We are building a citizen army across America fighting for a U.S. Constitutional Amendment that will end the rampant corruption of our federal government and ensure Free and Fair Elections. The massive amounts of money spent in our elections from outside special interests, often with little to no transparency, is drowning out the voices of average citizens and distorting the most fundamental principle of America - a country dependent upon the people alone. By working together, we can solve this problem and ensure true representative government in America for ourselves and future generations with an amendment to the Constitution. Wolf-PAC is using a proven strategy of going through our state governments to achieve an amendment. Learn more about our plan and how to become an active citizen by visiting our website.
Site Navigation
Search
Latest Stories
Join a growing community committed to civic renewal.
Subscribe to The Fulcrum and be part of the conversation.
Top Stories
Latest news
Read More
Congress advances a reconciliation bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security while passing key rural legislation. As debates over ICE funding, wildfire policy, and broadband expansion unfold, lawmakers also face new questions about the use of AI in government.
Getty Images, Bloomberg Creative
Starting Up the Reconciliation Machine
Apr 28, 2026
This week the Senate began the long, procedure-heavy process of creating and passing a reconciliation bill in order to enact Republican priorities without requiring any votes from Democratic legislators: funding the parts of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) whose funding remains lapsed and additional funds for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Also this week, the House agreed to two bills that next go to the President and voted on a number of bills related to rural areas.
Two New Laws Soon
Both of these bills go to the President next for signing:
- S. 98: Rural Broadband Protection Act of 2025 passed the House by voice vote.
- S. 1020: A bill to require the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to extend the time period during which licensees are required to commence construction of certain hydropower projects, passed the House 394-14.
House Votes on Rural-related Bills
These bills will go the Senate next. They are not close to becoming law.
- H.R. 2493: Improving Care in Rural America Reauthorization Act of 2025 passed 406-4.
- H.R. 5201: Kari’s Law Reporting Act passed 405-5. According to the FCC, “Kari’s Law requires direct 911 dialing and notification capabilities in multi-line telephone systems (MLTS), which are typically found in enterprises such as office buildings, campuses, and hotels.” This bill would require a report on how the implementation of Kari’s Law is going.
- H.R. 5200: Emergency Reporting Act, which would result in reports after activation of the Disaster Information Reporting System and to make improvements to network outage reporting, passed 386-7.
- H.R. 1681: Expediting Federal Broadband Deployment Reviews Act, which would establish an interagency group to ensure that certain Federal land management agencies prioritize the review of requests for communications use authorizations, passed 384-9.
- H.R. 5587: HEATS Act, which would amend the Geothermal Steam Act of 1970 to waive the requirement for a Federal drilling permit for certain activities and exempt certain activities from the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, passed 231-186.
- H.R. 6387: FIRE Act passed 220-198. Per the site Legis1, “The FIRE Act addresses a long-standing tension between federal air quality enforcement and state-level wildfire prevention. Under the current law, states risk falling out of compliance with national air quality standards when they conduct prescribed burns, even though those controlled burns are designed to reduce the far more damaging emissions from uncontrolled wildfires. The bill amends Section 319(b) of the Clean Air Act to give states a clearer path to exclude wildfire mitigation activities from air quality compliance calculations.” As you can see from the vote totals, this bill has strong partisan divergence. Why? As Legis1 went on to say, it’s an open question “…whether the bill is a practical fix for wildfire-prone states or a backdoor weakening of air quality standards…”. Which way a member of Congress sees it is almost entirely determined by which party the legislator belongs to.
- H.R. 4690: Reliable Federal Infrastructure Act, which would amend the Energy Conservation and Production Act to repeal certain Federal building energy efficiency performance standards, passed 215-202.
Funding the Department of Homeland Security by Reconciliation
The Department of Homeland Security is, sort of, in a shutdown. When appropriated funds for fiscal year 2026 lapsed early this year because Congress did not reach an agreement on funding it, DHS agencies without multi-year funds including TSA and the cybersecurity agency CISA stopped paying its employees. (ICE and CBP, on the other hand, had more-than-sufficient multi-year funds from last year’s reconciliation bill, and did not shut down.) Then they re-opened — the Trump Administration dubiously reassigned money appropriated to other purposes (more on that next week) — but that money isn’t expected to carry the department through September, the end of the fiscal year.
Last year’s reconciliation bill provided four years worth of funding for DHS. But now at least one Republican is telling Migrant Insider that DHS is running out of all that money because they’ve repurposed it to pay staff during the shutdown. As Migrant Insider goes on to note in this post, it’s hard to know if these claims are true because DHS has stopped reporting how it’s spending its money.
Republicans want to use the reconciliation process to fund DHS, and potentially other policy changes, without any Democratic votes.
The budget reconciliation process is complicated. Step 1 is having either chamber of Congress come up with a “budget resolution”. The budget resolution sets the amount of money that relevant committees will have to allocate in the reconciliation bill itself. As noted by reporter Jennifer Shutt, it’s just a blueprint and nothing in it, even if both chambers agree to it, changes existing law or funding amounts.
The Senate passed its budget resolution on Tuesday, April 21, in a party-line vote of 52-46. The resolution now goes to the House. Just like any other piece of legislation, the House could amend it and if they did, it would bounce back to the Senate.
Legislator Use of AI
NOTUS published an interesting piece describing how some members of Congress are using AI, both personally and professionally. So far, as far as we’re aware, AI is not being used to draft legislation, but from the kinds of uses described in the article, you could see how legislators might want to go that way some day.
Something that caught our eye was a mention that Sen. Schiff (D-CA) used an AI tool to draft a living will. Given all the stories in the news about lawyers submitting legal documents with made up cases in them to courts (like this one), Schiff’s choice might be surprising.
But, in general, when the user has expertise in an area, some of the AI tools out there can be helpful. Mike Masnick of Techdirt wrote about how he uses AI tools to do his work and argues that, when the user has a specific task and enough expertise to assess the tool’s output, it can be helpful.
Now, Sen. Schiff is a former prosecutor. Does this make him expert enough in trusts to assess the quality of the draft he was given? We don’t know - your GovTracker is not a lawyer of any kind. But we do know that many professions have enough specialization that expertise in one area would not automatically confer expertise in another.
So while GovTrack doesn’t care about Sen. Schiff’s personal trust arrangements (unless it somehow turned out the trust was a vehicle to violate House Ethics rules), we do care about legislators becoming reliant on AI tools if they don’t have the relevant expertise to assess how well the tools are performing or demonstrated awareness of their own limitations.
Starting Up the Reconciliation Machine was originally published by GovTrack and is republished with permission.
Keep ReadingShow less
Recommended
The impact of election fraud claims and voting laws on democracy in the United States. Daniel O. Jamison examines voter suppression concerns, mail-in ballot policies, and the broader political struggle over election integrity.
Getty Images, JJ Gouin
If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It
Apr 27, 2026
For nearly ten years, claims that our elections are riddled with fraud have threatened the foundation of our democratic republic.
It is alleged that Democrats have flooded the country with illegal immigrants who then illegally vote for Democrats. Purportedly to protect the country from this, Republicans seek legislation that would, among other provisions, restrict vote-by-mail, require potentially expensive and onerous proof of citizenship to register to vote, and require potentially expensive photo identification to vote.
However, the evidence does not support that election security is the issue. Instead, the proposed legislation aims to suppress lawful voting and cement dictatorship. Multiple court cases and investigations have shown that no significant fraud has occurred in the nation’s elections.
The Speaker of the House views as suspicious California’s acceptance for seven days after the election of ballots mailed on or before election day. He may have California Elections Code 3020 in mind and similar state laws.
Section 3020 states in part, “(2) If the ballot has no postmark, a postmark with no date, or an illegible postmark, and no other information is available from the United States Postal Service or the bona fide private mail delivery company to indicate the date on which the ballot was mailed, the vote by mail ballot identification envelope is date stamped by the elections official upon receipt of the vote by mail ballot from the United States Postal Service or a bona fide private mail delivery company, and is signed and dated pursuant to Section 3011 before election day.
(c) For purposes of this section, ‘bona fide private mail delivery company’ means a courier service that is in the regular business of accepting a mail item, package, or parcel for the purpose of delivery to a person or entity whose address is specified on the item.”
This basic provision appears to have existed with different post-election mail receipt time periods since before 2020. On audit and investigation, it should not be difficult to prove that Democrats had ballots signed, backdated, and delivered after election day to defeat a Republican House candidate who was leading on election day. But despite the massive financial resources of his party, the Speaker admits he can’t prove it. People, especially undocumented immigrants trying to lay low, do not want to be thrown in prison for voting illegally.
The façade of acting peacefully and lawfully in proposing legislation and constitutionally dubious executive orders to disenfranchise the opponent’s voters belies, as was demonstrated on January 6, 2021, that certain elements will, when these fail, act lawlessly and violently to keep power.
In order to intimidate citizens of color from voting, expect to see paramilitary forces of ICE, including local police co-opted by lucrative payments to be deputized ICE agents, dispatched to California and other blue states’ polls. After the election, ICE may be ordered to seize ballots and voting machines. Asserting that armed ICE agents are merely enforcing immigration law, the administration would claim that ICE is not subject to restrictions on use of the U.S. military at the polls. Expect a related prohibition on armed federal agents at polling places to be ignored until a court order is obtained that requires them to be unarmed, which order, if obeyed, would only marginally reduce intimidation.
Assembly Bill 2230 (Farias) is currently advancing in the California Legislature. It states in part, “Any person in possession of a firearm,…or any person who is wearing or displaying a uniform or other clothing or insignia that reasonably conveys an association with any local, state, or federal law enforcement agency…who is stationed in the immediate vicinity of, or posted at, a polling place without written authorization of the appropriate city or county elections official, is guilty of a felony,…An elections official shall not authorize any agency or officer responsible for immigration enforcement or federal law enforcement to be stationed or posted in the immediate vicinity of a polling place…for purposes of this section ‘immediate vicinity’ includes a building in which a polling place is situated, and 100 feet from any entrance or exit to the building, a parking facility for the building, and the ingress or egress for a vehicle to the parking facility.”
One might wonder whether 100 feet should be 2500 feet or more, but if local police are insufficient to enforce laws like this, can state National Guards do it? The Guard is under the control of the governor unless the president federalizes the Guard. The president’s federalizing the Guard to prevent the governor from blocking ICE, or his invocation of the Insurrection Act, could raise the issue of unlawful use of the U.S. military at the polls. U.S. military leaders, whose oath is to the Constitution and not a particular president, would then need to assess whether they can legally comply with the president’s orders.
The president, his party, and their supporters created this mess. Vote them out.
Daniel O. Jamison is a retired attorney. He is the author of the forthcoming book from McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, titled, “The Birth of Jim Crow: Racism, Reconstruction and the Pivotal Supreme Court Cases of 1857-1908.” Jamison’s op-eds have been widely published around the nation.Keep ReadingShow less
People voting in polling place
Getty Images
Latino Voters Signal Changing Views as Midterm Elections Approach
Apr 27, 2026
In South Florida, recent local elections have demonstrated a significant recalibration of the Latino vote, almost two years after the 2024 Presidential election.
A March 2026 poll from Florida International University’s Latino Public Opinion Forum (LPOF) — which uses web surveys and phone banking to collect data — shows that over 66% of Latinos disapprove of President Donald Trump.
Eduardo Gamarra, who founded the forum 12 years ago and works as a professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at FIU, shares that, although the survey doesn’t reflect an opinion following recent tensions with Iran, it still demonstrates an “absolutely negative” national sentiment among Latinos.
“On the approval, he's down 36 points. And on the congressional ballot, the democrats are up by almost 30 points. And the democrats are up on the presidential ballot by 28 points,” Gamarra said.
In Palm Beach, Emily Gregory, a first-time Democratic candidate who ran for FL State House 87, defeated Republican Jon Maples by a 2.4% margin in a special election triggered after Republican Mike Caruso vacated the seat in August 2025 to become the Palm Beach County Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller.
Caruso represented District 87 for three years, previously representing District 89, which was renumbered in 2022. Caruso won his 2024 election with a 19-point margin over Democratic candidate Sienna Osta.
Gamarra believes that Gregory’s win isn’t a coincidence. He believes it demonstrates the broader national shift reflected in the LPOF survey.
“Something is happening, and for us, really, one race does not make a realignment, certainly right. But I think you know several of these are a sign of what appears to be happening,” Gamarra said.
These recent polls and election results represent a significant shift away from the sentiment expressed by Latinos in the 2024 congressional and presidential elections.
The Americas Society/Council of the Americas (AS/COA) suggested in a November 2024 article that Trump “may have broken a Latino voting record for a Republican candidate.”
Barbara Casanova is the national secretary and membership chair for the Republican National Hispanic Assembly, a political organization seeking to promote Hispanic-American issues and interests within the Republican Party, according to the organization’s website.
Casanova explains that this initial shift towards Trump amongst the Latino electorate can be attributed to Trump’s strong personality and his emotional resonance with voters. She shares that, as we near two years into Trump’s presidency, voters must come to terms with the fact that this election won’t be like the last one.
“But in 2028, we're not going to have a Trump. We don't know who our presidential candidate will be. There's talk, there's rumors, there's stories, but we can't, we can't sit there's not going to be this beacon of issues and ideology that's going to really resonate necessarily,” Casanova said. “So it's how we look at what the actual issues are that are affecting the Hispanic community.”
However, the Latino bloc as a whole did not solely shift towards the Republican Party in 2024. Casanova shares that although voters saw an uptick in support for Trump, they also backed Democratic House and Senate candidates.
According to Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan political analysis newsletter at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, 13 Democrats in Trump-won districts were elected to congressional seats in states such as California, North Carolina, and Texas, compared to only three Republicans in districts won by Democratic Candidate Kamala Harris.
Casanova interprets these results as reflecting the irregular voting patterns across different Latino groups. She shares that issues that may seem important to the Latino electorate actually aren’t.
“I find that strongly Hispanic voters, citizens or residents that come here and have gone through the process believe in legal immigration, what they feel about,” Casanova said.
In the LPOF’s findings, this idea is also clear. Gamarra explains that the sentiment is not in support of loosened migration rules, but rather sensible ones.
“They want an immigration policy that makes sense,” Gamarra said. “They want the borders to be secure, right? Which sounds like they're Republicans, right? Except, they have a very low opinion of ICE, and they have an even harsher opinion of ICE’s tactics.”
Gamarra refers to an uptick in deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. A 2025 poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), a nonpartisan nonprofit health polling and policy organization, and the New York Times, revealed heightened fear and anxiety regarding the presence of ICE in local communities.
Sheyli Tomas-Sales, a sophomore at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Fla whose parents are Guatemalan immigrants, voted for the first time in the 2024 election for Harris — a decision she says was largely influenced by the GOP's rhetoric on migrants. She explains that, going into the upcoming elections, immigration enforcement remains a top issue on her ballot.
“Immigration, to me, is a big part of not only who I am, but kind of my representation,” Tomas-Sales said. “Both of my parents are immigrants, so it was very hard to see how [Trump] being in office affected my parents, and now going into these midterm elections, from what I've seen and what has happened so far in just these two years, I do still stand by my vote.”
Tomas-Sales shares that as midterms approach, she has seen a surge in political activism and people in her community using their voices to express political ideals. In Boca Raton, various protests regarding ICE have shaken the local community.
“Not only are they opening their eyes to what's going on in their own community, but they're also seeing how other communities are being affected,” Tomas-Sales said.
Gamarra believes that other issues affecting the Latino community include affordability and the economy.
“The top issue is the economy, and that's to be expected. Now, if you consider what's happened in the last month, with the cost of gasoline shooting up and the prices of the supermarkets shooting up as a result, this result is likely to be to be worse,” Gamarra said. “Latinos seem to be more affected directly by these kinds of issues than other groups.”
Gamarra believes that one of the most important highlights from recent polling is Latinos’ emphasized move away from more extremist beliefs, such as those influenced by MAGA stances, or those emphasized by President Trump and his allies.
He believes this shift is encouraging many Republican candidates to adopt more centrist rhetoric. Gamarra specifically points to incumbent candidate Maria Salazar, a Republican representing State House 27, who has openly supported President Trump.
“She seems to be running nervous, and because she is, on the one hand, a very staunch supporter of the President, but has had to really, kind of play this game of where she says she's very, very much in favor of the President, etc. But then, she's had to take positions that appear to contradict the president,” Gamarra said.
As elections pass and new ones approach, Casanova believes that effectively communicating with the Latino electorate and providing consistent messaging across party lines are necessary.
“I think it's hard to say what's going to happen in the midterms. It's going to be an interesting election, but more than interesting, I think it's going to really be a reflection of what we can expect perhaps in the next presidential election,” Casanova said.
Gabriela Quintero is a High School senior at Florida Atlantic University High School and will be attending Barnard College at Columbia University in the fall to pursue her B.A. in Political Science and English. Interested in politics, migration, policy, and culture, she hopes to pursue a career in political and cultural journalism.
Keep ReadingShow less
Image: Jamie Phamon Alamy. Image licensed obtained and used by IVN Editor Shawn Griffiths
Independents and Republicans May Hold the Power in Los Angeles – If They Actually Vote
Apr 27, 2026
Los Angeles voters are heading into a June 2 primary that may settle far more than who advances to November.
Under the Los Angeles City Charter, any candidate who clears 50% of the primary vote wins outright. No runoff. No November election. That rule turns the June primary into the only election in several of the city's most closely watched contests.
It is worth noting that this rule is not universal. In 2016, San Diego voters passed Measure K, a ballot measure authored by the Independent Voter Project, which eliminated San Diego's identical 50% primary rule and required all city elections to proceed to a November top-two runoff. Voters approved it with nearly 59% of the vote.
Los Angeles never made that change. The result is a system where a low-turnout June primary can end a race entirely, with no opportunity for the broader November electorate to weigh in.
At the same time, DSA-Los Angeles (Democratic Socialists of America) is running the most coordinated progressive municipal campaign the city has seen in years a six-race slate under the Shake Up LA banner, with active canvass programs, postcard campaigns, and small-donor fundraising networks already operational.
The Democratic Socialists of America is the largest socialist organization in the United States, with over 100,000 members.
Their core message is explicit: "LA is under attack by ICE, billionaire bosses, racism, oppression, and Trumpism; and the status quo is failing to meet the moment."
The message is all about base mobilization, and not persuasion – a strategy designed specifically for LA's low-turnout June primaries, where a motivated bloc of 4,000 to 6,000 well-organized voters can be decisive in a race that draws 25,000 to 45,000 total.
What DSA-LA is counting on (and what the registration data confirms) is that the other side of the ledger isn't organized at all.
The Voter Universe No One Is Targeting
Across the four council districts where DSA has endorsed candidates, voter registration data shows more than 200,000 registered No Party Preference (NPP), American Independent (AIP), and Republican voters.
These voters are fully eligible to participate in nonpartisan local elections on June 2 regardless of their party registration.
This group historically does not receive any targeted outreach in June municipal primaries. Their turnout rates in primaries run well below what they produce in November generals.
In CD11, that bloc totals 67,620, and is nearly 40 percent of total district registration. In CD15, it's 61,798 44.2 percent of the electorate, the highest combined non-Democratic share of any targeted district. In CD13, it's nearly 54,000. In CD1, more than 42,000.
In low-turnout primaries, those voters are the election. If they show up.
Council District 1: The DSA Incumbent and The Challenger Field
Eunisses Hernandez is seeking re-election in a district that stretches from Glassell Park and Highland Park to Chinatown and Pico Union. She is the district's first DSA-backed councilmember, and her record reflects that alignment directly.
- YouTube youtube.com
Hernandez co-founded La Defensx, an organization focused on shifting county resources away from incarceration toward community-based services.
In office, she authored the city's Sanctuary City Ordinance, led Measure ULA implementation, and passed what the DSA describes as the strongest tenant protections in 40 years. She was the only councilmember to vote against the city budget in her first year, citing inequitable resource allocation.
Hernandez won her 2022 primary outright with 53.9% – a 2,408-vote margin out of 29,888 votes cast.
Four challengers have been certified: Maria Lou Calanche, a former Los Angeles Police Commissioner and founder of the nonprofit Legacy LA; Nelson Grande, an executive consultant and former president of Avenida Entertainment Group; Raul Claros, founder of the CD1 Coalition, which runs community cleanup days; and Sylvia Robledo, a small-business owner and former council aide.
- YouTube youtu.be
The non-Democratic voter universe in CD1 totals 42,396 voters, 37.4% of total registration. A 5-point turnout lift among that group would yield roughly 2,120 additional votes. In a multi-candidate field, that's enough to determine whether Hernandez wins outright in June or faces a November runoff, and who finishes second.
Council District 9: The Open Seat and the Organizing War
This is LA’s lowest-income district, covering communities in South Los Angeles that have faced decades of disinvestment. With Curren Price terming out, the seat is open and DSA's investment here is significant.
Estuardo Mazariegos is the Shake Up LA candidate. He's Co-Director of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), a longtime labor organizer who helped lead the Fight for $15 and organized with SEIU. His platform calls for social housing on city-owned vacant lots, shutting down gas-fired power plants, expanding transit, and tenant protections including universal eviction defense.
His primary opponent is Jose Ugarte, longtime aide to the departing Price and the candidate favored by much of the incumbent's political network. Shake Up LA frames Ugarte as the "Status Quo Coalition" candidate: someone who uses progressive language while ultimately serving real estate developers over working families.
It's a sharp contrast that makes CD9 as much an intra-left battle as a left-versus-center one. Other candidates in the six-person field include Elmer Roldan, Jorge Hernandez Rosas, Jorge Nuño, and Martha Sanchez.
The non-Democratic voter universe in CD9 is 37,196, the smallest of the four targeted districts and the most heavily Democratic. With a crowded field likely to produce a November runoff, independent and Republican votes could still shape which two candidates advance.
Council District 11: The Race That Ends June 2
This is the highest-leverage race in Los Angeles, and the stakes are simple: one candidate wins on June 2 and that's it.
The certified ballot has two names: incumbent Traci Park and DSA-endorsed challenger Faizah Malik. A third candidate, Jeremy Wineberg, did not qualify.
Under the 50% rule, the winner of a two-candidate race clears the threshold automatically. There is no November runoff, no second window of opportunity to vote.
- YouTube youtu.be
Park is a municipal law attorney and the only moderate to win a council seat in the 2022 cycle. Her 2026 campaign is shaped heavily by the Palisades fire, which devastated Pacific Palisades and other communities in her district.
Park has been closely identified with the recovery effort, including fire victim tax relief and rebuilding measures. Her endorsements span mainstream institutional Los Angeles: US Senator Adam Schiff, Congressman Ted Lieu, Congressman Brad Sherman, State Treasurer Fiona Ma, Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire, and the TCU/IAM Local 1315 transit workers union, along with LAFD and LAPD labor organizations.
Malik is a Venice resident and civil rights and housing attorney, born in Southern California to South Asian Muslim immigrant parents. Her platform centers on renter protections, affordable housing, and equitable land use policy.
She has worked with DSA-LA, LA Forward, and the Keep LA Housed (KLAH) Coalition. She is also a vocal supporter of Palestinian human rights – a position central to the activist base mobilizing behind her.
- YouTube youtu.be
The non-Democratic voter universe in CD11 is 67,620 or 39.8% of the total registered voting population, including 14% Republican (nearly double the Republican share in any other DSA-targeted district).
The district covers Pacific Palisades, Brentwood, Venice, Mar Vista, Playa Vista, and Westchester. It is majority European ancestry (50.6%), highly educated, and heavily homeowner. Nearly a quarter of residents are over the age of 65.
Voter registration data analyzed ahead of the primary shows that a 5-point turnout lift among NPP, AIP, and Republican voters in CD11 would produce approximately 3,381 additional votes. A 10-point lift would add roughly 6,762.
In a primary where total votes cast may be between 30,000 and 50,000, those numbers are structurally decisive.
The evidence that this kind of outreach works here is documented.
In 2022, a voter education program targeted approximately 35,000 NPP and 10,000 Republican voters in CD11 during the November general election. The district produced the highest NPP participation rate of any comparable Democrat-versus-Democrat district citywide.
Republican turnout outperformed Republican registration share, the only such result in any comparable race that cycle.
While every other comparable D-vs-D race saw moderate candidates' leads erode by 9 to 10 points in late mail ballot counting, Park's margin shifted by just 1 point. She won by 4,048 votes.
That year, the program ran in November. However, in 2026, there will be no November election for CD11.
Council District 13: The DSA Incumbent Under Pressure
Hugo Soto-Martinez represents Echo Park, Hollywood, and Atwater Village and is one of the DSA's most prominent elected officials in Los Angeles. Before taking office, he organized with UNITE HERE Local 11 for 16 years.
In office, he authored the city's Sanctuary City law, lowered rent hikes for rent-stabilized units for the first time in 40 years, and led anti-harassment and no-fault eviction protections.
- YouTube youtube.com
Shake Up LA's framing is direct about the stakes: "big business interests are pouring resources into multiple 'law-and-order' candidates, hoping that a divided field will weaken the progressive movement and flip a seat."
Three challengers are in the race: Colter Carlisle, Rich Sarian, and Dylan Kendall. The presence of multiple opponents is itself a strategic play: divide the anti-incumbent vote enough to force a runoff, then consolidate in November.
The non-Democratic voter universe in CD13 is 53,976 - 35.8% of registration. In a multi-candidate field likely to produce a November runoff, independent and Republican voters could determine who finishes second and advances.
Council District 15: The Harbor District's High-Stakes, Two-Candidate Race
CD15 has the highest Republican registration share of any city council district at 17%. The combined non-Democratic voter universe is 61,798 or 44.2% of total registration.
Incumbent Tim McOsker is a lifelong San Pedro community member with three decades in city government. He served as chief of staff and chief deputy city attorney under Mayor James Hahn and most recently as CEO of AltaSea, a nonprofit focused on ocean sustainability and port-area job creation.
His platform centers on harbor-area quality of life, jobs, clean air and water, housing, and public safety.
His challenger is Jordan Rivers, a community organizer running in the harbor, San Pedro, and Watts communities that make up the district. The Los Angeles Times reported recently that when Rivers was 12, he stabbed an 8-year-old neighbor while the two were playing video games, a lawsuit alleged. Rivers denied attacking the boy and said it was an “accident.”
DSA-LA did not endorse in this race.
The structural dynamics are identical to CD11: two certified candidates, one of whom wins in June. With a 44.2% non-Democratic voter universe, larger by combined share than any other targeted district, a modest turnout lift would produce approximately 3,090 additional votes at a 5-point lift, or 6,180 at 10 points.
Mayor: Bass, Raman, Pratt, and the Shape of the Fall
The mayoral race will almost certainly produce a November runoff. Fourteen candidates are on the ballot and no one is likely to clear 50 percent. But June determines who the two finalists are and that question is less settled than conventional wisdom suggests.
Mayor Karen Bass is seeking re-election after a first term defined by her Inside Safe homelessness initiative and by the Palisades Fire. Downtown business leaders and the LA Chamber of Commerce are backing her second term, as are former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and County Supervisor Hilda Solis.
NBC4 reported that Bass cited a reduction in street homelessness at a recent event announcing business support for her campaign.
- YouTube www.youtube.com
Nithya Raman, the CD4 councilmember, entered the race just before the filing deadline after previously endorsing Bass. CalMatters described her as a progressive "in the mold of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani" who saw an opening with Bass weakened by criticism over the fire response.
- YouTube youtu.be
Raman is backed by UNITE HERE Local 11 and the Shake Up LA network. Her platform centers on housing affordability, workers' rights, and alternative crisis response. A self-described democratic socialist, she had previously endorsed Bass when it appeared Bass would face a more conservative opponent.
Then there is Spencer Pratt.
Known for his role on MTV's The Hills, Pratt holds a political science degree from USC and grew up in Pacific Palisades. His home and his parents' home nearby were destroyed in the January 2025 Palisades fire. He has been displaced for over a year.
On January 7, 2026, exactly one year after the fire started, he announced his candidacy at a rally in Pacific Palisades called, "They Let Us Burn," organized by the Palisades Fire Residents Coalition.
"I never wanted to be mayor," he said at the rally. "But once you uncover everything, these people in charge should have resigned."
His platform is an outsider's checklist: audit billions spent on homelessness nonprofits (which he calls the "homeless industrial complex"), fully fund the LAPD, restore emergency preparedness and reservoir capacity, expose corruption in city contracts, and implement a back-to-basics city budget.
His campaign website frames the mission as "disinfecting the city with light."
- YouTube youtu.be
As of early April polling, Pratt has surged into second place in the 14-candidate field, trailing only Bass, with roughly 40% of voters still undecided. Joe Rogan endorsed him on his April 15 podcast. The Hollywood Reporter covered the endorsement the following day.
The political establishment has mostly treated Pratt as a novelty. The polling says otherwise. But the more analytically interesting question isn't whether Pratt wins it's what his candidacy does to the arithmetic of who advances to November.
The mayoral race operates under the same 50% rule as the council races, but with 14 candidates it almost certainly produces a runoff. What matters in June is who finishes first and second. In a crowded field, margins between candidates can be a few thousand votes.
Pratt's candidacy is a live demonstration of the core argument of this entire article: in a low-turnout June primary, a candidate who activates voters who don't normally show up can move the outcome, regardless of what the political establishment thinks about his chances.
Pratt's base – fire victims, frustrated homeowners, voters who distrust City Hall on homelessness and public safety – overlaps heavily with the NPP and Republican voter universe that every other campaign in this cycle is ignoring.
If he mobilizes even a fraction of that universe in a 14-candidate field where second place is decided by tens of thousands of votes, he becomes a factor. Not because celebrity translates to governing competence, but because turnout math doesn't care about conventional wisdom.
For independent and Republican voters who share concerns about homelessness management, public safety, and city competence, the June primary is their chance to shape who the two November finalists are, and Pratt is making an unusually direct pitch to exactly that audience.
City Attorney: A Policy Fight in Legal Clothing
Incumbent Hydee Feldstein Soto faces three challengers.
- YouTube youtu.be
The most organized is Marissa Roy, the Shake Up LA-endorsed deputy attorney general who has built her platform around using the city attorney's office as a tool for tenant protection, worker rights, and civil rights litigation. Roy has litigated against companies that exploited workers and has challenged both the Trump administration and major tech companies in court.
- YouTube youtube.com
The city attorney oversees all litigation involving the city and advises the mayor and council on legal matters. It is not a legislative seat, but its posture shapes how the city responds to everything from landlord-tenant disputes to federal enforcement actions.
Other challengers include human rights attorney Aida Ashouri and a deputy district attorney. This race will likely go to November, but which candidate finishes second in June shapes the fall.
City Controller: The Fiscal Watchdog Race
Incumbent Kenneth Mejia is running again. He has made the office a platform for fiscal transparency, repeatedly spotlighting unspent public funds and questionable city expenditures, including approximately $80.4 million in idle special funds.
This tends to resonate with voters less interested in ideological combat than in whether the city manages its money responsibly. That is a significant portion of the independent voter universe.
The Structural Problem No One Is Addressing
The DSA's organizing model is disciplined and proven. Door-to-door canvassing, postcard programs, coordinated small-dollar fundraising, digital mobilization it's all active and running now.
The voters being reached are largely already registered Democrats who align ideologically with the slate of socialists. The goal is to make sure they return a ballot in June rather than waiting for November.
What makes this cycle unusual isn't just the DSA's organizational strength. It's the absence of any comparable civic infrastructure reaching the other side of the electorate.
Spencer Pratt's candidacy may be the closest thing to an accidental proof of concept. His fire-recovery videos went viral not because of his reality TV past but because they spoke directly to something hundreds of thousands of Los Angeles voters feel and no establishment candidate had been willing to say plainly.
In a 14-candidate race with 40% of voters undecided, that kind of organic connection to a disaffected audience is worth paying attention to not because the celebrity factor is the point, but because it illustrates exactly what happens when someone gives voters outside the Democratic base a reason to show up.
There are tens of thousands of eligible voters, including independents, third-party registrants, and Republicans who tend to sit out June primaries just because no one is talking to them. And most of them don't realize that in several of these races, June is the only election that matters.
Independents and Republicans May Hold the Power in Los Angeles – If They Actually Vote was originally published by Independent Voter News and is republished with permission.
Keep ReadingShow less
Load More