Protestant Progressives and weak mayors in Los Angeles

Steve Sailer:

Los Angeles has a "weak mayor" form of government stemming from the Progressive Era of almost a century ago. The Progressives were mostly northern Midwestern Protestants, as was the population of LA at the time, who despised the corruption in immigrant-dominated cities with machine-dominated politics, such as Chicago, where votes were traded for jobs and services. So, they invented a system that would be harder to corrupt and would rely upon the civic-mindedness of the citizens.

Well, today, LA, like Chicago before WWI, is an immigrant city with an uninformed and uninterested electorate. We just don't have the civic virtues anymore to make the system work the ways the Progressives intended. So, control has fallen into the hands of the only people interested and informed: a coterie of a couple of dozen ultra-rich Westside developers like Broad and former mayor Richard Riordan, both of whom backed Villaraigosa.

Under the circumstances, LA would probably be better off with traditional corrupt machine politics. Chicago is doing better with a strong mayor machine system under King Richard II than LA is doing under its old Progressive structure.

Of course, you'll never read about how the new immigration has undermined the Progressive reforms that liberals were once so proud of.

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