This is the most important election of your lifet…I’m going to stop you right there.
The most important election of my lifetime was in 1980, and America blew it, big time.
The next most important was 2016, and the DNC rubber stamped the primary and penciled in their nominee before any votes had been cast. They blew it that time for all of us, when we could be in a significantly better country right now.
But all that being said, I vote every time, and I make voters guides for every major election, and here are my recommendation on how you should vote in the 2024 election.
As I’ve said many times, having voters pick judges is a bad idea, and of course we’re asked to vote on some ballot propositions that would better be handled by the legislature/congress. Our lawmakers tend to avoid voting on anything that will cost them campaign contributions or force them to make a hard decision, so I’ll do my best to give a good reason as to why you should side with my favored candidates and/or positions on ballot measures.
These races are the ones on my sample ballot- if you live down the street from me, yours is probably the same. If you live somewhere else, it’ll probably be different. Ignore the ones that don’t apply to you.
I’m listing these in the order in which they appear on my ballot:
1) Montebello Unified School District – I don’t pay much attention to the school district here, but Lisa Ibanez is endorsed by the Montebello Teacher’s Association, and Aaron Reveles is a teacher who previously ran for congress on a pretty good platform, so they get my choices.
2) LA Community College District Board of Trustees, Seat 1- while the incumbent Andra Hoffman is probably fine, I like the solutions proposed by Cheyenne Sims, focusing on transfer pathways and ensuring the basic needs of students are met so they’re more prepared.
3) LA Community College District Board of Trustees, Seat 3- Nancy Pearlman is a former board member and would likely be good, I’ll stick with the incumbent David Vela. He has helped manage huge budgets when working in Gloria Molina’s office and with multiple members of the CA assembly.
4) LA Community College District Board of Trustees, Seat 5- Nishelle Henderson is the current board president and a union organizer, and I see no reason to replace her.
5) LA Community College District Board of Trustees, Seat 7- Kelsey Iino is on the board and seems rather accomplished, while her opponent is a writer with no real information available online about what he would do differently. Iino gets my vote.
6) Montebello City Clerk- there’s only one person on the ballot, so Christopher Jimenez should get about 95% of the vote.
7) Member of the State Assembly, 54th District- John Yi has good policy positions, focused on improving our mass transit options. His opponent, Mark Gonzalez has a mile long list of endorsements from establishment figures, and will probably win big. But Yi is endorsed by Kenneth Mejia, one of the best public officeholders in the state, and Yi gets my vote.
8) House of Representatives, 38th District- Linda Sanchez is…not great. But she’s also not absolutely terrible, and her opponent Eric Ching likely would be. So Sanchez gets the mark on my ballot.
9) District Attorney- there are a ton of lies about crime statistics that have been pushed on social media, but the facts are that crime is down, and George Gascon has done a pretty good job, especially in comparison to his predecessors. Vote Gascon to see the reform of our criminal justice system continue, and not go back to automatically throwing the book at everyone regardless of circumstance.
10) Judge of the Superior Court, Office 39- George Turner comes from the public defender’s office. Since judicial nominees never really say *anything* of substance, that’s a better resume to me than a city council member from Manhattan Beach. Vote Turner.
11) Judge of the Superior Court, Office 48- Again, Ericka Wiley knows the criminal justice system as a public defender, vs her opponent who is a prosecutor. Vote Wiley.
12) Judge of the Superior Court, Office 97- I actually go against my normal rule of choosing the public defender over the prosecutor in this one- Sharon Ransom has an overwhelming list of endorsements and is rated well qualified, so she gets my vote.
13) Judge of the Superior Court, Office 135- this is a choice between two prosecutors, and I’ll go with Georgia Huerta, who is much more experienced than her opponent.
14) Judge of the Superior Court, Office 137- Luz Herrera is a law professor, but Tracey M Blount is an attorney for LA County, appearing in court almost daily for over 20 years. Blount is my choice.
15) LA County Measure G- this would expand the board of supervisors from 5 to 9, which is still too few members for the county with the largest population in the country. Yes, yes, yes,
16) County Measure A- Amends a previous measure and provides resources to deal with homelessness. Yes yes yes!
17) State Measure 2- Authorizes Bond sales to fund repairs to public schools. An easy yes.
18) State Measure 3- Remember when the state passed Prop 8 that outlawed gay marriage in 2008? This reverses that mistake. Vote yes.
19) State Measure 4- Authorizes Bond sales to fund wildfire prevention efforts, among other good things. A strong yes.
20) State Measure 5- Reduces the super majority requirements for local bond issues. This gives more power to local communities, and is a big yes.
21) State Measure 6- Eliminates the ability of companies to use prisoners as slave labor. I can’t even imagine being opposed to this. This is an easy yes.
22) State Measure 32- A minimum wage increase was proven to be good for the economy when it was passed for fast food workers and we saw that it barely raised prices while putting a lot more money into the economy. This is a broader minimum wage increase, and will be good for workers and businesses (that know what they’re doing.) Vote yes.
23) State Measure 33- This is a bit tricky, since Costa-Hawkins is a terrible law on the books that makes it more difficult for local communities to deal with housing issues. The downside is that it’s written in a manner that some believe will have some communities pass bad faith rent control as a means to avoid new construction. But since those communities are doing everything they can to avoid new construction anyway, it should be an improvement over the status quo. Vote yes and hope for a measure to reform it further next time.
24) State Measure 34- this is the type of initiative that voters are ill equipped to make a decision on. While it sounds like a good idea to make medical providers to spend their money on, it’s actually a measure targeting the AIDS Healthcare Foundation in revenge for their previous campaigning relating to another issue on building codes. While the AHF acted in bad faith then, this is a silly way to do this stuff, and should be rejected by voters. Vote no.
25) State Measure 35- This is an easy yes in shoring up funding for the state’s Medi-Cal program. Yes.
26) State Measure 36- This measure would increase penalties and put more people who have committed relatively minor crimes behind bars, when there are better ways to deal with these problems. This will cost the state money in housing inmates for felonies for things like retail theft. If they really want to combat the biggest theft at retail, go after these cheap ass stores that commit wage theft on a daily basis, and don’t provide adequate security for their own stores. Why should CA taxpayers function as a de facto security service for big retail chains? Let prosecutors and judges do their job with the laws we already have. Vote no.
27) President and Vice President- As a resident of California, I realize that my vote doesn’t mean much in this race. We know who will be getting our electoral votes already. Harris has shown a lack of a backbone in her refusing to state *anything* that she would change from the current disastrous foreign policy we’re embarking on, but Trump is such a disaster it’s not even worth considering him. The third party candidates are all mostly meh. In any other year I’d probably vote for Claudia de la Cruz, but the Democrats did replace Biden on the ballot, and Tim Walz should be a good influence on the administration (and probably will make a better VP than we’ve had the last 4 years.) Harris-Walz gets my vote.
28) US Senate- our choice is between Steve Garvey, who should be in the baseball Hall of Fame, not the halls of congress, and Adam Schiff, who showed extreme cowardice in the primary by propping up Garvey so he wouldn’t face a significantly better candidate in the fall in Katie Porter or Barbara Lee. We know Schiff will win by 2 million+ votes, and allow me to go on record as saying that I will vote for whatever actual left candidate runs in 2030. But for now, he’s the choice.
Get to the polls and place your votes. I recommend using the online sample ballot at the LA County Registrar Recorder’s website, which saves your choices as a QR code in a “Poll Pass” you can scan in to get in and out in no time.