Illustration by Tomasz Walenta for TIME
I spent a decade debating whether to move to Los Angeles, and not once in my deliberations did I consider the city's government. This, it turned out, made me perfectly suited to live in L.A. In my seven years here, I have not had one conversation about what our mayor does, and I have talked to our mayor several times. There is no social shaming that comes with knowing nothing about local politics. Fewer Angelenos can name the mayor of this city than can name the mayor of Pawnee, Ind., on Parks and Recreation. I am assuming here that the cast and writing staff of Parks and Recreation know who the mayor of Pawnee is.
Only 20.8% of registered voters--fewer than 400,000 people--went to the polls in the March mayoral primary, despite the fact that the candidates had 40 debates and spent a record $19 million. That may sound like a lot to you, but to us it's just the budget of a Philip Seymour Hoffman vehicle. Our previous mayoral election attracted 18% of voters. Bill Clinton, when he visited last month, called the low turnout "ridiculous" and something "we can't tolerate." When Angelenos heard that Clinton was in town and said that, we thought, That explains the traffic on the 405.
As Eric Garcetti, who won the primary, told me, "I got 33% of the 20% turnout of the 49% of the population registered to vote. I had a landslide with 2.6% of the population." His new campaign strategy is to ask each voter to tell five people a day about him, which is the same strategy that won me the vice presidency of my high school.
And I was one of the 2.6%. That's because Eric is a friend whom I've gone to dinner with and whose wedding reception I attended, and I think it would be cool to be friends with the mayor of L.A. Not as cool as knowing Philip Seymour Hoffman, but cool. And not nearly as cool as being friends with the mayor of a real city. Do you know how excited I would be if I were friends with the guy who is the mayor of New York? Pretty excited, largely because it would probably mean that I was a billionaire. And being friends with Rahm Emanuel would mean that I wouldn't be too afraid to end this sentence with a joke about Rahm Emanuel.
But I don't judge my fellow Angelenos for not showing up. First of all, it was a little chilly that day. Second, politics just isn't our thing. It's not that we're flaky or intellectually lazy. We are, but that has nothing to do with this. It's just that we aren't into group stuff. Think of all the people you knew in high school who were into politics. Now picture everyone you knew who dreamed of moving to L.A. To put it more simply, people who live in L.A. are not ginormous dorks.
There are many things we care deeply about in L.A., such as what we look like, whether our friends are more successful than we are and, oddly, hamburgers. We also care about big issues that we can talk about with Bill Maher, such as gun control, global warming and marijuana legalization. But we dream too big to care about the boring details of local governance. After seven years, here's everything I know about politics in this city: our schools suck; our taxes are high; white cops hate black people who hate Korean shop owners who hate children who get A-minuses; food trucks annoy small restaurants; and the Hollywood sign is always about to come down.