US Midterms: Los Angeles Mayoral Race
The Facts
- Overview: In a race focused on homelessness, housing costs and crime, incumbent Mayor Karen Bass is seeking another four-year term, running against City Councilwoman Nithya Raman in a nonpartisan runoff on Nov. 3, after neither Democrat won a majority in the June 2 primary. September polls conducted by groups unaffiliated with either put Raman ahead by 3-11 points, while one pro-Raman poll showed Bass up 1%. Raman still leads as of early October, though one poll put Bass ahead 40%-28% among Hispanic voters.
- Karen Bass: Bass, 72, was raised in LA and worked as a nurse, physician assistant and University of Southern California medical faculty member. She founded the South LA nonprofit Community Coalition in 1990, served in California's Assembly as its first Black female speaker, and later served in Congress before becoming LA's first female mayor in 2022. Seeking a second term, she highlights housing development and reducing crime and homelessness. Her campaign also faced scrutiny over her response to the January 2025 Palisades fire.
- Nithya Raman: Raman, 45, immigrated from India as a child and earned degrees from Harvard and MIT. An urban planner, she worked in LA's City Administrative Officer's office, co-founded the SELAH homeless nonprofit and led Time's Up Entertainment. Elected to City Council in 2020, she has advanced renter protections and opposed expanded anti-homeless camping zones. Backed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), her mayoral campaign prioritizes housing, homelessness oversight, basic services and City Hall reforms.
Sources Split
LEFT
CENTER
RIGHT
+4
+1
+1
+2
+1
+1
ESTAB
CRIT
CENTER
PRO
ESTAB
The Spin
Democratic narrative
Karen Bass has already delivered the first multi-year homelessness drop in city history, pushed crime toward 1960s lows and built an affordable 47,000-unit pipeline while standing up to federal overreach. Raman's progressive credentials are real, but she remains untested on coalition-building in a weak-mayor system and has flipped on key safety and housing issues. Continuity of the foundations already laid is the safer path for a city that cannot afford another four years of experimentation.
Progressive narrative
LA can't afford another term of status-quo management that protects itself instead of delivering. Raman has already cut unsheltered homelessness nearly in half in her district, rewritten tenant protections for 1.5 million renters and walked picket lines while drafting a concrete plan to bring film and TV jobs home. She knows what the city deserves and will deliver, from expediting housing permits to reorienting City Hall around basic services. There will be no more pay-to-play politics.
Republican narrative
Bass and Raman both embody the progressive consensus that has left Los Angeles disordered and fiscally wasteful. Bass was abroad during the Palisades fire after cutting funding to the fire department, while Raman treats car theft as a car manufacturer problem and still backs costly, ineffective homelessness programs. Spencer Pratt was the only candidate to acknowledge the reality of the fentanyl and meth crisis and demanded public order. With him out, this runoff only offers different flavors of the same decline.
