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Nathan Hakman, who at this point is presumed to be the next La County DA defeating incumbent George Gascone not a big surprise, not a big surprise at all. The headwinds against George Gascon, I'll say, the hate against George Gascone.
And in the weird part was his reticence to even engage media, to engage his competition, to engage citizens, to engage his own deputy das just from the people that I spoke to, he would not even engage them, isolated himself to where that this was the eventual end to his I would say, his political career, at least as DA in Los Angeles County. I don't know what he may move on to next. I don't know if he will have a concession speech. I don't think he will
because that's just not his style. He hasn't said much of anything about anything. And La County will move forward, we will have a different district Attorney who fundamentally will have a different approach to crime. And when you add that with Proposition thirty six, which is going to pass
overwhelmingly more than three to one. You can see how people have spoken loudly and resoundingly about what they feel about crime in southern California, La County, specifically what needs to be done, what hasn't been done, what has been largely overlooked and excused. And I've said many times on my show that there's a culture of permissiveness and people have taken advantage of that, and I think part of the reason why we've seen the different types of crime.
It's one thing to say crime is down statistically, which is true, but the types of crime has changed. The brazen nature of crime that we experience day to day in southern California, from the street takeovers to the robberies to what happens on the metro, it's just fundamentally different. And if you want to only talk in terms of numbers and statistics, yes, you can say that there are
fewer violent crimes for capita than a year ago. But the bottom line is safety begins with how we feel, and you can't quantify that, but it's real and I don't think people, if they're being honest, feel generally safe when they go about their way here in Los Angeles County and this is the first step into changing that, and part of it is taking law enforcement and the laws seriously prosecuting crimes as they should. And we'll see what happens with Nathan Hoffmann and see if we get
something different than what we had before. It's a CAFI election desk. I'm Moe Kelly. We're going to check in with Steve Roberts of ABC News and look at the national scene and the latest as far as state projections and whether there has been any updates to what we know in the presidential race.
You're listening to later with Moe Kelly on demand from KFI Am sixty.
Is the election Desk on mo Kelly as we continue to follow the events all across the nation, races both federal, national, and local. Joining me right now is Steve Roberts, ABC News political analysts to give us some analysis of what's going on around the country.
Steve, how are you doing this evening? I know it's late where you are.
Yeah, it's gotten later too. It's gotten later for Kamala Harris too. You know, I think that any fair look at the trend lines now. We're very careful at ABC. We don't call races until we're absolutely sure. But the trend line is very clear, and unless something very very unusual happens, Trump is going to win this election. And this core reason for this is very obvious in actually in the exit polls from the very beginning mode this election.
Despite all of the turmoil of Biden getting out and Harris getting in and Trump getting shot, the basic parameters, the basic foundation of this election has been exactly the same from day one, and that is that about two thirds to three quarters of Americans tell polsters we don't like the direction of the country. We're paying too much for gas and groceries, where don't like inflation. Inflation is always the most damaging of issues. It affects every family
in Los Angeles every day. But it's beyond prices. There is this global gloom. Oh there's this infection of the spirit that has lasted long after the infection of COVID has gone away, and it helped defeat Donald Trump four years ago. It's defeating ruling parties in the UK and all over the world. And so when you step back in some ways tonight was inevitable that asking Kamala Harris to run as an incumbent vice president when the country is so gloomy, it was an enormously difficult task.
Well, there was history which was working against hers, just as far as vice presidents trying to become president usually don't do well, with the notable exception of George H. W.
Bush. We know what happened to al Gore and what have you.
But I wonder, though, was this more You say that there was an economic reason primarily, how much do you think was it an embrace of Donald Trump as well?
Well?
Sure, you know, it's always hard to evaluate which variables were more important, because, as you certainly rightly point out, mode every voter is a combination of many factors. And you know, a woman whom I care about reproductive rights also is paying too much for eggs and milk at the grocery store. I mean, you know, so everybody is a mixture of factors. Where you can see evidence of Trump's personality making a difference is in the votes of
black and Latino men. Twenty percent of Black men voted for Donald Trump, but over fifty percent of Latino men voted for Fifty three percent of Latino men voted for Donald Trump. And you have to at least hypothesize that his the whole aura around Donald Trump is sort of strength and power and and and sort of masculinity at least was one of the reasons why those numbers were so different. There were enormous gender gaps both the black
and Latino communities. Latino and Black women voted pretty much the way they have in the past for Harris, but there was a big shift among men.
Did you get a sense from at least the data that there were more black mail and Latino male voters. Now, if we look at history, the Democratic Party has had a strong base among Black women voters, less so with black men. Even though there may have been an upward shift towards Donald Trump, does the data suggest that more black men came out to vote this particular election cycle.
You know, that's hard to tell. Not really. I haven't been struck by any real significant shift. The real shift is in the way they're voted. And you know, you look at another number that was really striking to me. You know, a week or or so before the election, there was a lot of talk about late movement toward Democrats. There was that outlying Poland Iowa was showed Harris had by three points. There was all this talk about momentum on the Harris side. They were putting out press releases,
and it didn't show up tonight. In fact, of the folks who decided in the last week or so, by seven points, they voted for Donald Trump, not Harris. So that's yet one more number to factor into the mix. But you made a very important point, and it's not just that Harris was caught in this trying to run as the vice president from with a very unpopular administration. But history is really very telling here. It's sometimes called
the Curse of Martin van Buren. Martin van Buren was the vice president who has succeeded Andrew Jackson eighteen thirty six, one hundred and eighty eight years since then. As you point out, George Bush forty one, the only vice president who's ever been able to run directly. And when the presidents see that, people like both Joe Biden and Richard Nixon had once been vice presidents when they finally won
the presidency, but they didn't do it directly. And that's because there are only two slogans in American politics when it really comes down to it, you never had it so good, which is what all incumbents say, and it's time for change, which is what all challenges say. Now, when you're the vice president of an incumbent party, you actually got to say both things at the same time. You got to say, I'm defending the record, I'm proud of my service in this administration. But by the way,
I'm also a change agent. There's an inherent mixed message. It's inherently muddled, and you can see this with Kambala Harris. You could see that day when she was on the View, when she made one of the worst mistakes of the campaign, when she was asked, well, can you name a single issue the difference that I can't think of one because she was caught. She didn't want to insult Joe Biden, but at the same time, she came across to someone
who was too tied to the past. Even though she kept talking about changing the page and talking about turning over in a new day, she was inevitably tied to Trump, and Trump's ads hammered that home. They talked all the time about how it's been three and a half years
she's been part of the Biden administration. They showed every ad I saw in the last few days started with images of Biden and Harris standing together and holding hands, and they just hammered home because they knew that this was the single biggest weakness she had.
Steve Roberts, I'm running out of time with you, but let me ask you this question, and this is a general question. As I look at the Senate map and I looked at Republicans they now have control of the Senate, that the House is still to be decided, is it fair to posit that this might be beyond Kamala Harris a referendum against Democrats, and the Democratic Party is going to have to do some soul searching between now and the next midterms.
I think that's certainly.
I mean, the Democrats have already clearly lost the Senate seat in Ohio incumbent there Sheried Brown. Their incumbents in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are hanging by a thread. They could lose as well. You know, But you're right to point out the importance of the House because and then right there in southern California, as you well know, some of the key races are going to decide in the end whether the Democrats take the House. If Donald Trump this this next couple of years in Washington.
Will be very, very different.
If Donald Trump comes in not only with the Senate, but with the House and also of course a Supreme Court. With a Supreme Court with a conservative majority, There'll be no guardrails, there'll be no obstacles. If the Democrats manage even by one seat to hold the House, that means that they will have some leverage, they will have some power.
If they don't hold the.
House, they'll be left with only one source of any kind of leverage or power in Washington, and that's the Senate philibuster. And it wasn't that long ago that a whole lot of Democrats, including Joe Biden and Kamla Harris, said let's do away with the philibusters and we can pass all these wonderful things. Aren't they really glad that they are going to have the filibuster if that's the only way they can exert any kind of checking balance on Donald Trump.
We will find out.
Steve Roberts, ABC News Political Analysts, thank you so much for staying up late with us, and.
Thank you for what you do.
Sure anytime, I am six forty is the election desk, I'm o Kelly we'll have more in just a moment.
You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from KFI AM six forty.
It's the CAFI election Desk. I'm o Kelly. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
And joining us right now with some local updates is kfi's own Michael Monks, who joins me in studio. Michael, how long has your dave been going today?
You know, I attended the city council meeting this morning into the afternoon just to you know, take some notes he was going on. I didn't want to miss anything. And now here we are.
I see your five o'clock shadow, but it's not really a five o'clock shadow because it's like ten o'clock at night it is, and it starts three days earlier, so it's about five o'clock Monday shadow.
I suppose you got it that row very fast. Anything surprising in the data that you have right now? Where would you like to start? Sure?
So, I mean, you know, I'm following the county, I'm following the city. So I've got some county ballot measures and the la City council races that are going on.
Let's start with Measure A. All right, let's do it. Measure A.
This is this will impact everybody who buys anything in the city, right Like, so, we're already currently paying a quarter cent sales tax to support homeless efforts on purchases, and that is supposed to go away in measure that used to be. Yes, that's what the current one is exactly. These measures start to get confused, I guess it is. But the current Measure A would basically repeal that one, but not get rid of it. It would double the
amount that you're paying in order to fund homelessness. So from a quarter cent sales tax to a half a cent sales pack at sales tax without us on st clause, So in perpetuity and extra ever, forever, ever, ever, until you a voter or somebody says, Okay, enough is enough, let's put it on the ballot to repeal it. That's winning right now pretty overwhelmingly fifty five to forty five percent.
So yes, we're going to have more sales tax.
What I saw from the campaign and support of this was a lot of the large nonprofits in the area, including the United Way, pushing the message that if we don't adopt this, the people who have been helped and brought into housing from homelessness will be back on the street.
Is this a guilt conscience where we feel like you, if I just say yes to this, I've done my little part to help in homelessness.
Be damned.
The fact that we haven't made any inroads. It just seems like it feels like that. This is what I was anticipated.
This was because remember, just last year we voted on or just in the primaries, we voted on a statewide ballot measure related to more funding for mental health and homelessness and that sort of thing. It was very close, and so I was curious about how this one was going to turn out, whether folks have decided, Look, we've thrown billions of dollars at this problem. We're not seeing
any tangible difference in testing exactly. Now you'll hear from homeless advocates and the organizations that are supported by these funds that homeless homelessness finally dropped in both the city and the county very modestly, but after years of an increase, it did level off and drop for the first time in the official homeless count that was released earlier this year. So they may think they've got some momentum and maybe with a little more money they'll be able to address
it more. But right now the voters agree fifty five percent to forty five percent. I think the most surprising one that I'm seeing, though, mo is is measured G and this was the proposal to take the five county supervisors and make them not county supervisors and CEO.
This is basically a county mayor.
And based on the support that I mean, like every week I was getting press releases, We're gonna have Asians for measure, G, Gays for measure, G, Jews for measured G, Latinos from measure.
It was all these different.
Rank that opportunity on their right. It looks like President Trump's gonna be an office. I think it'll be allowed to make those jokes. Yeah, we'll see, but all of these different groups who represent diverse viewpoints, because that was one of the messages that like, look, we've got ten million people in this county. Each supervisor is basically representing two million. That's more than some governors, and it doesn't leave a lot of opportunities for a variety of the
county's rich cultural diversity to be represented. On the Council, on the Board of Supervisors. I have to say this one. I thought it was going to pass. You know, I'm not a good I'm not good at handicapping, But just based on all the attention it was getting, I thought, it looks like the right people are supporting this. I guess it's been fifty to fifty right now, maybe fifty one forty nine.
At no is winning right now.
No on that, I thought if it didn't have the CEO component, it would have passed overwhelmingly.
Are you saying you wouldn't want another mayor in La County?
Well, not only that, it just was unclear, and I talked to a number of the supervisors about it directly. It was unclear as far as how that position would work. There weren't any real term limits. There wasn't clarity about how the supervisors county supervisors would be subordinate to this person. If they said, hey, we're going to go from five to nine and make it more manageable and less unwieldy, I think voters would have passed that overwhelmingly.
I think you might be right about that, because there did seem to be a Now, look, this is also something that's come up over the years and has been rejected by La County voters eight times. But they basically had the same number of supervisors for I mean since
nineteen fifteen, and the county's population has grown. So a lot of the arguments you heard made sense objectively, like, yeah, you know, there are a lot more people living here and the same number of people representing all these different points of view, It does make sense to at least consider how you might be able to get closer to government.
They do it with the census as far as congressional representatives, so why not do it on a county level.
Exactly.
That's exactly right, and that was the argument that was taken, and it's very curious to me that it's as close. This is also an issue that divided the current Board of Supervisors. Now I attend a lot of their meetings too, every Tuesday, and most of the stuff sales through. They're a very polite group to one another. They tend to vote five nothing on things, occasional dissent on an item here or there. This one created some very serious friction.
Holly Mitchell and also Catherine Barger, who you would think are ideologically opposed to just about everything were in agreement.
As far as the opposition to this, they absolutely were. So Catherine Barger, a Republican from you know, the High Desert, I guess, and Holly Mitchell from here in the city is jus my supervisor. Yeah, so they teamed up to say like this was rushed through, it was not well thought out.
They also said they support.
Exploring an expansion of the board, but they didn't like this proposal at all. What was strange was that the opposition of this really had no serious campaign. The yes on g had a lot of press and push this really hard, and for it to be as tight as it is is really interesting.
Michael, can I lean on you to get one more segment out of you because we got to talk about the La City Council, whether Kevin de Leone has another life, did he avoid the end of his political career somehow, some way? And also Prop thirty six. We all know what's going to happen with Prop thirty six, But what does it mean? You know, after Prop thirty six passes,
it's the KFI election desk. I'm mo Kelly sitting in with Michael Monks will have more just a moment CAFI AM six forty live everywhere in the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from KFI AM six forty.
KFI Election Desk. I'm Mo Kelly. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
And joining me in studio is still Michael Monks, kfi's own Michael.
Let me just give everyone the national update.
Georgia has just been called for former President Trump.
It adds to a total.
So my tope board, as it were, is Donald Trump two forty eight, Kamala Harris two sixteen. That's the national Senior And you and I were talking about how Ohio interesting, What is going on in Ohio, how the Democratic incumbent Shared Brown lost to a relative unknown, relative unknown, and how the politics of that state have shifted so greatly in the past I'll say six years or so.
I come here directly from the Cincinnati media market. That's where I worked for a long time, interviewed Shared Brown many times, and even interviewed Bernie Marino when he was just a guy who owned car dealerships because he was going to open a new one in an area that I covered as a newsman. There and it is interesting that Ohio has become very reflective of the rural urban divide that we see across the country. Ohio is a
very populous state. You know, there's about ten million people there and there's probably five good sized cities, and when you look at the map of how they vote, it's exactly what you would think. It's overwhelmingly blue and Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Toledo, Dayton, and read everywhere else and there is a very serious disconnect between the city and the country. Shared Brown, over all these years has been able to bridge those gaps.
And I made the comparison off there talking about how he was able to connect even though it was a my word, rural state in the way that Joe Manchin did in rural West Virginia or John Tester did in a rural Montana.
And this is a state that Barack Obama won two times when you know, not that long ago, but now it does feel like a lifetime ago. That's how much that shift has taken. And I think this ousting of Shared Brown really represents a strengthening of that divine that we've got growing urban and rural across America.
Let's bring it back locally, Kevin de Leone, he is a politician of many lives. You think that he's done, and he keeps coming back. There was the controversy of the tape. I'll just call it the tape. In paraphrasing, he said, I'm not stepping down. He was going to write it out. Is he able to write it out? Well, this is the counselman like you noted that was part of that tape. He was the only one of the
three who is still around at city Hall. One of them lost their election, another one resigned and ran away. Kevin de Leon said, no, I'm gonna work on this. I'm going to repair my image, my relationship with the community.
Right now, though he's facing the toughest threat to his seat and in his political career because he's losing, and he's losing pretty comfortably to challenger Isabelle Herado, the tenants rights attorney who probably got the most press she's ever had just in the past couple of weeks because of the remarks she made at cal State LA to a group of students. And of course we found the question was asked by a student who works for Kevin daly On.
But it did bait her into saying f the police, and that has been the theme of the last couple of weeks, Kevin da Leon hitting her really hard on that. So we're looking at about a four thousand vote lead for Isabel Herado over Kevin Dalyon. I just checked the LA County Registrar. That first batch of votes came from mail ballots, the second batch came from early voting periods over that ten days, and then the third batch of votes that had been part of this update are also
vote by mail. So the question I guess Moe, is has Kevin Dallyon got enough of a voter turnout ground game kids, He got enough people out there willing to go directly to the polls and in person to help put him over the edge. I guess there's a little bit of room and a little bit of hope for him. But right now this is the toughest fight of his life. Close out our conversation and this hour talking about Proposition thirty six, but against the backdrop of crime more generally
here in southern California. In California, I look, I know how people feel about crime. I know how people feel, and I think the LA District attorney's race was part and parcel of Prop thirty six. Prop thirty six. I don't need to look at any outlet. I know that it's going to pass overwhelmingly. But what do you think that says going forward?
I think it's connected to the LA County District Attorney's race as well, right, I mean there is a perception regardless. It's the eyeball test, is what I think. You just called it a little bit ago, Like what can I see with my own eyes? And what I see is making me uncomfortable and unhappy, and that is a rise in crime or the perception that crime is on the rise, regardless of the stats that you can quote or manipulate. So what we are seeing is Californian saying, look, enough
is enough. We're too lenient on this. I can't go buy deodor and at Walgreens without some combination. Yeah, I mean, like I have the buzz, Like what if I'm buying some something embarrassing. I'm getting older, I'm buying embarrassing stuff at Walgreens. Nowak for yourself.
I'm not going to own that yet, you know, I don't want to have the buzz every you know, so I guess that's the feeling. But you walk around downtown LA and you see open air drug use all over town. You and I have talked many times about what happens on the transit system. Yeah, across the region, people are fed up with it. And that's why you're seeing Prop thirty six right now with about forty two percent of the vote come in. Seventy percent are saying yes, let's
have tougher penalty. Never for some of these proposition in California. Never, you don't see a vote that wide in margin, No, you really don't.
I mean we've even got like raised the minimum wage on the bow and that usually is something that people are well rally behind.
Yeah, of course, let's let's pay the word.
No, even that one's like about fifty to fifty right now with the same number of votes, and Prop thirty six is where it was at today on the state wide ballot.
I wonder, and this is a question I was just positing out loud, if I had a chance to speak to Nathan Hockman is going to be our next district attorney. You know, when are we going to feel something? When are we going to see something? Because look, you have to either wait for crime to happen so you can prosecute it, or you have to do something to try to thwart it in advance. I wonder what the future is going to look like in the short term, as
in when Hawkman takes office. In the long term, as we see Proposition of thirty six really play out and people get the word in that there's figuratively a new sheriff in town and he has new laws to use.
I think that's the challenge for everyone who's winning today, even at the top of the top of the ticket at the presidential candidates. I mean, whoever it is that wins, and if it's Donald Trump, for example, you say a lot of stuff, going to do this, We're going to do this and do that, and people's attention shifts really quickly from adulation to complaints and then rejection.
No politician is more popular than the day that he or she is alleged exactly, and after that disappointment starts to creep in. The difference is there's a possibility, not a probability, but a possibility that a future President Trump would have a Senate, a Republican Senate, and possibly a Republican House and a Scotis with a conservative majority, they're more levers at his disposable. Presumably, if it plays out like that, then just a local politician, that's.
Right, And then what kind of news will we be giving a district attorney in Hawkman when you know, just some random guy who committed a felony that didn't garner headlines is getting a tougher penalty. I mean, part of
that's going to be our responsibility. I supposed to make sure that we're looking at data, looking at statistics and saying, yeah, you know, people who are being arrested for this or that, they are paying a higher price for it, and now we need to figure out a way to quantify that to reflect higher safety standards in our community.
Speaking of safety standards, I know you have more work to do tonight, but you're not taking the metro home. They giving out free rides tonight, you know that, right they are.
Indeed, my spouse took the free bus.
She did around. You know, it's a good time.
But today I did take the official iHeart vehicle that they give me to ride around in, so.
I did look at that. That was very nice of them. It was very nice of them, you know.
I got to get down to the downtown headquarters every now and then, and so they've they've given me the iHeart vehicle too to do that.
I heard they have a nice studio at the Downtown Heart.
It's lovely, little loud because it's next to the firehouse. So you know, if I'm everlive from there on your show, you've probably heard the sirens. Don't they serve drinks there too, Okay, Shmoal you should come down check it out.
See there's a cat.
See. I've been invited to the downtown iHeart studios where they serve drinks.
They do serve drinks and anything. Michael Monks, thank you so much for my pleasure.
Mo.
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