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California Today

California Today: Garcetti Is Not a Fan of the Jungle Primary

Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles, in April.Credit...Mark Ralston/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Good morning.

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They have not quite finished counting the votes in the primary that took place in California on June 5. But a verdict is in on the state’s unusual election system from one prominent voter: It doesn’t work. (If we used emojis at The Times, a big “thumb’s down” would be inserted here.)

That verdict comes from Mayor Eric M. Garcetti of Los Angeles, who assessed California’s jungle primary during a freewheeling conversation on national, state and city politics with New York Times reporters during a visit to the newspaper’s offices in Los Angeles last week.

“If the intention was to get more moderate candidates, it’s been an abject failure,” Mr. Garcetti said. “That was the sell job.”

“People didn’t campaign to the center,” he said.

Under the jungle primary, candidates appear on a nonpartisan ballot in June; the top two finishers, regardless of party, face each other in November. Democrats in particular were worried that they would get shut out of November ballots for Congress because they had so many candidates competing for a set number of voters in some districts.

It ended up not happening, after Democrats poured millions of dollars into a handful of races. Republicans weren’t so lucky: The November contest for U.S. Senate is between two Democrats.

“It didn’t screw things up,” Mr. Garcetti said. ”But it also didn’t accomplish what it said it would.”

And Mr. Garcetti argued that it did not make sense to have a nonpartisan election to choose candidates who would be serving in a highly polarized environment — like Washington. “The big choice in federal politics is between Democrats and Republicans,” he said. “That should be the choice for voters in the fall.”

Mr. Garcetti said the outcome meant the jungle primary would live another day. “It didn’t have those cases where two Republicans or two Democrats popped through in a seat held by the opposite party,” he said. “It would have needed that for people to say, ‘kill it today.’ But it runs the risk next time.”

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Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of homeland security, during a news briefing on Monday.Credit...Tom Brenner/The New York Times

(Please note: We regularly highlight articles on news sites that have limited access for nonsubscribers. Consider supporting one of these publications, or this one, by becoming a subscriber.)

• President Trump and two members of his cabinet aggressively defended his policy of separating children from their parents at the border in response to a growing outcry from members of both parties. [The New York Times]

• In renewing the sort of attacks on undocumented immigrants that worked well in his 2016 presidential campaign, Mr. Trump sent a clear signal that he intends to make divisive, racially charged issues like immigration central to the midterms. [The New York Times]

• Both Senator Kamala Harris and Representative Nancy Pelosi have called for Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of homeland security, to resign. [The San Francisco Chronicle]

• For years, Mr. Trump loved taking up temporary residence at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and details of his stays have been a closely held secret. Now lawyers want the hotel to share what it knows. [The Washington Post]

• On his first day as the owner of The Los Angeles Times, the billionaire biotech executive Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong named Norman Pearlstine as the newspaper’s top editor. [The New York Times & The Los Angeles Times]

• During the redistricting process, politicians with the power to draw the lines have long done it in a way to gain advantage. But a decade ago, California turned over the entire process to a handful of ordinary citizens. [The Washington Post]

• The Supreme Court has declined to address the central questions in two closely watched challenges to partisan gerrymandering in other states. [The New York Times]

• As California’s primary once again proved, being rich may get you in the game, but it is no guarantee that you’ll win. [The San Francisco Chronicle]

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The view from the Cityscape Lounge atop the Hilton San Francisco.Credit...Jim Wilson/The New York Times

• Our colleague Thomas Fuller was sitting in a 12th-floor office in San Francisco on a recent night, writing an article about high-rise buildings and earthquakes. Then the building jolted. [The New York Times]

• Faced with intense pressure to grow, the University of California, San Diego will begin building the largest complex in campus history — a $627 million neighborhood that includes student housing, academic towers and retail space. [The San Diego Union-Tribune]

• Lately, Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, has had to act a lot like the tech industry’s top diplomat. [The New York Times]

• At an IBM office in San Francisco, a college debate champion and a loquacious IBM computer program argued about government subsidies. Among the questions that emerged: Can a machine talk too much? [The New York Times]

• The growing risk of climate-related disasters is making it harder to buy home insurance in California. [KQED]

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Frances McDormand pushed for diversity during her acceptance speech at the Academy Awards.Credit...Lucas Jackson/Reuters

• The actress Frances McDormand made inclusion riders famous when she accepted her Oscar. What if they took the leap from Hollywood to Wall Street? [The New York Times]

• San Francisco is funding a $400,000 effort to train hundreds of workers on how to better communicate with aging L.G.B.T. adults. [The San Francisco Chronicle]

• In the summer of 2013, the ocher sea stars of the California coast fell victim to a deadly plague. Now researchers say they’ve detected genetic differences that might help explain why some survived. [The New York Times]

• If California splits into three states, the corners would converge at a clothing-optional hot springs resort, a tin-roofed fruit stand and an old roadhouse saloon — a place that already feels like three Californias in one. [The Mercury News]

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Danniel, a giant Holstein steer, at the Sequoia Park Zoo in Eureka, in 2016.Credit...Shaun Walker/The Times-Standard, via Associated Press

Danniel, a beloved giant steer that, at 6 feet 4 inches, vied for but never quite earned a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records, died over the weekend at age 8, The Eureka Times-Standard reported.

One of the bovine’s co-owners speculated that the cause may have been calcium deficiency.

“He was a good boy,” the other co-owner told The Times-Standard.

Danniel was known for his friendly nature, large appetite and love of bread, and was said to have many friends such as Bodacious the bull. (People close to Danniel, however, said the bull eventually had to move out of pen the pair shared because Bodacious got “a little too bullish.”)

Danniel’s owners told the newspaper that they planned to have a memorial service.

And then there is a final tricky matter to consider: how to properly bury a giant steer.

California Today goes live at 6 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes.com.

California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.

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