The Brief

Childcare costs continue to rise, and recent surveys have shown that families with children struggle with affordability. In California, the average annual cost of childcare for an infant at a childcare center was more than $23,000 in 2025.

And voters are paying attention. A recent poll found that nationwide, 3 in 4 voters saw the cost of childcare for families with young children as a “crisis” or “major problem,” and more than 8 in 10 voters saw it as part of the affordability crisis. It’s one reason childcare has become a hot political topic in places across the country, from New York City to New Mexico, policymakers have recently unveiled universal childcare initiatives.

At the same time, the Trump administration has said childcare should be left up to states. “We're a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people. We're fighting wars. We can't take care of daycare,” President Donald Trump said earlier this year.

Ahead of the Nov. 3 elections, LAist asked families what they wanted candidates to know about the cost of childcare and how they are affording it, including sacrifices they have made like forgoing savings, moving or changing careers. More than 70 people responded, and their experiences helped shaped the questions we asked candidates.

So what can elected officials in California — from the Los Angeles mayor to the governor — do to help? What does "affordable childcare" mean to them, and how can we get there?

Here’s where they stand.

Governor

What can the governor do?

The governor’s office has major authority over how — and which — services get funded in the state. Each year, the governor proposes a budget, outlining the office’s priorities. The budget is then turned over to the state Legislature, which can make its own changes and negotiate with the governor before approving it.

“The governor is the chief administrator of all the major agencies,” said Stacy Lee, senior managing director for early childhood with Children Now. "So the governor can use their administrative and executive authority to align priorities. We saw this in New Mexico."

During his term, Gov. Gavin Newsom made early childhood education and care a key part of his agenda. One landmark initiative was the implementation of a brand new grade for 4-year-olds in the public school system. But implementation hasn't been without hurdles — and privately run preschools have been closing in the state at the same time.

What do the candidates say?

Neither candidate for this office responded to LAist’s survey.

Democrat Xavier Becerra’s campaign website promises he would “[expand] help with childcare and essential costs,” but did not specify how.

Republican Steve Hilton’s website outlines actions he would take, including creating a home visiting program to support families and expanding paid family leave from eight to 12 weeks.

Read more about the California Governor race.

State Assembly and Senate

What can state legislators do?

Members of the California state Assembly and state Senate hold the power to introduce bills to help address the childcare system in the state. “They could be part of policy bills that streamline, reduce bureaucracy, eliminate barriers for children, families, providers and others in the system,” Lee said.

They also ultimately approve the governor’s budget and can advocate for funding through the process. This past year, for example, lawmakers opposed the governor’s proposal to cut funding for subsidized childcare slots for low-income families and eventually approved funding for more spaces.

Lawmakers have also taken on some novel ideas to address childcare costs: in Riverside County, a state Assemblymember secured funding to try to create a "special district" for childcare — the first of its kind in the state.

• Read more about the State Senate races.
• Read more about the State Assembly races.

LA Mayor

What can the mayor do?

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani made headlines over the last year in promising universal childcare for all in the city — and other cities have taken on their own efforts to try to make childcare more accessible.

L.A.’s mayor doesn’t have some of the same powers that mayors in other cities, like New York, have. For example, the mayor doesn’t have authority over the Los Angeles Unified School District — a significant provider of preschool options and the largest city where the mayor doesn’t have direct power over the school system. But the mayor proposes the city’s $14 billion budget, can issue executive orders and oversees the city’s departments, like the Department of Recreation and Parks, which ran free childcare centers with federal COVID relief funding before it ran out of money.

Cities have also found revenue streams to fund childcare initiatives in their jurisdictions. Washington, D.C., for example, has used a tax on residents earning more than $250,000 a year to boost the pay of childcare providers — similar to San Francisco, which uses a commercial property tax.

There are things mayors can do for their employees as well. For example, New York City opened up a free childcare center for city employees.

• Read more about the L.A. Mayor race.

LA City Council

What can Councilmembers do?

The L.A. City Council approves the city’s budget, proposed by the mayor, and can advocate for how those funds are allocated. City Councilmembers also create and adopt local laws, or “ordinances,” that regulate life and business in the city.

“If you think at a city level … people think of potholes and roads and things, right? There's a lot of basic infrastructure things that they're responsible for, and that includes rules and laws around building codes, licensing,” Lee said.

That could also mean addressing issues around permitting and zoning for childcare facilities, and identifying city buildings that could be put to use for childcare. The City Council was also the body that approved using federal COVID relief money to open 10 licensed preschools at Recreation and Parks facilities.

• Read more about the L.A. City Council races: District 3 | District 9

OC Board of Supervisors

What can the Supervisors do?

The Orange County Board of Supervisors decides how the budget is split up each year toward county departments and services.

Counties, like cities, can also find ways to create revenue streams to provide services. San Francisco is both a city and county, and it used a commercial property tax to fund childcare. “Just like people raise funds for their local library, you could do that for childcare,” Lee said. Similar to other offices, supervisors can also advocate for childcare at the state and federal level.

The board also appoints the members to the Orange County Child Care and Development Planning Council. Every county in California has such a council, which serves as a body to discuss and plan childcare needs in the county.

Supervisors can also issue discretionary funds. Earlier this year, the county awarded $75,000 to First 5 Orange County for a “childcare business incubator” program.

What do the candidates say?

• Read more about the OC Board of Supervisors race.

Longer wait times for graffiti removal and streetlight repair. Fewer police officers per shift. Completely eliminating school crossing guards.

Those are just some of the service cuts the city of South Gate made earlier this year as it stared down a $9.4 million annual budget deficit and a looming fiscal emergency.

But none of that was enough to convince South Gate voters to approve an 8% utility user tax that would have been tacked onto a wide range of utility bills, including electricity, water, cable and phone service. Now, the city is gearing up for more cuts, including closing sports fields and the city pool for the winter months.

South Gate’s utility tax was just one of the many ways Southern California cities asked their residents to give them more money via local tax initiatives this November, with proposed taxes on everything from hotel stays to cannabis businesses.

And those early results suggest South Gate is an outlier: Of the 32 total local tax measures on the ballot in Los Angeles and Orange counties, all but six appear poised to pass, according to early results. (There are still several more days of vote counting to come.)

Eleven transient occupancy tax measures, which tax overnight stays in hotels or short-term rentals, passed in cities from Burbank to Los Alamitos. Most cities sought to increase their existing hotel taxes by anywhere from 1 to 5 percentage points, while Lynwood residents voted to establish a hotel tax for the first time.

Business-related taxes, such as taxes on business licenses or on certain businesses, also mostly passed, as did most parcel taxes in cities including Pasadena and Culver City.

But sales taxes saw more mixed results. Cudahy, San Gabriel, Orange, Santa Ana and Los Angeles all approved sales tax measures, while voters in Diamond Bar, Hermosa Beach and San Clemente all voted down their local sales tax proposals.

Most of those sales taxes focused on maintaining basic city services in communities facing big budget deficits, driven by the rising costs of insurance, maintenance and infrastructure projects, and employee pensions, among other factors. But in San Clemente, the proposed 1% sales tax would have specifically funded sand replenishment and other beach projects, along with wildfire prevention work. That measure appeared to be headed for failure, with just 36% of voters in support as of Wednesday afternoon.

Voters in San Marino approved an extension of their utility tax, and increased it from 5% to 6%. Last year, the tax provided almost $2.2 million in revenue.

City officials in South Gate had hoped for a similar boon, and projected the utility tax would bring in an estimated $10.4 million per year in general fund revenue, while raising total utility costs by about $39 per month for a typical household.

Leading up to the election, the city of South Gate pointed to other neighboring cities that have their own utility taxes, including Downey, Lakewood and Norwalk, where the tax mostly hovers around 5%. “South Gate is the exception, not the rule,” noted one city presentation that pointed to these other taxes in a bid to coax voters to go along.

Voters weren’t convinced. “I’m extremely frustrated that you now want to do electricity, water, sewer, cable, cell phone, gas. ... That hurts us. You’re passing that on to us and that is absolutely not acceptable,” said one resident at a City Council meeting on the measure earlier this year.

LAist has reached out to the city of South Gate about what’s next for the city.

The city of West Hollywood has approved an ordinance to create a domestic partnership registry for people in polyamorous relationships.

The domestic partnership registry extends certain legal protections for people in the city, including visitation rights to hospitals and jails in West Hollywood and some tenant protections. The registry doesn’t replace the state’s marriage or the state’s domestic partnership laws.

“It's a landmark ordinance and really puts and continues to elevate West Hollywood as a city that is here to support queer people and queer families as they evolve in their needs,” said Chelsea Byers, a West Hollywood City Council member. “I think that's a real joy that we can bring to people — that they can live in a greater sense of being seen and understood.”

In 1985, the city became the first city in the nation to create a similar domestic partnership registry for same-sex couples. Similar to that registry, people outside the city can also register.

“This new law not only gives polyamorous unions legal recognition, it also gives people permission to imagine a future together and to plan their lives openly,” said Christina Fialho, president and founder of Rewrite the BiLine, an advocacy group for bisexual people and nonnuclear families, who advocated for the ordinance.

Several cities in Massachusetts have also passed multipartner domestic partnership laws.

How it works

To file, people in a multi-partner relationship will submit a form in person that will be provided by the City Clerk’s office — all members of the relationship will have to provide identification to the clerk. (The ordinance also offers an option by mail, if the signatures are notarized).

Among the sweeping victories by Democrats on Tuesday were wins in several congressional districts that Republicans had redrawn explicitly to boost their party ahead of the midterms.

Republicans were bracing for some losses this election cycle, so last year President Donald Trump urged his party to take the extraordinary step of engaging in mid-decade redistricting efforts.

As of Tuesday night, many of those efforts had failed.

That included in Florida, where multiple Democrats — Kathy Castor, Pia Dandiya and Jared Moskowitz — won in redrawn districts, according to race calls by the Associated Press.

In North Carolina, Democratic Rep. Don Davis held on to his 1st District seat, even though Republicans in the state redrew it to be more competitive for the GOP. Trump would have won the redrawn 1st by nearly 12 percentage points, according to the Downballot.

Trump would have won by even more in Alabama's redrawn 2nd Congressional District, which Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures held on to, according to the AP race call.

Republicans in Alabama redid the state's congressional map after the U.S. Supreme Court further weakened the Voting Rights Act earlier this year.

And in Texas, which was the first state to redistrict at Trump's urging, a few of the redrawn districts had gone to Democrats.

Republicans redrew their maps with the expectation that the coalition of voters Trump won over in 2024 would support them this cycle. In Texas, Republicans were banking on gains made with Latino voters in new maps.

But many of those voters shifted their support to Democrats this year.
Copyright 2026 NPR

Nationwide election results came at a relentless pace Tuesday night, each more of a Democratic upset than the last. But you may not have known if you were attending the California Republican Party's election night event in Garden Grove.

In the dimly lit Hyatt ballroom where gubernatorial longshot Steve Hilton and his supporters gathered, the news channels were off, the music was turned up and “Don’t Stop Believin’” blasted throughout.

Minutes after the polls closed at 8 p.m., the Associated Press called the governor’s race for Democratic favorite Xavier Becerra.

Around the room, the occasional person glanced at their phone to sneak a peek at the growing GOP carnage. More of the crowd instead looked at each other or toward the empty stage, where a lectern stood in front of a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset.

Not long after, Hilton took the stage to concede the race — which had always been heavily favored against him in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-to-1.

“Maybe this isn’t the best year to be running for office as a Republican,” Hilton told his supporters, alluding to the election results that would soon lead the Democratic Party to win so big in the House and the Senate that many dubbed it a blue tsunami. “We see what’s going on around the country.”

Hilton knew the odds were long. He’d tried a number of tactics to win over California, including a suggestive advertisement suggesting voters should “Just Try” voting for him. He’d done his best to separate himself from President Donald Trump, who backed his campaign. He also attacked Becerra for staying largely out of the limelight since making it out on top of a chaotic primary.

None of Hilton’s appeals made a significant mark on the result, which trailed at around 36% of the vote as of Wednesday afternoon.

Standing outside the ballroom, Matt Shupe, a spokesperson for the California GOP, conceded it was challenging terrain for Republicans this year across the country — and always in California.

“It’s pretty typical that the party that's not in power gains some seats, so I think that was pretty expected for the most part,” he said. “We'll plan on bringing the fight more intensely than ever in 2028.”

By 9:30 p.m., people were headed to their cars to go home.