Sacramento's about to drop a zoning mandate on LA's desk — and the city is already looking for ways to stall SB 79. This is LA Mayor 2026. Today we're getting past the noise and into the one fight that actually decides housing in this town. And there's a real charge to make this week, Sarah — SB 79, neighborhood opposition you can put on a map, and an actual delay date. We're past the abstraction now. We've also got a vote-fraud rumor that finally has a clean obituary, courtesy of Poynter. We'll get there. But let's start with Larchmont Village. So the Beverly Press piece lays it right out — Larchmont Village and Hancock Park organizing against SB 79 under the cover of historic preservation. That's the donor map and the land-use map snapping into the same picture. Same geography that funded Pratt, now lining up against upzoning. The money and the NIMBYism live at the same address. Right. And here's what bugs me: the state is forcing the question LA politicians have ducked for years, and the city's first instinct is to delay. Neither Bass nor Raman has been pinned on what they'd do when that mandate actually lands. And for Raman that's the whole ballgame. She's run on density. Fine. Does she defend SB 79 against Hancock Park, and does she bolt an affordability mandate onto it? She needs a yes or no, not a debate-stage flourish. Because if you do density without a deed-restricted share, you're basically telling the homeowner coalition you'll fight them, with nothing to offer the tenants who'd get displaced. Exactly. Pro-density and pro-affordable belong in the same sentence. If she can't say both in the same sentence on SB 79, that's the tell. And whoever wins inherits a council that doesn't want this. Fernando Guerra's read at LMU nailed it — voters were frustrated with the city but trusted their own council member. Which is brutal for Raman in November. She's not the council member anymore — she's the challenger. Does that ground-level loyalty transfer, or was that loyalty really attached to the seat? And it's the cleanest description yet of why a mayor needs a theory of the council. When voters trust fifteen fiefdoms over the system, district-by-district power is the obstacle. Now we've got it on record, with a name attached. Quick close on the Spencer Pratt thing — Poynter confirms it. The zero-votes-of-twenty-four-thousand claim was a data reporting lag, not fraud. The Inglewood detail, the slow count, all of it — done. And honestly, that's the most precise case study we've had of what the slow count actually costs. The misinformation traveled because there wasn't an authoritative number to push back with. Which is a fixable mechanics problem, separate from this race entirely. And ranked-choice would change the math here in a way nobody wants to talk about. LA chose not to have it, and somebody benefits from that choice. Edwin Folven, writing in Beverly Press & Park Labrea News:
The measures approved by the Los Angeles City Council allow the city to largely delay SB 79 until 2030, giving the city time to come up with alternatives to satisfy projected goals for affordable housing. If the city had not taken steps to delay the state law, it would have taken effect on July 1.
This is the one I've been waiting all week to land on. June 3rd, the council voted to delay implementing SB 79 — a state law that lets bigger multifamily housing go up near transit stations. The state is finally forcing the zoning question LA politicians have spent years tiptoeing around. And look at who's organizing against it — Larchmont Village, Hancock Park, the Miracle Mile. That's the donor geography. The map funding the campaigns is also the map fighting upzoning along the D Line. What gets me is Bass and the council are on the same side here — against the state. That's Bass lining up with the homeowner coalition the day a real density mandate lands on her desk, Sarah. And Raman? She's been running on density her whole council career. So does she defend SB 79 against the Hancock Park preservation crowd, and does she bolt a deed-restricted affordability mandate onto it? It's a specific ask now; debate abstractions won't cover it. Neither of them has been pinned on it. SCAG dropped the transit map June 1st — Wilshire/Western, La Brea, Fairfax, La Cienega — the zones are drawn. The candidates are conveniently quiet. Quiet because saying yes costs you Windsor Square, and saying no costs you the state. Pick your enemy. When the federal government freezes homeless-services money over mismanagement, who actually takes the hit — and is there anyone in L.A. with the authority to clean it up? So the agency at the center of this is LAHSA — the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. It's a joint city-county body, so neither the mayor nor the Board of Supervisors has clean, sole authority over it. That mushy chain of command is the problem. Per LAist reporting, HUD halted federal homeless dollars to LAHSA as recently as June, citing mismanagement. That followed an April audit that found LAHSA had a, quote, 'significant' problem with inaccurate financial statements. And back in March, service providers on the ground were already waiting on millions in late payments while city and LAHSA officials publicly traded blame over who was responsible. The dollar stakes are real: LAist reported that roughly 300 million dollars in city funds alone was under review as leaders weighed whether to pull money from LAHSA entirely. The audit and the HUD freeze put the accountability gap right in the books. If city leaders were already talking about pulling their funding from LAHSA back in March, why is the system still set up the same way months later? That's where the 2026 race has to get concrete. LAist described the oversight fight as a, quote, 'LAHSA twilight zone,' with key city leaders calling for homelessness spending to move to a different structure but no consensus on what replaces it. Nithya Raman, who is both a council member and a mayoral candidate, has a natural policy lane here because she's been in those oversight debates. Bass, as the incumbent, owns the city's posture toward LAHSA. So watch whether either candidate puts forward an actual restructuring plan. Right now, the conversation is still more about blame than about the replacement governance model. From Poynter:
Bill Essayli, who leads the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles that Trump has said is investigating alleged fraud, said the claim that Pratt received zero votes in an update is false. “We reviewed official county records. The claim is false. Each candidate received votes in every update,” Essayli wrote on X.
So this is closed now. Poynter walks through it — Spencer Pratt, 24,000 ballots, supposedly zero votes. It was a data reporting lag. California's count is partial on election night, the update posted weird, and the internet did the rest. And look at who picked it up. Anna Paulina Luna, Elon Musk amplifying another version, all of it riding on Trump saying Democrats are committing fraud in California — without evidence. And here's the part that actually gets me — Bill Essayli, who runs the U.S. attorney's office Trump says is investigating this, came out and called the zero-votes claim false. The administration's own appointee debunked the administration's own talking point. We can see the mechanism now. But the reason garbage filled the gap is there was no authoritative anchor on the count for days. That's a California problem, separate from anything in this race. Which is the ranked-choice and count-mechanics conversation we keep having. The lag comes from choices, and this is the clearest case study yet of what those choices cost you downstream. Los Angeles Times, with Charlotte Zee:
Fernando Guerra, director of LMU’s Center for the Study of Los Angeles, commented on the Los Angeles mayoral race, where Mayor Karen Bass and City Councilmember Nithya Raman will compete in the Nov. 3 runoff.
Fernando Guerra at LMU put the plainest words yet on the thing I've been circling all week. His read: voters were frustrated with the city, but they could name their own council member as the one advocate fighting the system with them. That's the whole structural problem in one quote. The system fails citywide, but the district-level relationship holds — which is exactly why a mayor who doesn't have a theory of the council is dead on arrival. Right, but flip it for this race, Sarah. That loyalty helped Raman win her district. In November she's not the council member anymore — she's the challenger. Does that 'she fights for me' feeling actually travel citywide? That's the bet, isn't it? The thing that made her distinct on the ground in CD4 doesn't automatically scale to a mayoral electorate. And tie it to the SB 79 piece we just hit — the Hancock Park and Larchmont opposition is the same district-loyalty energy. People trust their neighborhood, distrust the city, and 'the city' is exactly who has to deliver the upzoning. That's how a state mandate stalls. If LA Mayor 2026 helps you keep track of the race, take a moment to subscribe or leave a review wherever you’re listening. It really helps other people find the show.
You’ll find links to every story we touched on today in the show notes, if you want to dig deeper or follow up on anything that caught your ear.
That’s LA Mayor 2026 for this Friday, June 12th. Thanks for listening. This is a Lantern Podcast.