A tale of two cities

New York and Los Angeles have a lot in common. Each city suffers from income polarization, a shrinking middle class and a vast low-wage service sector. Each is heavily Democratic and is home to an effective labor-liberal political alliance. Each elected a progressive Democrat as its mayor.

So why are the agendas of the two cities' mayors shaping up so differently?

Part of the reason is the elections that brought them to power. The issues that loomed largest in the two cities' mayoral contests could scarcely have been more different. In New York, Bill de Blasio's emphasis on raising taxes on the rich to fund preschool, providing workers with paid sick days and ending racially discriminatory stop-and-frisk police practices dominated the civic discourse. In Los Angeles, the race between Democratic mayoral candidates Eric Garcetti and Wendy Greuel featured no such discussions -- or, consequently, electoral mandates.

De Blasio, of course, was positioning himself against an ascendant civic plutocracy personified by outgoing New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, while Garcetti and Greuel had few if any ideological differences separating them from outgoing Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa or, for that matter, each other. Once installed in office, both De Blasio and Garcetti have backed measures to help their cities' working poor -- De Blasio supporting an extension of the city's paid sick-day ordinance to more workers, Garcetti backing a proposal to...