The LA Campaign Mail Academy Inductees, 2024 General Election Class

Please Mr. Postman, look and see / Is there a high-gloss 9x12 in your bag for me?

Election Day is tomorrow. That means that political mail, the industry that makes the US Postal Service financially possible, is going to go into hibernation for another nine months. It also means the submission window has closed for the Los Angeles Campaign Mail Academy (LACMA) annual induction ceremony, and the Academy has made its three selections for this year.

This year, as every year, these LACMA inductees represent the best in campaign direct mail. Not digital, video, or text messages. Only pieces of hard, shiny mail — the most expensive and least effective means of communicating with voters — are eligible for consideration.

You did not see any of these mail pieces. You threw them into the trash without even looking — even though someone worked really hard on them! — because you don’t understand or deserve art. But LACMA fishes them out, restores them, and treats them with the respect that all $75,000 PDFs deserve.

These are all mailers sent directly from candidate campaigns, not from outside PACs. All titles are the image filenames as submitted to the City Ethics Commission.

“ADRIN HOMELESS PRINT READY.pdf” and “SECOND HOMELESS PRINT READY.pdf” (Adrin Nazarian, Council District 2)

These mailers from two candidates with divergent views actually capture the overall LA homelessness debate pretty neatly. They both open with the same image — a couple of tents on the sidewalk — but what follows exposes a real ideological divide.

One candidate, Adrin Nazarian, responds to the tents with a spirit of empathy and collective consciousness — “It Could Happen to ANY ONE OF US” — and follows up with a hard-to-read brick of text that uses the words “compassion” and “police misconduct” beneath a picture of the candidate speaking to a group of young and multiracial students (you know they’re students because they’re carrying books and every single one has a backpack). “We Are Our Brother’s’ and Sisters’ Keepers.” That’s in quotes so apparently he’s saying it.

The other candidate, Adrin Nazarian, sees the same tent, screams “ENOUGH!” so loud his airbag deploys, and immediately issues a demand for police intervention beneath a picture of him dourly beatboxing in the street with his spouse and some middle-aged people who are 1000% white. “FOR SAFE AND SANITARY STREETS, WE NEED TO UPHOLD THE LAW.” That’s not only in quotes but attributed to him, so he’s really saying it!

But what if I told you that Adrin Nazarian and Adrin Nazarian are… the same person? And he sent out these mailers within six days of each other?

“Friends verion FINAL.pdf” (Kevin de Leon, Council District 14)

Kevin de Leon has put out a lot of contenders to choose from in this race.

A Comic Sans apology postcard (ultimately only apologizing for what other people said):

A picture of himself with Kamala Harris where she may not know he’s there, a picture of him with Karen Bass, and the label “a real democrat” despite not being endorsed by Harris or Bass and having lost the endorsement of the LA County Democratic Party to his opponent, Ysabel Jurado:

A classicly demented redbaiting mailer calling her Ysabel “Juardo” and deploying a full-on QR code just to link to this music video:

Another negative mailer where de Leon calls Jurado a corrupt liar and then details exactly where her daughter goes to school (not showing that one!).

But ultimately we have to go with this very sad one from the primary.

On one side: a bunch of pictures of de Leon hugging and smiling with his buddy Assemblymember Miguel Santiago under and next to the words “OLD FRIENDS.” It looks like a stock yearbook layout from 2002. Nice! “Even among old friends, values can be profoundly different.” Hmm! Then on the other side: remember that guy who was my friend? He protects child predators! Oh… what? “THAT’S RIGHT!”

It is true that de Leon and Santiago were friends for many years. Their friendship ended roughly around when Santiago said de Leon should resign after the leak of a recorded conversation where de Leon aggressively pushed to undermine Black political power via the redistricting process, and then when de Leon did not resign, Santiago ran against him.

Why their friendship history is documented in this mailer is less clear. “I, the person spending tens of thousands of dollars to send you this, have been friends for a long time with this other guy who protects child predators.” Okay, thanks! Or maybe it’s “This guy has been talking all kinds of crap about me but he used to like me! Don’t look up what he’s been crapping on me about! Also he protects child predators.”

De Leon managed to come three points ahead of Santiago to take second place and make it into the runoff against Jurado that will be decided tomorrow. Can’t argue with results!

“Nury Heather.pdf” (Grace Yoo, Council District 10)

Grace Yoo is a lawyer running against sort-of incumbent Heather Hutt. Hutt has not sent out that much mail this cycle, disappointingly. One piece has a nice picture of her and her three sons Hamilton, Harrison, and Hugh. Obviously if you named your sons like that you have to run on it.

Hutt’s biggest political vulnerability is also the reason she’s a sort-of incumbent: she was a hand-picked appointee to fill the seat of her predecessor, the disgraced Mark Ridley-Thomas, by a group of other Councilmembers who are now also disgraced, including disgraced former Council President Nury Martinez. It is a foregone conclusion that Grace Yoo will send out mail about this. All that remains to be seen is how she executes.

*crowd goes quiet*

*political consulting firm contracts a designer*

*designer boots up Adobe Illustrator*

Whoa! So this is very unpleasant to look at because of the picture and the number of M’s in “Mmmmm.” Is that what you were going for?

Why does the picture look like that? The actual picture, while also not great, is much higher quality. You appear to have used an enlarged thumbnail instead. Why are there so many M’s? The LA Times transcript of the tapes only uses three M’s. Five M’s is for when something is, like, yummy. Even then it’s not great. And combined with the picture… is there a different picture you could use? The first result on Google image for their names is this one:

That seems to get your point across more effectively? And it’s much higher quality. You can’t use that one? You already printed forty thousand of these with the other picture? Okay, that’s fine, I understand. Yes, I have your check.

Congrats to the inductees and may the best cardstock win tomorrow!