“Dogs are starving on Skid Row,” Adam Miller told me as we met at my home on a recent Sunday afternoon.
It was an impromptu remark after a long discussion of what ails Los Angeles, including what Miller would do if he became mayor.
This was the first time we met in person, but in recent weeks, with primary elections around the corner, the Jewish, Israel-supporting Miller has drawn a buzz in the community.
No kidding.
So many Angelenos, Jews and non-Jews alike, feel exasperated with the recent decline of our city. Some have given up and even left.
Miller doesn’t like the idea of giving up.
He doesn’t wear the easy smile of a politician. He’s not a schmoozer. He’s more the earnest type – a no-nonsense entrepreneur with solutions.
He has come up with a comprehensive “7×7 Plan” that outlines what his campaign says are “ambitious goals to address our most significant challenges with the clearly defined steps to achieve them.”
The plan is indeed ambitious, from reducing street homelessness by 60% to lowering average rents by 10% to doubling law enforcement patrols to cutting permitting times by 80% to unlocking housing and economic growth to rebuilding 1,500 miles of roadway to creating 100,000 new jobs across key industries to modernizing the city’s processes and infrastructure.
That alone is ambitious enough, but his biggest challenge may be to cut through the cynicism of voters who have been burned one too many times by politicians who make big promises but fail to deliver.
Which brings me back to the starving dogs on Skid Row.
“I’ve never heard a candidate talk about animals,” I told him.
The subject came up near the end of our conversation because Miller mentioned he was off to an event on animal welfare.
I was intrigued, so we extended our meeting.
He talked about the animal crisis with the same passion he showed for other crises. It struck me that this is not just a man with empathy; it’s someone who gets charged up by the very notion of fixing problems.
His campaign describes “a serial entrepreneur” who is running for mayor “to bring an operator’s mindset and executive leadership to City Hall, focused on making LA work better so Angelenos can live better.”
When you meet him in person, you get the sense that this successful high-tech entrepreneur means all of this. For him, it’s personal. He doesn’t need the job. He just loves this town.
“My wife and I raised our kids here, and like so many families across the city, we want them to be able to live, work and thrive in the neighborhoods they call home,” he writes on his website.
Will he get a chance to use his problem-solving skills to fix our city’s problems?
Can his centrist style prevail at a time when extremism is in vogue?
In other words, can he win?
If enough people hear his message, he thinks he can.
The top two vote-getters in the June 2 primary will advance to the general election in November. Polls show that incumbent Mayor Karen Bass will advance, but who will be her rival?
To her left is Nithya Raman of the Democratic Socialists of America, and to her right is reality TV star Republican Spencer Pratt, who has been making waves with satirical “California Dreaming” and “Batman” video clips.
Miller is running in the middle as a Democrat, but not the leftist progressive version. He’s more in the old-school liberal, pragmatic, pro-Israel tradition of Democrats.
If Raman makes the runoff and wins in November, we will have our own version of socialist New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. If the Republican Pratt makes the runoff, we can assume Bass will win.
Miller sees himself as the reasonable center, the Democrat with solutions everyone is looking for.
He’s a co-founder and longtime member of IKAR, a spiritual community with a history of advocating for social justice and building bridges across the cultural kaleidoscope of LA.
He’s also a proud supporter of Israel, and waxes nostalgic about the days when he lived there and immersed himself in Israeli life. He takes the rise in antisemitism as seriously as any of us, and we discussed the importance of “bubble zones” around synagogues and other measures to protect Jewish spaces.
Miller is earnest and practical, but he’s also visceral.
While so many Angelenos have lost trust in the political class, Miller is asking us not to lose faith. He sees competence as the road back. Mayors can have a major impact, he told me. The key is to take full advantage of the laws we currently have to recharge our city.
Adam Miller is not giving up on the city he loves, and he’s asking us to do the same.
And that includes not giving up on the starving dogs on Skid Row.
