Scratch the surface of the political posturing and, yeah, LA is a very conservative town politically... at least that, at the end of the day, it's a big business industry town and whatever the tourism and entertainment industries think will benefit them basically happens.
Not to mention that the political discourse is fuck*ng dominated by KFI jackoffs and an LA Times that was consistently much farther to the right than they ever want to admit.
Maybe not in terms of social politics but in terms of economic politics, LA is about as rockhard conservative a town as you can possibly get. Its a town full of lottery ticket nouveau riche entertainment types desperately trying to impress the old money in a business environment that tears through underlings who work for nothing because they wanna live the dream of being in the entertainment business and a commercial environment that thrives on the backs of illegals who work for nothing because they wanna live the dream of not dying in the crossfire of the drugwar in Tiajuana. The gap between the haves and the have-nots is not only a bleeding gash there but the gap is openly flaunted as your personal karmic failure if you don't overcome it. The idea that if you're not rich, you just didn't cheat well enough or get lucky enough was the whole mind-fuck behind the real estate bubble.
My boots aren't on the ground there but I could totally see Tony Villar being told by entertainment CEOs or whatnot that Occupy LA is making The Magic Store (TM) look bad and to sweep out that shit, "forget about it, Jake, it's Tinseltown" style.
Oakland I can't speak for, never been there. From my friends in the Bay Area, though, I've gotten a little bit of a sense of it being like Oakland is sick of looking like a town of dangerous angry rioting radicals looking for any reason to go, between the legacies of radical African-American movements there and local college muckrackers still flitting through trying to strike sparks of the Sixties again. I could see that totally being a Chamber of Commerce Image Improvement business pressure thing that's more about economic forces than social political leanings.