Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Nithya Raman will face off Wednesday in their first debate since advancing to the November runoff, opening a new phase of a mayoral race in which both candidates finished well short of a majority in June.
Bass finished first in the primary with 34.3% of the vote, followed by Raman with 29%, according to official election results. Reality television personality Spencer Pratt finished third with 25.5%, leaving both candidates with a sizable pool of voters to compete for as the race narrowed to two.
Fernando Guerra, director of Loyola Marymount University’s Center for the Study of Los Angeles, on Monday described the runoff as fundamentally a referendum on the incumbent.
Bass must persuade voters that she has made enough progress to warrant another term and that initiatives already underway will bear fruit if she is reelected, Guerra said. Raman, meanwhile, must convince them that Bass has had her opportunity and that the city needs new leadership.
“On one hand, it’s really simple,” Guerra said. ”On the other hand, it’s very complicated how each campaign…articulates that or presents that,” and responds to the narrative advanced by the other.
The Aug. 19 debate, hosted by the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association and co-sponsored by the Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council and Sherman Oaks/Encino Chamber of Commerce, is scheduled for 7 p.m. at the Sherman Oaks East Valley Adult Center. Journalist Phil Schuman will lead the moderator panel. The debate will also be available to watch via Zoom.
Organizers say the candidates are expected to address public safety, homelessness, housing, small businesses and City Hall accountability, among other issues.
Guerra cautioned, however, against viewing the forum as necessarily representative of the citywide electorate, describing it as a regionally-focused debate whose issues and questions may not reflect the city as a whole.
“What comes out of it may be issues and a focus that is regionally important,” Guerra said, but only “somewhat relevant to the rest of the city.”
The broader contest has also shifted since voters went to the polls in June.
Homelessness, already a central issue in the race, has provided Raman with a new line of attack after the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s annual point-in-time count showed a 3.4% increase in homelessness in Los Angeles following two years of declines. The Los Angeles Times subsequently found that inconsistencies in how hundreds of longstanding shelter beds on Skid Row were counted inflated the increase; a rough calculation by the newspaper put the rise at closer to 1.9%.
Guerra said the reversal nevertheless complicates a narrative Bass had been able to make about declines in homelessness during her tenure.
“The most relevant issue in Los Angeles right now is homelessness,” he said. Bass “had a very good narrative saying that I have been battling homelessness, and it has been declining…Now, of course, with the data showing that it has an uptick, it changes the whole narrative.”
The aftermath of the Palisades fire and the more recent Lineage warehouse fire in Boyle Heights could also become tests of Bass’ leadership, Guerra said. While the neighborhoods directly affected represent relatively small portions of the city’s electorate, he said, voters across Los Angeles are aware of the disasters and may judge the mayor by her response to them.
Boyle Heights carries particular symbolic importance among Latino voters, Guerra said, calling the neighborhood “the heart and the historical center of Latino politics.”
Raman was scheduled Monday to join community activists from Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles and nearby communities to discuss the Lineage fire.
Looking ahead to Wednesday, Raman’s campaign said she will frame the election as a choice between what she calls a broken status quo and a new approach to City Hall.
“Nithya will make the case that this election is a choice between remaining stuck in the same broken status quo or bringing new urgency, accountability, and results to City Hall,” Raman campaign spokesperson Liz Garcia said in a statement provided to SCNG Monday.
The campaign said Raman plans to focus on the cost of living, street homelessness and basic city services, including repairing potholes and streetlights, while arguing that City Hall has favored corporations and powerful interests over residents.
Bass’ campaign, meanwhile, said the mayor will use the debate to emphasize her record in office.
“At the debate, Mayor Bass will highlight her record of delivering for the Valley and throughout L.A., making our city safer and more affordable,” campaign spokesperson Alex Stack said in a statement Monday.
Stack told SCNG last week that the campaign also intends to draw contrasts with Raman on housing, homelessness and public safety. He said one of Bass’ vulnerabilities has been communicating her administration’s record to voters.
“She hasn’t done a good job of communicating that to the public,” he said, arguing that the administration has made progress on housing, homelessness and crime that voters may not recognize.
Both candidates will need to reach well beyond the voters who supported them in June.
Guerra cautioned against assuming that Pratt’s roughly 218,000 primary voters will move as a block. Some may not vote in November, he said. Some are ideologically conservative and unlikely to support Raman, while others backed Pratt because of dissatisfaction with the political establishment and could be receptive to a challenger.
“The Pratt voters are not a monolith,” he said. “They coalesce on behalf of Pratt for various different reasons.”
Guerra said he does not expect either Bass or Raman to win an overwhelming majority of Pratt’s supporters.
But Guerra said another group could prove even more important: voters who skipped the June primary but turn out in November.
He expects turnout to rise from roughly 40% in the primary to more than 50% in the general election, meaning the number of additional voters could exceed the number who backed Pratt.
Those voters, Guerra said, could be decisive.
“Those are as important as the Pratt voters,” Guerra said. “I would even say more important.”
Those additional voters tend to be younger and more liberal, potentially benefiting Raman, he said, though that alone would not give her the election.
For Bass, Guerra said, the path involves holding her primary supporters, winning a significant share of Pratt voters who return in November and remaining competitive among the additional general election voters.
Raman, he said, will need a strong organizing operation capable of turning her campaign into a broader movement.
“I think she needs to, number one, have a very powerful ground game,” Guerra said, pointing to organizing as a strength of Democratic Socialists of America-backed candidates in Los Angeles and elsewhere.
Bass enters that fight with a substantial financial advantage. Campaign finance reports through June 30 show she reported about $511,700 in general election contributions, compared with about $172,900 for Raman, according to the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission.
Guerra said Bass is likely to maintain an advantage in campaign resources and potentially benefit from independent expenditures. But he noted that Bass also held a financial advantage in the primary, and it was not enough to put her over 50%.
“There is no denying that Mayor Bass will have the advantage when it comes to resources,” Guerra said. “The question is, will it be enough to put her over the top at 50%?”
Guerra said Wednesday’s debate could offer an early look at how the general election will take shape.
“To me, this is really the beginning of the campaign right now,” he said. “This is launching the campaign.”
The debate, he said, will show “the arguments or themes or narratives that each campaign is going to try to pursue.”