Three and a half years ago, when Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles took office, the pandemic-worn city looked to her with hope and relief. Tent camps filled with homeless people had consumed parks, beaches and sidewalks. Melrose Avenue merchants had posted armed guards outside high-end sneaker outlets. Malls were bracing for smash-and-grab robberies.<\/p>\n
On her first day, Ms. Bass declared an emergency, citing the sheer scope of the homeless situation. As months passed, the size of the unsheltered homeless population and violent crime rates both<\/a> dropped<\/a>. Commuters cheered when she tapped state and federal connections to fix and swiftly reopen a damaged freeway<\/a>.<\/p>\n Then came the fires.<\/p>\n Two years into the job, while she was in Ghana attending the inauguration of a new president, Pacific Palisades erupted in flames, claiming 12 lives and destroying thousands of homes in the coastal enclave. She rushed back, demoted the fire chief and tried to explain that she wouldn\u2019t have gone abroad if she had known what would happen.<\/p>\n Ms. Bass \u2014 a former congresswoman who in 2020 was on the vice-presidential shortlist<\/a> \u2014 never fully recovered from that absence, and now she\u2019s fighting for a second term. More than a dozen challengers are on the June 2 primary ballot, and the mayor, 72, is widely expected to face a runoff in the fall.<\/p>\n A standoff last summer<\/a> with the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement over the Trump administration\u2019s deportations bolstered the mayor\u2019s approval ratings citywide, but lawn signs calling for her resignation<\/a> still dot the Palisades.<\/p>\n Ms. Bass is facing two main challengers from opposite ends of the political spectrum: Nithya Raman, a liberal City Council member and former ally of the mayor, and Spencer Pratt, a Republican reality television star whose house burned in the Palisades fire. Both Ms. Raman and Mr. Pratt have accused Ms. Bass of mismanaging Los Angeles, the country\u2019s second most populous city, on issues ranging from the fire recovery to streetlights.<\/p>\n \u201cThis has been a campaign about fire and ICE \u2014 and so far, the fire is winning,\u201d said Dan Schnur, a longtime political analyst who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Southern California. \u201cThat\u2019s not to say she can\u2019t win, but it\u2019s pretty rare for a politician to get a second chance to make a first impression in a city like Los Angeles that doesn\u2019t pay much attention to politics.\u201d<\/p>\n Public-opinion surveys<\/a> and internal polling shared by her campaign show the mayor\u2019s once formidable support has diminished. An annual survey by the Luskin School of Public Affairs<\/a> at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that 40 percent of likely voters remained undecided as recently as March, a red flag for an incumbent.<\/p>\n Los Angeles is overwhelmingly liberal \u2014 Democrats alone represent more than 55 percent of registered voters. But a growing minority of the city\u2019s elected leaders has risen from Ms. Raman\u2019s progressive wing of the party. And on the wealthy Westside, the MAGA right that Mr. Pratt has galvanized has become increasingly vocal, amplified by coverage in The New York Post, which started<\/a> a California edition this year in time for the midterm elections. (\u201cShocking Scenes From L.A.\u2019s Homeless Apocalypse<\/a>,\u201d one recent headline read.)<\/p>\n On Wednesday night, the mayor faced off against Ms. Raman and Mr. Pratt on a debate stage at the Skirball Cultural Center, just a few miles northeast of the Palisades fire zone. Ms. Bass and Ms. Raman sparred over housing policy and city spending while Mr. Pratt, a tabloid media fixture, invoked drug users, squatters, tortured dogs, fraud and people burning alive.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a MAGA Republican\u2019s idea of what Los Angeles looks like,\u201d Ms. Raman said at one point with a sigh.<\/p>\n When the mayor fact-checked an assortment of erroneous claims about the fire, Mr. Pratt called her \u201can incredible liar,\u201d and the moderator interjected: \u201cNo name-calling!\u201d<\/p>\n Since Ms. Bass was sworn into office in December 2022, the city has experienced one emergency after another. Pandemic tent camps. Busloads of migrants sent by the Republican governor of Texas during a tropical storm. School strikes. The threatened collapse of part of the Interstate 10 freeway.<\/p>\n The Palisades fire hit as the Trump administration prepared to take office. Then came the ICE raids and, after protests downtown, thousands of federal troops. Even the preparations for the 2028 Olympics were thrown into crisis mode after revelations surfaced about the chairman of the city\u2019s organizing committee and his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n In an interview last week at the Getty House, the official mayoral residence where she lives with three grandchildren and other relatives, Ms. Bass said she hoped voters would keep in mind her success in tackling some of those earlier challenges, and in doing the hard work of building consensus. Last month, President Trump, who has repeatedly bashed her, met with her and a Republican county supervisor, Kathryn Barger,<\/a> and agreed to their request for additional financial assistance for fire victims.<\/p>\n The fallout of the last few years, she acknowledged, has taken a toll both on the city and on her own political situation.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously what happened in the Palisades has hit me,\u201d she said, leaning in from a fireside chair in the wood-paneled office. But she added, \u201cI think we\u2019re dealing with a very disgruntled electorate. Period.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. Raman<\/a>, 44, won her City Council seat in 2020 with the support of the Democratic Socialists of America, which also helped to elect Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York<\/a>. Once a supporter of Ms. Bass\u2019s policies on homelessness and housing, Ms. Raman endorsed the mayor before entering the race at the last minute.<\/p>\n With a screenwriter husband and degrees in political theory and urban planning from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ms. Raman has been compared by both critics and admirers to Mr. Mamdani. At the Wednesday debate, however, her performance was far more halting than that of the polished mayor of New York. She has also downplayed her D.S.A. support and focused her campaign on the maintenance of streetlights and other basic services, promising \u201ca city that works.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been to Boyle Heights, I\u2019ve been to San Pedro, I\u2019ve been to Brentwood,\u201d Ms. Raman said in an interview, listing a diverse range of the city\u2019s neighborhoods. \u201cWhat has been interesting is that in all of those neighborhoods there\u2019s been a feeling of a lack of urgency and focus, a lack of action, and a feeling that things are getting worse rather than better.\u201d<\/p>\n The mayor has countered with a series of infrastructure programs, saying that the city had a decade-long backlog of streetlight repairs when she took office, and that Ms. Raman, who has served more than six years on the City Council, has had \u201ctwice as long as I have\u201d to address issues like potholes and housing. Ms. Raman has responded by suggesting Ms. Bass is simply passing the buck.<\/p>\n \u201cShe is the leader of the city, and I think people understand the difference between being one council member out of 15 and being the mayor,\u201d Ms. Raman said.<\/p>\n Mr. Pratt<\/a>, 42, is best known for his role on the MTV reality TV series \u201cThe Hills\u201d as the angry boyfriend of Heidi Montag, who is now his wife. He has spent much of his post-\u201cHills\u201d life claiming that his vindictive, opportunistic personality on the show was a fiction created by the producers. In past interviews and in his new memoir, \u201cThe Guy You Loved to Hate<\/a>,\u201d Mr. Pratt has said he leaned into the persona for fame and money.<\/p>\n Since the Palisades fire, he has criticized<\/a> Ms. Bass, Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democratic leaders for his property losses. In campaign ads<\/a>, he asserts that city officials \u201clet my home burn down.\u201d<\/p>\n He fought a bill to increase density<\/a> near transit stops that he feared would allow lots in the Palisades to be filled with high-rises and subsidized housing. Otherwise, he has said little until recently about problems affecting the four million or so Los Angeles residents outside his neighborhood.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve always told people, they go: \u2018Why do you live in California? Why do you live in L.A.?\u2019\u201d Mr. Pratt said in an interview last year during a trip to Washington to ask for a congressional investigation into the fire\u2019s handling. \u201cAnd I say, \u2018I don\u2019t \u2014 I live in the Palisades.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Last week, he declined an interview via text message, writing that he had only one comment: \u201cProtecting our mothers and children is my top priority and it\u2019s a winning message.\u201d<\/p>\n On his campaign website<\/a>, he says that, if elected, he will make long-term city assistance for homeless people contingent on sobriety and mental health treatment, and that he will push for an audit of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which he and Ms. Montag are suing<\/a> over the fire.<\/p>\n