Green New Deal polarizes L.A. voters

For decades, campaigns for city office in the San Fernando Valley foothills have been animated by intensely local issues such as traffic congestion, real estate development, and preserving the culture of horse keeping.

But this year, an idea that has erupted on the national stage — the Green New Deal — has become a polarizing issue in Tuesday’s special election to fill a northwest Valley council seat. Candidate Loraine Lundquist, a Democrat and college instructor, has endorsed L.A.’S version of the Green New Deal, a package of environmental proposals from Mayor Eric Garcetti. She has made battling climate change a core part of her campaign, inspiring activists from across the city.

Former City Hall aide John Lee, a Republican, has sought to turn those positions against her, arguing that Garcetti’s green initiatives will bring financial pain to the district. His supporters have also attacked the plan, arguing that Lundquist has an “extremist” agenda.

Lundquist “espouses extreme left ideas that don’t reflect the 12th District,” said Councilman Greig Smith, who supports Lee and is representing the district on an interim basis. “The green economy is one of them.”

Whether those types of arguments will take hold is unclear. This stretch of the Valley, historically a conservative stronghold, has lost Republican voters in recent decades and gained Democrats and unaffiliated voters. The district was also profoundly affected by one of Southern California’s biggest environmental disasters: the massive methane leak from an

Aliso Canyon storage facility that pushed thousands of people out of their homes.

“That was a radicalizing experience for a lot of people” in the district, said Ace Katano, a public defender who lives in Hollywood and has been knocking on doors to support Lundquist. “They realized the infrastructure we’ve built around fossil fuels had made their nice, pleasant home unsafe.”

Porter Ranch resident Marcy Rothenberg, an author and political blogger backing Lundquist, echoed that view. “I don’t think she’s too extreme for a district where we had the largest natural gas leak in the country’s history,” she said.

Both Lee and Lundquist have called for the shutdown of the Aliso Canyon storage facility. But they are divided on the broader question of how far L.A. should go to confront climate change and pull away from fossil fuels. Backers of both candidates have drawn attention to the Green New Deal as they scramble for votes in Northridge, Granada Hills, Chatsworth and other parts of the district.

The Valley campaign is “a little bit of a microcosm of what’s happening on the national stage around the Green New Deal,” said Colleen Callahan, deputy director of the Luskin Center for Innovation at UCLA.

In Washington, D.C., the national version of the Green New Deal — aimed at addressing both climate change and economic inequality — has come under fire from the right and exposed divisions on the left. In L.A., Garcetti’s version of the Green New Deal offers a long list of targets and initiatives, including a push to reduce driving and get Angelenos out of gas-powered cars.