Bass

The landmark Casa Vega Mexican restaurant in Sherman Oaks was honored in May with a sign proclaiming its corner of Ventura Boulevard as “Casa Vega Square.”

Mayor Karen Bass was there, and so was City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, whose district is on the other side of the San Fernando Valley. The event was perhaps more notable for who wasn’t there: Nithya Raman, the mayoral candidate whose City Council district includes Casa Vega.

To Raman’s critics, the episode represents what they say is one of her biggest flaws as an elected official: not tending to the parochial needs of her district. Bass has sounded that theme repeatedly during the mayoral election campaign, including calling Raman “contemptuous of her constituents” during their televised debate on NBC4 and Telemundo 52 Oct. 13.

Raman called that “a lie.” Some of Raman’s constituents beg to differ, saying her office has seemed unwilling to help with a broad array of city services, including fixing broken sidewalks and removing homeless encampments.

“She’s just been MIA,” said Jessica Lewis, who owns Dragonfly Cycle and Train, a fitness studio in Sherman Oaks. “I would send photos of what I was experiencing, like human feces at my front door, encampments at the back door … all those emails just fell on deaf ears.”

Raman spokesperson Stella Stahl disputed that contention, saying the council office has “a proactive constituent service team.”

“Our approach is to listen to those who live and work in a neighborhood, then use every tool the city has to fix what they’ve told us is broken,” Stahl said.

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, left, and challenger Nithya Raman during their debate before the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn.

(David Butow / For The Times)

Raman co-presented the motion to designate Vega Square, along with Councilmember Rodriguez, according to documents filed in March. Raman was unable to attend the ceremony because of scheduling conflicts, Stahl said, but other Raman staffers were present.

Councilmember Rodriguez said her staff spearheaded the designation, part of her broader work to “enshrining the many positive contributions that Latino families have made throughout our city.”

To be sure, Raman has constituents who are big fans. Marissa Rodriguez said she wasn’t aware of the web of licenses and city permits she would have to obtain before she could open her wine shop in Studio City, Dia Natural Wine. The process felt monumental, she said, and nearly impossible to complete on her own.

She reached out to Raman’s team, and said the council office’s help was integral to Dia Natural Wine making its debut in 2022.

“I thought I could do this myself, and at a certain point, I hit a ton of roadblocks at the city,” Marissa Rodriguez said. “They were extremely helpful in just sort of helping me navigate who I needed to talk to.”

Tyler Simmons, who owns a coffee wine bar, Reunion & Co., on Hyperion Avenue in the Franklin Hills neighborhood of Los Feliz, said Raman and her team have always been receptive to his community’s needs.

In response to complaints of speeding, he said, Raman’s office helped get four speed tables — a flatter, wider version of speed bumps — installed in the intersection near his business last year.

“She’s done her best,” Simmons said. “I think there’s larger systemic issues at play within the city … it’s bigger than a councilperson, unfortunately. I’m hoping, if she wins, she’ll help change all that.”

Sidewalks in disrepair along the 1300 block of Ventura Blvd on Friday, Oct. 16, 2026, in Sherman Oaks, California. Christy Vega, owner of Casa Vega, claims that Nithya Raman, Councilmember, Fourth District, has been unhelpful and ignored her requests to get certain city services, including street sidewalk repairs and addressing homelessness in her parking lot. (Gary Coronado/For The Times)

A street in disrepair along the 1300 block of Ventura Blvd on Friday, Oct. 16, 2026, in Sherman Oaks, California. Christy Vega, owner of Casa Vega, claims that Nithya Raman, Councilmember, Fourth District, has been unhelpful and ignored her requests to get certain city services, including street sidewalk repairs and addressing homelessness in her parking lot. (Gary Coronado/For The Times)

On the other hand, Casa Vega owner Christy Vega rattles off a long list of complaints when discussing Raman and her office. She said she’s spent years seeking help from Raman’s staff, including to make repairs on sidewalks and pavement outside the restaurant, and to remove a homeless encampment that sprang up during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“With Raman’s office, they viewed me as a nuisance rather than someone who’s trying to keep her employees safe,” Vega said.

Vega is supporting Bass in the Nov. 3 election, and she sits on on the board of Thrive LA, an advocacy group backed by business and community leaders that is running ads against Raman in the mayoral race and also ran anti-Raman ads during her 2024 City Council reelection campaign.

Vega says she’s not supporting Raman because of her experience seeking help from Raman’s council office for problems her business encountered, including cars being broken into in the restaurant’s parking lot and muggings on the street out front. One employee was stabbed at a nearby bus stop, and another fell because of the potholes in the alley behind her restaurant, she said.

At one point, Vega said, she called Raman’s office to ask for help in fixing the curb near her restaurant that was damaged during a street racing incident.

Vega said she was told by Raman’s office that she would need to fix the curb herself, meaning she’d have to pull permits, hire a contractor and pay out of pocket for the repairs Vega said she pushed back, and a staff member suggested she move to another district.

Raman’s office didn’t comment on that assertion, but Stahl said that the Bureau of Street Services isn’t funded to repair damaged sidewalks, and the responsibility falls to the adjacent property owners.

“Every constituent who contacts our office deserves a response, and we take Ms. Vega’s concerns seriously. People often reach out to us on their hardest days,” Stahl said. “Unfortunately, we weren’t able to accommodate it at that time. Telling constituents no to basic service requests is frustrating for residents and for us, and it’s part of why the council member ran for office.”

Councilmember Rodriguez, who represents the northeast San Fernando Valley, said she’s stepped in to help business owners in Raman’s district over the years. Most recently, she helped Vega with permitting issues on the restaurant’s outdoor patio.

A sign for L.A. Councilmember Nithya Raman’s district office on Ventura Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley.

(Gary Coronado / For The Times)

“I’ve heard some of the same frustrations and stories from many people. … It reflects a pattern,” said Rodriguez, who is backing Bass for mayor. “If this is your audition [for mayor] based on your performance in your own district, I think it’s an example of the responsiveness of what people can expect.”

Sophia Brodetsky, who owns the Valley Inn restaurant with her husband in Sherman Oaks, isn’t happy with either mayoral candidate, but said Bass’ office has been more receptive to her needs.

Brodetsky has endured robberies, property damage and homeless encampments that have disrupted her restaurant that dates back to 1947, she said.

“They’re running for office right now. They promise you an arm and a leg, but they don’t deliver,” Brodetsky said.

According to Vega and Lewis, owner of the Dragonfly gym, a number of Sherman Oaks business owners reached out to Bass after she was elected mayor in 2022 to voice their concerns about Raman’s stewardship of the district.

The mayor met with a group of business owners in the area in 2023 and she convened weekly safety meetings between business owners, district leaders and local law enforcement to address their concerns, Vega said.

Vega said it was Bass and Rodriguez who helped her navigate the permit process when she sought to open an outdoor patio for her restaurant last year.

“I wasn’t a supporter of hers. I wasn’t someone that she owed any favors to,” Vega said of Bass. “She answered the phone immediately, and she heard the panic of my voice and my tears, and she said, ‘I’m on it.’”

Lewis, however, said she and others felt betrayed by Bass when she endorsed Raman for reelection in 2024.

“That just felt like a huge slap in the face,” Lewis said.

Lewis said she plans to vote for Bass, but reluctantly. Keeping her business afloat has felt nearly impossible at times, she said, but getting help from both the council and the mayor’s office has been an even tougher hurdle.

“The council office would blame the mayor’s office. The mayor’s office would blame the county,” Lewis said. “It was like everyone was just pointing fingers at someone else, and no one was actually doing anything about it.”

Former Los Angeles mayoral candidate Rick Caruso declined once again to endorse either incumbent Mayor Karen Bass or challenger Nithya Raman in the Nov. 3 runoff election, but expressed what he called “extreme concern” about Raman’s plans to remove Police Chief Jim McDonnell.

The billionaire developer lost to Bass in the 2022 election, and was a staunch critic of the mayor for her response to the 2025 Palisades fire. Even so, he appeared with the mayor at his upscale Palisades Village shopping center Tuesday to promote a new program to streamline city utility services.

While declining to endorse Bass, Caruso commended the mayor by saying “she’s done her work, and she’s worked with the team, and I compliment this.”

“In comparison, Councilwoman Raman has made statements that we should all ask for an explanation to,” Caruso said, citing her plans to replace McDonnell. “I do show extreme concern when a candidate is talking about firing a chief of police.”

Raman’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

At last week’s televised mayoral debate, Raman said that if elected mayor she would replace McDonnell, saying the LAPD appeared to be protecting federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents during their operations in L.A. Raman didn’t give a clear timeline of when she would act.

Bass has publicly backed the chief she hired two years ago, and warned that the Police Department could be thrown into disarray if he is removed before the 2028 Olympic Games.

Caruso applauded Bass’s support for McDonnell at Tuesday’s event.

“I don’t think we need LAPD being a lab experiment for the DSA,” Caruso said, referring to the Democratic Socialists of America, which has endorsed Raman. “It’s going to take L.A. in the wrong direction, and we should all be concerned about the direction she wants to take LAPD.”

When pressed by reporters about a possible endorsement, Caruso said, “I can’t answer that tonight or today. I’ll let you know.”

Caruso also declined to make an endorsement at a groundbreaking he attended with the mayor last month for the new Palisades Recreation Center, calling both Bass and Raman “tough choices.” Bass also sidestepped questions from The Times at the September event about whether she’d welcome Caruso’s endorsement.

Caruso funneled more than $100 million of his own fortune into his 2022 mayoral campaign, outspending Bass 11 to 1. Bass defeated Caruso by nearly 10 percentage points. Caruso didn’t run for the 2026 race, despite many expecting him to challenge Bass again.

Caruso said Tuesday that he and Bass haven’t always agreed on policy, but came together to help Pacific Palisades in a time of crisis. Caruso has played a prominent role in helping rebuild Pacific Palisades and Altadena following the fires.

The 67-year-old developer is behind popular L.A. malls, including the Grove and the Americana at Brand. He also owns Palisades Village, which first opened in 2018 and closed down after the fires destroyed much of downtown. Palisades Village reopened on Aug. 15, after 19 months and more than $100 million in renovations, Caruso said.

“I know what I’ve seen in the last year and a half, and the help she’s leaned in and given to this community,” Caruso said of Bass. “So, we did get together because it has to transcend politics, and we have to do the right thing.”

Bass and Caruso both acknowledged their longstanding relationship, dating back to Bass’s days in Sacramento, she said. The pair have been in constant communication since the 2022 mayoral race and started directly collaborating immediately after the Palisades fire, she said.

“My love for the city transcends politics, and I’m going to stand behind people that are doing right for the city and doing right for the people of the city that need the help the most,” Caruso said. “That’s why I’m standing here today.”

Caruso joined Bass Tuesday to announce Power Ready LA— an effort that will streamline how the Department of Water and Power delivers utility services to commercial and residential projects.

The effort will result in lower upfront costs for eligible housing and commercial projects, Bass said. It builds on an executive directive the mayor signed in April, which aims to cut delays, introduce tech automation and speed up building permits for residential and commercial development.

“For me, performance can’t be everything,” Miley Cyrus declared on Friday night, and you had to admire her choice of setting: onstage at the Hollywood Bowl in front of approximately 18,000 people who’d turned up precisely to see her perform.

A star since her teenage days on the Disney Channel’s “Hannah Montana,” the 33-year-old musician and actor was maybe half an hour into the first of two sold-out concerts at the iconic hillside amphitheater — a place close to Cyrus’ heart, as she explained in a videotaped intro recalling a gig she and her fiancé, Maxx Morando, caught last year by the French band Air.

“I step into wine, which soaks onto my boots,” she said in the dramatic black-and-white clip. “I don’t mind stained leather — it only adds to their character.”

Cyrus’ shows were billed as part of the rollout of her latest album, “Bass Persuades,” which came out in September (and which found her dropping her last name to go simply by Miley). Yet the two-night engagement is really meant to mark her grand return to the stage after she said a few years ago that she’d sworn off touring because it was too harmful to her mental health.

Is “grand” the right word for a comeback as equivocal as this one? Despite all the hype surrounding this weekend’s concerts, Cyrus spoke again and again Friday about how much less space for performance she has in her life these days than she used to; she talked repeatedly about her quest to balance her fans’ emotional needs with her own.

At one point, after singing a couple of numbers on a small B-stage about halfway up the bowl, she walked through the crowd back to the main stage, gripping and grinning the entire way. Then she described the toll her trip had just taken: “I appreciate each of you guys reaching out and touching me, and me getting to feel you. But I do want to say — it is a lot for me,” she said. “It is a little bit overwhelming.”

In an era of parasocial pop stardom, the radical honesty of Cyrus’ approach — her clear-eyed appraisal of the relationship that binds an idol and her audience — was kind of a thrill to behold. The problem was that her singing for the most part wasn’t.

As she described being overwhelmed, her band slowly revved up her song “Wrecking Ball.” It’s one of the great power ballads of the last 25 years, with a chorus as cathartic as any in modern pop; Cyrus, the showbiz lifer, surely understood the payoff she was building toward. Except when the moment arrived, she inexplicably dodged it, skipping the song’s first chorus and soft-pedaling the second — an anticlimax for the ages.

Indeed, Cyrus let the audience and her backup singers handle vocals for many of her biggest hits, among them “The Climb,” “Party in the U.S.A.” and “We Can’t Stop”; during that last one, she twerked for a second, evoking memories of the infamous 2013 MTV performance that briefly scandalized a nation.

She sang more heartily in songs from “Bass Persuades,” which would’ve been better news if that tuneless mishmash of bleary synths and dated club beats weren’t one of the year’s least likable pop records. (This month Variety reported that, after debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, the album took the biggest fall in chart history in its second week of release.)

The paradox of Cyrus’ career at this stage is that she wants to do the thing that nobody wants her to do — “Bass Persuades” is just the latest in a string of crummy LPs — and doesn’t want to do the thing that everybody wants her to do. Truly, her bad taste should be studied: On Friday, she welcomed Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips to the B-stage for a duet on “Karen Don’t Be Sad,” from the miserable psych-rock record they made together in 2015. Naturally, Cyrus said it was her favorite of her albums.

One highlight of the show was Cyrus’ tribute to her late godmother, Dolly Parton, whom she memorialized with a rendition of “Jolene” and with a funny and touching account of the time Parton tried unsuccessfully to get Cyrus to sing with her at the Bowl.

I also found myself moved near the end of the night by Cyrus’ performance of the only keeper on “Bass Persuades” — a dreamy little love song called “Let’s Get Married” for which Morando joined her onstage. As he played drums, she ran her hand tenderly over his chest before laying her head on his shoulder; the moment reminded me of that goofy intro video about the Air concert, which she likened to a bubble containing only the two of them.

“That’s how it feels when we’re together,” she said. “I think I’d live in that bubble.”

In the race to become L.A.’s next mayor, the city’s top cop — LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell — has become a lightning rod for debate.

The two candidates — incumbent Karen Bass and City Councilmember Nithya Raman — have staked out differing positions about how the Los Angeles Police Department has performed under McDonnell.

Raman has vowed to replace McDonnell, saying he has not “met the moment” given the department’s response to federal immigration raids. Bass has publicly backed the chief she hired two years ago, saying the LAPD could be thrown into disarray if McDonnell is removed before the 2028 Olympic Games.

Raman’s potential ouster of McDonnell and desire to push reforms on the LAPD has pitted her against the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the powerful union for rank-and-file officers that campaigned against Bass during her first election but is now backing her. The union has poured millions of dollars into attack ads against Raman, who has said she declined contributions from the organization in the past.

In an op-ed published in the Protective League’s monthly magazine earlier this year, union president Richard Mendoza called the Democratic Socialists of America, which has endorsed Raman, an “imminent threat to our members.”

Last week, Raman faced criticism for an Instagram video in which she appeared to slam McDonnell and the mayor, saying at one point “only you can stop fascist liars.” She later denied that she was referring to Bass or McDonnell, saying her remarks were improperly edited — and that she had the video pulled.

The Raman campaign did not respond to numerous requests for an interview about her vision for the LAPD.

Raman, a Harvard-educated urban planner, has sought to burnish her credentials as a political outsider by publicly calling for a change in LAPD leadership — but she hasn’t given a clear timeline on when she would replace McDonnell.

LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell greets Mayor Karen Bass during a ceremony at police headquarters in downtown Los Angeles on May 27.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Last week, Raman told ABC7 she expected to replace McDonnell in 2030, after he has finished his first five-year term. Hours later, she pulled back a bit, issuing a statement saying she expects to replace him prior to the end of his term, which concludes in late 2029.

“Chief McDonnell is Mayor Bass’s police chief,” her statement said. “I have made it clear that I would seek a chief who can keep Angelenos safe and restore trust with our immigrant communities.”

Her comments at a mayoral debate this week threw further uncertainty about who will run the LAPD if she gets the top job.

Raman sidestepped a question about whether she would replace McDonnell before the Olympics.

“I believe he’s lost the trust of Angelenos, especially in light of the ICE raids,” she said, adding that she wasn’t sure that she could make a “unilateral decision” to fire McDonnell outright. Bass pounced on the comment, saying that the fact that Raman didn’t know the mayor has that authority to get rid of a police chief shows she is unfit for the office.

The LAPD didn’t immediately respond to a request Thursday for an interview with McDonnell.

Asked about Raman’s remarks during his regular appearance on Fox 11 Los Angeles on Wednesday, McDonnell said he found it “problematic” to hear criticism of the LAPD’s response to civil unrest from someone “who wasn’t there.”

He defended the department’s protest response, saying his officers acted appropriately when confronted by unruly demonstrators hurling bottles, bricks, Molotov cocktails and commercial-grade fireworks. Fifty-two officers suffered injuries, ranging from concussions to hearing loss, he said. Such “riotous situations” necessitated the use of tear gas against crowds, he said, something the department hadn’t done in decades.

“It was getting to a point where it could become a deadly force situation, which we were trying to avoid at all costs,” he said. “I don’t think it could’ve been done differently that could’ve had a better outcome.”

City Councilmember Nithya Raman speaks during a debate with incumbent Mayor Karen Bass on Oct. 13.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

Conventional wisdom holds that new mayors will eventually select their own chief, a decision that is considered as important as any in defining a city leader’s legacy. Some have waited longer than others to do it. Bass, for instance, oversaw the reappointment of McDonnell’s predecessor, Michel Moore, shortly after her election and stood by him for a year before Moore’s abrupt resignation in early 2024.

Mayors in other big cities have faced similar dilemmas.

In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist whom Raman is sometimes compared to, recently announced that he intends to retain NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, in a move that was decried by his progressive base. Mamdani told local media that he believed that Tisch was right for the job, based on a proven track record of rooting out corruption and had overseen a crime drop as commissioner, which is the equivalent of a police chief in L.A.

Bass selected McDonnell to lead the LAPD in November 2024 after a lengthy nationwide search.

His appointment was viewed with surprise in local political circles, where some questioned why a progressive mayor like Bass, with a background in community organizing, would hitch her fortunes to a law-and-order chief. Others argued that McDonnell was an appealing choice: An LAPD veteran who offered experience and respect after serving as the chief in Long Beach and later as L.A. County sheriff.

After numerous scandals under Moore, McDonnell was seen as offering stability while the city prepared for the massive security challenges of the World Cup and Olympic Games. In McDonnell, his supporters say, the mayor has an honest and principled leader who has managed to steady a department beset by low morale, dwindling staffing levels and aging facilities. Violent crime has fallen to historic lows under his watch, as it has it many other U.S. cities.

McDonnell, however, has faced withering scrutiny over a dramatic rise in police shootings last year and for the department’s use of hard foam projectiles, tear gas, horse-mounted officers and other tactics against protesters. Within the LAPD, some have also criticized McDonnell for taking a detached approach to running the department and ceding control to underlings, such as Assistant Chief Dominic Choi.

During Tuesday’s debate, Raman suggested that under McDonnell the LAPD has drifted back to being a more opaque, closed-off agency that no longer publishes basic information such as neighborhood-level crime statistics.

In a recent interview with The Times, Bass signaled her frustration with the slow pace of change within the LAPD.

Without singling out McDonnell by name, Bass said she was concerned about the lack of progress on revamping LAPD’s much-maligned disciplinary system, which the chief oversees and which — depending on who you ask — either punishes officers too harshly or fails to hold them accountable.

Bass said that when she toured police station houses after being elected, the number one complaint she heard was about the perception that lower-ranking officers are punished more severely than command staff.

“They feel that command gets away with a lot of things that the rank and file does not,” she said. “So I feel like the reform of the disciplinary system has not gone fast enough, and I am concerned about that.”

Bass has also vowed to make a priority of addressing police shootings of civilians, particularly those involving people experiencing mental health crises. Last month, she signed an executive directive calling for an outside review of the LAPD’s policies and training, which she referred to as “woefully inadequate.”

Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell speaks at a news conference at the Hall of Justice on Aug. 6.

(Arwen Clemans / Los Angeles Times)

If McDonnell has any doubts about his future, he hasn’t hinted at them during recent public appearances, often talking about the department’s role in the Olympics.

Bass told The Times that a push to replace McDonnell right before the 2028 Olympic Games would leave the LAPD with a leadership vacuum just as its leaders are supposed to be focused on security plans for that event. The last time city leaders recruited a new chief, the search process was nationwide, lasting more than 10 months, she said.

“I think that [Raman] is naive on what it means to do that,” Bass said. “I think she’s naive, and not understanding the instability to the department when leadership is in flux. And so if it took her the same amount of time, that means we’d have a new police chief about seven to eight months before one of the most high-profile security events in U.S. history.”

LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell with his wife Kathy, right, is introduced as the 59th chief of the Los Angeles Police Department with Dr. Erroll Southers, then the president of the Los Angeles Police Commission, left, and Mayor Karen Bass on Nov. 14, 2024.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

In some ways, Raman and Bass are not as far apart on public safety as they previously were. Both candidates have been critical of the license plate reader company Flock Safety, advocated for investing in alternatives to policing and have recently indicated that they are committed to keeping the LAPD from shrinking any further. And since launching her mayoral bid, Raman’s campaign has publicly distanced itself from the “defund the police” movement that Bass has consistently rebuffed.

Where the two candidates diverge most sharply was over a package of police raises negotiated by Bass in 2023 that Raman said has deepened the city’s financial problems. Sold as a way to boost recruitment, the pay increases are among the reasons the police union has endorsed Bass’ reelection. The next mayor will be asked to negotiate a new police contract, which is set to expire next year.

Matt Klink, an L.A.-based Republican political consultant, said that law enforcement groups, such as the Protective League, were skeptical of Bass when she first took office but now back her because she has “shown through her first term in office that she has consistently supported the police.” He said that Raman, on the other hand, has played to the far left by villainizing McDonnell and downplaying concerns about safety.

“Mayor Bass has a stronger record of supporting the police,” he said. “She backed our contracts and our budgets — she has generally supported public safety.”

UCLA professor David Turner said despite his wariness of Bass’ centrist drift, he and other progressives are equally skeptical of Raman, who, has repeatedly voted to increase the LAPD budget without any meaningful efforts to rein in police misconduct.

“That money was proposed by Mayor Bass and voted and approved by Councilmember Nithya Raman,” said Turner, who runs Million Dollar Hoods, which seeks to map the impact of mass incarceration. Still, he said, he hopes that Raman’s tough talk about McDonnell will translate into more accountability for the LAPD.

“What I’m looking for and what L.A. progressives are looking for is a certain level of boldness and a willingness not to capitulate to the [Protective League] and their whims,” he said.

Times staff writers David Zahniser and James Queally contributed to this report.

With three weeks left to go until election day and polls showing her on the brink of losing, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has begun to channel the Sun King himself, Louis XIV:

L’État, c’est moi.

Gaslighting voters by insisting the political establishment that has left Los Angeles a mess and that she personifies is worth keeping in office for four more years is her only hope for victory. It’s a wild strategy that reached a crescendo during Tuesday night’s debate, as Bass kept bringing up the fact that L.A.’s ancien régime just doesn’t like her democratic socialist opponent, Nithya Raman.

“Your colleagues have a very difficult time working with you,” Bass snapped at one point, later claiming that Raman’s constituents don’t care for her even though the council member won reelection two years ago. The mayor twice bragged that immigrant rights groups support her; twice referenced Imelda Padilla, the moderate San Fernando Valley council member whose internet dragging of Raman has been out of the Burn Book from “Mean Girls”; and described her opponent as “not ready for prime time.”

Well, the way the mayor’s term has gone in the last couple of years, if it was a prime-time TV show, it might be called “Breaking Bad 2.” And it wouldn’t exactly be a hit.

If it were, two-thirds of Angelenos wouldn’t have decided to vote for anyone but Bass in the primary.

Bass arguably won the debate Tuesday night, but it felt like the technical “victory” — and that’s probably the wrong word — of a politician who is simply more polished. The mayor really needed a knockout punch, and that she did not achieve.

Instead, she in effect told voters that the last four years of disasters, inefficiencies and ineptitude are still a better option than taking a chance on the City Hall equivalent of the classroom dork.

Yet people are so angry at Bass and what she represents that a democratic socialist has a great shot at becoming L.A.’s next mayor — an unthinkable prospect even last year, with no one to blame but the ruling class that has left this great city hobbled, cynical and at the point of giving up.

So the establishment doesn’t like Raman: So what? And: Boo-hoo.

Casting Raman as a political leper while asserting that Bass represents stability and good times ahead isn’t the winning strategy that Bass and Raman’s critics think it is. It’s really just a sad coda for Bass.

She’s been a good soldier for L.A., someone who has participated in nearly every progressive movement to pass through Southern California since volunteering for Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign as a teenager nearly 60 years ago. Even as Bass embarked on a 22-year political career that has seen stops in Sacramento, Washington and City Hall, the native Angeleno always successfully depicted herself as a political outsider.

Because she was: a Black woman in a realm not meant for people like her. She was someone who co-founded a pioneering nonprofit in the crucible of a changing South L.A. in the 1990s and always seemed to land on the right side of history until becoming mayor in 2022.

Sadly, Bass didn’t turn out to be the visionary L.A. desperately needed.

Mayor Karen Bass, left, sits for Tuesday’s debate with Councilmember Nithya Raman, right. Between them are NBC4 reporter Conan Nolan, NBC4 News anchor Colleen Williams and Telemundo 52 anchor Alejandra Ortiz.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

Like so many baby boomers, Bass eventually became The Man without realizing it. Today, she not only stands as the figurehead of the city’s liberal potentates, but she’s also calling on them to rally around one of their own — and they have responded in kind. Democratic politicians, bureaucrats and labor leaders, once rabble-rousers like Bass who nowadays seem to exist mostly to keep their sinecure, have labored mightily to convince unbelieving voters that Bass deserves another shot.

That’s always been the marvel of L.A.’s political establishment. It can take someone like Bass, once considered so radical that her days visiting communist Cuba in the 1970s torpedoed her chances of becoming then-presidential candidate Joe Biden’s running mate in 2020, and transform her into an anodyne incumbent. It can make democratic socialists like Councilmembers Eunisses Hernandez, Ysabel Jurado and Hugo Soto-Martínez — people who explicitly ran to take on a sclerotic City Hall — full-throated Bass supporters who have refused to support one of their own in Raman.

Raman was also becoming part of L.A.’s political chosen ones, to the point she initially endorsed Bass. But she now embraces her turn as the machine’s biggest sellout — whether it’s a true change of heart or a chameleonic self-serving measure, as critics maintain, remains to be seen. It was Raman who said at the end of the debate, “When the mayor is confronted with issues, she blames the system. With your support, we can actually change the system” — catnip to enough Angelenos that Raman seems to be at the cusp of victory and a monumental upset.

After the debate, NBC reporter Robert Kovacic interviewed elected officials to let them hype up Bass or Raman. The latter’s proxy was City Controller Kenneth Mejia, another person loathed by L.A.’s political know-it-alls because he keeps bucking the establishment. Mejia gushed about how Raman “destroyed” Bass with the enthusiasm of a Swiftie.

Bass’ supporters were Councilmember Monica Rodriguez and Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur, both of whom gravely parroted their candidate’s warnings about just how dangerous a Raman mayoralty would be. Chavez Zbur reduced Raman’s not-bad performance to a “host of complaints” — ironic, because most of Bass’ night was spent bashing Raman instead of offering much of anything positive.

Rodriguez, meanwhile, told Kovacic that voters shouldn’t choose Raman because “we can’t afford that level of indecisive leadership.”

I rolled my eyes when Rodriguez — whose office declined a chance for her to sit down with me to talk up why Latinos should support Bass — said that.

She’s part of the fabled eastern San Fernando Valley Latino political machine, another group of former gatecrashers who assumed the trappings and stylings of the old guard once they assumed power. Rodriguez long blasted Bass with the same venom she reserved for Raman until the latter mounted her challenge — but now that Rodriguez’s power is under threat, she’s all of a sudden decided to become Bass’ ride-or-die?

Moves like that remind me of another French monarch, Louis XV. “After me, the deluge,” he is supposed to have said, a warning of what would happen once his reign ended.

If Bass’ vow to rule the same as before represents a decisive leader, more and more Angelenos seem to be saying, give us the Raman flood.

Besides, nobody ever said, nor ever put on a campaign sticker, “The establishment? It’s cool!”

In the Los Angeles mayoral debate Tuesday night, I was reminded of two things.

First, as I’ve said before, it’s no surprise that roughly one-third of likely voters remain undecided with less than three weeks to go until election day.

Second, there is one key difference between the two candidates: We know who Mayor Karen Bass is, but we don’t yet know who Councilmember Nithya Raman is, even though she’s been leading in most polls.

Those two points are connected. I think a majority of voters want a change at City Hall because of the marginal progress on homelessness, the erosion of basic services and the bad decisions before and after the Palisades disaster, among a host of other issues.

But they’re not sure what they’d be getting in Raman.

Why not?

If you haven’t already seen the story a few days ago by The Times’ longtime City Hall reporting ace, Dave Zahniser, you need to check it out right here.

The headline neatly sums it up:

“L.A. mayoral candidate Nithya Raman has strong opinions. But they often change.”

Raman has flip-flopped so many times, it’s as if she’s having a political identity crisis, which is not a great selling point for a candidate.

She endorsed Bass, an ally, for reelection and then abruptly and surprisingly announced that she was running against her.

She rose to power as a darling of the Democratic Socialists of America and vowed to defund the police, only to later support an LAPD budget increase.

She embraced the so-called mansion tax, then said it needed an overhaul.

She supported and helped fund Bass’ signature homelessness initiative, Inside Safe, and now has turned against it.

“That’s the real wild card,” said Sara Sadhwani, assistant professor of politics at Pomona College. “She has flip-flopped so extensively on policy that it’s unclear which version of her values we would get.”

Look, it’s not uncommon for a candidate of the left, or the right, to move toward the center to broaden support. And there’s nothing wrong with learning on the job and evolving. It’s all too rare, in fact.

The problem for Raman is that in somersaulting around on core issues, she’s alienating some of the people she would need as allies in order to be an effective mayor.

They might come around, because in the city’s shared system of power, there are times when the City Council and mayor need to paddle in the same direction in order to get anywhere. But among the 15 City Council members, 13 have endorsed Bass, and that support includes even the DSA wing of the council.

I like the idea of a rebel as L.A. mayor, but the job is hard enough with City Council allies. Without them, Raman could be cooked. And it’s not as if she’d have an easy time winning support for much of anything from the powerful public employee unions and traditional business interests, which are for the most part aligned with Bass, for better and for worse.

Both candidates had their moments in the debate, although I gave the edge to Bass. During The Times’ live chat, I said I think L.A. really needs a leadership change, and I think Raman did not prove that she’s the answer.

It’s probably the second-most important political job in the state, in one of the great cities of the world, and along with the ducking and punching, I wanted more love, more poetry, more unbridled passion and a contagious sense of possibility.

And please, all you Spencer Pratt toadies, don’t send me your whiny little notes about how he was the guy all along. Identifying some of the obvious problems is easy enough. (I do it all the time.) Having a plan is another matter, and that’s why I never ran for mayor, and why Pratt faded out of the picture.

So what next, as the final three weeks of the campaign play out?

If I were Raman, who is 45, I’d go heavy on touting the work she’s done on eviction protections and capping rent hikes, because nailing down younger voters could give her the keys to the throne. On homelessness, she knows the issue better than most, has detailed what’s wrong with the Bass program, has made headway in her own district, and has laid out a plan to speed up progress and efficiency citywide.

But her best argument is that City Hall and the entrenched political establishment need a major shake-up, because the machine is now a jalopy.

“We cannot afford another four years of decline, of mismanagement, of excuses,” Raman said in the debate.

As for Bass, 73, you can’t count her out just yet because she’s a fighter, and she’s better at campaigning than at being mayor. She also is likely to benefit from the fact that older voters — who are most likely to go to the polls — favor her by a huge margin.

“You are not ready for prime time,” Bass told her former ally during the debate, and Bass also hammered Raman for taking “different positions on different days of the week.”

In 2005, Mayor Jim Hahn became the first L.A. mayor to lose a reelection bid in more than three decades, falling to Antonio Villaraigosa. It was a rout, at 58% for Villaraigosa to 41% for Hahn.

I don’t see a rout this time.

The question for Los Angeles is this:

Have you had enough of the mayor you know, and are you ready to roll the dice on someone you don’t?

steve.lopez@latimes.com

Karen Bass and Nithya Raman faced off Tuesday night in a debate hosted by NBC4 and Telemundo52 in Universal City. It was the L.A. mayoral candidates’ last head-to-head before the Nov. 3 election.

Times columnists Lorraine Ali, Gustavo Arellano and Steve Lopez weigh in on the highlights and lowlights.

Arellano: Raman had the line of the night at the very beginning, channeling — of all politicians — Ronald Reagan, one of the last people you’d think of as an Angeleno, even though he absolutely was.

“Are you better off than you were four years ago?” she asked while looking directly into the camera.

For the vast majority of L.A. residents, the answer is a resounding no.

Up until tonight, Raman has done a good job of communicating a message of hope and change, while Bass, as the incumbent, has repeatedly tripped on her record over the biblically bad four years of her first term.

But I didn’t hear that Raman tonight — partly because Bass made her play defense, from her first answer to her closing statement.

The mayor won the debate, if we’re judging by forensics. She rarely looked down at her notepad, unlike Raman. It’s something I’ve never noticed about Raman before — either a new nervous tic, or an indication that the city councilmember can’t seem to speak with conviction, which has been a frequent critique against her.

Bass’ barrages got to Raman more than a few times, leading her to talk over the NBC and Telemundo moderators or even shush them. A whining Raman is not a good Raman, which her advisors need to drill into her sooner rather than later.

But Raman’s answers never meandered and weren’t too elliptical, even when she was pressed by the able moderators. Since she’s ahead in most reputable polls, Raman’s job for the night was not failing — and she cleared that low, low hurdle.

Bass, meanwhile, needed to deliver a knockout punch. Instead, as a politico friend who cares for neither candidate texted me after the debate, she won one round. There are only so many more rounds before Election Day for her to catch up — and Bass can’t rely on just winning on points anymore, especially with an opponent who’s now running like she’s ahead.

During closing remarks, Raman hearkened back to her Reagan shout-out, stating, “We cannot afford another four years of decline, of mismanagement, of excuses.” She then pivoted to her positivity message, smiling while proclaiming, “We can be joyful and ambitious again.” The more she sticks to that upbeat vibe, the better she comes off to a voter base tired of the doom and gloom that has fallen over L.A. under Bass.

Bass, meanwhile, came off as funereal, beginning with, “It has been the honor of a lifetime to serve in the city that I was born and raised.” That’s how you start a retirement announcement, not another four-year term. Let’s see what the voters say on Election Day.

Incumbent Karen Bass during a mayoral debate against City Councilmember Nithya Raman Tuesday night.

(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)

City Councilmember Nithya Raman during Tuesday night’s debate against Mayor Karen Bass.

(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)

Lopez: After watching the debate, I don’t think this thing is over.

Yes, Raman has been ahead in polling, and Bass is saddled with high negativity ratings, the baggage of the Palisades fire and the continued challenge of homelessness.

But this debate could have been a knockout punch for Raman, and instead, I think Bass won the night, not just by touting her achievements and responding sharply to criticism, but by seeming to have a better command of the moment.

My colleague Lorraine Ali made a good point — how many people were actually watching this debate? Probably not many, so it’s not like this one-hour back-and-forth tips the scale.

But as has been noted, a huge percentage of likely voters remain undecided. Maybe that’s because they’re not in love with either candidate. Or maybe they’re ready to move on from Bass but aren’t sure about who Raman really is. If they watched tonight, looking for an answer, I’m not sure they got one.

Raman came into elected office as a darling of the Democratic Socialists of America and was a high-profile member of that wing on the City Council. But even the council’s DSA members didn’t endorse her bid for mayor. In fact, Bass has gotten support from 13 of the 15 council members.

So how will Raman build a coalition in a city where mayoral power is shared with the council, and matters like homelessness are the joint responsibility of the city and the county, and any progress is stymied without strong mayoral relationships in Sacramento and D.C.?

It’s possible that the council will come around to her if she’s elected, because just as the mayor needs the council to get much done, the council needs the mayor.

But I’d like to know more about who Raman is and why she’s flip-flopped so much (on support for the LAPD, on the mansion tax, on the Inside Safe homeless initiative, etc., etc.), as my colleague David Zahniser reported just the other day.

Learning and evolving can be a good thing. But voters need to know who Raman is, what her vision is for the city and how she expects to lead.

I didn’t get that in this debate. Bass, whose first term works against her as much as for her, is still hanging on and hanging in.

It may come down to whether older voters, who are likely to favor Bass, turn out in greater numbers than younger voters, who are likely to favor Raman.

But from where I sit, it ain’t over. Except maybe for the Dodgers.

Ali: Raman was ahead in the polls headed into tonight’s mayoral debate, so her job wasn’t quite as hard as Bass’, who is fighting for her political life. Raman just needed to knock the mayor off balance — then keep her there for an hour. But that didn’t happen.

Bass came off composed, confident and in command of the conversation, while Raman appeared less sure of herself, frequently looking down to check her notes while defending her work on key concerns such as homelessness (until recently, she was chair of the city’s housing and homelessness committee) and attacking Bass for leaving the city “leaderless” during crises such as the Palisades and Lineage fires.

The overall tone of the debate was less heated than when the two candidates met in August to battle it out sans Spencer Pratt, the former reality TV personality and Republican contender who lost in the primary.

But there were moments Tuesday when the women’s history as colleagues — and onetime allies — informed their attacks on one another.

Bass said Raman was “not ready for prime time” and that she had a “contemptuous” relationship with her constituents. Raman continually pointed out that Bass had failed to remedy L.A.’s homelessness crisis, and did so from the perspective of someone who had worked closely with the mayor.

There’s still a question around how many folks actually watched the debate, and if the candidates’ points will resonate in subsequent clips or memes. Neither contender has the charm or spark of, say, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and as vapid as it may sound, charisma matters.

Three weeks out from the election and there still isn’t a lot of excitement over the mayoral choices on the ballot. This debate didn’t help that cause, or juice the race.

Lucky for Bass, she has the presence of a leader, and that gave her the edge over Raman tonight. But was anyone watching beyond my fellow columnists Gustavo Arellano and Steve Lopez?

Ali: The stakes are high for both contenders, yet I wonder how many Angelenos will be watching.

It’s surprising the number of otherwise politically aware folks who had no idea the debate was taking place tonight until I mentioned it. Then they were irked to find it airing on network TV: “Who still has cable?!” Apparently, venturing onto Telemundo or NBC’s live feed is a bridge too far. But it shouldn’t be.

Raman is still a mystery to many, even though she’s polling ahead. Tonight, she needs to definitively show who she is beyond The Candidate Who Is Not Karen Bass. Bass has to defend her record, of course, but also contend with the electorate’s insatiable need for change — even if they know very little about what that change may bring.

As for the rest of us? Tune in! The future of L.A. requires your attention.

Lopez: Picking up on Gustavo’s framing of the debate as Round 3, we’re talking about two pugilists who used to fight for the same club, more or less, and now enter the ring looking to take each other out. So it’s personal, and could indeed get nasty.

Raman’s job in the debate is a little easier, in some ways. Though I don’t put much stock in polls, she’s ahead on points by virtue of Bass’ high negative rating alone. And yet, think of the pressure on Raman to seal the deal.

If the challenger doesn’t prevail tonight and go on to win the election next month, she could be setting herself up for a lonely political future, having alienated more than a few former allies in her quest to evict the mayor from City Hall.

For Bass, the stakes are just as high. A 21-year political career is on the line.

I hope that along with the punches and counter-punches, we get some inspiration, too, and a workable game plan for making a great but troubled city a better place to call home, even if the Dodgers end up breaking our hearts.

Arellano: Will the Third Bass-Raman debate be a classic — or a dud?

Ali-Frazier. Morales-Barrera. Liddell-Couture. Trilogies are hallowed in the worlds of boxing and mixed-martial arts as case studies of evenly matched rivals to wallop each other in the first two matches, creating the setting for a final showdown and chance at eternal bragging rights — and usually, a title.

Will tonight’s bout between L.A. mayoral candidates Karen Bass and Nithya Raman, scheduled to air at 7 p.m. on KNBC, rise to those rarified levels?

The makings of a classic are there. Bass was the wily incumbent during her primary face-off with Raman who let fellow mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt land most of the attacks against their shared opponent. That left Raman uttering loopy word salads when she wasn’t crying conspiracy between the two. But the council member nevertheless made it into the general election against Bass, and dominated their second debate, hosted in August by the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn.

All of a sudden, Bass was a staggering champion lunging at a revived Raman, who swung and stung and ducked the way only a hungry up-and-comer can.

The two go into their rubber match each promoting polls that they claim show voters back them, while letting proxies launch attack ads that promise to get uglier and more ubiquitous as Election Day nears. Expect Bass at tonight’s debate to try and assert her dominance early with equal part offense against Raman and defense of her record. Expect Raman, whom City Hall opponents have long trashed as conflict-averse, to focus on a message of possibility and positivity while holding her ground and striking back — and hard — when necessary.

Will tonight cement the Bass-Raman trilogy as an electoral classic — or end it on a deflating note? One thing’s for sure: the two need to leave everything on the debate stage if either wants to win and get that much closer to become L.A.’s Madam Mayor.

Hours before Nithya Raman took the stage at Jewish Federation L.A.’s mayoral forum this week, Mayor Karen Bass’ campaign blasted out a press release accusing the council member of skipping a City Council Jewish Heritage Month event to appear on Hasan Piker’s livestream.

The Raman camp’s response: “The Mayor is deliberately spreading misinformation that the public record directly contradicts,” said Liz Garcia, a campaign spokesperson.

Piker is a left-wing streamer on the platform Twitch and a fierce critic of Israel. Raman appeared on his stream on May 15, where he asked her if she thought Israel was committing genocide in Palestine. She said she did.

That same day, Raman missed a Jewish Heritage Month event at City Hall. Debbie Paperman, who is on the executive board of Democrats for Israel Los Angeles, said Raman told her that she had not been feeling well.

The Bass campaign, citing the fact that Raman appeared on Piker’s stream the same day, fired off an email to reporters claiming the councilmember had lied about her reasons for missing the Jewish heritage event.

The Raman campaign said that Raman was, in fact, ill.

Video from the May 15 council meeting shows Raman was present at the start of the meeting, but no longer at her seat during the heritage event, in which Councilmember Bob Blumenfield celebrated Jewish athletes. More than an hour later, Raman was back in council to make a speech and introduce other speakers for Hapa Day, celebrating people of mixed Asian and Pacific Island heritage, during which she said she wasn’t feeling well.

Raman’s team said she was still at City Hall during the Jewish Heritage Month event, but that she left council chambers due to her illness.

She felt better later that afternoon, the Raman camp said, allowing her to appear on Piker’s show.

Paperman said she wasn’t convinced. “It happened that you were sick for the multiple hours this was going on and you happened to get better to go on this psycho’s stream?” said Paperman. “I don’t believe that.”

Piker, meanwhile, shot back at the mayor for using his name to try to dissuade voters from supporting Raman.

“Karen Bass is deploying the same nasty tactic that Donald Trump used recently at a press conference, wondering out loud why any Jewish person would vote for Democrats, due to my presence in the big tent,” he told The Times in a text message.

Piker said he will vote for Raman, though he supported Bass against billionaire Rick Caruso in 2022.

“I was also a fan of [her] past work in Cuba,” he told The Times. “Karen Bass used to be quite the radical.”

Bass swings up in new poll

Bass will need to rely on undecided Republican and conservative voters to propel her to a mayoral victory, a new poll paid for by a group supporting her found.

The incumbent mayor is trailing Raman by 4 percentage points, 39% to 35%, with a quarter of the electorate still undecided, according to the initial results from an FM3 Research poll that was commissioned by the Central City Assn.’s PAC, an independent expenditure group supporting the mayor.

When the pollsters gave likely voters additional, critical information about both candidates, Bass shot up by 5 points and took a narrow lead over Raman, 40% to 39%, with 21% undecided, according to FM3.

“The undecided voters — including many that say they will refuse to make a choice between Bass and Raman by Election Day — are disproportionately: Republicans, conservatives, 65+, homeowners, Democratic women over the age of 50 and those who do not hold a college degree,” wrote the research company in a polling memorandum.

The poll surveyed 809 likely L.A. voters from Sept. 21-28. It has a 3.5% margin of error.

“The mayoral race remains a statistical tie,” said Nella McOsker, the president of the Central City Assn. “Our poll demonstrates that some of the most reliable voting blocs swing to Bass once they fully learn both candidates’ records.”

A poll conducted between Sept. 15 and Sept. 20 by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by The Times, found Raman was ahead 39% to 28%.

Raman allies engage in trash talk

A woman walks out of her home carrying a full garbage bag, then starts venting about the high cost of trash pickup.

“Karen Bass has nearly bankrupted L.A., so the city doubled my trash fees. Isn’t L.A. expensive enough?” the woman says angrily, before slamming the lid on a black trash bin.

That message is at the heart of a campaign video created by Streets For All, a transportation advocacy group now spending about $1.2 million to promote Raman and tear down Bass.

That ad is missing a key piece of information: Raman voted to hike those trash fees several times last year, even as two of her council colleagues spoke out against them.

“I was one of two no votes,” said City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, who is supporting Bass’ reelection, in an interview. “She never once pushed back.”

Rodriguez called the ad misleading, saying it implies that Raman was an opponent of the fee hikes.

Michael Schneider, who runs the Streets For All campaign committee, defended the 14-second spot, saying council members hiked the trash fees to make up for bad budget decisions made by the mayor — including her support for a $2.6-billion upgrade of the Convention Center.

The council boosted the trash fee to $55.95 per month last year for small apartment buildings, up from $24.33. For single-family homes, the monthly fee was also hiked to $55.95, up from $36.32.

The city’s budget advisors said the increases were needed in large part because the monthly fees had not been increased in 17 years. As a result, L.A.’s residential trash customers were not being charged the full cost of garbage pickup, leaving the city budget to cover the difference.

“Kick it in the Park” gets Olympic makeover

L.A.’s summer of 2026 will be remembered for stifling heat, innumerable Dodgers injuries and, especially, World Cup watch parties.

Teams, corporate sponsors and the city of Los Angeles welcomed in the world, producing large crowds and kumbaya moments — with fans of opposing teams partying side-by-side in (relative) peace and harmony.

Mayor Karen Bass’ “Kick it in the Park” events drew a total of 45,000 fans over the length of the quadrennial soccer tournament. A survey of about 2,000 of them registered overwhelming support for the free shindigs.

Paul Krekorian, executive director of the mayor’s Office of Major Events, declared victory in a meeting with City Council members this week. He also said that substantial planning is already underway to bring the city even more viewing parties and “activations” during the 2028 Olympics.

While the city hosted a maximum of three viewing parties a day during the World Cup, it plans to stage as many as 15 a day when the Olympics come to town. A list has been drawn up of possible locations for the festivities — spread around every corner of the city and distant from Olympic venues to avoid overcrowding.

Among the possible viewing party locations: MacArthur Park, the Greek Theatre, Pan Pacific Park, Leimert Park Plaza, Koreatown, Penmar Recreation Center, Echo Park Lake, Angels Gate Park and the Watts Towers.

Given the welter of Olympic events, it will be a challenge to schedule the parties, whose centerpieces are usually big screen projections of the live events, with food and live performances often thrown in.

State of play

— SPLIT ON GAZA: Bass and Raman split on Tuesday over whether Israel has committed genocide in Gaza during the Israel Gaza war. The two candidates gave their opinions during a forum hosted by Jewish Federation Los Angeles. Raman said she agrees with the experts who use the term, while Bass said she would not use the term genocide to describe Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza.

— WILDFIRE FAILURES: A long-awaited independent investigation commissioned by Gov. Gavin Newsom offered the most in-depth review of the Jan. 7, 2025, Palisades and Eaton fires, describing the chaos and poor communication that made firefighting, rescues and evacuations even more difficult. The 724-page report also cited the Los Angeles Fire Department’s failure to fully extinguish the Jan. 1 Lachman fire, which reignited days later, and Los Angeles County’s failure to provide timely evacuation alerts in Altadena.

— ESTAMOS CON WHOM?: Recent polling by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by The Times, found that likely Latino voters favor Councilmember Raman over incumbent Bass by a wide margin — 45% to 21%, with 34% undecided. That’s an even bigger lead than Raman had over Bass with voters overall in the most recent Berkeley IGS/L.A. Times poll.

— VOTER GUIDES: The Times released its much-anticipated voter guides for the November election this week, including a mayoral guide and a guide to the Council District 9 race, among many others.

— OLYMPIC OBSCURA: The nonprofit organizer of the 2028 Summer Olympics, LA28, has provided less information in its annual reports than it agreed to in a 2021 contract with the city. The group has stopped reporting the contracts it signs over $1 million, leaving taxpayers with less information about the work going into the Games. LA28 says it has provided all necessary info.

The city also asked LA28 to take out a $650-million insurance policy, and agree to cover any potential losses above that amount, should the Games be canceled by a calamity.

— LAPD BLUES: Secret recordings documenting LAPD officers making racist comments have renewed questions about whether the force, which is now less than 50% white, has made forward progress on stamping out prejudice in its ranks.

— STORM’S BREWING: L.A.’s sanitation agency is bracing for the coming ‘Super’ El Niño, which could wreak havoc with the city’s Hyperion sewage treatment plant.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program went to East Hollywood in Hugo Soto-Martínez’s district on Tuesday, where they moved 61 people indoors near Beverly Boulevard and Madison Avenue. On Thursday, Inside Safe moved 27 people indoors near Louvre Street and Ralston Avenue in Pacoima in Rodriguez’s district.
• On the docket next week: On Wednesday, the City Council’s transportation committee will be discussing an independent evaluation of the city’s Vision Zero Program.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to LAontheRecord@latimes.com. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is in the fight of her political life, facing a vigorous challenge from City Councilmember Nithya Raman, a savvy campaigner who was until recently a close ally.

Raman publicly endorsed Bass at the start of the year, then launched her own mayoral bid weeks later, saying the city “can’t seem to manage the basics.” She came in second behind Bass in the June 2 primary election, edging out the flashier and more attention-grabbing Spencer Pratt, a onetime reality television star.

Now, Raman and Bass — both Democrats — are heading toward a generational showdown.

Bass, 72, is a veteran lawmaker who served in Sacramento and Washington D.C., before coming to City Hall. She’s drawn support from more traditional corners of the city’s political establishment, including Los Angeles County’s Democratic Party and its Federation of Labor, which represents hundreds of thousands of workers.

Raman, 45, arrived in L.A. in 2013 and launched a City Council bid six years later. She’s been endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America and other groups that are newer to city politics, including Streets For All, which seeks to expand the city’s bus and bike lane network.

Bass has been dogged by high unfavorable ratings since the Palisades fire, which broke out in January 2025 while she was out of the country, destroying thousands of homes and leaving 12 dead. She has faced criticism over her handling of the wildfire response and recovery work.

Since the primary, the mayor’s political challenges have intensified.

The Lineage cold-storage warehouse fire broke out in June, causing communities on L.A.’s Eastside to cope with the stench of rotting meat for two months. The latest homeless count showed an increase in the number of people living on the street, dealing a setback to a mayor who staked her reputation on the issue.

Raman contends that Bass is simply a bad manager, pointing to those crises and other problems facing the city.

“I respect very much her long career of public service,” Raman said. “But the election has to be about results.”

The mayor isn’t backing down.

She says Raman has little to show for her three years running the council’s powerful housing and homeless committee. She contends that Raman is on the wrong side of the issues — particularly public safety — and does not work well with others.

“It says something that you do not have strong working relationships with any of your colleagues. Not one,” Bass said. “Each council member had a story to tell about how difficult she was to work with.”

Two social media influencers who filed an ethics complaint against Tom Steyer’s California gubernatorial campaign have submitted new complaints to the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission and the Los Angeles Ethics Commission, accusing Nithya Raman’s mayoral campaign of paying influencers without proper disclosure.

Their complaints, it turns out, received a legal assist from the campaign of L.A. Mayor Karen Bass.

The metadata for a draft of their filings last week revealed that they had been created with the help of the law firm used by Bass’ election campaign.

Kaitlyn Hennessy, who filed the complaint with Beatrice Gomberg, acknowledged to The Times that the Bass campaign steered them to the Kaufman Legal Group, which helped prepare the complaint.

Bass’ campaign said it is picking up the tab for the legal work but wasn’t paying Hennessy and Gomberg for their efforts.

The complaint focused on posts by comedian and TV personality Adam Conover and influencer-turned-Raman staffer Eric Cheng, along with a host of so-called “meme” accounts, which repost content created by others, sometimes at the behest of political campaigns.

The Raman campaign said it has done nothing wrong and denied any wrongdoing on behalf of Cheng. Conover also denied any wrongdoing.

The Bass campaign’s decision to cover legal costs for the complaints is unlikely to pose ethics issues, according to legal experts consulted by The Times, provided the payments are reported by the campaign in its disclosure reports, which the campaign said it intends to do.

“As long as a campaign is transparent in reporting its expenditures, there’s nothing inherently wrong for a campaign to have its lawyers file an ethics complaint for the campaign or somebody else with their informed consent,” said Jeffrey Daar, a former president of the L.A. Ethics Commission.

Conover’s posts promoting Raman already attracted scrutiny in ethics complaints filed in May by former L.A. City Council candidate Dylan Kendall. The investigations into those complaints, to the FPPC and L.A. Ethics Commission, are ongoing.

Conover told The Times that payments made by the campaign to a company connected to him were not for his posts but for video work one of his staffers did for Raman’s campaign. They initially were described in Raman’s campaign filings as payments for online ads but later were amended to say they were for video production services.

A spokesperson for Raman’s campaign said Cheng is paid for work he does for the campaign, not for posts on his personal social media account, and that it had gotten guidance from L.A. Ethics Commission staff on Cheng’s disclosure requirements to ensure it was in compliance.

The spokesperson added that Cheng voluntarily posted on his social media account that he would be joining the campaign before his employment began.

The L.A. Ethics Commission and FPPC declined to comment on the status of the complaint or the prior one brought by Kendall.

Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Marymount University’s law school who also previously served as the president of the ethics commission, said that because news of an ethics complaint can have a political impact before its merits have been evaluated, it is important to view filings late in an election cycle with greater scrutiny.

“Whenever I see that there’s an ethics complaint filed this close to the election, I always pause for a minute,” she said.

California is one of the few states in the country that require social media influencers to disclose if they have been paid by a political campaign to create content. L.A. rules are even more strict.

Political groups are required to notify paid creators of the requirement.

New state legislation signed into law last month gives the FPPC the power to refer alleged violators to law enforcement for possible misdemeanor charges, and violations can be penalized with a fine of up to $5,000 per instance. The L.A. Ethics Commission can levy fines of up to $15,000 or three times the amount of money at issue.

There are no such rules for paid social media content sponsored by a federal candidate or political committee.

The FPPC last month concluded its investigation into Steyer’s campaign and found that it had properly followed the rules, but it did say that several social media influencers, including Cheng, the Raman staffer, had not properly disclosed payments from the Steyer campaign.

Hennessy and Gomberg are continuing to investigate improperly disclosed social media posts in races across the country, including the L.A. mayoral race, because of their concerns about the corrosive impact this content can have on the electoral process, Hennessy said.

“It’s really disappointing to me, because you see how this impacts races,” Hennessy said. “When you have this undisclosed content, people don’t understand that what they’re watching is an ad.”