L.A. Mayor Karen Bass was having a really bad week.
But then it turned into a pretty good week, and she must have breathed a sigh of relief.
Until the Saturday morning surprise.
I had to set fire to my scorecard, and to the column I had just drafted, which touched on all the expected big-name challengers who had bowed out of the mayoral race in the past several days: L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, billionaire businessman Rick Caruso (who forced a runoff with Bass the last time around), and former L.A. Unified schools chief Austin Beutner.
It was looking as though we wouldn’t get a badly needed, monthslong, toe-to-toe face-off about all that’s right and wrong in the sprawling metropolis of high hopes and low expectations. In a conversation I had with Loyola Marymount University’s Fernando Guerra, a decades-long observer of the local political scene, he made this observation about the dull political season that was shaping up:
“What is interesting to me is that no one from the establishment political class is running against [Bass] when she is clearly vulnerable.”
Vulnerable because of her handling of the Palisades fire and its aftermath.
Vulnerable because of limited progress on core issues such as homelessness, housing affordability and the shameful condition of streets, sidewalks and parks.
But then came Saturday morning, when, in an unexpected move, L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman decided to step up, injecting a new element of drama into the race.
It was a surprise because Raman and Bass are not political enemies. In fact, they’ve largely been allies and have endorsed each other’s reelection bids.
So what was Raman thinking in signing up for a challenge in which she is clearly the underdog?
“I have deep respect for Mayor Bass. We’ve worked closely together on my biggest priorities and her biggest priorities, and there’s significant alignment there,” Raman told The Times. “But over the last few months in particular, I’ve really begun to feel like unless we have some big changes in how we do things in Los Angeles, that the things we count on are not going to function anymore.”
There’s more to it than that, in political terms. Raman is to the left of Bass and the traditional left in Los Angeles. She and three other council members supported by the Democratic Socialists of America have changed the conversation at City Hall, with more emphasis on social service, housing and labor issues, and less on traditional law enforcement.
That agenda won’t play with conservative voters and neighborhoods in which public safety is a big issue, but among the progressives’ likely supporters are renters, immigrants, young adults, the underserved, and the frontline workers in the minimum-wage economy.
Raman’s candidacy — along with DSA candidates for other city offices — makes the election something of a referendum on the evolving center of political clout in L.A. It raises the question of whether the city is ready to blow things up and move further in the direction of New York City, which just elected as mayor the ultra-progressive Zohran Mamdani.
And for all of that, it also raises the question of whether progressives can both deliver on their promises and also balance a budget. No easy task, there.
As for Bass, you don’t get as far in politics as she has — from the state Legislature to Congress to City Hall — without sharp survival skills and without collecting friends you can count on, even when the road to reelection is filled with potholes.
And even when an ally comes after you.
“Wow, what a surprise,” Guerra said upon Raman’s entry into the race.
He considers her a formidable foe who was the first to prove “that the DSA can win in Los Angeles” and who brings several advantages to a campaign against Bass.
For one, she has a record of some success on homelessness in her district and was involved in that cause in the Silver Lake area before she was in public office, when she identified a startling lack of coordination and continuity. And by virtue of her age, 44, she’s aligned with younger voters hungry for change in political leadership.
It’s possible that with Raman in the race, and the nuts-and-bolts issues of governance now center stage, there will be slightly less emphasis on Bass’ handling and mishandling of the Palisades fire, which destroyed thousands of properties, wiped out a vibrant community and killed 12 people.
When I said at the top of this column that Bass was having a really bad week, I was referring to the Palisades fire and the latest story from Times investigative reporters Alene Tchekmedyian and Paul Pringle. They had already established that the Los Angeles Fire Department had failed to pre-deploy adequately for the fire, and that it had failed to extinguish an earlier fire that later triggered the epic disaster.
The reporters had also established that the so-called “after-action” report on the fire had been altered to downplay failures by the department and the city, all of which was scandalous enough.
But on Wednesday, Tchekmedyian and Pringle reported that Bass was involved in the revisions despite her earlier denials. The mayor “wanted key findings about the LAFD’s actions removed or softened before the report was made public,” according to sources.
Bass vehemently denied the allegations and blasted The Times. But even before the latest story, Bass’ Palisades report card was one that a prudent person might have fed to the dog. She had left the country just before the fire despite warnings of potentially cataclysmic conditions. And multiple other missteps followed, including the botched hiring and early departure of a rebuilding czar.
Raman has not targeted Bass’ handling of the fire, and we’ll see if that changes. I don’t consider the response to the ICE raids to be a point of contention between Raman and Bass. One of the mayor’s strengths in office has been her defense of the city’s immigrants and her pushback against President Trump.
“Bass gets high marks resisting ICE,” Guerra said of polling and public opinion surveys he has either conducted or reviewed. “But on other issues, including homelessness, she does not do well.”
Two-thirds of voters in one poll said they would not back Bass in the June primary, Guerra said. But that poll did not offer an alternative to Bass, and now there is one.
Actually, several. The others include Brentwood tech entrepreneur Adam Miller, who’s got money to spend; reality TV personality Spencer Pratt, a Republican who lost his Palisades home and has been hammering the mayor; and minister/community organizer Rae Huang, a Democratic socialist.
Do they matter, given the odds against them and the entry of Raman into the race?
Yes, they might. Bass needs more than 50% of the June primary vote to win outright. But with Raman and the others grabbing varying percentages of the vote, a two-person November runoff is likely and the candidates will almost surely be Bass and Raman.
After a crazy week in L.A., allies are now foes.
And the race for mayor just got interesting.
steve.lopez@latimes.com
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