Jon Favreau

Nithya Raman, welcome to Pod Save America.

We have a lot to get through.

I'm going to go pretty quickly.

I also do want to disclose that I've been a supporter of yours for a long time, but I was really excited to see you jump in the race, not just because you're you, but because I thought Los Angeles deserved a big, contentious, hard-fought mayoral campaign and we were about to not have one.

Yes.

You had endorsed Karen Bass for mayor.

She was a political ally of yours.

Then literally in the hours before the noon deadline, you decided to run.

What happened in the month between endorsing your former political ally and deciding to run against her?

So let's talk about what's wrong with Los Angeles, which would be too long of a conversation to have.

But stepping back, the city of L.A.

has a budget of around $14 billion.

Yet we can't fix sidewalks, repave streets.

We don't plant trees.

We can't replace the bulbs in our street lamps.

Why in the richest state in the country, in the fourth largest economy in the world, is Los Angeles such a basket case?

So you would, if you were to become mayor, you would inherit these contracts.

How do you fix it?

How do we dig ourselves out of this hole?

And how do you do it when it's not just the mayor that's kind of making these decisions, but also the city council and other people that feel beholden to these groups, even if they're supportive of making sure public employees receive good benefits and good pay?