Wednesday night in Sherman Oaks, Angelenos got their first real look at the race that will determine City Hall’s direction for the next four years. Councilmember Nithya Raman arrived prepared, with a theme and a punch line. Mayor Karen Bass arrived unfocused, with a list of excuses.
Raman ran the debate on one question, borrowed from a campaign 46 years old: are you better off than you were four years ago? For a city staring at a billion-dollar deficit, a homeless count still climbing, and a mayor who can’t or won’t say who’s in charge of her administration, that question answers itself.
Mayor Bass spent the night defending, not leading. She reached for county reimbursements to explain away Inside Safe’s exorbitant price tag and offered procedural excuses for most everything else. What she didn’t do was make a compelling case for four more years. The second-largest city in the country deserves a mayor who leads with a vision, not one who complains her way through 90 minutes.
Raman had the sharper night and the sharper theme.
But her performance is still not enough to win in November. DSA Councilmember Raman spent the debate handing Mayor Bass’ campaign the ammunition to beat Raman.
Start with public safety, where Raman still can’t get out of her own way. She opposed the 2023 LAPD pay package that finally allowed the department to hire a full class of officers. Mayor Bass made her pay for it on stage: “You have a lot of nerve talking about the hiring of police officers… and you voted against it.”
Raman’s defense was that she’d backed other budgets that “maintained and even expanded” the force. It sounds like a lawyer’s answer, not a leader’s. Then she went further, leaving little doubt that she’d replace LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell over his handling of immigration enforcement. A councilmember with a defund-era voting record who announces she’ll fire a competent, effective police chief sends a message that doesn’t travel beyond her district’s most progressive supporters.
Homelessness is worse. Raman built her debate performance by attacking Mayor Bass’ Inside Safe program as bloated and unaccountable, a fair hit given the $400 million price tag and an analysis showing that more than 40% of people housed through it drifted back to the street.
Raman’s alternative amounts to the failed “housing-first” policy with better branding: move people only “concurrent” with housing placement, never before. Translated from consultant-speak: no housing, no move.
With Los Angeles nowhere near housing everyone, Raman’s policy leaves the tents right where they are, and voters can do the math. She also voted NO on Municipal Code 41.18, the ordinance that keeps encampments away from schools and parks, even as parents pleaded for it. That isn’t a message. That’s a TV ad or mailer Bass’ campaign hasn’t had to write…yet.
Density seals it. Raman wants more apartments in single-family neighborhoods citywide, with no exceptions. She calls it fairness. Homeowners from the Valley to South LA will call it a threat to the one asset most of them own. That’s not a niche issue. It’s the single-family backbone of this city. Raman just handed Bass and every well-funded independent expenditure between now and November the one issue that turns a renter’s applause line into a homeowner’s “no.”
Elections aren’t won on issues. They’re won on themes. Right now, Raman owns hers: Los Angeles is broken, and Bass broke it. But Bass has the money, the incumbency, and 10 weeks of paid advertising to reframe Raman as an out-of-touch radical who is soft on crime, weak on encampments, and hostile to the neighborhoods that actually decide these elections – i.e., a choice rather than a referendum.
Raman won the debate. Whether she wins in November is another question. The answer hinges on Bass’ ability to sell voters on her competence theme, amplified by the three issues Raman couldn’t put away on the debate stage.
Matt Klink, a lifelong Angeleno, is the owner and president of Klink Campaigns, Inc.