Spaces in Meta Values of Dropdown

I’m using custom queries and meta values to pull in different users based on various values in their profiles but running into an issue with Dropdown fields. (possibly others too).

As far as I can tell there’s no option to define a value that’s different from the displayed text and meta values shouldn’t have spaces. For instance… if I have a dropdown option of Los Angeles it prints out like this: <option value=”Los Angeles”>Los Angeles</option> and using “Los Angeles” in a meta query won’t work since it has a space. Perhaps there’s a workaround?

Thoughts???