I haven't lived in LA county for just over twenty years, but from my perch just across the Orange Curtain I still follow events there**. So I fall under the "interested parties". Mostly I want to thank you for this as a piece of analysis.
I'm pleased to know that you have so many readers in LA County that they might be able to influence the primary, which I agree is likely to be relatively low turnout, although the 2012 DA primary had just over 800k votes cast.
Given that LA DA is a California Rules Top Two* (should be called Washington Rules - they had the system before we did) with Gascon next to guaranteed one of the slots, *if I* were voting in that race I would be seriously struggling with the need to vote strategically - strongest candidate not named Gascon, which would probably be Siddall from what I know now. But these things are extremely unstable.
* My kingdom for a Condorcet voting system, or at least RCV-IRV, which while flawed beats what we have now.
** my daughter had made the first two cuts of interviews to be hired into the LA DA's office in the dreadful summer of 2020; never got to the third round since Lacey was basically stalling new hires starting about August, probably correctly in view of her disappointing but unsurprising loss to the execrable Gascon.
Hmm, I guess that depends on how you view the DA's job. I'm an engineer and my observation is that engineers generally speaking make lousy politicians. The LA DA's office has per their website about 1100 total employees, which makes the DA job much more of an intensely political CEO (in this case, one that runs for reelection every four years) than any sort of attorney.
I think it's a category error to view the DA as anything other than a politician whose job it is to manage a bunch of investigators and prosecutors, which job requires some fairly deep understanding of the ecosystem in which the DAs office operates, for which prosecutor experience is a big plus but neither strictly necessary nor at all sufficient.
Jay's description of John McKinney's speech at the victim vigil is in it's way a better endorsement than the vote of the deputy DAs.
I don't think I was saying that engineers make good politicians. They often are pretty poor with people, but not all are. You haven't seen dysfunction until you see a non-technical lawyer trying to be CEO of an R&D engineering start-up.
I did not think you were saying that. I was commenting on your statement that "Engineers want to work for engineers", with your extending it by hypothesis to "barristers want to work for barristers", or by extension to Our Host's post, "prosecutors want to work for prosecutors".
I over-interpreted your statement to mean that you believe that engineers (who do, in my experience, want to work for engineers) thought that the personality traits and skill set that make for a good engineer/first line engineering manager also make for a good CEO (or a good VP engineering in a large corporation); in my experience my engineering peers know better than that.
I have not experienced the specific form of dysfunction you describe, but I can well imagine it :).
Hi Patrick -
I haven't lived in LA county for just over twenty years, but from my perch just across the Orange Curtain I still follow events there**. So I fall under the "interested parties". Mostly I want to thank you for this as a piece of analysis.
I'm pleased to know that you have so many readers in LA County that they might be able to influence the primary, which I agree is likely to be relatively low turnout, although the 2012 DA primary had just over 800k votes cast.
Given that LA DA is a California Rules Top Two* (should be called Washington Rules - they had the system before we did) with Gascon next to guaranteed one of the slots, *if I* were voting in that race I would be seriously struggling with the need to vote strategically - strongest candidate not named Gascon, which would probably be Siddall from what I know now. But these things are extremely unstable.
* My kingdom for a Condorcet voting system, or at least RCV-IRV, which while flawed beats what we have now.
** my daughter had made the first two cuts of interviews to be hired into the LA DA's office in the dreadful summer of 2020; never got to the third round since Lacey was basically stalling new hires starting about August, probably correctly in view of her disappointing but unsurprising loss to the execrable Gascon.
Engineers want to work for engineers. I guess it's not remarkable that barristers want to work for barristers.
Hmm, I guess that depends on how you view the DA's job. I'm an engineer and my observation is that engineers generally speaking make lousy politicians. The LA DA's office has per their website about 1100 total employees, which makes the DA job much more of an intensely political CEO (in this case, one that runs for reelection every four years) than any sort of attorney.
I think it's a category error to view the DA as anything other than a politician whose job it is to manage a bunch of investigators and prosecutors, which job requires some fairly deep understanding of the ecosystem in which the DAs office operates, for which prosecutor experience is a big plus but neither strictly necessary nor at all sufficient.
Jay's description of John McKinney's speech at the victim vigil is in it's way a better endorsement than the vote of the deputy DAs.
I don't think I was saying that engineers make good politicians. They often are pretty poor with people, but not all are. You haven't seen dysfunction until you see a non-technical lawyer trying to be CEO of an R&D engineering start-up.
I did not think you were saying that. I was commenting on your statement that "Engineers want to work for engineers", with your extending it by hypothesis to "barristers want to work for barristers", or by extension to Our Host's post, "prosecutors want to work for prosecutors".
I over-interpreted your statement to mean that you believe that engineers (who do, in my experience, want to work for engineers) thought that the personality traits and skill set that make for a good engineer/first line engineering manager also make for a good CEO (or a good VP engineering in a large corporation); in my experience my engineering peers know better than that.
I have not experienced the specific form of dysfunction you describe, but I can well imagine it :).