The Brief

Early results from a special election in Santa Ana show Councilmember Jessie Lopez staving off a recall attempt.

As of Wednesday evening, 56% of votes tallied were against ousting Lopez, according to the Orange County Registrar of Voters.

The registrar has more than 400 ballots left to process, with more likely to trickle in by mail in the coming days. In all, some 26,700 people were eligible to vote in the recall election — the turnout so far is 25%. The next vote count update is scheduled for Thursday at 5 p.m.

Lopez was targeted for recall by the Santa Ana Police Officers Association and several real estate groups, largely because of her voting record in favor of rent control and policies that her opponents deemed "anti-police." They cite as an example Lopez's 2021 vote against a law that would have made it illegal to be a spectator at street races.

Lopez told LAist earlier this month that the recall effort has been spearheaded by "special interest groups that push policies that harm working class people."

Legal questions

The recall election has been mired in legal questions. After ballots had been sent out, O.C. Registrar Bob Page said he realized the city was using the wrong district boundaries and the wrong population data to calculate how many signatures were needed to trigger the recall and who would get to vote.

As a result, he said nearly 1,200 voters who should have been eligible to vote did not get ballots.

Using the correct district boundaries, Page also calculated that the initial recall petition actually fell short of the number required to hold an election by 230 signatures. In late October, Page rescinded his initial verification that recall petitioners had met the signature threshold.

Based on these problems, a voter in Lopez's district filed a court challenge to the recall in early November. The Orange County Superior Court judge in that case decided not to issue a ruling until January.

Shannon Ortiz, a resident of Ward 3, which is represented by Lopez, said she was aware of the legal questions surrounding the recall but was casting her ballot anyway.

"I don't have personal control over whether this is happening today, but I do have control over my own vote," she said outside a vote center in Santa Ana on Tuesday.

Kathy Hettick said she hadn't heard of the legal problems with the special election, but she had gotten a lot of mailers from both sides of the recall.

"I get mail saying vote 'yes,' I get mail saying vote 'no,'" she said. "That really bothers me because that costs money."

What happens next?

If there are more votes to be counted beyond Wednesday’s 5 p.m. update, the O.C. registrar will update the results on subsequent days until all ballots are counted. The registrar has until Dec. 8 to certify the results.

It’ll be up to Santa Ana’s city council to then accept the results. At the end of last month, they deadlocked on whether to cancel the election because of the district boundary issues raised by the registrar's office.

A federal judge has ordered Los Angeles to pay more than $1.8 million in attorneys’ fees and costs to the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights and other organizations that sued the city over what it deemed an inadequate response to the homelessness crisis.

The city is appealing the decision.

The details

L.A. Alliance is a group of business owners and residents who sued the city and county of Los Angeles in 2020 in an effort to push both governments to provide more shelter to unhoused people in the region.

The city of L.A. settled with the plaintiffs in 2022, and U.S. District Judge David O. Carter is overseeing the city’s progress in keeping up with the terms of that agreement. The judge found the city breached its agreement in multiple ways in a ruling last summer.

Specifically, the judge found that the city did not provide a plan for how it intends to create 12,915 shelter beds, as promised, by 2027. The court also found the city “flouted” its responsibilities by failing to provide accurate, comprehensive data when requested and did not provide evidence to support the numbers it was reporting, according to court documents.

In addition to $1.6 million in attorneys’ fees and $5,000 in costs to L.A. Alliance, Carter awarded about $200,000 in fees and $160 in costs to the Los Angeles Catholic Worker and Los Angeles Community Action Network.

The organizations are considered “intervenors” in the suit, representing people experiencing homelessness on Skid Row. Their attorneys include those from the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles.

Why it matters

In his order, released Tuesday, Carter compared the recent award to the millions of taxpayer dollars city officials agreed to pay an outside law firm representing L.A. in the settlement.

Carter wrote in the order that the attorneys' fees and costs to L.A. Alliance and others “is reasonable, especially in light of the approximately $5.9 million that the City’s outside counsel is charging.”

LAist’s housing and homelessness coverage was cited several times in the order.

“It has fallen to plaintiff, intervenors, and journalists to point out the deficiencies in the city’s reporting,” Carter wrote, referring to data the city is required to report to the court as part of the settlement.

“Plaintiff and intervenors must be compensated for this,” he said.

The city’s response 

Attorneys representing the city filed a notice of appeal with the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Thursday.

L.A. City Attorney Hydee Feldstein-Soto’s office did not respond to LAist’s requests for comment by phone or email.

Shayla Myers, senior attorney with the Unhoused People's Justice Project at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, told LAist the intervenors participated in the case without compensation “because it's incredibly important given what is at stake in these proceedings that unhoused folks have a voice.”

Matthew Umhofer, an attorney for L.A. Alliance, told LAist he’s thrilled the court is imposing accountability on the city, including sanctions for violating the settlement agreement. But Umhofer said he’s saddened that L.A. Alliance is going to have to keep fighting to hold the city to its promises.

“The obvious city strategy here is hire a big, good law firm to fight on absolutely every front in hopes that the plaintiffs, the intervenors or the court will ultimately give up trying to hold the city accountable,” he said.

What's next

The parties are scheduled to appear in federal court in downtown L.A. on Monday, when a hearing will resume to determine whether the judge will hold the city of Los Angeles in contempt of court.

Carter has said in documents that he’s concerned “the city has demonstrated a continuous pattern of delay” in meeting its obligations with court orders under the settlement and that the “delay continues to this day.”

Every January, the open-air downtown food fair reopens after its winter break and announces new additions to its carefully selected group of regular vendors.

This year’s new vendor class demonstrates the resilience of L.A.'s independent food scene, ranging from a Grammy-nominated producer's Persian-influenced pizza to Southern fried fish celebrating Black American culinary traditions, to an LAist 2025 Tournament of Cheeseburger heavyweight contender.

The reopening also marks the start of Smorgasburg LA's 10th anniversary year, and will feature 41 returning vendors, who've helped build the regular event into a fun, family-friendly opportunity to try new, often cutting-edge food you may not be familiar with.

Doors open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at DTLA’s The Row, with free entry and free parking for the first two hours.

A new year

General manager Zach Brooks said this is his favorite time of year. "We add the new vendors at the beginning of the new year, everyone's excited."

Vendors apply through Smorgasburg's website, and the team meets with every applicant to taste their food before acceptance. Brooks said it's not a vetting process like "Shark Tank" but rather a matter of seeing if it's a good fit. Competition remains fierce, with many more applicants than available spots.

"I think it's just a testament to L.A. and the resilience of people who love this business and have a passion for it, and are going to continue to persevere and start their businesses and want to be out there selling food," Brooks said.

Here are a few highlights:

Viral orange chicken sandwich 

Long Beach-based Terrible Burger becomes Smorgasburg's new permanent burger vendor after standout appearances at LAist's Tournament of Cheeseburgers and the market's rotating Smorgasburger Stand. The smashburger pop-up, run by husband-and-wife team Nicole and Ryan Ramirez, specializes in burgers that draw from pop culture and global influences. They've made waves with a Korean barbecue burger topped with bulgogi barbecue sauce and a viral orange chicken sandwich, previously available only at their Tuesday night residency at Long Beach's Midnight Oil, making its L.A. debut Sunday.

Terrible Burger's viral orange chicken sandwich makes its LA debut at Smorgasburg after being available only in Long Beach.

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Courtesy Terrible Burger

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"We have been big Smorgasburg fans for a really long time before we even started Terrible Burger. We would go to Smorgasburg on dates, just eat and hang out. And it was just always a little dream of, "oh, what if we ever sold food here?" Nicole Ramirez said.

Crispy fried snapper and thick-cut fries 

Orange County-based Hot Grease, run by Asha Starks, is among four vendors graduating from residencies to permanent status. The Southern fried fish pop-up celebrates Black American history through food that honors Starks' family heritage.

"Folks often forget that there are Black folks in Orange County. My family came to Orange County during the second wave of the Great Migration, and they settled in Santa Ana... my food is very cultural. And the story, I feel like, is just as important to highlight," Starks said.

Hot Grease's crispy buttermilk fried snapper with thick-cut fries and "Ill Dill" tartar sauce.

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Courtesy Hot Grease

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Hot Grease serves crispy buttermilk fried snapper with thick-cut fries and small-batch sauces like "Ill Dill" tartar. Honoring the fish fry's history as a site of mutual aid, Starks directs 3% of sales to the Potlikker Line, Hot Grease's reproductive justice mutual aid fund. For January, she's added fish and grits, black-eyed peas and collard greens.

Pizza with a Persian twist

Mamani Pizza brings studio-born energy to Smorgasburg LA with pies featuring Persian-inspired creativity.

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Courtesy Mamani Pizza

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Mamani Pizza, from the Grammy-nominated producer Farsi, part of the music production team Wallis Lane, started making Neapolitan-style pizzas at his West L.A. recording studio a year ago. What began as late-night pies for friends and artists became an underground hit. Most pizzas are traditional, but Farsi adds Persian touches like The Mamani, topped with ground wagyu koobideh, roasted Anaheim chilis, Persian herbs and pomegranate molasses.

Other new vendors

Banana Mama - Asian-inspired pudding
Barranco's Yogurt - Oaxacan fruit yogurt
Franzl's Franks - Austrian sausages
Melnificent Wingz - Gourmet chicken wings
Piruchi - Peruvian street food
RuRu's Golden Tea - Karak chai
Stick Talk - vegan corn dogs
SouuLA - Taiwanese breakfast concept
Unreal Poke - Hawaiian poke
Zindrew Dumpling Shop - Spicy wontons