Los Angeles voters are deciding Tuesday whether to give Mayor Karen Bass a second term or hand the city's top job to council member Nithya Raman, a fellow progressive Democrat backed by the Democratic Socialists of America.
The result will show whether the nation's second most populous city follows the path of New York, where democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani won the mayor's office last year, or sticks with an establishment figure despite a rocky first term.
Bass, 73, has been dogged by fallout from the deadly 2025 Palisades Fire, the most destructive blaze in the city's history. She was out of the country when the fire erupted, and the fire department was caught unprepared despite days of warnings about powerful winds and bone-dry conditions. This past June, a fire in a massive frozen-food warehouse east of downtown left residents dealing with weeks of foul odors and frustration.
Beyond the fire, the city continues to wrestle with a homelessness crisis marked by filthy encampments and rows of rusting RVs across many neighborhoods. Hollywood jobs have been migrating to cheaper locations for years, and residents widely complain about inadequate basic services, from street paving to streetlight repairs. The stakes extend beyond city limits, with Los Angeles set to host the 2028 Olympic Games.
Bass has argued she has made enough progress to earn another term leading the city of 3.8 million people, and she says Raman, 45, is "not ready for primetime" after only six years on the council. Raman, who endorsed Bass before jumping into the race herself, counters that "we cannot afford another four years of decline, of mismanagement, of excuses."
Public safety has been a central issue. Bass wants to hire more police officers and has labeled Raman's positions on policing and homelessness as "extreme." Raman posted "defund the police" on social media in 2020 and opposed the mayor's 2023 police contract as too costly for the financially strapped city, though more recently she has said the department should stay at its current size. Raman has said she would replace the police chief, which Bass calls reckless ahead of the Olympics.
On homelessness, Bass points to dozens of cleared encampments and thousands of people brought into shelter, though data show nearly half of them dropped out of the system and presumably returned to the streets. Raman, who voted against numerous no-camping zones on the council but later said she would not block them as mayor, has pledged to cut the number of people sleeping in tents and encampments by at least 50% by 2028. She wants to expand medical teams serving people on the streets and add housing to move people out of city-rented hotel rooms.
Bass carries endorsements from Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Vice President Kamala Harris, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and nearly every city council member. Billionaire developer Rick Caruso, whom Bass defeated in the 2022 mayoral race, said he was voting for her without issuing a formal endorsement. Raman, an urban planner, has drawn support from groups including Our Revolution and the Sierra Club, but few prominent local politicians. She did land a widely publicized private meeting with former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is not involved in the race.
One wild card is the roughly quarter of the primary vote won by Spencer Pratt, a Republican former reality television personality who lost his home in the Palisades Fire but failed to advance to the November ballot. Where his supporters turn, if they vote at all, remains unknown.
A Berkeley IGS/LA Times poll conducted Oct. 19-25 found about 4 in 10 likely voters called reducing homeless encampments a top priority for the next mayor, while roughly 3 in 10 pointed to public safety or building more affordable housing. In the campaign's sole televised debate, Raman said, "Homelessness is rising despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent. Storefronts are closing," accusing Bass of being "missing in action."
