Left-Wing Governance Is Destroying Cities Like Los Angeles – Citizens Deserve Better

The Los Angeles mayoral election – which will proceed to a runoff in November – has once again trained the national spotlight on the incredible dysfunction of this major American city. As both an American and a Californian who grew up in nearby Orange County, it pains me to see what decades of Leftist misgovernance have wrought in this once-great metropolis.

Incumbent Karen Bass’ disastrous mayoralty represents all the predictable consequences of progressives’ policies, intensified by her administration’s extraordinary incompetence and outright negligence. From failing to fund the fire department to leaving the reservoirs dry, Bass’ administration vastly compromised the city’s ability to contain the January 2025 wildfires that devastated Los Angeles. Thanks to their incompetence, more than 16,000 homes and businesses were destroyed, while the city and state’s onerous regulations are making rebuilding a nightmare of bureaucratic red tape and expensive delays.

While the hellish destruction wrought by the wildfires is unique to Los Angeles, the city also shares a problem common to blue cities across the country: sprawling homeless encampments that represent a massive threat to community well-being. Residents of cities like Los Angeles or San Francisco who are trying to get to work, take their kids to the playground, or walk their dogs must stay on the lookout for stray hypodermic needles littering the ground, or be ready to steer their frightened children away from mentally ill individuals who should be receiving treatment, but are instead left to have psychotic episodes in public.

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Instead of using tried-and-true methods to get vagrants and drug addicts off the streets and off drugs, Los Angeles – like San Francisco and other blue cities – has incentivized these behaviors. Los Angeles spent billions on ideologically driven, evidence-poor programs, including distributing drug paraphernalia to addicts; decriminalized the behaviors fueling the crisis and declined to uphold public order; and created a vast nonprofit bureaucracy with no incentive to actually reduce homelessness. The result? Homelessness has more than doubled over the past 10 years, and has made life for law-abiding citizens increasingly dangerous.

Los Angeles has also exemplified the lawlessness that comes from “sanctuary city” policies that privilege violent activists over law-abiding citizens. Seeking to capitalize on anti-ICE sentiment, politicians like Mayor Bass stood by as rioters torched cars, blocked traffic, and assaulted law enforcement officers. We’re seeing similar scenes today in Newark, where Left-wing politicians refuse to distinguish between peaceful protest and the menacing campaign underway by radical activists seeking to obstruct the operations of an ICE detention facility.

This total abdication of responsibility, combined with eye-watering levels of state and local taxation, has driven scores of Angelenos and millions of Californians to move out of state. In most cases, these are not ideological decisions – these are ordinary people who would likely love to stay in Los Angeles, but have come to find the high taxation, unusable schools, misgovernance, and tolerance for public disorder too much to take.

All citizens deserve to live under a government that fulfills its most basic obligations of maintaining public order and enabling them to build good lives. As conservatives, we should be crystal clear about what it is that has brought cities like Los Angeles so low: unaccountable Left-wing governance that privileges ideology over results, and leaves taxpayers high and dry.

Take action with the ACLJ. Sign our petition: Stop the Left’s Radical Agenda.