How Wendy Won the Eastside; Game, Set Match for H,I,P; Inside Caruso's Cakewalk to Approval; Coping with Trump II

It's a special Newsmakers Post-Mortem episode this week, as the gang dissects all the top local returns of Tuesday's election, from an insurgent SB' City Council win to the surprising spectacle of local voters opening their wallets for City Hall and City College.

And, oh yeah, some quiet reflections and loud lamentations on the return to presidential power of that Other Guy.

The biggest smile in town, both before and after the election, belonged to tenant activist Wendy Santamaria, who has ousted incumbent Alejandra Gutierrez from the District 1 seat on City Council.

While elections chief Joe Holland conducts his perennial kabuki dance search under the desk and behind the door for uncounted ballots, the tenant organizer and rent control advocate at post time held held an apparently insurmountable lead of 152 votes, and Josh Molina says her victory was due to out-hustling her rival in good old retail campaigning (no further word on the big sign stealing mystery, though).

Nick Welsh graciously avoids rubbing it in over the genial host's confident, and utterly mistaken, forecast that voters would be way too cranky about the economy to give super-majority approval to the Measure P bond to finance infrastructure at City College (again) let alone a straight-up thumbs-up for the Measure I proposal to raise the city's sales tax rate (again). When the deal went down, however, both passed by 2-to-1; ditto Measure H, which increases the hotel tax on tourists (again), passage of which was a foregone conclusion cuz: Other People's Money.

Gwyn Lurie reprises the county Planning Commission's approval of that controversial big shopping mall project, gussied up with a few units of housing, that L.A. developer Rick Caruso plans to build at the Miramar Resort, a process rife with questions** about behind-the-scenes negotiations by Commissioner John Parke and maneuvering by county planners to jam it through before Supervisor-elect Roy Lee shows up in January to evict Caruso booster Das Williams from the First District seat on the Board of Supervisors.

Plus: contemplation, cogitation, rumination and serious brooding and ranting about the presidential election of Donald J. Drumpf (again).

All this and more, right here, right now, on Newsmakers TV.

JR

Check out the post-election episode via YouTube below, or by clicking through this link. The podcast is here. TVSB, Channel 17, broadcasts the program at 8 p.m. M-F, and at 9 a.m on Saturday and Sunday. KCSB, 91.9 FM, airs the show at 5:30 p.m. on Monday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53HM_2Wqdes

Image: City Council member-elect Wendy Santamaria on election night, via John Palmenteri's Instagram account.

** Correction: On the 11-8-24 program, it was incorrectly stated that Planning Commissioner Mike Cooney was not present for the meeting about the Caruso project. Mr. Cooney was in fact present; we apologize for the error.

Emily Flake cartoon for The New Yorker.