There are a bunch of municipal utilities and co-ops in California. Most are quite small, though LADWP and SMUD are fairly good-sized. The history of LADWP would be interesting to read if anybody neutral has ever written it up.

SMUD basically bought out PG&E's system in Sacramento County (essentially through eminent domain, which was a lot more difficult, took a lot longer, and was a lot more expensive than you might think). It took several decades to fix up the messes that PG&E left, as well as to figure out how to run the business themselves. They made many mistakes, including buying their own nuclear power plant (which the ratepayers are still paying off almost 30 years after the shutdown; decommissioning ain't cheap and takes a long time). But on the whole the municipal systems work. SMUD has some of the lowest rates in the state, even after raising them and instituting mandatory Time of Use rates a couple of years ago (fixed rate is still available, with significant limitations).

Oh, and PG&E used to run Sacramento's streetcars. That didn't survive WW2 by long.-

As a municipal utility, SMUD operates its own grid; it's not subject to the ISO. They're not very transparent about how they do that. But the results are clear: while PG&E and SCE and SDG&E have rolling blackouts (thanks to ISO orders) and public safety power shutoffs (PG&E still blacks out far more areas for far longer than the other 2 big private utilities), SMUD made it through both hot spells this summer with few outages (mostly equipment-caused). So: elected "communists" got no shortages.

Does LADWP operate it's own grid, outside of the ISO, too?