Welcome to Surfing Political Waves, a short series podcast hosted by the Pepperdine School
of Public Policy.
This is Dan Schnurr.
And I'm Joel Fox.
And we're bringing you California election insight and analysis as the country ramps
up to one of the most historic presidential races in memory, as well as other fascinating
campaigns up and down the ballot.
Well, welcome to Surfing Political Waves at Pepperdine University.
This is Joel Fox.
And my special guest today is Rob Green, an editorial writer who writes for the Los Angeles
Times.
He covers criminal justice reform, the Los Angeles city and county governments, and many
other issues.
But the thing we ought to talk about with Rob, and we will in a minute, is that Rob
won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing.
That's a big deal, folks.
It's one of the top, if not the top, writing award in journalism, one that a few years
ago, it will get into what he wrote about.
But let's start this conversation about editorial writing for newspapers in 2024.
Editorials, newspapers, very powerful instruments many years ago, maybe not so much today.
So Rob, let me put you on the spot right away.
Do newspaper editorials influence elections?
Well, good question, Joel.
I guess I would say that it depends on the election.
So not on the year of the election, but the particular office or measure.
I don't think an editorial is going to sway a presidential election.
Might not even sway a gubernatorial election, but on things like ballot measures and people
who are running for your city council or your board of supervisors, definitely people who
are running for a superior court judge.
Yes, I think a newspaper editorial can make a difference.
So in those races that you just described where the editorial may make a difference,
tell us about the process for you as an editorial writer, for your team on the editorial board,
reaching a decision on which way to go.
How does all that work out?
Well, you said team, Joel, and that's correct.
I am a member of a team.
There are six of us, all of us write editorials.
And we, rather than just write our own opinions each individually, we work as a team and we
write as a board on behalf of the Los Angeles Times.
So we decide ahead of time what we're going to write about, and then we will argue with
each other.
We do a lot of arguing in a nice way about the pros and cons of different positions.
And when we're talking about an endorsement, we'll assign one person with a backup person
to kind of be the point person and bring back all the information that we need to know about
a particular electoral race and about the candidates.
And then we will make our arguments among each other.
And then one person will be assigned to write the first draft of that editorial.
Once that is assigned and finished, does it have to circulate among the staff again for
approval?
It depends.
Generally, it doesn't.
We have editors and the editors will make sure that it is in accord with what we had
discussed previously.
But everyone has the option of taking a look at it after the editor is done with it just
to make sure that we're all on the same page or that we are all where we intended to be.
So speaking of being on the same page in the debates around the board, is everyone like
minded on the editorial board?
I mean, clearly, people would argue that the LA Times has a specific point of view that
seems to cut across a lot of issues.
If someone with a contrary point of view, did they get an opportunity to join the board?
Well, we do as a board, we do have a point of view and we don't try to encompass every
possible point of view.
We represent the point of view of the newspaper as an institution.
So the newspaper as an institution is not a hard right conservative institution.
And so we don't have hard right conservative points of view on the editorial board.
When we want to talk to people who are expressing those points of view, we invite them as guests
to speak with us and they can speak for themselves on the op-ed page.
But we don't make an attempt to be completely representative of every point of view in the
country because otherwise, every editorial would essentially be an election and that
wouldn't really get us very far.
Do you clear your editorial positions with the publisher or the newspaper?
The publisher has the opportunity at any time to take a look at what we're working on.
So it's up to the publisher.
So it's not a matter of our writing something and then sending it to the publisher and saying,
are you okay with this?
The publisher will let us know whether he's okay with it.
So you're looking at evidence, you're looking at balancing opinions and analyzing evidence
and maybe even crusading to some point of view.
How much does community attitudes play into editorial positioning?
It makes a difference because even though we are not news reporters in the sense that
we don't work in the newsroom, we work separately because we are in opinion, we do reporting.
And as reporters, we need to find out as much as we can about a particular issue or with
an endorsement about a candidate or a particular office or a ballot measure.
So that includes going out and talking to people who are directly affected by those
candidates or ballot measures or issues or what have you.
So before we get into the coming election here and how the paper is positioning its
opinion, let's just revisit what I started with.
And that is the fact that, congratulations, Rob, you won the poll.
It's a prize.
That's a big deal.
Tell us about it.
Tell us about that.
Yeah, tell us about that.
What did you write about?
What happened?
I was writing editorial.
Well, I write editorials.
I write editorials every day or at least several times a week.
And the ones for which I was recognized came in 2020, which I'm particularly proud about
because as you know, 2020 was a singular year.
2020 was the year of George Floyd and the pandemic and lockdowns and protests and the
disputed presidential election disputed, I guess, only by Donald Trump and his supporters
culminating in the attack on the Capitol after 2020.
But I wrote a series of editorials that kind of drilled down on particular things during
that year that were some of them were Los Angeles oriented, but some of them were nationally
oriented and they had to do with things like justice and equity.
So they weren't necessarily about the killing of George Floyd.
They weren't necessarily about the pandemic, but they were about issues that affected us
that were driven by those events during that year.
So let's talk about that because you wrote and won your award because of articles on
justice and justice reform.
That was for 2020, as you just well described.
Now it's 2024 and there seems to be a change of attitude, particularly among voters in
Los Angeles city and county and probably across California.
How do you view this change?
How did it come about?
And ultimately, I'm going to ask you, have you changed over the course of the four years?
Okay, let's start with your first question.
Has there been a change in attitude?
I think that was your first question.
Has there been a change in attitude?
And there certainly has.
2020 again was the year of the killing of George Floyd, but also of Breonna Taylor and
a number of other incidents that made people concerned about the justice system, a system
that we in the United States, we revere and want to protect, but which has some flaws
that became impossible to ignore in that year.
And so it was a year of reform.
They were one of the editorials for which I was recognized and thank you kindly for
bringing that up.
I appreciate it.
But one of them was an endorsement of the district attorney, George Gascon, who brought
a reform agenda to the DA's office.
He was a challenger.
He defeated the incumbent.
And now the Times had a story yesterday because he's at a reelection four years later, he's
something like 30 points behind.
And for him to pull out a victory at this point would be surprising.
So yes, things have changed a great deal.
So why have they changed?
Several reasons.
One is that I think that when voters in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the United States
embraced reform in 2020, the idea was new enough to a lot of folks that we weren't really
sure what it meant and how far it ought to go.
And so some people embraced reform and said, yes, we need to change laws to make sure that
things are more equal.
But then they started hearing things like defund the police and they said, or even abolish
the police.
And a lot of folks said, wait a minute, I don't think I signed on for that.
And I think that a lot of folks who had a stake in the way things were saw that concern
and capitalized on it politically and started trying to drive a wedge and so played up fears
of crime.
At the same time, there were indeed factually increases in crime.
And that is a concern.
And crime is a problem and it's real.
And it hurts people.
And so a lot of folks who were comfortable with reform previously said, wait a minute,
I think that some of the things that we adopted, some of the changes that we adopted, some
of the people that we elected are causing us harm.
They are causing crime to go up.
And so we need to ramp back a little bit.
And you asked me, Joel, whether it has changed, whether I've changed in those four years.
Well, you wrote, let me just tell our listeners that you wrote the editorial four years ago
that supported George Gascon for district attorney of Los Angeles.
And you write the editorial this time.
What did you decide?
Do you still support Mr. Gascon or not?
Tell us why.
Yes, we supported Gascon again because we thought that his policies, we believe that
his policies are best for the people of L.A. County, best not just for not just best for
justice, but best also for public safety.
I know that there are a lot of folks who don't buy that, but we had to spend a lot of time
looking at the claims that were made against him, that the particular policies that he
adopted caused an increase in crime.
And I find that that's really that's not the case.
First of all, the policies of a prosecutor rarely have an immediate impact on crime go
to bad.
So there's that to start out with.
But we also looked at the particular concerns that people raised about his policies.
And sometimes the concerns that were raised were just were just false.
So there was an assertion that he just doesn't charge misdemeanors.
Well, that's not true.
There are some misdemeanors that he doesn't charge, but serious misdemeanors he does charge.
And then there were concerns that some of the policies that he has gave people gave
people an incentive to commit crime because they felt that they wouldn't be prosecuted.
Now, I can't tell you what's in the minds of people when they commit crime, especially
property crimes, especially those high profile crimes, but which we're all concerned that
we've seen the smashing rab robberies, the burglaries, the property crimes.
There are assertions that he hasn't he's not prosecuting those.
And we looked at the facts and that's just not true.
He's prosecuted those cases just as much as his predecessor did.
But the assertion is made that a lot of people who engage in those crimes think they're not
going to get prosecuted because they misunderstand his policies and that that has driven crime.
Well, as I said, I can't tell you what's in the minds of people who commit those crimes.
But we did become convinced that that his policies were not going easy on criminals.
What they did do for some folks, they shortened some sentences because we've also seen in
academic and sociological studies that sentences are sort of like medication.
You have to dose properly.
And if you dose properly, you can have a really positive effect on driving down recidivism.
If you put someone in prison for a serious crime for too short a period and then let
them out, you're just encouraging them to commit more crime.
That stands to reason what a lot of people don't understand unless they study this issue
is that if you keep people in prison for too long after the sort of the prime period for
driving down recidivism, you can also drive up the the the re-arrest rate or the likelihood
of a person committing crime.
So we liked Gascon's policies in that he was being smarter about sentences.
But I certainly understand.
I certainly understand people's concerns that that they were leading, that those policies
were leading to more crimes on the street.
It's a long, but I understand why they would think that.
In the real political world, though, I think you'll see that you spend a good portion of
the time just now making some very cogent arguments on your positioning with Gascon.
But those are hard things to sell to the public in the short commercials.
Very hard to sell.
Yeah.
And the reaction on the street is, hey, I just read that they broke into the store down
the street.
And that becomes a real problem.
I think I want to go back, though, to well, let me ask you one more question on this,
because I know a lot of deputy district attorneys were against Mr. Gascon.
How did you weigh that when you were considering the endorsement?
It's an important factor.
So you need an elected official who is going to be effective.
The policies are only part of the battle.
If you've got great policies and you can't get them done, then what's the point?
And I have to say that with Gascon, when he first ran, he hadn't done this job in Los
Angeles before, although he had been district attorney in San Francisco.
He hadn't done it in Los Angeles before.
We looked at the policies and we said, this is good.
This is what we want.
This is where we want to go.
And he actually started doing it in Los Angeles.
I mean, there are a lot of things that he did that gave me pause.
He did not work well with his deputies.
And I understand where he was coming from.
He knew that he was going to be opposed from the beginning.
So he made the strategic decision to not try to be a nice guy and get along and just kind
of rip the bandaid off, as they say, and impose his policies from the get go without buy in
from his deputies.
But strategically, tactically, that was the wrong decision.
And it wasn't, you know, certainly not good for the policy.
So if he is going to be defeated, it's his policies that also will suffer a setback.
I hope not not in their entirety, but to at least some extent.
So the question that we had to face was, do we change direction and go with a different
candidate who has policies we don't like as much but would be more effective?
And ultimately, we had to decide, well, no, because we don't want somebody who's going
to be effective at policies we don't like, that policies that we don't think are the
best interests of justice in Los Angeles County.
Although it was a conversation we had to have.
We had we did have to come to grips with it.
It wasn't a slam dunk.
And you obviously interviewed his opponent, Mr. Hockman, right?
Yes.
Yeah.
Yes.
I began our conversation by asking you, do newspaper editorials influence elections?
Or I think they play a role.
And be curious to know what kind of attitude you and your your team have.
When on television commercials, you'll see pop up.
The Los Angeles Times says vote yes on this proposition.
The Los Angeles Times says this guy should not be elected to this position.
Thus, your editorial is spread much far and wide than it is just in the newspaper.
So give you any visceral visceral thrills to see that.
And what kind of reaction do you have?
Or is it just a ho hum?
Here we go.
It's an election year.
All right.
I'll tell you the truth, sometimes it makes my stomach hurt.
Really?
Tell me why.
Because we work so hard in our editorials and our endorsements to make a case, to make
an argument the same way we would make an argument, a closing argument to a jury.
We walk through facts and issues and do our best to to convince our readers why they should
vote for or against a particular ballot measure or a particular candidate.
And when we see it on screen taken by the campaign itself, all that is gone.
All you know, it's just Los Angeles Times tells you to do this or to do that.
So it hurts that the reasoning is gone.
And also sometimes they'll take our argument and completely turn it upside down.
So I haven't had the case before where someone will say that the Times says to do this when
we've actually said to do something else entirely.
But I have heard folks go on not just on TV ads, but say on radio interviews and instead
of making their own argument, refer back to the Times editorial or endorsement, which
at first gives me a thrill, especially if they make the argument that we made, if they
make it well, but then gives me a stomach ache again if they make if they state the
argument that we make and make it poorly.
It's like going into court and having some lawyer who's not very good make your closing
statement.
So you're telling me it's hit and miss with your reaction.
Yeah.
Let me let me ask you about another issue on the ballot, since I have this opportunity
to do that.
It's controversial, and that is Los Angeles County Measure G, which will add supervisors
to the Board of Supervisors from five to nine.
We would elect a CEO.
I know the time is taken in position.
You're going to tell us what it is.
But tell us what went into that thinking when you reach your conclusion.
Part of what went into that thinking is where we've been on the issue generally in the past.
So as long as I've been with the Times, and that's 18 years, but even before that, the
editorial page has been an advocate for a change in county government.
We've wanted two things.
We've wanted a larger board of supervisors on the argument that it would be more representative
of the people in the county, because right now we only have five members of the board
for a county of 10 million people.
That means two million per supervisor.
I didn't know that there's any local government.
Well, I know there's no local government in the United States that has that many people
per constituents, per representative.
And we wanted an independent elected executive because just having a larger board without
having the checks and balances of three branches of government, which is a foundation of the
nation's organization and has been from the beginning.
Without that, we just enlarge the dysfunction of the county.
And county government is dysfunctional.
It's not really through any of the fault of the folks who are working in county government,
but it's impossible for the county to get anything done because of its structure.
So one of the things that went into it is that we've always been in favor of an independently
elected executive and a larger board of supervisors.
And I will tell you that when some of the folks who worked on this ballot measure told
us what they included in it, they said they included it in there partly because the Los
Angeles Times had said these things for so many years.
And I do still believe that these are two good things for LA County is to have the checks
and balances that it's lacking and to have more representative board of supervisors.
So there was that.
And then there was the question of what Los Angeles County almost always does with a ballot
measure before the election.
And they just pull it out of their back pocket at what's close to the last minute without
giving a lot of time for vetting or examining.
And they say, here it is.
Take it or leave it.
And it wasn't quite that bad this time, but it was close.
So this came up in July.
The vote is in November.
And so the question is, does something of as much import as this have enough vetting?
So we looked into it as much as we could and on balance.
Our conclusion was the county is dysfunctional.
We need to break that dysfunction.
And it's better to make these changes than it would be to wait for two years and try
it again after a long period of drafting and vetting, which probably would come up with
something that's not all that much different from what we have now.
Let's just note that, as you pointed out, it came up late.
And the fact that it got on the ballot was on a three to two vote by the supervisors.
So there was obviously a dissension there.
That's correct.
Part of our thinking is that, again, sorry to repeat myself, but we felt it was necessary
to break the dysfunction.
When the board agrees 5-0 or when the board is divided 3-2, either way, they still don't
seem to get a lot done.
So early this year, they commissioned a study to find out what would be the best way to
restructure county government.
And when this measure came up in July, they still hadn't sent that out for...
That was supposed to go out for bid so that somebody would study that question.
Still hadn't gone out for bid.
That's part of the dysfunction we're trying to break.
So last question on this point.
An objection that I see to it, I actually agree with you that it should be a larger
board.
My concern with the CEO, and I heard your argument and you can restate it or tell me
I don't know what I'm talking about.
But what I see the CEO, which is essentially going to be the mayor of Los Angeles County,
is that the interest in...
I know this happens with all elections, the special interests, the labor unions, the businesses
are going to push to get their candidate in control, which will be a different kind of
government than if there were nine members on the board of supervisors.
Did that cause any concern for you as it has, frankly, caused some concern for me?
Of course.
The idea of one person with all that power, of course that's going to cause concern.
And then we have to remember that what would California be like?
Whether you like the governor or you don't like the governor.
What would California be like if it was run by only the legislature?
If only the legislature proposed and adopted the budget.
If only the legislature proposed and then vetoed or signed every new law.
It's just not a good idea.
Same with the federal government.
What if Congress ran the federal government?
We had that with the Articles of Confederation.
We decided very soon.
By we, I mean our forebears back in the 18th century, decided that just isn't working.
It doesn't work for county government either.
Does it work for a small county like Sierra County or Modoc County?
Yeah, probably works fine.
Five people, you have what is in a sense an appointed city manager, except it's a county
manager instead.
That works fine, but Los Angeles County is the size and has the budget of a state and
not a small state.
It would be like the fifth largest state in the country.
We need checks and balances and we don't have that with an appointed chief executive because
the board can bounce the chief executive whenever that person does something that a board majority
doesn't like.
Okay, we're going to start wrapping this up, Rob, and I appreciate all of your sharp
answers and your time dedicated to this.
I'm going to ask one more question and maybe one open-ended one at the end.
I'd like your view on political influencing and the landscape of political influencing,
which has so dramatically changed.
When newspapers were in their heyday, they really did have a great impact.
Now along comes radio, then along comes television, now comes the internet.
What's your view of influencing the political influencing landscape today?
Well, it has changed.
Because I work at a newspaper, I suppose I could express regret that newspapers don't
have the same influence that they once did, but when I got into the newspaper business
already, it was already in decline.
Elected officials or politicians who are running for office are always going to look for the
best way to reach people who will vote for them.
Whether it's newspapers or through social media, that's going to change.
Today it's social media.
Newspapers reach maybe a more, well, it would be unfair to say a more discerning voter.
Let's say a voter who is interested in more analysis of a particular issue or candidate.
A voter who is more interested in a more visceral understanding of a candidate might be better
reached through TikTok or some other social media.
The game really hasn't changed.
The players are always going to change.
Just the same way that the politicians change, the way that they reach voters is going to
change as well.
A newspaper editorial does not have the clout that it once does, doesn't have the power
to elect a president the way that it might have once.
But the people are always going to be finding a way and politicians are always going to
be finding a way to reach each other, whether the medium is newspapers or TV or radio or
what have you.
Very good.
Let me close with a open ended question for you, blindsiding you a little bit.
If you don't have an answer, that's fine.
Got any stories, anecdotes about your life as a editorial writer at the LA Times?
Could be humorous, could be dramatic.
Anything that you'd like to tell our audience?
I will tell you that in 2008, I was in Denver to cover the nomination convention.
Right.
Barack Obama.
Yes.
Now, I wasn't there to cover Obama.
I was there to go to the California delegation, which met for breakfast every morning, as
most states delegations did.
And that's where you find out what's going on in the political world.
That's where the mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, and the mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio
Villaraigosa, both made their pitches to the top Democrats from California about why each
of them should be the next governor.
Now, neither of them were explicit about that.
They were just talking about the great things they had done for their city.
And you could tell they were being sized up by the delegates to that convention who were
there to nominate Barack Obama, but actually were there to figure out where to go next,
just in terms of what's next for California.
That was fascinating.
The anecdote I had is that a couple of young women came up to me at the time, found out
that I was an editorial writer at the Los Angeles Times and said, you know, you really ought to talk to our aunt.
She's the district attorney of San Francisco.
And you should have lunch with you.
She should have lunch with you.
Let's arrange something.
And I said, yeah, that's nice.
I don't really have time.
I'm here for something else.
And they were very insistent.
And so they arranged a lunch and that's when and how I met Kamala Harris.
Yeah, that's a great anecdote.
Which was which was fascinating.
We ended up not endorsing her for attorney general.
But but but she's managed to stick around on the political scene.
I've heard that rumor.
Yes.
Listen, congratulations on your Pulitzer Prize.
Thank you, Joel.
And thank you for spending time with us.
We're thanking Rob Green from the Los Angeles Times, surfing political waves here at Pepperdine.
Thanks Rob.
Thank you, Joel.
Thanks for joining us for this conversation on surfing political waves.
For more engaging dialogue on politics and policy, visit Pepperdine School of Public Policy
on YouTube at Pepperdine SPP.
For upcoming community events, go to public policy dot Pepperdine dot edu slash events.