Politics
Richard Alatorre, pioneering Eastside politician, dies at 81
It was a meeting of two of the most powerful men in Los Angeles — and there was no way Richard Alatorre would lose.
Police Chief Darryl Gates and his command staff had stopped by Alatorre’s office to introduce themselves. Alatorre, newly elected to the City Council, stayed seated, feet on his desk, a friend looking on. Gates offered some pleasantries before Alatorre cut him off — and down — with a question: “Where are the greasers?”
The police chief was flummoxed. Alatorre, already a political force in Eastside and California politics, asked the same question again, letting the last word — an antiquated slur against Mexican Americans — make the top brass squirm.
Gates finally said he didn’t understand the question. The council member replied that the Los Angeles Police Department had no Latinos in its upper ranks, and that Gates could return when he fixed that. Meeting over.
It was classic Alatorre: uncompromising, uncouth and unapologetic in the name of exerting his influence to better Latinos. And effective: Gates eventually conferred with him about how to diversify LAPD management.
“I’m not just one that opens his mouth and [mau-maus] about a given subject and then moves on to the next topic without ever getting your hands dirty and trying to get something done,” Alatorre told a UCLA historian in 1990, a few years after his encounter with Gates. “No, I try and see it to its end, backroom deals and everything.”
Alatorre died Tuesday morning at his home in Eagle Rock after a long battle with cancer, surrounded by friends, family and former staffers. He was 81.
Mayor Richard Riordan, left, jokes with City Councilmember Richard Alatorre during an event promoting shopping in downtown L.A. in 1997.
(Ken Lubas/Los Angeles Times )
The son of a Mexican American mother and Mexican immigrant father spent his 28-year political career practicing what he called “change from the inside”: climbing California’s political hierarchies and bringing other Latinos up with him.
In Sacramento as an Assembly member, the gravel-voiced Alatorre pushed through bills on prison reform, bilingual services and farmworker rights. He oversaw a landmark reapportionment in the 1980s that helped Latinos enter the state Legislature in numbers never before seen, doing the same for Los Angeles after joining the City Council.
“A lot of us considered Alatorre to be a vato who made good,” said Jaime Regalado, professor emeritus of political science at Cal State L.A. Alatorre frequently spoke at Regalado’s classes and was more than happy to take questions from students who thought he was a vendido — a sellout.
“But lo and behold, through his reputation in his years, he became the vato for a lot of people,” Regalado concluded.
As he won rights and access for Latinos statewide, Alatorre built an Eastside political machine that drew accolades and criticism. At the end of his career, scandal threatened his legacy as he fended off investigations into alleged corruption and cronyism. Ultimately, his stature remained undiminished among supporters and even some rivals.
Gloria Molina, a onetime acolyte who built a competing Eastside machine in the 1980s and ’90s and once described Alatorre as a “bully” to The Times, gifted Alatorre a commemorative scroll at an L.A. County Board of Supervisors meeting just before he left public office in 1999.
“I’m glad that the wheeling and dealing will be gone,” said the then-supervisor, who died last year. “But at the same time, there’s a lot of things I think we’re going to miss. Richard offered the Latino community political power that it never had.”
Born in 1943 in Boyle Heights and raised in East Los Angeles, Alatorre grew up in an era when Mexican Americans were joining the middle class but found themselves politically ignored. He remembered his father, Jose, a stove repairman who instilled in his son and daughter the importance of education, bemoaning the gerrymandering that kept Latinos from electing more of their own.
On a rainy night in 1960, the family’s outlook on politics changed.
The Alatorres joined 20,000 people at East Los Angeles College to hear John F. Kennedy speak, a week before election day. Richard wanted to leave because of the terrible weather, but his father insisted they stay and witness history.
Kennedy “seemed to be the first presidential candidate reaching into my community and asking for our help,” Alatorre told The Times in 1989. “That represented hope to me.”
He volunteered for the Kennedy campaign as well as that of Leopoldo Sanchez, who became the first Latino judge elected in California. Alatorre became senior class president at Garfield High, moonlighting as a bill collector for a jewelry store before enrolling at Cal State L.A. There, he found a political science class too hard and his classmates too smart, so he told his father he was going to drop out.
Jose said that would create a self-defeating pattern and urged him to reconsider.
Former Vice President Walter Mondale, center, with his wife Joan and California Assemblymember Richard Alatorre, are greeted by a well-wisher during at the state Democratic Party Convention in 1983.
(Walt Zeboski / Associated Press)
Alatorre graduated from Cal State L.A., earned a master’s degree from USC and became a staffer for Eastside Assemblymember Walter Karabian. He headed Latino voter outreach for Tom Bradley’s failed 1969 mayoral run, taught civics classes to inmates at Terminal Island and served as Western regional director for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. As his star rose in mainstream politics, Alatorre maintained his dedication to the Eastside grassroots.
When protesters were jailed and held on $100,000 bail during the 1968 Chicano Blowouts, Alatorre used his connections with the Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy presidential campaigns to raise $300,000. He convinced a judge to reduce the protesters’ bail to $15,000, then went to bail bondsmen he knew to cut a deal. He did the same during the 1970 Chicano Moratorium, which he left just before it turned into a deadly melee.
The following year, Alatorre ran for an Eastside Assembly seat in a special election and seemed headed for an easy victory. But in one of the biggest upsets in L.A. County history, Alatorre finished second to Republican Bill Brophy after a third-party candidate, Chicano activist and journalist Raul Ruiz, siphoned off votes.
Six months later, Alatorre ran again and won. He never lost a race again.
The rookie Assembly member initially found himself on the wrong side of Sacramento’s ruling class, clashing with state Senate leader David Roberti and Assembly Speaker Leo McCarthy, San Fernando Valley Assemblymember Howard Berman and Gov. Jerry Brown. Alatorre was nevertheless able to distinguish himself fast with his bare-knuckle style.
When the dean of UC Berkeley School of Law came before a subcommittee chaired by Alatorre to ask for more money, Alatorre told him the school needed to institute affirmative action first. When UC Irvine asked for money to build a medical center, Alatorre made his support contingent on opening health clinics in Santa Ana and setting aside 25% of its enrollment for Black and Latino students.
He was a co-founder of what today is known as the California Latino Legislative Caucus, originally numbering just five members. Alatorre also authored a pair of bills — one mandating bilingual services in communities that needed them, another allowing farmworkers to collectively bargain — that were the first of their kind in the nation. He rose in Sacramento with the support and advice of Willie Brown, a Black Assembly member from San Francisco who proved a kindred spirit.
“He loves clothes and I love clothes,” Alatorre said in his UCLA oral history. “He likes nice things, I like nice things. And we’re the two foulmouthed legislators.”
When Brown became Assembly speaker in 1981, he asked Alatorre to head the committee tasked to redraw the boundaries for state legislative districts.
Alatorre’s job was to ensure that Democrats kept their majority in Sacramento. But he also remembered his dad’s long-ago lament that Latinos didn’t have enough political representation. With the help of computer programs and the input of activists who testified at public hearings, he spread Latino voters over many districts instead of amassing them in a few, anticipating a future in which California’s Latino population would be dramatically bigger.
“It was a critical moment in Latino political history,” said Fernando Guerra, director for the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University. As a graduate student at the University of Michigan in the 1980s, he heard Alatorre speak. “Richard talked about how what he had accomplished in California was doable anywhere.”
Back in his Eastside base, Alatorre was creating a political machine with his friend Art Torres. Torres beat a longtime incumbent for a state Senate seat in 1982, the same year two allies won newly realigned congressional seats. But one governing board eluded Alatorre and Torres: the L.A. City Council, where a Latino hadn’t served since Edward Roybal left for Congress in 1963. Standing in their way was longtime Eastside incumbent Art Snyder, who had survived repeated recall attempts and insurgent candidates.
In 1985, Snyder announced he was resigning in the face of scandals. Alatorre easily won the special election to replace him. Hundreds of people, including Brown, then-Assemblymember Maxine Waters, Reps. Mervyn Dymally and Roybal, and Cesar Chavez, attended Alatorre’s swearing-in at City Hall, along with a serenading mariachi.
Alatorre was soon put in charge of redistricting council seats. His moves not only led to new boundaries that enabled Gloria Molina’s victory in 1987, but he also strengthened three districts held by Black council members since the 1960s so that they would remain Black-led for decades, a reality that remains true today.
“He felt every person in his district had dignity, every kid had a future, and everyone had hope,” said Hilary Norton, Alatorre’s former chief of staff, who remembered toy drives organized by Alatorre in his district. “He believed in God’s power to redeem everybody.”
Richard Alatorre at a press conference with Francis Banerjee, then-general manager of the city Department of Transportation, in 1998
(Ken Lubas/Los Angeles Times)
Alatorre’s power continued to grow. He became the inaugural chair of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board of directors and helped Richard Riordan become mayor in 1993. His former staffer Richard Polanco became the head of the Latino Legislative Caucus and continued his mentor’s goal of getting more Latinos in public office. Critics alleged that Alatorre seemed too eager to direct city contracts to supporters — and he made no apologies for that.
“I didn’t establish the rules of the game. I just learned them well and know how to apply them,” he told The Times in 1999 just before leaving office. “Yet they [the press] write about how sinister that is.”
By then, the controversies that always lapped at Alatorre had subsumed his career.
While he was an Assembly member, the California attorney general’s office investigated him and other Latino politicians for alleged ties to the Mexican Mafia, which proved unfounded. Months after his historic City Council win, Alatorrre paid a then-record penalty for illegally financing the race with funds from his Assembly campaign. He was fined again in 1988 for trying to steer a city contract to the East Los Angeles Community Union, better known as TELACU, which had paid him a $1,000 speaking fee.
None of this tarnished his image among supporters or diluted his influence. But a 1996 lawsuit, filed by a former MTA employee alleging he was fired for opposing a $65-million Eastside subway contract that would partially benefit Alatorre associates, proved more corrosive.
Local and federal investigators began to look at everything from Alatorre’s votes as MTA board chair to charities he promoted to his purchase of a home in Eagle Rock and even who financed the retiling of that house’s roof.
Those investigations resulted in no charges. But the most damaging blow to Alatorre’s reputation happened in 1998, in the midst of a custody battle. The dying sister of Alatorre’s wife had signed over guardianship of her daughter to the Alatorres instead of the girl’s biological father, Henry Lozano, an Eastside political veteran who had helped on Alatorre’s first campaign.
In sworn testimony, Alatorre said he hadn’t used cocaine in years. But a month later, the presiding judge in the case ordered a surprise drug test. It came back positive.
A few months later, Alatorre announced he wouldn’t seek a fourth council term.
“I guess one of my shortcomings was not being able to help people define Richard Alatorre,” he complained to The Times in 1999 on his way out. “Everyone got caught up in my style, in the way I dress, the way I talk, not what I believe in … my enjoyment in helping others.”
Two years later, he pleaded guilty to tax evasion after failing to report nearly $42,000 in alleged bribes. He was sentenced to eight months of house arrest, allowed to leave only for grocery shopping or work.
“For five years, I had to wake up wondering what the next story was coming up,” Alatorre told L.A. CityBeat in 2005. “Because of what happened, I’m the sum of the end of my career, when things were bad. I’ve got that asterisk on my resume that overshadowed 28 years of work.”
By then, however, Alatorre was in the midst of a personal, professional and political comeback that continued for the rest of his life.
L.A. Councilman Richard Alatorre congratulates Bernard C. Parks after Parks was named to be the new chief of the LAPD in 1997
(Gary Friedman/Los Angeles Times)
He found quick work as a consultant and lobbyist, sparking a 2010 investigation by the L.A. County district attorney’s office that concluded he did lobbying work without registering with City Hall but did not result in any charges. A new generation of Latino political hopefuls sought his advice, none more than Antonio Villaraigosa. The two had frequently clashed on the MTA board during the 1990s, when Alatorre was chair and Villaraigosa was Molina’s representative. By the time of Villaraigosa’s successful 2005 mayoral run, Alatorre was a key advisor and remained one until the end.
“He forgot more than I ever knew,” said Villaraigosa, who spoke this year along with Mayor Karen Bass at a banquet at the Bonaventure Hotel in honor of Alatorre, who was too ill to attend. “Richard knew what needed to be done, and how to do it. He was never afraid to kick the door open when it needed to be.”
And while Alatorre’s failed cocaine test in 1998 sparked embarrassing headlines, he also credited the humiliation with “saving” him in his 2016 autobiography, “Change From the Inside.”
“With help from those I love the most,” he concluded in the 429-page book, with a photo of him surrounded by his beaming family on the opposite page, “I discover[ed] the power within me to find redemption and in the process for the first time in my life, I also [found] peace and grace.”
Alatorre is survived by his wife, Angie; their daughter, Melinda; two sons from a previous marriage, Derrick and Darrell; and granddaughters Gabriela, Mariela, Daniela and Kaycee.
Politics
Marjorie Taylor Greene criticizes Trump’s meetings with Zelenskyy, Netanyahu: ‘Can we just do America?’
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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., on Sunday called for President Trump to only focus on America’s needs as the president meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The president has been heavily involved in the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas conflicts since returning to the White House.
Trump met with Zelenskyy on Sunday at Mar-a-Lago to discuss a peace plan aimed at ending the Russia-Ukraine war that began with an invasion by Moscow in February 2022.
Netanyahu arrived in Florida on Sunday ahead of their scheduled meeting on Monday at Trump’s estate to address Israel’s conflicts in the Middle East. It will be the sixth meeting of the year between the two leaders.
TRUMP ZELENSKYY SAY UKRAINE PEACE DEAL CLOSE BUT ‘THORNY ISSUES’ REMAIN AFTER FLORIDA TALKS
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene criticized President Donald Trump’s meetings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Greene, responding to Trump’s meeting with Zelenskyy and Netanyahu, said that the Trump administration should address the needs of Americans rather than becoming further involved in global conflicts.
“Zelensky today. Netanyahu tomorrow,” she wrote on X.
President Donald Trump welcomes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida. (Jim WATSON / AFP via Getty Images)
“Can we just do America?” the congresswoman continued.
The congresswoman has been a vocal critic of supplying U.S. military aid to foreign countries amid the conflicts in Europe and the Middle East.
She has also referred to Zelenskyy as “a dictator who canceled elections” and labeled Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as a genocide and humanitarian crisis.
ZELENSKYY READY TO PRESENT NEW PEACE PROPOSALS TO US AND RUSSIA AFTER WORKING WITH EUROPEAN TALKS
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and President Donald Trump had a public feud in recent months. (Getty Images)
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This comes after Taylor Greene, who is set to resign from the House in January, had a public spat with Trump over the past few months as Trump took issue with the Georgia Republican’s push to release documents related to the investigations into deceased sex predator Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump had withdrawn his endorsement of Greene and called her a “traitor” over the public feud.
Is there a dumpster somewhere to torch and bury this year of bedlam, 2025?
We near its end with equal amounts relief and trepidation. Surely we can’t be expected to endure another such tumultuous turn around the sun?
It was only January that Donald Trump moved back into the White House, apparently toting trunkloads of gilt for the walls. Within weeks, he’d declared an emergency at the border; set in motion plans to dismantle government agencies; fired masses of federal workers; and tariffs, tariffs, tariffs.
Demonstrators at a No Kings rally in Washington, protesting actions by President Trump and Elon Musk.
(Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press)
By spring, the administration was attacking Harvard as a test case for strong-arming higher education. By June, Trump’s grotesquely misnamed Big Beautiful Bill had become law, giving $1 trillion in tax cuts to billionaires and funding a deportation effort (and armed force) that has fundamentally reshaped American immigration law and ended any pretense about targeting “the worst of the worst.”
Fall and winter have brought questionable bombings of boats in the Caribbean, a further backing away from Ukraine, a crackdown on opposition to Trump by classifying it as leftist terrorism and congressional inaction on healthcare that will leave many struggling to stay insured.
That’s the short list.
It was a year when America tried something new, and while adherents of the MAGA movement may celebrate much of it, our columnists Anita Chabria and Mark Z. Barabak have a different perspective.
Here, they renew their annual tradition of looking at the year past and offering some thoughts on what the new year may bring.
Chabria: Welp, that was something. I can’t say 2025 was a stellar year for the American experiment, but it certainly will make the history books.
Before we dive into pure politics, I’ll start with something positive. I met a married couple at a No Kings rally in Sacramento who were dressed up as dinosaurs, inspired by the Portland Frog, an activist who wears an inflatable amphibian suit.
When I asked why, the husband told me, “If you don’t do something soon, you will have democracy be extinct.”
Crowds participate in No Kings Day in downtown Los Angeles in October.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
I loved that so many Americans were doing something by turning out to not just protest policies that hit personally, but to rally in support of democracy writ large. For many, it was their first time taking this kind of action, and they were doing it in a way that expressed optimism and possibility rather than giving in to anger or despair. Where there is humor, there is hope.
Barabak: As in, it only hurts when I laugh?
In 2024, a plurality of Americans voted to reinstall Trump in the White House — warts, felony conviction and all — mainly in the hope he would bring down the cost of living and make eggs and gasoline affordable again.
While eggs and gas are no longer exorbitant, the cost of just about everything else continues to climb. Or, in the case of beef, utility bills and insurance, skyrocket.
The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts is another of the long-standing institutions Trump has smeared his name across.
(Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press)
Meantime, the president seems less concerned with improving voters’ lives than smearing his name on every object he lays his eyes on, one of the latest examples being the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
(The only place Trump doesn’t want to see his name is in those voluminous Epstein files.)
I wonder: Why stop there? Why not brand these the United States of Trump-erica, then boast we live in the “hottest” country on Planet Trump?
Chabria: Stop giving him ideas!
You and I agree that it’s been a difficult year full of absurdity, but we’ve disagreed on how seriously to take Trump as a threat to democracy. As the year closes, I am more concerned than ever.
It’s not the ugly antics of ego that alarm me, but the devastating policies that will be hard to undo — if we get the chance to undo them.
The race-based witch hunt of deportations is obviously at the top of that list, but the demolition of both K-12 and higher education; the dismantling of federal agencies, thereby cutting our scientific power as a nation; the increasing oligarchy of tech industrialists; the quiet placement of election deniers in key election posts — these are all hammers bashing away at our democracy.
Now, we are seeing overt antisemitism and racism on the MAGA right, with alarming acceptance from many. The far right has championed a debate as dumb as it is frightening, about “heritage” Americans being somehow a higher class of citizens than nonwhites.
Vice President JD Vance speaks at the University of Mississippi in Oxford.
(Gerald Herbert / Associated Press)
Recently, Vice President JD Vance gave a speech in which he announced, “In the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore,” and Trump has said he wants to start taking away citizenship from legal immigrants. Both men claim America is a Christian nation, and eschew diversity as a value.
Do you still think American democracy is secure, and this political moment will pass without lasting damage to our democratic norms?
Barabak: I’ll start with some differentiation.
I agree that Trump is sowing seeds or, more specifically, enacting policies and programs, that will germinate and do damage for many years to come.
Alienating our allies, terrorizing communities with his prejudicial anti-immigrant policies — which go far beyond a reasonable tightening of border security — starving science and other research programs. The list is a long and depressing one, as you suggest.
But I do believe — cue the trumpets and cherubs — there is nothing beyond the power of voters to fix.
To quote, well, me, there is no organism on the planet more sensitive to heat and light than a politician. We’ve already seen an anti-Trump backlash in a series of elections held this year, in red and blue state alike. A strong repudiation in the 2026 midterm election will do more than all the editorial tut-tutting and protest marches combined. (Not that either are bad things.)
A stressed-out seeming poll worker in a polling station at Los Angeles’ Union Station.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
The best way to preserve our democracy and uphold America’s values is for unhappy citizens to register their dissent via the ballot box. And to address at least one of your concerns, I’m not too worried about Trump somehow nullifying the results, given legal checks and the decentralization of our election system.
Installing lawmakers in Congress with a mandate to hold Trump to account would be a good start toward repairing at least some of the damage he’s wrought. And if it turns into a Republican rout, it’ll be quite something to watch the president’s onetime allies run for the hills as fast as their weak knees allow.
Chabria: OMG! It’s a holiday miracle. We agree!
I think the midterms will be messy, but I don’t think this will be an election where Trump, or anyone, outright tries to undo overall results.
Although I do think the groundwork will be laid to sow further doubt in our election integrity ahead of 2028, and we will see bogus claims of fraud and lawsuits.
So the midterms very well could be a reset if Democrats take control of something, anything. We would likely not see past damage repaired, but may see enough opposition to slow the pace of whatever is happening now, and offer transparency and oversight.
But the 2026 election only matters if people vote, which historically is not something a great number of people do in midterms. At this point, there are few people out there who haven’t heard about the stakes in November, but that still doesn’t translate to folks — lazy, busy, distracted — weighing in.
If proposed restrictions on mail-in ballots or voter identification take effect, even just in some states, that will also change the outcomes.
But there is hope, always hope.
Barabak: On that note, let’s recognize a few of the many good things that happened in 2025.
MacKenzie Scott donated $700 million to more than a dozen historically Black colleges and universities, showing that not all tech billionaires are selfish and venal.
The Dodgers won their second championship and, while this San Francisco Giants fan was not pleased, their seven-game thriller against the Toronto Blue Jays was a World Series for the ages.
And the strength and resilience shown by survivors of January’s SoCal firestorm has been something to behold.
Any others, beside your demonstrating dinos, who deserve commendation?
Pope Leo XIV waves after delivering the Christmas Day blessing from the main balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican.
(Gregorio Borgia / Associated Press)
Chabria: Though I’m not Catholic, I have been surprisingly inspired by Pope Leo XIV.
So I’ll leave us with a bit of his advice for the future: “Be agents of communion, capable of breaking down the logic of division and polarization, of individualism and egocentrism.”
Many of us are tired, and suffering from Trump fatigue. Regardless, to put it in nonpapal terms, it may be a dumpster — but we’re all in it together.
Barabak: I’d like to end, as we do each year, with a thank you to our readers.
Anita and I wouldn’t be here — which would greatly please some folks — but for you. (And a special nod to the paid subscribers out there. You help keep the lights on.)
Here’s wishing each and all a happy, healthy and prosperous new year.
We’ll see you again in 2026.
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2025 didn’t just expose Democratic divisions — it created a short list of political losers whose missteps are already shaping the battlefield for 2026. From establishment leaders squeezed by a restless progressive base to national figures who burned precious time, this past year has left behind a series of cautionary tales for a party out of power.
MODERATE DEMOCRATS PUSH BACK AS PROGRESSIVES MOVE TO OUST JEFFRIES, CLARK OVER TRUMP STRATEGY
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., right, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., walk speak to members of the media outside the West Wing at the White House in Washington, Monday, Sept. 29, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Establishment and old-school Democrats
The loudest, most visible Democratic figures haven’t just voiced opposition to the Trump administration — they’ve also made it clear they expect a new version of the party to emerge going forward. From Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani in New York City promising expansive government program increases to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s hint that she could beat Vice President J.D. Vance in a bid for the presidency, progressives can easily say they had some of the most visible momentum in 2025.
And that’s bad news for old-school Democrats.
As recently as last month, both House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and House Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass., faced primary challenges from their progressive base. These challengers cited dissatisfaction with their resistance against the administration. It’s unclear if those calls are disproportionately loud in a moment where Democrats find themselves out of power. But many moderate Democrats told Fox News Digital they don’t think it’s helping win over the electorate’s political middle.
Should progressives continue to crowd out the picture in 2026, more establishment Democrats may find it increasingly difficult to ignore pressure from their far-left flank as the nation heads into the midterms.
GOP SEIZES ON DEM CIVIL WAR AS PROGRESSIVES JUMP INTO KEY 2026 SENATE RACES: ‘THEY’RE IN SHAMBLES’
California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a campaign event in support of Proposition 50 in San Francisco, Monday, Nov. 3, 2025. (Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
Gavin Newsom
California Gov. Gavin Newsom is running out of time to prove why he could be something more than a party messaging figure. In the past year, he’s pigeonholed himself into exactly that role.
In 2025, Newsom cemented himself as one of the key Democratic foils to Trump’s agenda. And on that front, there’s little question he capitalized on the attention.
Most notably, Newsom pushed through a redistricting effort meant to squeeze five Republicans out of office after Texas advanced a similar plan earlier this year. While the plan received mixed reviews — even from Democrats in the state who were wary of fighting fire with fire — it has certainly advanced Newsom’s national status.
But like every would-be Trump foil, Newsom finds himself somewhat reliant on Trump for his next move. Should Newsom begin to position himself for a 2028 bid for the White House, he won’t have that luxury around forever, and he only has one more year as California’s governor.
Newsom burned precious time in 2025 to show voters in California and across the country what kind of executive he could be.
DEMOCRATIC HEAVYWEIGHTS HARRIS, NEWSOM TURN HEADS, FUEL 2028 SPECULATION
Former President Joe Biden talks to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House, Monday, Sept. 2, 2024, in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Joe Biden
On several key issues, former President Joe Biden’s legacy has already grown old in 2025.
It took just weeks for the Trump administration to dismantle the claim that Biden was doing everything he could to stop illegal border crossings from pouring into the United States. With a few key executive orders, Trump brought the country to one of its lowest levels of border encounters ever.
And while that’s the most notable entry, the list of double-takes doesn’t end there.
An autopen investigation in the House of Representatives revealed Biden had delegated an unprecedented amount of authority to his aides. Moreover, a book put out by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson took a deep look at just how hard his inner circle had worked to maintain the president’s image amid concerns about his age and cognitive ability.
Taken together, Biden’s administration just one year removed has plunged Democrats into questions of where to go next and provided Republicans with a wealth of evidence to make the case Democrats weren’t as transparent about the country’s problems as they could have been.
‘ROCK STAR’ NEWSOM STEALS THE SHOW AT DNC SUMMIT AS DEMOCRATS HUNT FOR 2028 CONTENDER TO TAKE ON TRUMP
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer gives a thumbs up as he walks out of the Senate Chamber after speaking on the floor of the Senate on Dec. 20, 2024. (Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)
Chuck Schumer
Few political figures have had as politically damaging a year in 2025 as the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
He received most of the blame for a disastrous 43-day government shutdown that largely left Democrats empty-handed. While Schumer himself didn’t vote with the eight Democrats who eventually supported a Republican plan to end the shutdown, he received calls to step aside in the aftermath for failing to keep Senate Democrats on the same page.
According to many Republicans, the political calculus for Schumer during the shutdown was more about putting up a good enough fight to appease the progressive side of the Democratic base.
But Schumer also failed to do that too.
During the shutdown, the New York City mayoral race had come to its final stretch with little word from the Senate Minority Leader. When it became clear the self-proclaimed socialist Zohran Mamdani would capture the party’s nomination, Schumer tried to dodge questions about whether he would support his bid. That reluctance never went away and questions about the relationship between the two Democrats only intensified.
Just days removed from the election, Schumer continued to give non-answers about Mamdani.
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Now at the close of 2025, Schumer has left questions unanswered about whether he can still effectively lead the party and whether he represents the party’s future.
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