Mayor

With just over a week to go before election day, Nithya Raman’s endorsement for mayor from the Democratic Socialists of America’s Los Angeles chapter is in jeopardy, as members of the local and national branches tussle over the city council member’s bonafides on Palestine.

The local chapter voted to endorse Raman last month, and with that comes teams of eager doorknockers canvassing for her across the city.

The endorsement wasn’t exactly full-throated — the tally was 937 in favor and 484 against — and since then factions within the DSA have argued that she isn’t in compliance with the organization’s stance on Palestine, namely, that she doesn’t support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.

The DSA’s National Political Committee, or NPC, emailed the local’s leaders saying that they were out of compliance with “R22,” a DSA resolution that requires local chapters to inquire about a politician’s positions on the BDS movement before they are endorsed, DSA-L.A.’s co-chair Leslie Chang told The Times.

Chang acknowledged that the chapter didn’t include a question about BDS on its questionnaire for Raman before it endorsed her.

“This was an oversight,” she and co-chair Sean Wakasa wrote in an email to DSA-LA members. To the group’s national political committee, leadership wrote that Raman “has always supported the right of private citizens to engage in boycotts, including BDS.”

The Raman campaign declined to comment. At a forum last month, Raman called BDS a “legitimate form of peaceful protest” without saying whether she supports the movement.

The DSA’s national political committee, which was originally set to meet on the issue last week, is now expected to meet Monday to mull either suspending the endorsement or asking Raman to clarify her position.

Chang insists the national group has no authority to rescind an endorsement made by the L.A. chapter.

“Our endorsement of Nithya was a democratic decision made by the membership, and the NPC is violating its own bylaws by considering un-endorsement and expulsion without following proper procedure,” she said in a statement to The Times. “So we’re going to continue campaigning for our entire slate and protect our chapter’s vote by all means necessary.”

A spokesperson for the DSA national organization declined to comment.

‘City of L.A. on steroids’

As voters ready to go to the polls next month, another local race is already looming large in the background: the contest for top dog in Los Angeles County government.

Measure G, approved by a slim margin of voters in November 2024, set in motion the process of creating both a new CEO position with broad executive powers and an independent ethics commission, and it expanded the Board of Supervisors from five members to nine.

But Supervisor Kathryn Barger is now asking her fellow supervisors to take a “pause,” telling the Times in an interview that “haste makes waste” and that she is concerned about that process and the speed of its implementation. She also called into question the ethics of a sitting supervisor running for an office that is expected to pay $558,000 in total compensation.

“This position is going to change the county. We’re going to become the city of L.A. on steroids,” she said Wednesday, a day after the board’s latest meeting devolved into a contentious discussion of the county executive issue and Barger’s intention to slow down the process.

“Once again,” she added, “we are rushing to put something together, I think maybe in the hopes that no one will peel back the curtain and expose what is going on.”

At Tuesday’s board meeting, Barger committed to not run for the CEO position and called on her fellow board members to do the same. Supervisors Holly Mitchell and Hilda Solis have now publicly stated that they too will follow the pledge.

But Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, widely viewed as a potential top contender for the position, has declined to pledge not to run. Instead, she criticized Barger’s approach in an emailed statement to The Times.

“Pressuring others out of an election is political interference, no matter how many times she calls it ethics,” Horvath said, adding that voters “took this power away from politicians like Supervisor Barger because they wanted to make this choice themselves. She doesn’t get to claw it back and dress up a power grab as an ethics crusade.”

Golfing for Gates

Thirty-four years after he left his post, former Police Chief Daryl F. Gates continues to be an unexpected flashpoint in this year’s mayoral contest.

Raman said during an Oct. 13 debate that the LAPD under Gates was “the gold standard” for its noncooperation with federal immigration enforcement. Bass responded by accusing her of romanticizing a chief who presided over the mistreatment of Black and Latino residents.

Raman initially accused Bass of twisting her words. But this week, the council member began issuing apologies, telling CNN she “should not have said it.”

Although Bass has repeatedly denounced Gates’ 14-year tenure on the campaign trail, one of her biggest financial supporters has been keeping his legacy alive.

The Los Angeles Police Protective League, which represents rank and file officers and is backing Bass, has been a long-standing host of a memorial golf tournament named after Gates, who died in 2010. This year’s was billed as one of the union’s “premier fundraising events.” According to the union, proceeds go to its Officer Needs Help Fund, which helps officers and their families in times of need.

Bass’ campaign, asked about the tournament, did not immediately offer a comment. Neither did Raman and the police union.

Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed.

State of play

— WILL SHE, WON’T HE: Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath endorsed Raman on Tuesday, giving the City Council member a powerful boost in the battle for votes on the Westside and in the San Fernando Valley.

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

— VALLEY RAIL: Construction is set to begin this week on a 6.7-mile rail line linking Van Nuys and Pacoima. The nearly $4-billion project, which will run along Van Nuys Boulevard, will include 11 street-level stations and is projected to open in 2032, according to L.A. Metro, the Los Angeles County transit agency.

— TOP COP FLOP: Raman’s police chief woes continued this week when she was asked by CNN anchor Elex Michaelson to name a police chief she respects. “I don’t know. I don’t know,” she said, before Michaelson continued with another question.

— GHOST OF GASCÓN: In the homestretch of the mayor and city attorney contests, George Gascón has been conjured as a boogeyman by opponents of progressive candidates Marissa Roy and Raman.

— LET THE GAMES BEGIN? The next mayor of Los Angeles will be in the global spotlight in 2028, when L.A. plays host to the Summer Olympic Games. And if Raman prevails over Bass, that mayor will be someone who didn’t even want the Olympics here in the first place.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program did not launch any new encampment operations this week.
• On the docket next week: The DSA National Political Committee will meet Monday to discuss DSA-LA’s endorsement of Raman.

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.

The mayor of the small Central Valley farm town of Kerman pulled up to a bakery, her cellphone camera recording, and confronted federal immigration agents conducting an early-morning operation in which multiple people were detained.

“You’re not welcome in my city,” Maria Pacheco told the masked agents, identifying herself as the mayor. “You’ve taken enough people yesterday. We don’t want you here. You need to leave.”

As the men wearing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement vests drove away, she shouted: “How can you make a living kidnapping people? How can you sleep at night doing what you’re doing? … You are a sorry piece of sh—!”

Pacheco, who is running for a seat on the Fresno County Board of Supervisors, posted video of the Oct. 8 confrontation in Kerman — a mostly Latino city of 17,000 west of Fresno — on social media, labeling it: “Mayor Maria Pacheco Stands Up to ICE.”

The footage went viral. TikTok commentators praised her bravery. Comedian and actor George Lopez posted about it on Facebook — writing, “We need more politicians like Maria Pacheco!” — and she shared her campaign fundraising link in the comments.

A few days later, Pacheco allegedly drove through Fresno, closely following a vehicle driven by a man she assumed was an ICE agent.

Except, he wasn’t one.

Eric Bridges, a Fresno hairdresser, has accused Pacheco of closely trailing him in an orange Nissan Altima for more than 20 minutes on Oct. 14 and taking photos of his vehicles as she followed him to his sister’s house.

“I’m looking for ICE, and you look like ICE,” Pacheco told him, according to a signed statement submitted to the Fresno County District Attorney’s Office this week in which Bridges wrote that he wanted “to press charges to the fullest extent of the law.”

Bridges’ attorney, Roger Bonakdar, told The Times that Pacheco used his client “as a political trampoline so she could create social media clickbait” to benefit her political campaign.

“There are real concerns as to whether or not she is acting as some sort of vigilante law enforcement person, that she’s wrongfully abusing her position as an elected official,” Bonakdar said.

Bonakdar added that he filed complaints about the incident with the Fresno Police Department and county prosecutor.

Taylor Long, a spokesperson for the district attorney’s office, said in an email that the information provided by Bonakdar had been referred to its Public Integrity Unit, which investigates public officials for potential crimes related to their office, but that “the receipt and review of information” does not mean a crime had occurred or that charges were warranted.

No charges had been filed by the district attorney’s office in connection with the incident as of Wednesday, Long wrote.

In an email to The Times, Pacheco wrote: “Regarding recent allegations, my only comment is this: If he wants to go to court, we will go to court.”

“Meanwhile, the Kerman Food Bank and other local organizations are experiencing food shortages as families face fear and uncertainty caused by recent immigration enforcement actions,” Pacheco wrote. “Parents are afraid to go to work or leave home, even to buy groceries, leaving more families struggling to put food on the table. … That is where our attention belongs, and where my time, energy and heart will remain.”

The encounter comes at a tense time in the Central Valley, where a surge this month in federal immigration operations and detentions has rattled agricultural communities, causing workers to stop showing up to farm fields and construction sites and families to keep their children home from school.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for information about the Oct. 8 operation outside La Princesa Real Bakery in Kerman, where Pacheco filmed her interaction with agents. Pacheco told the Fresno Bee that four of the bakery’s customers had been detained and that one was eventually released because he had lawful immigration status.

In his signed statement, Bridges wrote that he was driving near Kearney Park just west of Fresno on the afternoon of Oct. 14 when he noticed an orange car “pull behind me quickly and follow me into the park.” Bridges said he stopped his vehicle and was on the phone with his sister, telling her that he was being followed and that the driver was taking photos of him.

As he sat in the parking lot, he wrote, the car circled him for five minutes, and he could overhear the driver on the phone through her vehicle’s speaker system.

He then drove to his sister’s neighborhood, where the car tailed him into a cul-de-sac and stopped beside his white Mercedes sport utility vehicle — an encounter recorded by a home security camera.

When the female driver rolled down her car window, Bridges wrote, she asked who he was and he did the same. According to Bridges’ statement, the driver told him he was “in [her] ‘hood driving an unmarked car.”

Bridges wrote that he had a California Department of Motor Vehicles print-out affixed to the back of his vehicle and asked if she was a police officer or DMV employee.

She replied, “Don’t worry about who I am; I’m someone important” then accused him of being an ICE agent, Bridges wrote. Outraged, he began filming her.

In the home security footage, Bridges can be heard from a distance saying, “I didn’t know you owned the neighborhood,” and shouting in apparent surprise: “I look like I’m ICE?” after the woman speaks to him.

A close-up video that Bridges recorded shows a woman in sunglasses smiling as she drives away, with him saying, “Don’t you ever in your … life follow me, you weird-ass b—.”

Bridges wrote that she flipped him off as she left and that he learned she was the mayor of Kerman after reviewing the video footage.

Bonakdar, his attorney, said Bridges is a grandfather and hair stylist who has never worked for ICE or the Department of Homeland Security. When the driver of the orange vehicle saw him, Bonakdar said, Bridges was not wearing a face covering, as immigration agents often do, or a badge or tactical vest.

Pacheco “claims to be an advocate for minority groups, or to somehow have an interest in helping those people,” Bonakdar said. “I mean, she just victimized somebody who is a member of two minority groups. [Bridges] is a thin-framed, middle-aged Black gay man.”

Bonakdar said Bridges had received threats from people accusing him of being an undercover ICE agent and that some had told him he was not welcome in certain places.

On Oct. 15, the day after the alleged encounter with Bridges, Pacheco wrote a Facebook post about a street corner near agricultural fields just west of Fresno city limits: “I have spotted ICE on Shaw and Dickenson. White SUV. No plates. Driver is masked and hooded.”

Two days later, she took to Facebook again, writing: “I never imagined we’d live in a time when communities would fear masked men in unmarked vehicles. It’s exhausting living on constant high alert, watching for out-of-state or missing license plates, never knowing who’s next.”

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.

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!”