Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Nithya Raman traded sharp attacks Wednesday night over homelessness, public safety and their records at City Hall, using their first debate since advancing to the November runoff to question whether the other has delivered results for Los Angeles.
The 90-minute debate repeatedly returned to homelessness, with Bass defending her administration’s approach and calling for the city to take greater control of a fragmented regional system, while Raman argued that Angelenos have spent hundreds of millions of dollars without seeing sufficient improvement on their streets.
But their disagreement was also about who should be held responsible for the state of the city. Bass repeatedly portrayed Raman, who has served nearly six years on the City Council, as a politician with plenty of proposals but too few accomplishments. Raman countered that Bass has spent nearly four years as the city’s chief executive and should be judged on the results.
“We are living in the results of her leadership,” Raman said in her closing remarks. “And I respect very much her long career of public service, but this election has to be about results.”
Bass essentially made the opposite argument, pointing to her administration’s work on homelessness, housing and public safety while repeatedly challenging Raman to account for what she has accomplished during her time on the council.
“You have lots of plans and lots of ideas, but have done very little,” Bass told Raman during one exchange.
Bass finished first in the June primary with 34.3% of the vote, followed by Raman with 29%. Reality television personality Spencer Pratt finished third with 25.5%, leaving both candidates seeking to expand their support in the Nov. 3 general election after neither won more than 35% of the primary vote.
The debate, organized by the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association and co-sponsored by the Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council and Sherman Oaks/Encino Chamber of Commerce, drew supporters from both campaigns. Before it began, supporters gathered outside the meeting room with bullhorns and posters, chanting and rallying for their candidates.
The homelessness debate
Homelessness produced some of the evening’s most sustained disagreements.
Bass said her goal is to “end street homelessness, period,” and argued that doing so will require moving away from expensive hotel rooms, expanding less costly interim housing and overhauling a system in which responsibility is divided among the city, Los Angeles County and the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.
“The city needs to be in control,” Bass said, arguing that the current division of responsibilities make it harder to connect people with mental health and substance-use treatment and move them from interim to permanent housing.
Raman focused her criticism on spending and oversight, attacking Bass’ signature Inside Safe program and saying she would audit homelessness spending, strengthen City Hall oversight of thousands of shelter beds funded by the city and expand access to street medicine and mental health services.
“Angelenos are really fed up with this issue,” Raman said. “They’re fed up with spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and not seeing the results that they deserve on their streets.”
The candidates also sparred over who deserved credit for a reduction in homelessness in Raman’s council district.
Raman repeatedly pointed to a roughly 49% decline in street homelessness in her district over the past year as evidence that her approach has worked even as homelessness increased citywide. Bass did not dispute the decline but argued that her administration’s Inside Safe program was responsible for that progress.
“The question is, who did it?” Bass said. “The 49% was done by Inside Safe.”
Raman pushed back, arguing that Bass could not claim credit for decreases in one council district while distancing herself from increases citywide.
The issue has taken on renewed significance in the race after the latest homeless count by the LAHSA showed homelessness rising 3.4% in the city following two years of declines. The Los Angeles Times subsequently found that inconsistencies in the counting of hundreds of longstanding shelter beds in Skid Row inflated that increase; a rough calculation by the newspaper put the rise at closer to 1.9%.
Police and public safety
The candidates also drew a clear distinction over the Los Angeles Police Department.
Raman said the city should at least maintain the size of its current police force but criticized the police contract she opposed, arguing that the raises were more than the city could afford. She called for a citywide system of civilian responders to handle calls involving homelessness and other solutions that do not require an armed officer.
“We need to make sure that we are retaining our police force, but also that we’re using them more effectively,” Raman said.
Bass attacked Raman’s record on police spending, pointing to her votes against police hiring and raises.
“She talks… out of both sides of her mouth,” Bass said. “She wants to study everything…but the City Council and the City of Los Angeles is not an academic institution. We need to act.”
Bass defended raises for officers as necessary to retain them and pointed to declines in her homicides and her administration’s expansion of community violence-intervention and alternative-response programs.
Asked whether she would fire LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell if elected, Raman stopped short of explicitly saying she would, but said his response to federal immigration enforcement had not “met the moment” and that the city could find police leadership that “takes into account every single resident of Los Angeles.”
Housing concerns
Housing exposed another difference, particularly over how Los Angeles should respond to SB79, a state law allowing denser housing near transit.
Bass said she opposed Sacramento overriding local zoning decisions and argued that Los Angeles should increase housing while protecting single-family neighborhoods, including by concentrating development along commercial corridors and working with communities.
“I do not support Sacramento” imposing that approach, Bass said, pointing to her administration’s effort to fast-track housing and convert vacant office buildings.
Raman was less categorical about the state law. She said Los Angeles should make its own planning decisions but argued that Sacramento has intervened because the city has failed to adequately plan for its housing shortage.
“The state is using a sledgehammer on the city because the city is not doing the work,” she said.
Pressed on whether she supports SB79, Raman did not give a direct yes-or-no answer. She said Los Angeles could preserve “many single-family neighborhoods” while adding density in places suited for development, arguing that a credible city housing plan could head off further state intervention.
Records at City Hall
Some of the night’s sharpest exchanges became more personal as Bass repeatedly questioned Raman’s work on the City Council.
Bass accused Raman of missing “several thousands” of council votes and said her attendance record raised questions about whether she could manage the city.
Raman responded that some of her absences resulted from serving on outside boards to which she had been appointed, including appointments that conflicted with council meetings, while others involved caring for her children.
Raman then turned Bass’ attack back on her.
“If I was such a poor worker, why did you appoint me to all of these external boards?” Raman asked.
Bass also seized on Raman’s lack of endorsements from her City Council colleagues, arguing that it reflected difficulties working with others. Raman said many council members had endorsed Bass before she entered the race and must continue working with the sitting mayor.
Campaign consultants and Lineage
The debate also touched upon a controversy that emerged this week over Raman’s campaign consultants.
Asked about her campaign’s decision to work with Fight Agency, a media consulting firm that worked for New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and former Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner, Raman acknowledged that her campaign had weighed concerns about the firm before hiring it to produce paid advertising. Platner ended his campaign last month after a woman accused him of sexual assault, an allegation he denied.
“We wanted to make sure that we were hiring good people to make our ads,” Raman said.
Raman then turned the criticism on Bass, pointing to Yusef Robb, an informal, unpaid adviser and spokesperson to the mayor who began working as a crisis communications consultant for Lineage Logistics two days after the company’s cold-storage warehouse caught fire in Boyle Heights in June, according to reports by L.A. Material and the Los Angeles Times. Robb subsequently stopped advising Bass.
Asked whether it was appropriate for Robb to advise her while working for Lineage, Bass said it was not.
“Absolutely not,” Bass said. “When I realized it, found out about it, they stopped advising me.”
In their closing remarks, Bass pointed to her administration’s work on homelessness and housing while questioning Raman’s record and ability to work with the City Council. Raman urged Angelenos to “raise our expectations,” arguing that residents should be able to count on working street lights, repaired potholes and leaders prepared for emergencies.
The candidates will face each other in the Nov. 3 general election.