It’s a Mad, Mad World

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The world has turned on its head. The evidence?

Florida is the new California: natural disasters, Zika virus, a guy killed when his bike hit a turtle, and all sorts of assorted nuttiness. And Los Angeles is a meaningful base of support for a Republican president.

Sure, Nixon and Reagan had their constituents here, but they were local – and in many ways more moderate than the Republicans in Washington these days. No, this is different.

Deep blue Los Angeles boasts the biggest individual donor to the Donald Trump campaign, his Treasury secretary-designate has run a local bank and bankrolled hit movies, and his chief policy adviser comes from Breitbart News, the West L.A. source for all things hard right.

One might argue that it’s all about the money – as we show on Page 8, the leading local backers of the Trump campaign are phenomenally wealthy – but that’s not it, not solely, anyway. We’ve found in research for our annual Wealthiest Angelenos issue that among the super-rich here voter registration breaks down pretty evenly among Republicans, Democrats, and the “decline to disclose” party.

For all the Obamajams and Hillary Clinton fundraisers Angelenos have had to endure over the course of the last year, it’s hard to argue that ideas weren’t at the core of the election. Most Angelenos may not like the ideas that prevailed, but it’s clear they transcended economic status.

A Politico profile in September of a passel of female Trump supporters from Bel Air made clear (through a thin veneer of snark) that there was more to their support of the New York branding genius than money. There was, among other things, an abiding distrust of President Obama and his former secretary of state – in her case exacerbated because she was, well, a woman.

So while Los Angeles was busy voting to legalize pot, a small but powerful group of local elites tapped into the flyover zeitgeist. And Los Angeles, which has long lamented its underrepresentation in Washington, now has a seat at the table.

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