Bass will give two State of the City speeches during election season
Spring in Southern California has a certain rhythm: Dodgers fans return to Chavez Ravine, the jacarandas start to bloom, and L.A.’s mayor gives a speech — usually a long one — about how the city is doing.
Mayor Karen Bass, running for a second term in the June 2 election, is shaking up that routine, by delivering two different State of the City addresses nearly three months apart.
Bass said the first State of the City address, scheduled for Feb. 2, will serve as a countdown to the 2026 World Cup, which will feature eight matches at Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium later this year. That speech is aimed at unifying the city, honoring its “people, neighborhoods and cultures,” according to an invitation that went out this week.
“It’s a day to really celebrate our city,” Bass said in an interview. “I mean, last year was very, very tough, and now we’re ready to get things together to welcome the world.”
The Feb. 2 address, planned at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, will spell out the city’s efforts to ensure that everyone in L.A., not just the buyers of expensive World Cup tickets, will have a chance to participate in the global soccer event, Bass said.
The second speech, planned for mid-April, will be more of a traditional State of the City address, focusing heavily on the mayor’s spending priorities and the release of her budget on April 20.
L.A. mayors usually deliver the State of the City address during the third week in April, using them to list their accomplishments and highlight new policy initiatives. In recent decades, they have been staged in the ornate City Council chamber, outside Griffith Park Observatory and even at an electric truck factory in Harbor City.
The speech planned by Bass for Feb. 2 falls on the first day that L.A. mayoral candidates are allowed to file paperwork with the City Clerk declaring their intention to run for that office.
Bass, who launched her campaign in December, is expected to face several challengers, including former schools Supt. Austin Beutner, community organizer Rae Huang and reality television star Spencer Pratt.
Beutner and Huang had no comment on the upcoming speeches. But Pratt questioned whether Bass is using the extra city speech to bolster her campaign.
“It’s no surprise that Karen Bass is using her position as the incumbent mayor to promote her re-election,” Pratt said in a statement, “but two state of the city speeches does seem excessive given that each event will cost taxpayers resources which could better serve the community elsewhere.”
Bass pushed back on that idea, saying the extra speech is not connected to her campaign, which already had its public kickoff.
“Every press conference — anything I do right now — could easily be attached to that, and it’s not true,” she said.
In recent weeks, Bass stayed mostly behind the scenes as the city marked the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 7, 2025, Palisades fire, which destroyed thousands of homes and left 12 people dead. Although she did attend some events marking the anniversary, those were not part of her public schedule.
As an incumbent, Bass will always have the advantage of her City Hall bully pulpit, said Fernando Guerra, political science professor at Loyola Marymount University.
“People will say she’s using her position, and the speech, to get more attention and publicity,” he said. “That’s her job, to be out there. She should be talking to the city.”