{"id":345098,"date":"2026-06-03T17:49:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T17:49:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/345098\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T17:49:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T17:49:15","slug":"l-a-mayor-karen-bass-will-face-spencer-pratt-or-nithya-raman-in-runoff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/345098\/","title":{"rendered":"L.A. Mayor Karen Bass will face Spencer Pratt or Nithya Raman in runoff"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass capped a bruising primary campaign by securing a spot in the Nov. 3 runoff, where she will face either reality TV personality Spencer Pratt or City Councilmember Nithya Raman. <\/p>\n

Votes were still being counted Wednesday, but the Associated Press said that Bass had a big enough lead in Tuesday\u2019s primary to ensure she will be on the ballot in November.<\/p>\n

An ebullient Bass celebrated the results on election night at the Line LA Hotel in Koreatown, telling her supporters that her administration had laid a foundation for the future, by moving homeless people indoors, fast-tracking new, affordable housing and strengthening the local economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are going to work together to make sure that this city thrives,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

It still could be days before voters know who will face Bass in November. Mail-in ballots with a Tuesday postmark will be accepted by county election officials for another six days.<\/p>\n

Pratt, who lost his home in the January 2025 Palisades fire, said he \u201ccouldn\u2019t be more excited\u201d about campaigning in a second round against Bass.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, obviously God wanted five more months of me exposing all the failures of our mayor, so it\u2019s gonna be a fun ride,\u201d Pratt told reporters. \u201cI hope she\u2019s ready.\u201d<\/p>\n

Raman, speaking to supporters at Boomtown Brewery in downtown, said the first batch of results might not provide \u201cthe final answer on this race.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMany thousands of votes will be counted in the days ahead, and we may not get an answer we like,\u201d she said. \u201cBut regardless of what happens next, nobody \u2014 nobody \u2014 can take away what all of us have built together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bass, a former legislator who served in Sacramento and Washington, is in the biggest fight of her political career, campaigning for reelection amid widespread voter discontent. Although the race is nonpartisan, the pro-labor, establishment Democrat has been squeezed from each end of the political spectrum.<\/p>\n

Pratt, a Republican, has been winning over conservative voters as he depicts L.A.\u2019s citizenry as under threat from drug-addicted homeless \u201czombies.\u201d He made crime a central issue in his campaign, promising voters he would enforce more of the city\u2019s laws.<\/p>\n

\"Los <\/p>\n

Los Angeles mayoral candidate Nithya Raman speaks to the media during her election night party at Boomtown Brewery in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

(Gina Ferazzi \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

Raman, a democratic socialist, has been railing at Bass for giving police officers an expensive package of raises, saying those personnel costs have \u201cbankrupted the city.\u201d She also promised to ramp up the production of apartments, including in single-family neighborhoods, in a bid to bring down rental costs.<\/p>\n

Pratt\u2019s celebrity, along with his media savvy and message, transformed the contest into a national story. Pratt became a fixture on cable news, and his candidacy also fueled interest from Us Weekly, TMZ and other entertainment outlets.<\/p>\n

Also competing for votes were community organizer Rae Huang, a leftist who denounced Raman as too moderate, and tech entrepreneur Adam Miller, a centrist Democrat who promised to bring a more muscular management style to City Hall.<\/p>\n

The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder\/County Clerk plans to make daily afternoon updates on the vote tally in the mayor\u2019s race and other contests.<\/p>\n

On election night in 2022, real estate developer Rick Caruso was in first place, with Bass in second. Bass didn\u2019t overtake Caruso for another week, as late-arriving mail-in ballots continued to pour in.<\/p>\n

Bass launched her reelection campaign<\/a> in 2024, at a time when her bid for a second term looked like an easy task. All that changed in the wake of the January 2025 Palisades fire, which destroyed thousands of homes in Pacific Palisades and left 12 people dead.<\/p>\n

\"Mayor <\/p>\n

Mayor Karen Bass greets supporters at the Line Hotel in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

(Carlin Stiehl \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n

Even in the wake of that disaster, the mayor\u2019s race remained largely uneventful. But the contest received a jolt in February, when Raman, who ousted an incumbent council member during her first run for city office in 2020, launched a surprise bid to unseat Bass.<\/p>\n

Raman\u2019s entry into the race caught the mayor and even many of Raman\u2019s own allies off guard, reshaping the contest and raising the prospect of a generational challenge to the incumbent.<\/p>\n

The race took another turn last month when Pratt, who is best known as a star of MTV\u2019s \u201cThe Hills,\u201d delivered an assured debate performance against Bass and Raman. That appearance, along with his own social media skills and his supporters\u2019 production of slick AI videos, helped him become a breakout political star.<\/p>\n

Pratt blamed Bass for the destruction of his home and promised to clear the city\u2019s streets of homeless encampments, pushing them as far away as Seattle if necessary. Critics have described those plans as unworkable. <\/p>\n

Raman, a onetime Bass ally, also blasted the mayor\u2019s approach to homelessness, saying it was too expensive and failing to yield meaningful results.<\/p>\n

Bass has been defending her record, pointing to a 17.5% decrease in \u201cunsheltered\u201d homelessness \u2014 the number of people living outside or in their vehicles \u2014 over a two-year stretch. She pointed to a historic drop in the city\u2019s homicide rate, which has fallen to its lowest point since 1959, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.<\/p>\n

The mayor received a major assist from the rank-and-file police officers\u2019 union, which spent more than $1.2 million criticizing Raman\u2019s approach to homelessness and police hiring, at times portraying her as a \u201cflip flopper.\u201d<\/p>\n

In recent months, Bass portrayed herself as an impatient agent of change at City Hall, who declared a state of emergency on homelessness on her first day in office and ousted department heads who failed to move with urgency.<\/p>\n

Those messages haven\u2019t resonated with many Angelenos, according to recent surveys.<\/p>\n

Sixty-three percent of likely voters said the city is not on the right track, according to a poll released last week by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times. Only 24% of poll respondents said the city was headed in the right direction. <\/p>\n

\"Los <\/p>\n

Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt speaks to the media outside of a election night party at Don Antonio\u2019s Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

(Rolando Bolanos \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

In the Berkeley IGS poll, 97% of Pratt supporters said the city is headed in the wrong direction, compared with 2% who think it is moving in the right direction.<\/p>\n

In the campaign\u2019s final weeks, Raman and Pratt \u2014 who have traded second and third place in various polls \u2014 went after each other with fury. Raman highlighted Pratt\u2019s effusive praise for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, telling voters that Pratt would make the city \u201ca lot more hateful and a lot more stupid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pratt, in an interview with CNN, said he is a \u201cvery different person\u201d from the one who appeared on Jones\u2019 program nearly two decades ago. He repeatedly attacked Raman over her opposition to a law that prohibits homeless encampments from coming within 500 feet of schools and day-care centers.<\/p>\n

Raman also accused Bass of going easy on Pratt, alleging at one point that Bass and Pratt were working together to attack her during a televised debate in hopes of pushing her into third place. Bass and Pratt denied the allegation.<\/p>\n

The contest even garnered the attention of President Trump, who signaled his support for Pratt last month and said he\u2019d heard that the candidate is a \u201cbig MAGA person.\u201d <\/p>\n

That type of messaging might not sell in a city where fewer than 15% of the city\u2019s voters are Republican, according to county figures compiled in April. The number of Democrats is nearly four times that amount.<\/p>\n

Pratt said he has surrounded himself with Democrats and repeatedly pointed out that the mayor\u2019s race is nonpartisan.<\/p>\n

Still, the Berkeley IGS poll found that Raman and Bass would defeat Pratt by double digits in a runoff. That same survey found that Raman would lead by four percentage points in a Bass-Raman showdown.<\/p>\n

Staff writers Noah Haggerty, Gavin Quinton and Hayley Smith contributed to this report <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass capped a bruising primary campaign by securing a spot in the Nov. 3…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340708,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[5925,12858,15327,1409,2000,141518,1493,64873,48,52,51,47,50,49,346,8111,36877,2211,32081,1522,430],"class_list":["post-345098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-decrease","tag-bass","tag-bid","tag-city","tag-contest","tag-early-return","tag-homelessness","tag-l-a-mayor","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-office","tag-poll","tag-pratt","tag-race","tag-raman","tag-voter","tag-week"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345098","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=345098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}