The Brief

The race for state Senate District 25 has stood out in California for its sheer cost. More than $5 million has been poured into the five-way race — much of it coming from one candidate.

But preliminary primary results show that the nearly $3 million that Democrat Yvonne Yiu invested in her campaign — making her the top donor to any state race — could not help her secure a top two spot needed to advance to the general election.

At last count Wednesday, the Monterey Park council member was in third place. The top vote-getter is Elizabeth Wong Ahlers, the sole Republican and a Crescenta Valley Town Council member, trailed by Democrat Sasha Renée Pérez, vice mayor of Alhambra.

The group of four Democrats — which also include Sandra Armenta and Teddy Choi — had split the partisan vote in a blue-skewing district that spans Glendale to Rancho Cucamonga and is home to one of the state's largest Asian American voter populations in the San Gabriel Valley.

Ahlers grabbed nearly 39% of the vote, while Pérez had nearly 28%, according to the updated tally released by the California Secretary of State Wednesday afternoon.

Democrat Yvonne Yiu campaigned as a tough-on-crime candidate who also wanted to increase AAPI representation in the state Senate.

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Yvonne Yiu For Senate campaign

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The two best-known Democrats, Yiu and Pérez, had focused their campaign attacks on one another, with Yiu enjoying a cash advantage that she directed toward TV commercials and political mail that positioned her as a tough-on-crime candidate who would ensure better Asian American representation in Sacramento.

But, money doesn't guarantee victory, said Nathan Chan, a political scientist at Loyola Marymount University.

"The quality of the outreach also matters," Chan said. "Just because you're sending mailers out nonstop doesn't necessarily guarantee that the voters are going to respond to it."

Yiu, who used to run her own investment banking firm, had self-funded a previous campaign. She contributed nearly $6 million to an unsuccessful run for state controller in 2022.

Yiu, who did not respond to a request for comment for this story, had said before that she self-funds to avoid being beholden to special interests.

Yiu had generated more money than Peréz and the groups in support of Peréz by a margin of more than 2 to 1. But Pérez was able to rack up key endorsements from the California Democratic Party, Planned Parenthood and unions representing teachers, nurses and firefighters whom she said embraced her priorities.

"Whether it was passing Alhambra's first sustainability plan or working on financial aid expansion, that made folks really excited," Pérez said. "So I think it's not just about money. You have to have a strong story that you're sharing."

Ahlers said she recognizes the challenge of winning votes in a district where Democratic voter registration tops 46% — nearly double that of Republicans. But she says people are tired of Democratic Party dominance in Sacramento.

"In the current Senate, the supermajority of Democrats has been the reason why the state of California is decreasing in population," Ahlers said, describing the tax burden and housing crisis as Democratic failures that have forced Californians to leave. "If people are paying attention, they'll vote for a change, which is me."

The district's current senator Anthony Portantino, who is facing term limits, is running to replace Rep. Adam Schiff in the 30th Congressional District.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Eight FIFA World Cup games will come to Inglewood this summer, each with tens of thousands of fans and, presumably, a flood of traffic. 

If you live in Inglewood or the surrounding communities, it takes just a few minutes to sign up for email alerts from the city of Inglewood ahead of potential traffic-inducing events.

Here’s how it’s done, step-by-step.

1. Start here at the city of Inglewood’s online Alert Center. 
2. Select “Notify Me” 
3. Click “Notify Me Sign In” 
4. Create an account, if you don’t have one, or sign in. 
5. Return to the “Notify Me” page and scroll to the “Alert Center” section
6. Select the mail icon to receive alerts by email. Confirm your email.  
7. Select the phone icon to receive alerts by text. Confirm your phone number. 
8. Enjoy being in the know.

If you want to know when to avoid driving but don’t want to sign up for alerts, here are the dates and kick-off times for the eight matches. 

Group Stage:

• Friday, June 12, at 6 p.m.: USA v. Paraguay 
• Monday, June 15, at  6 p.m.: Iran vs. New Zealand 
• Thursday, June 18, at  12 p.m.: Switzerland vs. Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Sunday, June 2,1 at 12 p.m.: Belgium vs. Iran 
• Thursday, June 25, at 7 p.m. Türkiye vs. USA

Round of 32: 

• Sunday, June 28, at 12 p.m.: Group A runners-up vs. Group B runners-up
• Thursday, July 2, at 12 p.m.: Group H winners vs. Group J runners-up

Quarterfinal:

• Friday, July 10, at 12 p.m.: Winner match 93 vs. Winner match 94

May gray skies will continue to keep the mornings on the cooler side, but come later this afternoon we'll see some sunshine and slightly warmer temps.

High temperatures along the beaches will stay in the mid 60s to around 70 degrees, and reach the lower 70s for the inland coast.

For the valleys, temperatures will reach the upper 70s. Meanwhile the Inland Empire will see highs up to 83 degrees.

Coachella Valley will see highs from 95 to 100 degrees.

Looking ahead to the weekend, the National Weather Service is forecasting high surf and dangerous rip currents for nearby beaches.

Come Saturday afternoon around 3:00, Ventura County will be under a high surf advisory. That will last until 9 a.m. Monday. Waves could be five to eight feet tall.

Meanwhile, the Malibu coast and L.A. County beaches will see dangerous rip currents and breaking waves starting Saturday evening through Monday morning. Swimmers, surfers and beach goers should be careful.

A 13,000-year-old oak tree in Jurupa Valley will now be protected thanks to an agreement between environmentalists and a real estate developer. Conservation groups had sued over a housing project that they say would have killed the tree.

The Jurupa Oak tree has been around since the Ice age, shared Len Nunney with the Friends of Riverside's Hills.

"And it's unique botanically because not only because of its age," said Nunney, "but because it's actually survived as climate has changed. As far as we know, it's the only remaining representative of its species that's anywhere near our area."

Conservationists have claimed that the Jurupa Oak's roots penetrate down into the hill's large rocks, hundreds of feet down to groundwater.

Environmentalists have wrangled for years with city officials over how to protect the oak. In 2024, Jurupa Valley approved a 900-acre housing project that would have been built 500 feet from the tree.

But conservation groups argued the city didn't consider the project's impacts, so they filed a lawsuit weeks after its approval. The new agreement now requires Richland Communities — the project's developer — to conserve 54 acres near the oak tree. They also can't develop land within 1,000 feet from it.

Nunney said that Friends of Riverside's Hills and the other parties to the lawsuit, the Center for Biological Diversity and the California Native Plant Society, are satisfied with the agreement.

"I must say that Richland really did negotiate in good faith in establishing a much larger barrier around the oak," said Nunney."

The agreement also allows environmental groups or California Native American tribes to purchase another 54 acres to conserve more open space.

Aaron Echols, who is the chair of the Inland Empire chapter of the California Native Plant Society and a member of the Friends of the Jurupa Oak, said he's confident stakeholders can come together to try to purchase the extra land.

"The buffer distance between the oak and development has been more than doubled at the shortest distance," said Echols. "If we can acquire the additional 50 acres, that will grow even larger, and will entirely protect the immediate watershed around the oak."

Jurupa Valley officials also said they're pleased with the settlement. City Manager Rod Butler told KVCR in an emailed statement that the city hoped Richland Communities and conservationists could reach a mutual agreement.

The city also created a webpage outlining its plans to work with the Gabrieleño Band of Mission Indians, Kizh Nation to help steward the land near the Jurupa Oak.

Andrew Salas, chairman of the Gabrieleño Band of Mission Indians, Kizh Nation, said back in 2024 that the tribe was committed to working with Richland to preserve not only the oak, but the surrounding land and natural habitat.

Richland did not respond to requests for comment.

Since staunch conservatives achieved full control of Huntington Beach’s seven-member City Council in 2024, they have voted in lockstep to fight state mandates to build more housing, and for the right to censor books in the children’s library. They also voted unanimously to install a commemorative plaque at the library that spells out “M-A-G-A” and to commission a public mural to honor slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

But the city’s once-solid MAGA coalition appears to be fracturing, largely over allegations of “cronyism” — contracts, deals, favors and political appointments that appear to benefit friends and family of the city’s leaders. In April, several members of the council publicly lambasted the mayor’s plan to award a lucrative contract, seemingly out of nowhere and without competitive bidding, to the fiance of his appointee to a city commission.

The public backlash was swift from across the political spectrum — an unusual occurrence in the politically polarized city. An equally unusual display of dissent arose from the once-allied council. One of the dissenters, City Councilmember Chad Williams, told LAist he was outraged by “the audacity of our own mayor to push through this sweetheart deal for his commissioner’s fiance. Our city deserves better,” he said.

The mayor, Casey McKeon, told LAist he didn’t “understand the pushback.” He said the consultant who would have benefited from the contract, Tyler Wolff of Wolffhaus Studio & Creative, “happens to be one of the best in the industry. Why should we not engage in his services?”

Wolff, for his part, told LAist he merely saw problems with the city’s “brand ecosystem” — including events, merchandising and media outreach — and proposed solutions. “There’s no creative leadership, there’s no oversight, and there’s no accountability,” he said. Wolff said he was caught off guard by the controversy over the proposed contract for his company. “I know nothing about the RFP procurement process,” he said.

Ultimately, McKeon withdrew the contract with Wolffhaus under pressure, and the city is currently evaluating alternative bids (including from Wolffhaus).

The rift comes at a fraught time for the MAGA movement: Nationally, the coalition is splintering over the war in Iran; Locally, a deepening budget crisis in Huntington Beach has caused some residents and local leaders to look more closely at the city’s recent spending decisions.

At the heart of the city’s problems is cronyism, critics say. But not everyone agrees on what falls into that category.

The backstory

Pat Burns, left, Gracey Van Der Mark, then-council member Tony Strickland and Casey McKeon at a City Council meeting in 2024.

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Allen J. Schaben

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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

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The latest controversy started when a proposal to award a $720,000 contract to Wolffhaus appeared on the city’s April 7 council meeting agenda, proposed by McKeon. The two-year contract was for revamping and maximizing the city’s “brand,” including ramping up sales of HB merch, opening a film commission, and improving the city’s public relations. The ultimate goal is to generate more revenue to help close a looming budget gap.

Several council members said they had no prior knowledge of the initiative before it appeared on the agenda — nor did they know that the city had already paid Wolff $30,000 to “audit” the city’s branding and communications strategy.

Critics on the council, including Williams, pointed out what they characterized as a number of other red flags, including Wolffhaus’ unfinished website which included a contact number that went to an adult hotline. (Wolff said it was a mistake and is now fixed.) The contract also contained a clause stating that, should the city want to cancel the contract at any time without cause, it would owe half of the remaining allocated funds to Wolffhaus. Williams called it a potential “windfall for work that was never done.”

“This was tailor made for Tyler [Wolff],” Williams said of the contract.

City Councilmember Andrew Gruel sided with Williams in vocally opposing the contract, calling its road to near-approval “sloppy.” Gruel told LAist he has a high regard for Wolff’s work, but was concerned about the transparency leading up to the contract’s sudden appearance on the council’s agenda. “I think the whole process was upside down,” Gruel said.

The council’s usual critics were livid, lambasting the personal connection between McKeon and Wolff and the lack of a competitive bidding process, which is generally required for large contracts.

“The whole thing just smacks of cronyism, backroom deals, sloppiness, lack of accountability, fiscal responsibility, I mean, pick some adjectives,” said Cathey Ryder, co-founder of the group Protect HB. The group has been a frequent foil to the current council’s agenda, including spearheading a ballot initiative last year that overturned the library censorship measure.

But indignation came in equal measure from the other side of the proverbial aisle, including from former backers of the mayor and his allies.

“I’ve supported most of the people on this City Council for a long time,” resident Domnic McGee said during public comment at the April 7 meeting. “But it seems that certain people are ruling by fiat,” he said, referring to McKeon.

McGee, who serves on the city’s planning commission, told LAist he worried that the communications contract would give the mayor a direct line to “spin” the messaging coming out of the city during election season. McKeon is up for re-election this fall.

“Casey [McKeon] will be able to override anything he doesn't like and overemphasize what he does,” McGee said. “And he could pretty much use this for his campaign.”

McGee said he campaigned for McKeon in 2021 but would now “never vote for him again.”

Following the outcry, McKeon withdrew the proposal from consideration and the city put out a request for competitive bids. An ad hoc committee made up of the mayor and two allied council members will review the proposals in private and recommend their top choices. Williams said the bidding process had been “utterly tainted.”

A pattern of 'cronyism' complaints

The rift over the Wolffhaus contract may have temporarily shaken up Huntington Beach’s conservative factions, but the faultlines are blurry. At their latest meeting, the City Council voted 6-0 to shift $10,000 in federal grants from an afterschool care program in the city’s Oak View neighborhood, and $5,000 from a local program for at-risk youth, to a nonprofit where Councilmember Gruel, a vocal critic of the Wolffhaus deal, is the executive director.

The organization, Save the Brave, which is based in Temecula, takes veterans on deep-sea fishing trips. Gruel left the City Council chambers when the vote was taking place, but did not formally recuse himself, or publicly disclose his ties to the organization. Under California’s Political Reform Act, elected officials are required to publicly disclose and recuse themselves from voting on any issue that represents a potential financial conflict of interest.

Gruel told LAist he had disclosed his ties with the organization from the start of the grant process — well before the money came to a vote before City Council. He said he takes no money for his work with Save the Brave, and that he didn’t know he was supposed to publicly disclose his ties to the organization at the time the vote took place. “I’m still learning all this stuff,” said Gruel, a chef and TV personality who was appointed to his seat last year after former City Councilmember Tony Strickland won a seat in the state legislature in a special election.

Asked whether he thought the council’s vote to give his organization additional funds was a bad look, Gruel said “Of course.”

“Especially in the framework of previous council decisions, there’s this reputation now that there are these backroom deals,” he said.

Longtime critics of Huntington Beach’s city government say it has become commonplace to reward people with political and family ties with funds, contracts, and prominent positions in city government. They point to the following examples:

• A decades-long, multi-million dollar settlement with the operator of the city’s annual airshow, who staged campaign events and printed signs for several of the City Councilmembers who approved the settlement. The city has been fighting a state effort to audit the deal. But Williams and Gruel recently proposed settling the case and letting the audit go forward.
• A special street renaming for a local conservative donor, Ed Laird, who helped fund the campaigns of several City Council members. (Laird also helped negotiate the airshow settlement.)
• The appointment, by Gracey Van Der Mark, of City Councilmember Gruel’s wife to the city’s Community and Library Services Commission in 2023. Gruel said he had nothing to do with the appointment, which is unpaid.
• The appointment in 2022 of Kelly Gates, wife of Michael Gates, the former city attorney and now deputy assistant attorney, to the city’s Finance Committee, also an unpaid position. Van Der Mark also made that appointment. 

California’s Fair Political Practices Commission, the state ethics body, has found legal violations related to some of these incidents. The commission recently ruled that former city attorney Michael Gates, and City Council members McKeon, Van Der Mark, and Pat Burns violated disclosure rules by failing to report that they had received free VIP passes to the airshow in 2022 when they were negotiating a settlement with the event’s operator. A similar complaint is pending against Kelly Gates — city finance commissioners are also required to disclose their income and gifts.

The mere appearance of a conflict of interest is problematic for good governance, said Tracy Westen, a public interest lawyer who has expertise in government ethics. For example, appointing the spouses of government leaders to key positions in city government. “It could be they were the best people for the job,” Westen said, “but it raises an appearance issue.”

Some Orange County cities, including Irvine, Westminster and Laguna Niguel, prohibit appointments of family members to city commissions. Huntington Beach does not have a similar rule, although the City council is prohibited from appointing relatives to salaried positions.

What it all means for the November election

Those looking to unseat the current City Council majority see opportunity in the rift over the Wolffhaus contract. “We are pleasantly surprised to see that there's a crack in the cabal, for lack of a better word,” said Ryder of Protect HB. The group is backing a slate of four candidates in the November election in hopes of unseating the council majority. One of the candidates is Erin Spivey, who sued the city over the book censorship policy and won, including a $1 million judgment against the city for attorneys' fees. The city is appealing.

If elected, Spivey said she would propose a ban on contracts and city appointments for individuals with close ties to City Council members. “This has got to stop. The government is not the plaything of elected officials,” Spivey said.

Some of the city’s most controversial figures are seeking higher office this year. Michael Gates is running for state Attorney General in the June primary. Van Der Mark is also hoping to make a jump to Sacramento — she’s one of four candidates to represent State Assembly District 72 on the primary ballot.

At the local level, McKeon and Burns are up for re-election this fall, and Gruel will face his first test on a ballot.

McKeon, Burns, and newcomer Brian Thienes are running as a conservative slate, with signs reading “Don’t split the vote!”

But Gruel has chosen to run solo — distancing himself from the trend in Huntington Beach, over the last two election cycles, of Republican-backed council candidates running as a bloc. “I don’t necessarily look at everything through a party filter,” Gruel told LAist, adding that he considers himself a small-government libertarian.

Gruel said he shared critics’ concerns about the lack of daylight on some of the city’s recent contracts and decisions. “Generally speaking this is why I’m so frustrated by the look, because my whole thing is transparency,” he said.