Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass desperately wants Angelenos to trust her and not their lying eyes.
But no one should be surprised that a new poll from the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies finds that just 26% of Angelenos say they’ll vote to re-elect her on Tuesday, the June 2 primary. Close behind are Councilmember Nithya Raman at 25% and former reality TV guy Spencer Pratt at 22%. Sensible entrepreneur Adam Miller, backed by our editorial board, is at 5%, while the far-left Rae Huang is at 9%.
Karen Bass has failed on virtually every policy front she has any influence over, from street maintenance to housing.
Karen Bass botched the Palisades fire from the moment she decided to take off to Ghana. Reports that she directed the watering down of the after-action report came as a shock to no one.
She touts progress on homelessness. That’s cold comfort for those dying on the streets. And for the rest of us forced to reconcile the supposed greatness of Los Angeles with the dystopian images of encampments and vast areas of Downtown Los Angeles, it’s impossible to say she’s done a good job. I’d like to go tell the dudes down the street from me camped on the side of some businesses and doing whippets all day that the mayor is actually helping them and making the city better, but that seems false.
She chose to water down her one sensible policy, the streamlining of housing permitting via Executive Directive 1, and has actively fought sensible laws like Senate Bill 79 which make it easier to build housing near major transit stops.
She amazingly has the endorsement of some of the city’s business groups, which on its face appears significant. But in reality that should be understood as the consequence of Stockholm Syndrome more than anything. Under Karen Bass, Los Angeles remains as hostile to business and investment as ever, with high levels of regulation, mandates and lots of red tape. The business groups just don’t want to get abused any more.
Bass can garner all the endorsements from politicians and unions that she wants. The results speak for themselves.
Only a Karen Bass could make Spencer Pratt a viable candidate for mayor of Los Angeles.
Of her top two challengers, my suspicion is that Raman has the best shot of beating Bass in the general. But Raman’s walked quite the tightrope of being a DSA’er who talks like a back-to-basics liberal while also hanging out with left-wing extremists like Hasan Piker. It’s a balancing act that risks alienating centrists and leftists alike.
At the same time, it seems highly improbable that a progressive city like Los Angeles would choose Spencer Pratt over even a failing Karen Bass — if only for purely partisan reasons. And I’m sure the chronically online right-wingers on X can’t understand this because they appear to be as removed from reality as chronically online left-wingers once were on Twitter.
Having only talked to her once this season, I found Raman quite convincing as someone with a core set of beliefs very different from my own who also recognizes that LA can’t become a model of progressive governance when it can’t keep its streetlights on, get its sidewalks fixed and homeless people are dying everywhere. Given how badly Karen Bass has fumbled as mayor, Raman couldn’t do much worse.
All of this said, my primary hope as a lifelong Angeleno is that Karen Bass loses. A Karen Bass re-election would only confirm my other suspicion that Angelenos have a weird affection for mediocrity and potholes and really like having a lot of unhoused neighbors.
Sal Rodriguez can be reached at salrodriguez@scng.com