The Brief

Culver City’s DMV office got a new paint job recently.

Usually, that’s not news. But in doing so, the state whitewashed an iconic Chicano mural painted on the building nearly 50 years ago. Now, one of the artists is working with the state to get it restored.

The cream colored wall covering over the most prominent part of the mural

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How the coverup was discovered

Artists David Botello and Wayne Healy, founders of East Los Streetscapers, painted “Moonscapes” in the late ‘70s with $10,000 from the California Arts Council. The Chicano science mural took about a year-and-a-half to paint, covering all the exterior walls of the DMV office.

The mural was a futuristic take on life and transportation with a bend toward environmentalism. For example, people drove through space with a dashboard computer warning the driver to switch to alternative energies. The four black walls were filled with vibrant displays of these stories. Then, crews painted over all but one.

Botello jokes the astronaut was holding the "first iPad" in its other hand — a handheld screen the muralists painted decades before the product. The screen referenced lowriders, barrios and his wife Lupe.

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“Over time, the wood deteriorated, and the mural often became a target for graffiti,” DMV spokesperson Ronald Ongtoaboc told LAist in a statement. “The DMV attempted to locate information on the mural, its artists and the organization(s) responsible for the mural, with no success.”

Botello, who lives in El Sereno, got in touch with the DMV in late February after he got wind of the whitewashing. His brother, a fellow muralist who also assisted on “Moonscapes,” sent him photos of contractors painting over the frontside of the mural, where a famed section showing an astronaut floating could be seen all who passed by Washington Boulevard.

David Botello is working with the DMV to have the mural restored

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“ We were devastated. We just felt so terrible because all that effort, overpainted,” Botello said. “Nobody could believe they would do that.”

Botello emailed the department that night. “ I said, ‘To whom it may concern, you painted out our mural. How come you didn’t contact us?’” The next morning, he was told to get in touch with the DMV’s facilities manager in Sacramento to ask them to stop painting over the artwork. The department agreed.

Botello marked on the wall to warn contractors not to paint anymore.

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Just one wall of mural was left — ironically because the long line of waiting DMV visitors who regularly snaked along it had made it hard to reach.

Why the mural matters

“Moonscapes” is significant because Chicanos didn’t paint often on the west side during L.A.’s mural movement, let alone one focused on science.

That work drew some attention. Botello recalled an interaction they had while working on the front of the building.

“ A lady from across the block came over, and said, ‘How come you’re putting graffiti on the wall? We’re gonna call the cops.’”

They had just put chalk on the walls to outline what to paint. Botello said he took out the designs and assured her they had permission. By the time they finished, the mural was popular and featured in magazines.

A young Botello stands in front of "Moonscapes III," which focuses on energy and transportation. To the left is a dipstick that shows the space car is low on oil, signaling the importance of reducing oil consumption. This display was where the driving test starts.

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"Moonspaces V" depicted the astronauts who died in the Challenger disaster.

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"Moonscapes III" also includes a portion where a large man, a mechanic, is holding up a glass jar that's meant to symbolize an eight cylinder engine.

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"Moonscapes II" is a cruise through time. Next to the  Aztec moon goddess are DNA molecules. Inside them are different forms of life, such as a whale, a brain and an embryo.

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“ Little by little, everybody accepted it because we were not doing an obvious Chicano mural,” he said.

But Botello and Healy injected bits of themselves across the mural. The astronaut’s helmet had a reflection of a “ zoot suiter,” and the Mexican flag was on its upper arm.

What comes next

This isn’t the first time one of Botello’s murals has been ruined. In the ‘80s, Shell Oil commissioned the East Los Streetscapers to paint a mural at a gas station. But in 1988, the wall it was on was torn down. Similarly, no one on the team got a warning.

That situation became a test case for the California Art Preservation Act. They took Shell Oil to court and won through an appeal in 1991. That case is why the act today also protects murals.

The act prohibits the destruction or altering of artwork without the artist’s consent or a chance to preserve it. And in the case of murals, building owners are supposed to “diligently” attempt to give the artist 90 days’ notice.

That being said, Botello doesn’t want to take the DMV to court.

“We want to go with the goodwill that I’m getting from the manager in Sacramento,” Botello said, “and believe first of all, that he’s gonna pay for restoring the walls. ”

Graffiti can be seen on what's left of "Moonscapes III."

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The wood panels — which were the mural's canvas — have also clearly worn and cracked over the years.

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Botello is working on an estimate of charges. He’s already put in more than 100 hours of work to save the mural. Botello and a restorationist are getting a paint remover from the University of Florence in Italy to test on the walls. If it works, it would remove the top layer of white paint.

But if that doesn’t pan out, the mural will need to be redone.

“ It is possible to repaint it, but I’m not healthy enough,” he said. “I would maybe supervise. We have to get a good team.”

Botello is interested in updating the mural too. Some of it is tied to specific historical events, such as the Challenger disaster, so repainting is a chance to bring panels up to date.

“ I would like to see the most beautiful parts of the mural fully restored and maybe come up with something new for other parts,” he said.

Dan Shimell, an attorney and a new face in local politics, is Santa Ana’s next mayor after a shocking win against incumbent Valerie Amezcua. His win has become one of the most surprising upsets in Orange County’s general election and marks a shift for a city that previously elected its first Latina mayor.

Amezcua congratulated Shimell on social media late Monday night after the last round of election results nearly doubled Shimell’s lead. As of Tuesday night, Shimell held a 5-point lead over Amezcua. Amezcua did not respond to LAist’s requests for comment.

“It has been the honor of my life to serve the people of Santa Ana,” Amezcua said in a post. “Together, we have accomplished great things. We invested in our neighborhoods, expanded opportunity for families, and strengthened the services that make Santa Ana home. Our work was never about one person. It was about all of us moving this community forward.”

Aside from Shimell, progressives Sandra de Anda and Isuri S. Ramos are also projected to win City Council seats, deepening the Santa Ana City Council’s progressive bench.

A flashpoint in Amezcua’s re-election campaign was during the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids that rattled much of Southern California, including Santa Ana, Orange County’s only sanctuary city. The raids sparked protests that drew a heavy law enforcement response from Santa Ana police, including rubber bullets and tear gas.

In Amezcua’s first public response, she accused protesters of inciting chaos and violence. She later walked back her comments in a city statement, saying most protesters were demonstrating peacefully and that she did not support the raids.

Shimell told LAist he thinks Santa Ana voters, especially young and first-time voters, went to the polls to vote for those who can't.

“Those who have been or might in the future be impacted by immigration policy and enforcement,” Shimell added. “Taking a bold stance on immigration and police accountability seemed to resonate with voters I spoke with, and stood in stark contrast to the [police]-backed candidates who remained largely silent on those issues.”

What does this say about Santa Ana politics? 

Orange County Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento served as mayor of the city from 2020 to 2022, and his current district includes Santa Ana. Sarmiento told LAist that the results were surprising but reflected the change voters want to see in their elected officials.

“I think the underlying message is that money and establishment conventional politics no longer is the formula to success in a campaign in the city,” Sarmiento said. “It's really the influence of people and voters over money. That's really the theme here.”

Santa Ana City Councilmember Thai Viet Phan told LAist that the race results were somewhat surprising — but spoke to a larger trend.

“[In] the election results throughout the country … you saw a very leftward shift, with not just candidates but also just how voters voted,” Phan said. “I think that was reflected here in Santa Ana on the council.”

Amezcua outspent Shimell — by a lot

Shimell raised about $28,500 in his campaign for mayor. Amezcua raised more than $75,000 and received more than $200,000 in outside support — more than half of that came from the Santa Ana Police Officers Association.

Mike Moodian, a public policy professor at Chapman University, told LAist that in many ways, the races capture the zeitgeist of Santa Ana.

“Here we saw that there was a police union-backed group, and there was a resistance to that,” Moodian said. “People might have seen the incumbent mayor as part of a police union-backed establishment."

He explained that voters may have looked at Shimell as a fresh face who can represent more people and that the city is experiencing a deeper progressive shift.

“I find the residents of Santa Ana tend to be much more involved and engaged in local politics than most other cities in Orange County. So you also have a well-informed, engaged citizenry that showed up, and the voices were heard in Santa Ana,” Moodian said.

Moodian said Amezcua may have lost support from some voters because they were unsatisfied with her response to immigration enforcement.

What’s next?

Ballots are still being counted. The OC Registrar of Voters posts updates every day, except Sundays, at 5 p.m. Election results will be certified by Dec. 3. You can find updates on key measures and other races here.

For seven years, Nazmul Chaudhry has been trying to get the city of Los Angeles to fix a broken sidewalk in front of his store.

Chaudhry owns Deshi Food, a restaurant and grocery store in Little Bangladesh. Before I could even begin our interview, he led me to the front of his store to show me the sidewalk that pedestrians sidestep and electric scooter riders slow down around.

He said he’s tried to get the attention of city officials, but nothing has been done.

The broken sidewalk in front of Nazmul Chaudhry's shop in Little Bangladesh.

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He’s hoping that will soon change. He said then-candidate Nithya Raman spent time in the historic enclave just north of Koreatown this fall, talking with community members about their problems. For the first time since he moved to the United States in 1989, Chaudhry is excited about a mayoral election.

“Everybody's happy because we've never seen anyone [come] like that directly to us,” Chaudhry said.

Mayor-elect Raman is of Indian descent and an immigrant. When she takes office, she will be the first South Asian mayor of Los Angeles. Chaudhry is proud of that distinction. But what means more to him is that Raman spent time walking the streets of Little Bangladesh, visiting businesses and speaking to community members about their concerns. Chaudhry said that, because of that, he asked all his customers and family members to vote for Raman. At dinner parties, Chaudhry said, Bengalis would share how they were excited to vote for Raman in this election.

Nazmul Chaudhry and one of his customers, Mohamed Hassen. They both voted for Nithya Raman for mayor.

In the Little Bangladesh area, vote returns to date show Raman with a 2-to-1 margin over Mayor Karen Bass.

 "Hopefully she's gonna take care of the city," Chaudhry said.

His business has been hit hard after federal immigration raids ramped up in Southern California. People are afraid to leave their homes for fear of being taken by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And for those who do come to his store, he said, they are met with increased prices because of tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump's administration on imported goods.

Nazmul Chaudry offers a lunch buffet at his restaurant but he has seen a drop in foot traffic after ICE raids ramped up.

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"Everybody's suffering actually these days," Chaudhry said. “If you see, Nov. 3 is a huge change because people [are] fed up."

Chaudhry also said city services don’t do a good job keeping the streets clean. So he takes it upon himself to pick up trash in front of his shop.

A few weeks before Election Day, Raman posted a social media video from Little Bangladesh addressing the trash along the street.

His relatives in New York told Chaudhry that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, also of Indian descent, has “changed the whole city.” He’s hoping for some of that change in Los Angeles when Raman takes office in December.

Shift away from identity politics

While Raman’s Indian background was a feature of her campaign, it was “not the central thesis,” said Sara Sadhwani,  an associate professor of politics at Pomona College and a senior researcher with AAPI Data.

In 2020, when Kamala Harris, also of Indian descent, was running for vice president, Sadhwani said, she conducted research on Indian Americans who wanted to see more representation in politics. In 2024, some of them turned away from Harris.

“When the economy is bad, identity slips away as the top issue on someone's mind,” she said.

Identity politics, Sadhwani said, was important in 2008 when the nation elected the first Black president, Barack Obama.

Los Angeles mayor-elect Nithya Raman poses for a photograph with family members after casting her vote on Election Day during the midterm elections at the Silverlake Community Church.

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“ We're ushering in a new political generation of millennials and Gen Z; diversity is just expected at this point amongst a vast majority of Americans,” she said, highlighting how at the last census more people identified as multiracial.

Nationally too, Sadhwani said, thec ountry is seeing a shift. South Asians have gone from “model minority” to “governing minority.”

”The old script was that for Indian Americans, for South Asians, that being that quiet professional is what success meant,” she said. “When we look at Raman and also Mamdani, they're fighting for executive power in very visible, very messy city politics, and they won not by following the rules, but they won by challenging the status quo.”

South Asians as a political force

That idea resonates with Faizah Malik, managing attorney for housing justice at Public Counsel and a former L.A. City Council candidate.

“When we were growing up, our parents said, ‘Just keep your head down, go to school, get educated, make a nice life for your family, and that's it,’” she said. “Politics was not really part of the conversation, but I think what we're seeing is that we can run for office, we can win by being our full selves.”

This is an exciting time, she said, for “South Asian political empowerment,” with Raman set to join Mamdani in leading the country’s two largest cities.

Malik said that, as a housing advocate, she cares about Raman’s fight “to build more housing around the city that people can afford, her fight to keep renters in their homes, to prevent homelessness, her fight to try and really solve our homelessness crisis but also be efficient with our public dollars.”

Nikita Chaudhry, an actor and political organizer, wants to see Raman revitalize L.A.’s film industry, “to call the city the home of Hollywood again.”

“Having that kind of representation and knowing that it exists is really exciting because I think and hope it will activate South Asian Americans of all ages to get more involved in their communities,” Chaudhry said.

Raman's and Mamdani’s victories were years in the making, Chaudhry said: from organizing in their communities to holding other elected positions to engaging voters who are otherwise ignored by elected officials. And she hopes that it will inspire other South Asians to become more involved in their communities.

“If you're feeling activated, if you're feeling excited, that's great," she said. "Take that energy and the time and the skills and the specificity of what fires you up towards your local organization, towards your neighborhood, towards your community.”

As the race to represent L.A.’s Council District 9 remains too close to call, candidate Estuardo Mazariegos’ campaign has accused the campaign of Jose Ugarte, the front-runner, of potential ballot tampering.

The Mazariegos campaign made the accusations Monday, saying it had filed a complaint with the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk. In a press release, the campaign alleged that representatives for the Ugarte campaign had collected voters’ ballots to drop off without signing the appropriate line identifying the individual who returned the ballot.

In one case, Mazariegos’ team accused Ugarte campaigners of filling out a ballot on a voter’s behalf without her knowledge of who she was voting for.

“Taking people’s ballots, filling them out, and not following legal voter assistance guidelines in a district that has faced so much disenfranchisement is disgusting,” Mazariegos said in a statement.

Mike Sanchez, a spokesperson for the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, said his office had forwarded the news release to the district attorney for review. He also pointed to the California Elections Code, which says that a “ballot shall not be disqualified solely because the person authorized to return it did not provide on the identification envelope their name or signature.”

Under California law, a voter can authorize another person to return their mail-in ballot — an approach also called ballot harvesting.

Justin Levitt, a  professor of constitutional law at Loyola Marymount University, told AirTalk Tuesday that there is no legal limit on the number of ballots an individual can turn in on others’ behalf, so long as they aren’t being compensated per ballot returned.

“Even if there were some sort of administrative wrongdoing, as long as there's no indication of fraud with the ballot itself, those ballots will all be counted,” he said.

Levitt said, however, that signing a ballot and then handing it to someone else to fill out would be illegal.

“ To the extent that there are allegations now that the DA may investigate, I suspect that's what they'll be focusing on,” Levitt continued.

The Mazariegos campaign also sent a collection of photos to the press, including one of a campaigner, USC student Amir King, returning a stack of ballots at a ballot drop box.

The Mazariegos campaign alleged that representatives for the Ugarte campaign had collected voters’ ballots to drop off without signing the appropriate line identifying the individual who returned the ballot.

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Courtesy of Estuardo Mazariegos' Campaign

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Ugarte’s campaign responded to the accusations by pointing to a post by King on Instagram in which he accused the Mazariegos campaign of bullying him and making false claims about him.

“Why is he attacking me? For participating in our democracy, as is my right under California state law and for helping others participate in democracy, as is their right under California state law,” King said in the post.

As of Tuesday morning, just under 300 ballots separate Ugarte and Mazariegos, with 44,000 ballots left to count in L.A. County. It’s not clear how many ballots in Council District 9 are left to count.