Why the L.A. mayoral runoff is about to be a ‘knife fight’

The gloves are off.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Nithya Raman have only begun to wage their Nov. 3 runoff campaigns, but they’re already trading sharp jabs about each other and their records.

“This November, voters will have a clear choice between myself and Nithya Raman, a difference that is made crystal clear because we have been changing L.A., while some people including the councilwoman … fought to take L.A. backwards,” Bass said Tuesday in her campaign kickoff event at East End Studios in the city’s Arts District.

Bass launched her first salvo over the weekend, as the tally of mail-in votes made clear that Raman would edge out Spencer Pratt to challenge her in the fall election. Minutes after the results came out, the mayor issued a scorching statement blasting Raman for voting against police hiring and the effort to keep homeless encampments away from schools.

Raman accused Bass during the primary of engaging in “pay to play” politics, saying special interests who benefited from the mayor’s decisions — the police union, business groups and Airbnb — spent big on her reelection. Since then, she has described Bass as part of a status quo that voters rejected.

“For too long, City Hall has prioritized giving political advantage to powerful interests that fund elections,” Raman said in a statement Monday night, after the Associated Press determined that she would make the runoff. “Meanwhile, working people pay the price in higher rents, depleted services, and a city that has stopped working for them.”

Despite the attacks, Bass and Raman are aligned on a number of city policies. And because they agree on so many subjects, their best strategy in the runoff will be to tear the other down, said Rob Stutzman, a GOP political strategist in Sacramento.

“Neither of them can move credibly that far to the middle,” he said. “So can Bass scare more centrist voters away from Raman? Or is Raman able to grab them, because they’re convinced Bass is utterly incompetent?”

Either way, Stutzman said, “I expect we’re in for a very negative campaign.”

Bass and Raman are both Democrats and self-described progressives. Both support the effort to divert some 911 calls away from the Los Angeles Police Department, shifting them to unarmed responders. Both see a need to move homeless people into housing, and both have said that Measure ULA, the city’s tax on high-end property sales, needs to be rewritten to spur apartment construction.

Both of the candidates will have to court the chunk of the electorate that went with Pratt, who is in third place with nearly all votes counted.

“It’s going to be a knife fight,” said Michael Schneider, a Raman supporter and chief executive of the advocacy group Streets For All, which pushes for bus lanes, bicycle lanes and other improvements to city streets.

Bass, during Tuesday’s kickoff, criticized Raman for her opposition to a law that keeps homeless encampments at least 500 feet from schools. She also accused Raman of being MIA on the fight to protect Hollywood jobs.

Raman’s camp responded by saying the council member has comprehensive plans to address homelessness, public safety and the woes facing the entertainment industry.

“An overwhelming majority of Angelenos just voted to replace the current mayor because they’re sick of the status quo—and so am I,” Raman said in a statement.

Even before Tuesday’s primary, the mayoral race was growing increasingly nasty.

Raman hit Bass repeatedly on her record, saying the incumbent failed to act with urgency on repairs to streets, sidewalks and other infrastructure, production of new apartments and the exodus of Hollywood jobs.

A ballot marked for mayoral candidate Nithya Raman at a Los Angeles County Ballot Processing Center.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

The road ahead looks treacherous for Bass, the first sitting L.A. mayor to be forced into a runoff since 2005.

In a head-to-head matchup, Raman would lead Bass 32% to 28%, according to a poll of registered voters conducted last month by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, which was co-sponsored by The Times. The poll said 25% would choose neither or wouldn’t vote, and 15% were undecided.

Bass continues to experience the political fallout from the January 2025 Palisades fire, which destroyed thousands of homes and left 12 people dead. She was out of the country when the fire broke out and has received criticism over her handling of the recovery.

Pacific Palisades resident Hank Wright, whose home was destroyed in last year’s fire, voted for Pratt in last week’s primary. Now, with Pratt out of the running, he’s not happy with his choices in the runoff, saying they range from “disaster to catastrophic.”

Bass, he said, has been terrible for the city and is a major reason why his home is gone. Nevertheless, he’s now planning to vote for her, out of concern over Raman’s record and her ties to the Democratic Socialists of America, which supported her first two council campaigns and recommended her in its most recent voter guide.

Wright said he supports the city law prohibiting encampments near schools and disagrees with the DSA’s push to cut police spending.

“Nithya would be catastrophic,” he said.

Pratt, the onetime star of MTV’s “The Hills,” used his campaign to express his anger not just over the Palisades disaster but also the city’s handling of homelessness, crime and other issues. Bass is already hitting Raman on public safety, an issue stoked by Pratt during his campaign.

Still, one expert warned that Bass will place herself in peril if she veers too far to the right — particularly in a November runoff, when the number of left-leaning voters is expected to increase dramatically. By then, the Democratic Socialists of America may have endorsed Raman, who is a member of the group, putting its considerable voter outreach operation into action.

“The city is clearly moving to the left. You cannot tack to the right. This is a new era,” said Fernando Guerra, who runs the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University.

Raman, who declared “defund the police” during her first winning campaign in 2020, has been moderating her views.

Two days after launching her mayoral campaign, she said the LAPD should not shrink any further. Appearing last month in Sherman Oaks, she said she would not, as mayor, stand in the way of council members who are looking to create new no-camping zones in their districts.

While in office, Raman has voted dozens of times against establishing new no-camping zones near homeless shelters, senior centers, freeway overpasses and other locations.

Even so, a Raman victory would represent a seismic shift for the city, putting the city’s first DSA member in the mayor’s office.

That, in turn, could be part of an even larger political realignment.

Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia, left and Los Angeles City Council candidate Faizah Malik attend a canvassing event March 15 in Westchester.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

Voters just delivered a big victory to City Controller Kenneth Mejia, whose reelection was also recommended by the DSA. Deputy Atty. Gen. Marissa Roy, the DSA-endorsed candidate in the city attorney’s race, is running well ahead of her runoff opponent, Deputy Dist. Atty. John McKinney, according to recent returns.

On top of that, two DSA-endorsed council members — Hugo Soto-Martinez and Eunisses Hernandez — won easy victories over their respective challengers during last week’s primary.

Sean Wakasa, who co-chairs of DSA’s L.A. chapter, said he is excited to see Raman make the runoff and is hopping his chapter will endorse her. So far, no decisions have been made on that front, he said.

The upcoming runoff shows how much has changed in L.A. political circles over the past year.

Raman, whose district stretches from Silver Lake to Reseda, was until recently a Bass ally, endorsing her reelection bid. Last year, she told The Times that Bass is the most progressive mayor in city history.

Bass helped Raman during a tough reelection fight in 2024, pushing for the Los Angeles County Democratic Party to endorse Raman and appearing in the candidate’s videos and campaign mailers.

When she launched her campaign, Raman criticized Bass’ progress on homelessness and affordability, while also arguing that the city “can’t seem to manage the basics.”

Raman is more likely than Bass to pick up the voters who chose community organizer Rae Huang, a leftist who, like Raman, is a DSA member. She also has a shot at the voters who went with tech entrepreneur Adam Miller, who ran on the idea that he would manage the city better than Bass.

So far, Miller and Huang have not publicly revealed who, if anyone, they plan to endorse.