Angeles Equestrians Center in Burbank Saturday, June thirteenth and Sunday, June fourteenth. Tickets are on sale now at Lawinefest dot com. But right now, collar number nine at one eighty eight seven ninety five two two two gets a pair of general admission tickets to Sunday June fourteenth. You must be at least twenty one years old to win tickets furnished by the La Winefest Good luck dialing.
00:20:27
Speaker 2: So for the last week, I've been on vacation in Alaska around a lot of people who don't live in California. And when they find out that I live in California, and they find out that I do what I do for a living, they weren't asking me about the dubiedatorial election. They weren't asking me about Gavin Newsom. They were asking me all about Spencer Pratt. And when they would talk to me about Spencer Pratt, it would be essentially three different points. One is have you seen his ads? It's all over my social media feed. They're fantastic. Number two is does he have a chance to win? And number three is how could you elect that horrible woman in the first place?
00:21:13
Speaker 1: You mean, this horrible woman.
00:21:15
Speaker 4: If you're feeling down, if you're feeling blue, let's get help for you.
00:21:20
Speaker 1: That would be her. Karen Bass is in trying to get reelected mode. So she's finally sitting down and doing some one on one interviews after no more debates will ever happen. After that first debate between Karen Bass Spensher Pratt and Nythia Raman. They all pulled out at the same time of the debate that was supposed to happen last week, So now here is her opportunity to get her face in front of the voters. She sat down with ABC seven in Los Angeles and it did not go great. You don't say.
00:21:56
Speaker 5: And today we are wrapping up our week long conversations with the top candidates running for Los Angeles mayor. We're doing it with the incumbent and the front runner in the race, Mayor Karen Vass.
00:22:07
Speaker 1: She is running for us, although front runner is still like undecided because she's the front runner at about thirty percent, which is real low for the incumbent, and the last poll from Inside California Politics has Spencer Pratt at twenty two percent right behind her.
00:22:23
Speaker 5: She is running for a second term and she is talking about what she has accomplished while in office and what she wants to do with another four years. So let's go over to our political reporter Josh Haskell with another conversation.
00:22:34
Speaker 6: Josh Philip, thank you so much. We have incumbent Mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Vass here, she's running for reelection. Thank you so much. For joining us, Mayor, let's get right into it. When I interviewed you at the one year anniversary of the Palasheads.
00:22:48
Speaker 3: Fire, you told me that you were a little.
00:22:50
Speaker 6: Surprised that so much of the anger about the fire is still directed solely at you.
00:23:01
Speaker 1: Well, she was in charge, and we found out thanks to that CBS reporter's new book, that she definitely knew about the winds and also didn't tell anybody in her office where she was going when she went to Ghana.
00:23:13
Speaker 2: I wonder privately, though, how much she thinks the anger should have been directed at Gavin and not directed at her.
00:23:23
Speaker 1: You think there's some bad blood between those two.
00:23:26
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, because if you really trace things back, if Gavin and the state wouldn't have told the LAFD to stand down and they could have just put the fire out, none of this would have ever happened. So I guess, if you go back far enough, in her mind, all of this is Gavin's fault.
00:23:49
Speaker 6: And it seems like that anger has now encompassed other problems facing the city, homelessness, Hollywood production, crime, all directed at you.
00:23:58
Speaker 1: It's almost like every single metric in this city is worse than it was four years ago.
00:24:06
Speaker 6: How do you convince such an angry electorate that you deserve four more years.
00:24:10
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, it's super important that I explain about the accomplishments that have been done.
00:24:15
Speaker 3: The fact that homelessness is down.
00:24:17
Speaker 1: Nope, who is believing that it's not down in my neighborhood, it's not down. At the off ramp of the ten freeway dividing Culver City in Los Angeles, that's still there every single day. No part of this city looks any better than it did four years ago.
00:24:35
Speaker 2: No. In fact, not only are there more people living on the streets, it's dirtier than it ever has been.
00:24:43
Speaker 3: Seventeen and a half percent two years in a row.
00:24:45
Speaker 4: It's the first time we've seen a decline in street homelessness. Around the country, homelessness went up eighteen percent.
00:24:52
Speaker 3: Crime is down, Nope.
00:24:56
Speaker 1: What planet is this woman living on. We just had three weeks of every single night burglaries in the San Fernando Valley, and when they announced an arrest, there was another burglary that night in the San Fernando Valley.
00:25:14
Speaker 4: Sixty year low in terms of our homicide rate. We go through spikes here and there, and when we do we respond aggressively.
00:25:22
Speaker 1: So is that because we've got more police on the streets taken down the gang members, or is that because doctors have gotten really good at treating bullet wounds. So her answer is, well, you know, big cities are going to have these problems. We're doing better than everyone else.
00:25:37
Speaker 4: We go through spikes here and there, and when we do, we respond aggressively. But also the alternatives so that you don't always have to have a police officer.
00:25:47
Speaker 1: Oh, we're still on that nonsense.
00:25:50
Speaker 2: Go to any other big city in the West, or any other big city in the country for that matter, outside of maybe the city I'm in right now, Seattle, Portland, maybe Oakland. No city looks as bad as Los Angeles right now. Not Dallas, not Miami, not Denver, not any of those cities, Not New York, not Boston. Los Angeles is appalling right now compared to all the other big cities in the country.
00:26:23
Speaker 1: We both recently were just in San Francisco. Outside of the tenderloin, San Francisco looks a hell of a lot cleaner than it did two years ago.
00:26:32
Speaker 2: No Los Angeles looks dirty all over the place. It doesn't matter if you're in South LA, you're in Hollywood, you're in Venice. There is trash everywhere. There are people living on the streets. There are RVs that are parked where homeless people are living in. They're dumping their trash on the streets. No one is blowing the whistle. And all of this is going on on Karen Bass's.
00:26:56
Speaker 4: Watch, increasing the hiring of police, building forty two thousand units of affordable housing, because we know that the number one issue in our city was four years ago and it is today is affordability. The part that we can control in the city is the cost of housing, and all of.
00:27:16
Speaker 2: Them housing went up. Yeah, it's very expensive to live in.
00:27:19
Speaker 4: La And all of that has taken place under my watch. I want to make sure that we can move forward and complete what we started and prepare our city for a very successful games, which I know we will have.
00:27:33
Speaker 1: Do you see the story that all the projected hotel traffic that we're supposed to get for the World Cup is way below expectations. Yeah, Well, would you want to come here to watch a soccer game? Well, especially when you can go to because they're being played all over the continent. Ed you go to Toronto, you go to Kansas City and they're going to be cheaper and it's going to be safer.
00:27:54
Speaker 2: Well, just wait until that new stadium pops up in Las Vegas, right across the freeway from the football stadium. Las Vegas is going to get all of this because you can stay on that one boulevard, Las Vegas Boulevard, and you can walk to the stadium and you can gamble and you don't have to worry about being accosted by a bomb. Yeah, but you have to go see the a's and we still got.
00:28:20
Speaker 1: Our Oakland A's baby. Now you out.
00:28:22
Speaker 2: Eight hundred two two two five two two two is a telephone number one eight hundred two two two five two two two fixed California Hour coming up after the news at one, Professor barber Stone joins us, All right, let's go back to La Mayor carrying bass and or sit down with ABC seven on homelessness.
00:28:41
Speaker 6: I know that street homelessness is down, but roughly forty percent of those who have gone through inside Safe have ended up back on the street. What is being done to address that?
00:28:51
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, the number one thing that has been lacking is the services. So once we get people off the street, making sure that we are us why they fell on the street. To begin with, Josh, sixty percent of the people and Insight Safe have remained housed.
00:29:07
Speaker 1: I think she's a glass f fulk got a mayor.
00:29:11
Speaker 2: Okay, So she gives them motel rooms and rundown baits motels like situations. They light the motels on fire, they destroy the rooms, and they use the motel room to store some of their stuff, and they still participate in what's going on in the encampments on the streets because that's where the drugs are and that's where the fun is.
00:29:35
Speaker 1: Yep, it's a raving success.
00:29:38
Speaker 4: I think it's really important to build on that success.
00:29:42
Speaker 3: But what LA needs to do.
00:29:43
Speaker 4: In the next four years that I plan to accomplish is building out a more cost effective system to deal with people when they get off the street and not put them into permanent housing immediately. You can't go from a tent into an apartment and expec to function on your own.
00:30:01
Speaker 6: Also on homelessness at the Pantry, earlier this week, you were talking about comprehensive health care for the unhoused, and you talked about how many of the unhoused because of their meth use, lose their teeth.
00:30:13
Speaker 3: That's right?
00:30:15
Speaker 6: Who would pay for the dental care for the unhoused?
00:30:18
Speaker 1: Free teeth for all the meth heads? It's Karen Bess two point zero.
00:30:23
Speaker 2: Wait, with all of the problems facing the city, which she wants to spend our money on, is dental implants for crackheads?
00:30:32
Speaker 1: Yes? What do you think all that medical cost is for? Well?
00:30:39
Speaker 2: How about this? How about breast implants for the hookers? That would be good for business.
00:30:45
Speaker 6: Who would pay for the dental care? So for the unhoused?
00:30:48
Speaker 4: When I say comprehensive health care, it's actually what people can get from medical.
00:30:53
Speaker 1: The problem medical If you're homeless and you rotted your teeth away with meth, you get free. I wonder if they have to go down to algadonus too.
00:31:06
Speaker 4: The problem is is that the linkage isn't made with the people and the services in a system. Well, it's we already pay for it. It's already paid for it's the linking.
00:31:17
Speaker 1: No, we don't.
00:31:20
Speaker 2: If we paid for it, they wouldn't need new teeth, now, would we would they?
00:31:25
Speaker 1: Well, they're not paying for it.
00:31:28
Speaker 3: Well, well, it's.
00:31:30
Speaker 4: We already pay for it. It's already paid for. It's the lead.
00:31:33
Speaker 1: Think of it the next time you get paid, John, a small portion of your paycheck is going towards free teeth for meth heads.
00:31:43
Speaker 2: You know, I realize that she's not the savviest of the politicians, But if you are treading water, let's say, as you run for reelection, hagging your hat on this is probably not a great idea.
00:32:01
Speaker 3: It's already paid for.
00:32:02
Speaker 4: It's the linkage that hasn't happened.
00:32:04
Speaker 6: The reaction reaction to that, though, was why isn't the mayor doing more to address the meth use in the first place?
00:32:11
Speaker 3: What are you doing to address the drug use?
00:32:14
Speaker 1: So we don't pay for dental care?
00:32:16
Speaker 2: And what do you think that waiting room would look like at that dentish office if you put all the meth heads in there and you just put a pile of Highlights magazines on the table in front of them.
00:32:28
Speaker 3: Pay for dental care and let me just take one hundred percent.
00:32:31
Speaker 4: Let me just tell you that when I came in, we start even though it is not the city's role to provide healthcare, it is the county.
00:32:39
Speaker 3: That was not enough for me.
00:32:40
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound like locking arms.
00:32:44
Speaker 3: That was not enough for me.
00:32:45
Speaker 4: I said, we have to provided ourselves. So we took lawsuit money from tobacco and we established contracts with drug related organizations, substance abuse organizations.
00:32:58
Speaker 1: No no, no, no, no, no no. What she's talking about is harm reduction. It's money from the tobacco lawsuits that's going towards homeless healthcare Los Angeles to pass out math pipes.
00:33:11
Speaker 2: How about this, Instead of spending money to fix the teeth of the crackheads, why not take the money away from the woman who's giving them the needles and the tinfoil and the crack pipes and everything else.
00:33:26
Speaker 1: Wouldn't that be cheaper?
00:33:28
Speaker 4: Yeah, and so some of those people we can refer to a drug treatment program. The issue with dental is is that you want people to be productive. You want them to have a job. You want them to no longer need public assistance.
00:33:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, but don't you want them to stop doing the meth before you give them the free tiefs? Yeah?
00:33:47
Speaker 2: I don't care if they have the best grill in town. If they're on meth. Guess what, the airline isn't hiring them to be a pilot.
00:33:59
Speaker 4: So while some one is in interim housing waiting for permanent housing. Lets us help them get their act together so they will be successful and down the line we'll not need public assistance at all.
00:34:11
Speaker 1: How's that working out?
00:34:16
Speaker 6: Is the current size and hiring rate of the LAPD sustainable?
00:34:19
Speaker 4: No?
00:34:20
Speaker 3: Well of the current size. No, we need to have.
00:34:23
Speaker 4: More police officers because for Los Angeles we have a relatively small department.
00:34:29
Speaker 3: And you know what, you're gonna pay one way or another. You're going to pay an.
00:34:32
Speaker 4: Overtime costs and you're certainly going to pay in a compromise of quality of life of individuals who say the police don't respond.
00:34:40
Speaker 1: Well, I wonder why nobody wants to work for this department. Karen. That's a head scratcher.
00:34:46
Speaker 3: And here we have the games coming up.
00:34:49
Speaker 4: You know, we had a couple of spikes, We had some robberies in the valley and we aggress some.
00:34:54
Speaker 1: It was like three dozen in two weeks.
00:34:57
Speaker 2: How many additions to the crime blotd or did we make just from crime in the valley.
00:35:04
Speaker 3: And we aggressively responded to that.
00:35:07
Speaker 4: And when those bikes have occurred, we have been able to eliminate the cause meaning catch to people that are involved in crime.
00:35:14
Speaker 2: Nope, I get it that we're a democratic state in la is a democratic city. How can anyone vote for her?
00:35:25
Speaker 4: So we need to continue to grow our police department. But one thing we cannot do is allow the department to shrink any further. And hopefully the city council will approve the money that was put in the budget to hire police officers.
00:35:40
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that.
00:35:41
Speaker 6: So much of your strategy getting things done at city Hall has been this idea of locked arms. Yes, just collaborate, but especially lately, there's been a number of instances where members of the city Council have voted against some of your proposals, and some city council members won't even enforce forty one eighteen.
00:35:58
Speaker 1: Are you reaching up, Nithia, you're former supporter.
00:36:05
Speaker 6: Are you reaching a point where you sort of have to go at it your own? Or you're growing more and more frustrated with the fact that the city Council is just not always endorsing what you want to do.
00:36:16
Speaker 2: No.
00:36:16
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, that's our democratic process. But let me just explain that I feel in general I work very well with the council members.
00:36:24
Speaker 3: Of course, we have differences.
00:36:25
Speaker 1: How about the one that's running against you, and.
00:36:29
Speaker 4: Of course to get something done, if I need to work around them, you better believe it. But I don't think that that's going to happen this time in the budget. I think the council realizes that we cannot save money based on the back of our public safety. We cannot compromise public safety.
00:36:47
Speaker 6: Why do you think someone like reality TV star Spencer Pratt is doing well in this race?
00:36:54
Speaker 4: Oh, I think he's tapping into the anger and frustration that people have. I think he's doing but I think we're a celebrity.
00:37:01
Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait wait wait anger at who? Anger at her? That's right,
