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Originally Posted by CaliNative
Talk about sweeping generalizations. Most of Los Angeles city is about as liberal "blue" as San Francisco. Even much of once red O..C. is turning blue, or at least purple. Some of the suburbs are still red, but so are some of SFs outer suburbs. San Diego city is majority Dem. although some of the suburbs are still red.
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You’re the one generalizing here.
My statement highlighted the major differences between democratic values of Bay Area vs SoCal Democrats. You haven’t negated my argument with any specifics. I’ll offer a few specifics below.
LA and SD are “blue” because of large numbers of Chicanos. Their liberalism is largely a working-class phenomenon, whose platform is overwhelmingly socio-economic (unions, jobs, healthcare), and not environmental (sprawl, active-transportation, composting, carbon emissions)
In contrast to LA/SD, environmental issues carry at least as much weight as socioeconomic issues on their democratic platform of NorCal liberals. Virtually all of California’s PIVOTAL environmental and transportation initiatives have been and continue to be spearheaded by politicians of Bay Area Affiliation, even if later garnering support from select SoCal reps. This includes Phil Ting, author of many active transportation bills (S.B.1193, and others ). Consider also AB743, authored by Darrell Steinberg to eliminate CEQA from environmental review of proposals, or AB2493 (Levine) which raises penalties on drivers who hit cyclists and pedestrians, or what about SB50 and SB837 to override local zoning restrictions for transit proximal projects, or SB71 which requires all new homes be built with solar capacity (all from Scott Weiner). Then of course the Greenbelt Initiative (see link in my previous post) founded by Dorothy Erskine to set an urban growth boundary (eg sprawl boundary) around basically the entire Bay Area. Where is the equivalent of this in LA/SD? Have you driven to the high-desert corridor? I don’t see a self-imposed growth boundary created specifically to contain sprawl, anywhere around LA, or SD. Where are the Phil Tings, Scott Weiners, Dorothy Erskines, Darrell Steinbergs, and Marc Levine’s of LA/SD, an area with three times the population and an area represented by many more assembly members than The Bay? The only major enviro bill authored by a SoCal rep that I can think of is the plastic bag ban
To answer my own question, None of these laws were spearheaded by SoCal representatives or activists because these ideas don’t sell well to an electorate for which such issues aren’t on their radar (LA/SD), and don’t resonate nearly as pervasively as they do in NorCal. Conversely, resistance to policies that limit sprawl and driving is much stronger in SoCal. SoCal politicians have no problem producing a litany of pro-Union initiatives however. Social equity issues are far and away the primary driving force of a “blue” LA/SD. You’d have trouble arguing that Smart growth, transportation, and other environmental issues is on the forefront of the SoCal electorate, on par with social equity issues and unions.
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Originally Posted by CaliNative
Los Angeles has as much undeveloped land around it as the S F area, including the Santa Monica Mountains NRA, the national forests in the San Gabriel Mountains etc. As far as not caring about sprawl, if Tejon Ranch were put to a vote it would be voted down. It is not a done deal. I am against it as are a lot of people down here. The SF and L A metro areas have more in common than many people admit.
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Tejon was approved, quite uncontroversially I may add, by the LA Supes. Did you even read the article?