calling upon gangs<\/a> to \u201ctake back\u201d the city from ICE; and childcare specialist Terri Rivers.<\/p>\nNone has held elected office in Long Beach before. The city has not voted in a mayor who hasn\u2019t first sat on the City Council since Beverly O\u2019Neill\u2019s inaugural victory in 1994.<\/p>\n
Outside of Richardson, only Rivers has filed to form a campaign fundraising committee, which is required if they plan to receive over $2,000 in contributions. None of the challengers has reported making any expenditures. Richardson has so far spent $138,000, mostly on campaign consultants.<\/p>\n
Any candidate that earns more than 50% of the vote in the June 2 primary election will win outright; if no candidate gets a majority vote, the top two vote-getters will advance to the general election on Nov. 3.<\/p>\n
Experts say such a large gap in fundraising is a strong indication of how the election will likely turn out.<\/p>\n
Winning against a local incumbent like Richardson is \u201cextremely difficult,\u201d barring a major scandal or instance of corruption, said Matt Lesenyie, a political science professor at Cal State Long Beach.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe strength of the incumbent can scare off quality candidates,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd then, should somebody take them on, they\u2019ve got this machine with inertia that is going to push back against them mightily.\u201d<\/p>\n
Behind Richardson is a donor coalition of labor and business groups, politicians like Assemblyman Josh Lowenthal and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, two sitting Long Beach council members in their own re-election races and L.A. County Sheriff Robert Luna, formerly Long Beach\u2019s police chief.<\/p>\n
Beyond that, analysts who spoke with the Long Beach Post say Richardson holds the advantage in experience, name recognition and backings than his less well-heeled competitors.<\/p>\n
The power of the mayor includes running council meetings, advocating on a regional, state and federal level, providing budget recommendations, among other duties. The measure of a good candidate, in many ways, is their ability to drive momentum around a plan.<\/p>\n
Winning the seat, Lesenyie said, requires strong name recognition, a sizable war chest, and tight-knit backing from business associations, unions and other civic leaders. Winning candidates also need a track record that shows wherever they previously served, success was left in their wake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Incumbent Mayor Rex Richardson has raised more than $336,000 in contributions for his reelection bid, while his four…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-205659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}