Mayor Karen Bass has had a lengthy political career, spending six years in the state Legislature, 12 years in Congress and the last three in the top elected office at Los Angeles City Hall.<\/p>\n
Now, facing the toughest reelection battle of her career, Bass is marketing herself in a way that might surprise some Angelenos: She\u2019s running as a champion of change.<\/p>\n
And she\u2019s not alone.<\/p>\n
City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who has represented a Hollywood Hills district since 2020, says her last-minute decision to enter the race was fueled by \u201ca sense of urgency that things needed to change.\u201d<\/p>\n
Three other major candidates, all political newcomers, argue that an outsider is needed to shake up the status quo.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can no longer keep our city together with duct tape and slurry,\u201d said Rae Huang<\/a>, a leftist community organizer, at a recent candidate forum on housing and transportation. <\/p>\n The race to embrace the mantle of change in the June 2 primary election comes at a moment of political peril for Bass, a veteran Democrat who has racked up high disapproval numbers<\/a> in several voter surveys.<\/a> <\/p>\n In recent months, Bass has revamped her messaging, saying she\u2019s been tackling problems that have \u201cbeen around for multiple decades,\u201d such as homelessness, sluggish police hiring and trash-strewn streets.<\/p>\n Last week, speaking to the Pacific Palisades Democratic Club<\/a>, Bass said she wants another four years to finish that work. She also implied that, in her zeal to fix the city\u2019s problems, she quietly pushed out a dozen high-level bureaucrats, including those who dealt with trash pickup and police recruitment.<\/p>\n \u201cLet me just tell you that in three years and three months, it is difficult to change what has been a practice for over four decades,\u201d Bass told the group. \u201cI am very clear that there needs to be massive change, and I\u2019ve done a lot of change.\u201d<\/p>\n Raman has portrayed herself as someone who shook up the system while in office, securing a 4% cap on rent increases<\/a> for more than 600,000 apartments and opposing initiatives she viewed as \u201cdisastrous\u201d for the city\u2019s budget. She said the city is falling short on an array of issues, including traffic deaths and housing affordability.<\/p>\n \u201cSo much of what\u2019s happening in L.A., our inability to address our biggest crises \u2014 our housing crisis, our homelessness crisis, but also essential services like lights and potholes \u2014 so much of this has resulted from a lack of clear urgency in decision-making at City Hall,\u201d said Raman, the first L.A. council member to win office with the backing of the Democratic Socialists of America.<\/p>\n Those types of arguments have elicited salty responses from Huang, tech entrepreneur Adam Miller<\/a> and conservative reality TV personality Spencer Pratt<\/a>.<\/p>\n Miller, who described himself as a lifelong Democrat, pointed out that Raman runs the powerful five-member council committee on housing and homelessness. He argued that both she and Bass have failed on those issues, as well as on public safety and much needed infrastructure repairs.<\/p>\n \u201cThese are the people who have been running the government,\u201d said Miller, who made a fortune developing education software. \u201cSo I don\u2019t understand how they could describe themselves as change-makers. They\u2019re the ones who have been the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n Pratt offered a similar take on social media, calling Raman and Bass \u201ctwo peas in a pod,\u201d while portraying himself as a change agent.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a wrecking ball to the status quo,\u201d he said in one post<\/a>.<\/p>\n Neither Pratt nor his representative responded to an interview request. <\/p>\n In one recent high-profile poll, about 56% of respondents said they had an unfavorable view of Bass. In another, about 40% of those surveyed<\/a> said they had not yet made up their minds about who should lead the city.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s clear that there are concerns among voters about the direction of the city \u2014 and the state, quite frankly,\u201d said Pomona College politics professor Sara Sadhwani, referring to the race for governor. \u201cIn both instances, there are lackluster candidates, and so we see voters being very much undecided in both of these incredibly consequential races.\u201d<\/p>\n The election season got underway a little more than a year after the Palisades fire, which destroyed thousands of homes and left 12 people dead.<\/p>\n Bass, who was out of the country when the fire broke out, was unsteady in her early public appearances and, since then, has faced sharp criticism over the pace of the rebuilding<\/a>. She has defended her record on the recovery, saying she cut red tape and suspended city permit fees, while also pressing the Trump administration to crack down on insurance companies<\/a> that fail to compensate wildfire survivors.<\/p>\n The back-and-forth over change and the status quo broke to the surface during last month\u2019s housing forum<\/a> in downtown L.A. <\/p>\n At one point, Raman voiced alarm over the city\u2019s elevated \u201cpeople mover\u201d being built at Los Angeles International Airport, saying it is so far behind schedule that it won\u2019t be ready before the World Cup, which starts in June.<\/p>\n Raman said that as mayor, she would ensure that such projects are finished on time \u2014 and replace airport leadership if it fails to happen.<\/p>\n \u201cNithya, you\u2019ve been on City Council for six years, though,\u201d Huang shot back. \u201cWhy have you not moved this forward?\u201d<\/p>\n (At five years and four months, Raman\u2019s tenure is slightly less than that.)<\/p>\n Raman countered that, as a council member, she only has control over certain issues. <\/p>\n \u201cSo much of what\u2019s going wrong in Los Angeles requires the mayor to get involved,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Bass did not attend the forum, traveling instead to New Orleans for a reelection fundraiser. Pratt also skipped. In their absence, the three remaining candidates pounded on a wide array of municipal ills, including broken sidewalks, high rents and sluggish housing production.<\/p>\n Raman, at that event and elsewhere, has sought to differentiate herself from Bass, and City Hall more broadly, by highlighting her dissenting votes.<\/p>\n In 2023, Raman opposed a package of police pay increases<\/a> negotiated by Bass, saying they were too expensive<\/a> and would deprive other city departments of funding. Last year, she voted against a $2.6-billion upgrade<\/a> of the Convention Center, citing similar long-term cost concerns.<\/p>\n Bass, for her part, said she\u2019s been shifting the direction of the city in critical ways. Previous city leaders were too hesitant to build temporary housing for homeless people, she said, leaving them to languish on sidewalks while waiting for government-funded apartments to be built.<\/p>\n After taking office in 2022, Bass declared a local emergency on homelessness<\/a> and launched her Inside Safe initiative<\/a>, which has put thousands of people into hotels and motels<\/a>. Raman signed off on the emergency and the funding for Inside Safe but now says the program is too expensive. <\/p>\n The mayor said she also pushed for changes in LAPD hiring, not just by making officers\u2019 salaries more competitive, but by hacking away at a slow and bureaucratic recruitment process. Speaking to the Palisades Democrats, Bass said she got that done, in part, by changing the leadership and staff at the city\u2019s personnel department.<\/p>\n Bass told the group she\u2019s preparing to launch an initiative to clean up the city\u2019s streets \u2014 and that she made a personnel move in that regard as well.<\/p>\n \u201cIn terms of cleanliness, I\u2019ve had to change the leadership of the Department of Sanitation, because I couldn\u2019t get the job done,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Sadhwani, the Pomona College professor, said she doubts that voters will view Bass as a reform candidate. Raman, she argued, is also part of the establishment.<\/p>\n \u201cThey cannot run from the fact that they have been in power,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor Karen Bass has had a lengthy political career, spending six years in the state Legislature, 12 years…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[12858,10800,1409,1493,1011,64873,48,52,51,47,12305,50,49,346,592,36877,2211,34965,32081,49592,72],"class_list":{"0":"post-253942","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-bass","9":"tag-change","10":"tag-city","11":"tag-homelessness","12":"tag-housing","13":"tag-l-a-mayor","14":"tag-la","15":"tag-la-headlines","16":"tag-la-news","17":"tag-los-angeles","18":"tag-los-angeles-city-hall","19":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","20":"tag-los-angeles-news","21":"tag-office","22":"tag-people","23":"tag-pratt","24":"tag-race","25":"tag-rae-huang","26":"tag-raman","27":"tag-status-quo","28":"tag-year"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}