Politics

What SoFi Stadium traffic is teaching LA politicians about the Olympics

Published

4 months ago

June 21, 2026

LOS ANGELES — Paul Krekorian, head of Los Angeles’ Office of Major Events, was driving to SoFi Stadium for the U.S. soccer team’s opening match against Paraguay when he found himself stuck in a traffic jam, trapped behind a mess of unmoving cars on a side street in Inglewood.

The problem: A self-driving Waymo vehicle was at the head of the line, attempting — without success — to make an unprotected left turn onto Manchester Boulevard, a busy thoroughfare.

“It couldn’t figure out that it was never, ever going to be able to make that left turn,” said Krekorian, a former LA City Council member appointed to the newly created major events role by Mayor Karen Bass.

He was annoyed. But what Krekorian actually saw was an opportunity — to correct a problem ahead of the 2028 Summer Olympics, which will use the $5 billion-plus stadium for swimming events and the opening ceremony. It is the way many local officials are watching the World Cup unfold here: monitoring everything from the performance of traffic signals to signs of political unrest as a stress test for the Olympics.

“Instead of just steaming about it, I was thinking: OK, how are we going to geofence Waymos?” Krekorian said. “How are we going to work with the transportation network companies to make sure that we have effective pick-up and drop-off locations? All of that stuff.”

The messy lead-up to the World Cup — marked by weak hotel bookings, high ticket prices and security concerns — left some in LA leadership circles worried about the fate of the tournament, and its implications for the Olympics here. The World Cup’s economic benefit to the region remains a big question mark, and its early run in LA has revealed pressure points. In interviews with Blue Light News, state and federal officials said they were concerned about reports of traffic jams in Inglewood. They also lamented the high cost of parking and tickets to the matches, the latter a longstanding complaint among soccer fans who’ve been priced out of attending the tournament, and a source of frustration among California elected officials who have demanded answers from FIFA.

“We saw three to five hours of congestion just for people to go to SoFi to pay $200 for parking,” said LA City Council member Bob Blumenfield. “Seeing some of those things, obviously, LA28 is a much larger footprint, so … we really are going to have to focus on the transit element of all this. And obviously, with the Olympics, we are thinking about that.”

Los Angeles will host its fourth match of the World Cup today, between Iran and Belgium, the most of any venue thus far. It has avoided the major disruptions some had feared. And after more than a week of competition — including two high-profile games at SoFi Stadium, one of them involving Iran’s team — Los Angeles politicians are more confident than ever that the city can pull off the upcoming global sports gathering that has been in the works for almost a decade.

“Much of what we’ve done in preparation for welcoming the world for the World Cup will be applicable to what we will do in ‘28 for the Olympic and Paralympic Games,” Krekorian said. “There’s a palpable excitement here to be hosting the World Cup, and this is only a fraction of what we’ll see when it comes time for ‘28.”

The stakes are unusually high in Los Angeles — perhaps more so than in any of the other 10 World Cup host cities in the U.S. — because a major misstep would inevitably raise questions about the region’s ability to put on the Olympics. The city has already been the target of criticism from conservative personalities and politicians who questioned Democratic leaders here after the January 2025 firestorms, including the late Charlie Kirk and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), both of whom suggested the Games should be moved elsewhere. If the World Cup is a success — eight games will be played here over several weeks — it would demonstrate that a liberal, blue-state city can still pull off a complex mega-event.

Reynold Hoover, CEO of LA28, the Games’ organizing committee, told Blue Light News he and his team are paying close attention to the soccer tournament — and that once it concludes, they will analyze data ranging from public transportation ridership and fan zone attendance to spectator flows in and around SoFi Stadium.

“This is an opportunity not just for LA, but for the country to show that we can actually do something really big together,” he said. “And when you look at the World Cup and what you’re seeing here in the United States, I think that’s a precursor, and I think both sides of the aisle see the value of having the Summer Olympics here in the United States for the first time since 1996.”

Concerns remain here, including about the cost of attendance. Blumenfield might benefit from attending a World Cup match at SoFi Stadium given that he is on the council’s ad hoc committee involved in preparations for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. But that’s not in the cards: “It’s too rich for my blood — I can’t afford a ticket,” he said.

Indeed, tickets to local World Cup matches have been climbing: the get-in price for Sunday’s Iran-Belgium contest is nearly $900 on one resale platform.

Transit remains a major issue, too — and one that several elected officials said they are monitoring closely.

Rep. Laura Friedman, who called the World Cup “a great dress rehearsal” for the 2028 Games, said it is paramount that Olympic organizers build on public transit gains from the soccer tournament. According to Los Angeles Metro data, ridership on Metro buses serving SoFi Stadium increased 41 percent from the first World Cup match at the venue to the second. While Friedman praised Metro for “performing very well,” she said that “for the Olympics we can try to increase” use of public transit.

“At SoFi Stadium, we have seen very expensive parking fees, we’ve seen a lot of congestion, long travel times,” said Friedman, a Burbank Democrat. “Especially for foreign visitors who may not be renting a car, they expect to be able to take public transportation — easily and safely.”

For all the comparisons of the two events, the Olympic Games are a vast enterprise many times larger than the World Cup — a fact not lost on local elected officials who caution against an apples-to-apples comparison. “The success of the World Cup at SoFi underscores our ability as a city to be able to manage these types of large-scale events,” said LA City Council member Monica Rodriguez, who also is on the ad hoc 2028 Games committee. “The difference with the Olympics is that we’re going to have multiple venues that are going to be hosting all at the same time. … So my primary concern is about the cost of security.”

On that front, LA has avoided major public security problems during the World Cup. The closest thing to a controversy at LA’s matches has been the uneven enforcement of FIFA’s ban on the display of Iran’s pre-revolution flag inside the stadium during the team’s draw with New Zealand on Monday.

LA City Council member Adrin Nazarian, a former state lawmaker who was born in Iran, attended that game and said “it felt very safe.” He also took public transportation to get there, and gave the trip high marks. “I wanted to experience that myself, just to kind of see how it is,” he said.

“What was happening in the Metro lines, for example, I was blown away,” he said. “Extremely helpful staff, ambassadors all over the place, high-visibility security. So, for folks coming in who may have had a negative impression about Los Angeles and the homelessness or safety concerns, you wouldn’t have experienced it.”

Public transportation helped Nazarian avoid Krekorian’s fate. As for the major events czar, did he ever get to make that left turn onto Manchester?

“I made a six-point turn … and I got out of there and took a different route,” Krekorian said with a laugh.

Politics

Haley Stevens is everywhere — except on the trail for El-Sayed

Published

8 hours ago

October 16, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Haley Stevens is highly visible in the wake of her Senate primary loss: Meeting with the Dalai Lama, crashing “TMZ Live” with her new fiancee, getting spoofed on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

One place she hasn’t been spotted: alongside her former rival Abdul El-Sayed.

Even though the representative quickly endorsed El-Sayed after their bruising Aug. 4 primary, she’s done little to help him since. That absence is becoming more conspicuous in the closing weeks of a crucial Senate contest, as some of her old supporters continue to vocally resist backing him.

In an interview, Stevens said El-Sayed is building a “new coalition” in the race against GOP former Rep. Mike Rogers — and suggested it’s not her place to push some of her more skeptical supporters into joining it.

When asked if she was encouraging her former donors to help El-Sayed, she said she believes her role this election is to “be part of the coordinated campaign, support where I can,” mentioning Michigan House races. When asked again if she would push donors to back him, she responded: “That’s Elissa’s thing,” referring to Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), who has been fundraising for El-Sayed. “I didn’t win a Senate primary,” she continued. “It’s not like a salty grapes deal or anything.”

Stevens said she’d checked in with El-Sayed’s team, but hadn’t met with the candidate himself recently because she’d been traveling.

“There’s changing dynamics, and there’s a new coalition that Abdul has built, and some people are a die-hard part of it, and some people are not. We’re seeing some constituent community pain coming out,” Stevens said, referencing resistance to El-Sayed among some Black and Jewish voters who backed her in the primary.

“Rogers is working the Black community harder and more successfully than we have ever seen a Republican do or at least that I can remember — ever,” Stevens said.

“But we’re also seeing Abdul go up to the UP [Upper Peninsula] and we’re seeing him fill venues in rural Michigan and it’s very real in terms of this coalition he’s built,” she added.

El-Sayed ran particularly strongly during the primary with young voters and in the state’s large Arab-American community, as well as in some rural, more populist parts of the state, and is working hard to expand that coalition in the general election.

Stevens’ remarks come as some of her former backers and financial boosters continue to publicly withhold support from El-Sayed and in some cases openly embrace his Republican rival. The ruptures are most visible among the Jewish and Black communities that largely broke for Stevens, and point to enduring friction within Michigan Democrats’ traditional coalition after a bitter primary that she could be in a unique position to mend.

Debbie Rosenman, the chair of Birmingham-Bloomfield Area Democratic Party Club in Stevens’ backyard and an El-Sayed supporter, said Stevens has been “absent” on the trail and said she was “very concerned” her coalition is not coalescing around El-Sayed.

“I feel that that could change with more of her public support,” Rosenman said.

El-Sayed’s campaign said the former rivals’ teams keep in close touch and noted several Stevens staffers joined the nominee’s team after the primary.

“The Abdul campaign is grateful for Congresswoman Stevens’ immediate and sustained support,” El-Sayed campaign spokesperson Roxie Richner said in a statement.

El-Sayed has worked to repair relationships with Black and Jewish leaders. He has endorsements from several of them and is campaigning with prominent Democrats from both communities, including former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Kamala Harris and Slotkin, who is Jewish. He has made more than two dozen visits to Black churches and participated in more than 100 events and meetings with Black leaders, according to his campaign. He has hired a liaison to the Jewish community, keeps in regular contact with Jewish leaders and has apologized for his controversial remark after a synagogue attack in West Bloomfield in the spring that “hurt people hurt people.”

“I take very seriously that I’m going to represent a large community of Jewish Michiganders, and I want them to know that I’m committed to their safety and their well being, even if there are points in foreign policy on which we might disagree,” El-Sayed said in an interview.

Not everyone has come around.

David Kramer, Stevens’ primary campaign chair and a vice chair of the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus who introduced Stevens to her fiance, is now working with Nonnegotiable Michigan, a group of Jewish leaders who have pledged to withhold their support from El-Sayed unless he adjusts his approach to Israel.

Kramer, a prominent Democratic fundraiser in the state who has also previously worked with Slotkin and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, told Blue Light News he’s not tapping his donor network for the general election and estimated he’s left upward of seven figures on the table that he could have raised to boost El-Sayed.

Brian Hermelin, a normally Democratic donor who backed Stevens in the primary and leads the Jewish Federation of Detroit, co-hosted a fundraiser for Republican nominee Mike Rogers shortly after the primary that raised roughly $200,000.

Rogers’ campaign has attempted to capitalize on those cracks by launching a “Democrats for Mike Rogers” group and making overtures to Jewish and Black voters. Bobby Schostak, a former Michigan GOP chair who is serving as Rogers’ finance chair, estimated the Republican’s campaign has brought in roughly $3 million to $4 million since the primary from “nontraditional Republican donors” across the country, including Democrats.

“The Democratic Party is still divided,” said Democrat Mary Waters, a Black Detroit city councilor who’s met with both El-Sayed and Rogers but remains undecided. “People are still so torn about what it is that they want to do.”

Joe Tate, a Black state representative from Detroit who supported Stevens, acknowledged there has been some lingering apprehension around El-Sayed. But he said Stevens’ endorsement of El-Sayed helped convince him to back the candidate and predicted Democratic voters would largely stand by their party, too.

El-Sayed’s donor network may look different from Stevens’, but he’s still posted big numbers. He raised nearly $33 million from July through September, which included some raised before the Aug. 4 primary, compared to Rogers’ nearly $10 million, and has been outspending Rogers on the airwaves.

Some of El-Sayed’s prominent surrogates have also taken steps to court apprehensive Democrats. Jewish leaders like former Rep. Andy Levin, a former synagogue president who Stevens defeated in a 2022 primary, are holding house parties with voters coordinated by the grassroots group Michigan Jews for Democracy. Slotkin has privately pressed senators and donors to boost El-Sayed’s bid.

That includes hosting a fundraiser for El-Sayed in Washington, D.C., in late September with donors who she described as initially “skeptical” of the nominee.

“I talked to them about why I thought it was important and how I don’t agree with Abdul on everything … but we agree on the really important things, and that’s putting a check and balance on this president,” Slotkin told Blue Light News in a brief hallway interview on Capitol Hill the next day. “And they donated.”

Politics

Senate Republicans are getting smoked in fundraising

Published

13 hours ago

October 16, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Republican Senate candidates are hurting for cash.

Nearly every Democratic candidate in battleground Senate races outraised their GOP opponent from July through September. And in some cases, the disparities were stark.

In Texas, Democrat James Talarico trounced Republican Ken Paxton $60.2 million to $10.2 million in their main campaign accounts.
In Georgia, Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff raised $33.1 million to Rep. Mike Collins’ nearly $2.8 million.
In North Carolina, Democrat Roy Cooper raised $12.2 million to Michael Whatley’s $2.1 million.
In Michigan, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed hauled in roughly $33 million to former Rep. Mike Rogers’ nearly $10 million.
In Maine, Democrat Troy Jackson raised $20.5 million to GOP Sen. Susan Collins’ $5.2 million.
In Ohio, Democratic former Sen. Sherrod Brown hauled in $23.1 million to GOP Sen. Jon Husted’s $4.8 million.
In Iowa, Josh Turek raised $13.9 million to Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson’s nearly $3.3 million.
In Alaska, Democratic former Rep. Mary Peltola raked in $17 million to GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan’s nearly $2.7 million.
In New Hampshire, Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas brought in $8.1 million to Republican former Sen. John E. Sununu’s $1.5 million.
And in Kansas, Democrat Adam Hamilton raised nearly $9.9 million to GOP Sen. Roger Marshall’s just $866,000.

Across those 10 Senate races, the Democratic campaigns raised more than five times as much as the Republican ones. Put another way: Talarico alone raised more than all those Republicans combined.

Marshall and Whatley each started October with less than $1 million left in the bank. Mike Collins wasn’t much better-positioned, entering the final weeks of the election with just over $1 million cash on hand.

These numbers do not include joint fundraising committees, which allow candidates to raise money and may have some more cash that has not yet been transferred to the campaigns.

Democrats have consistently outraised Republicans on the candidate level this cycle. But the yawning gaps heading into the midterm’s home stretch stand as the latest example of the deteriorating environment for the GOP.

And while GOP outside groups have significantly more money than Democrats, this candidate cash advantage matters because candidates get TV ads for much cheaper rates, letting their dollars stretch much farther.

To underscore how lopsided some of these figures are: At least half a dozen House Democratic challengers raised over $3 million in the third quarter — a sum higher than several GOP Senate incumbents.

There are some silver linings for the GOP.

In Minnesota, Republican Michele Tafoya raised $4.9 million to Democratic Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan’s $4.3 million. Tafoya started the month with $2.1 million to Flanagan’s $1.5 million.

Sullivan, Husted, Hinson, Rogers and Susan Collins all entered October with millions more in cash on hand than their Democratic opponents.

And Republicans are getting air cover from GOP super PACs bankrolled by billionaire Elon Musk and President Donald Trump’s MAGA Inc. that have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the midterms in recent weeks.

Musk was revealed on Thursday as the primary funder of Texas PAC, which has spent $131 million so far boosting Paxton and attacking Talarico. Musk gave $158 million to Senate Republicans’ super PAC arm last quarter, the filings showed, with the group in turn transferring the funds to the pro-Paxton PAC.

Republicans are also benefitting from a recent Supreme Court ruling that allows party committees to spend unlimited sums in coordination with candidates, allowing the National Republican Senatorial Committee to offset at least some of the differences.

Since the tranche of reports filed Thursday only cover until Sept. 30, the full scope of each candidates’ coffers is unknown.

But there are other signs that some are strapped for cash in the final sprint: Whatley has gone dark on television, a clear indication of him running low on funds even as his campaign insists it’s a temporary pause.