Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass begins a June 2 primary for a second and final term facing the harshest skepticism of her political career, as many voters connect her leadership to the 2025 Palisades fire response and to broader frustrations about homelessness, p
When Mayor Karen Bass stepped into office in 2022, she made homelessness feel like a countdown problem with an emergency button to press. Standing with allies as she declared a local emergency, she promised voters bold action.
Now. with Bass running in the June 2 primary for a second and final term. that early promise feels like it belongs to another political lifetime. Many voters associate her with a different kind of emergency: the devastating 2025 Palisades fire. For them. the question isn’t whether Bass cares—it’s whether the city was ready. and whether the response matched the scale of what hit.
“City turned on her after the fires,” said Michael Trujillo, a Democratic political strategist not involved in the mayor’s race. “We saw an office and an administration that was not well equipped for a crisis.”
Beneath that simmering distrust is a race that has turned into a multi-front fight. City Councilmember Nithya Raman—who applauded Bass at her emergency declaration event for homelessness—has moved to unseat her. Reality television personality Spencer Pratt. whose home was destroyed in the Palisades fire. is also waging an insurgent campaign. portraying homeless residents as a danger to stroller-pushing moms.
Bass’s campaign acknowledges it does not expect her to get a majority vote in Tuesday’s election. Still, Bass told reporters she intends to win the Nov. 3 runoff by pointing to what she says is tangible progress: clearing homeless encampments. fast-tracking affordable housing. and reducing homicides. which are at their lowest level since 1966.
“I have been fighting for change from Day One,” Bass said in an interview. “That’s very disruptive and can get people pissed off. But I’m going to do what needs to be done to address these problems.”
Her defenders argue this is the messiness of governing; her critics argue it’s the cost of decisions made early—especially the pay packages, the push to rehouse people from encampments, and the wildfire response that came after she was confronted with a crisis of her own.
The political history of Los Angeles offers no comfort. Bass would be the latest big-city mayor facing a difficult path back when voters already sour. Former Mayor James Hahn lost his 2005 reelection after being forced into a runoff. Former Mayor Sam Yorty. pushed into a runoff in 1973. was defeated by then-Councilmember Tom Bradley. whom Bass cites as one of her heroes.
In recent years, big-city mayors in Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco have also lost reelection—an environment Bass now faces head-on, with a majority of voters viewing her unfavorably.
One frustration that cuts across the race is whether the city’s problems extend far beyond the Palisades fire. Oren Hadar, a Raman supporter who lives in Mid-City, said he is tired of what he calls the slow pace of basic repair.
He pointed to broken sidewalks, pockmarked streets and decaying infrastructure—and said the backlog means fixes can be many years away.
“I just get the sense that the city is kind of falling apart,” Hadar said. “We can’t repave streets. We can’t fix streetlights. It’s just this basic stuff that isn’t getting done.”
Former L.A. Deputy Mayor Rick Cole. who served in the administration of Eric Garcetti. blames some of Bass’s troubles on choices early in her term. Cole said Bass negotiated significant raises for police officers. firefighters and the civilian workforce. leaving the city with too little money to sustain basic services.
Compounding the issue, Cole said Bass became a micromanager who failed to empower her team to “do the job of running the city.” Cole spent nearly three years advising City Controller Kenneth Mejia before joining the Pasadena City Council.
“From A to Z, from animal services to the zoo, the city is shabbier and more dysfunctional than it was three years ago,” Cole said.
Bass disputes that framing. She said city services were already suffering from years of neglect when she took over from Garcetti. She also pointed to an effort over the last two years to assemble a long-range plan for repairing streets. sidewalks and other city infrastructure. And she defended the employee raises by arguing the city’s financial woes were driven in large part by soaring legal payouts and a drop in tourism and other economic activity that followed President Trump’s tariffs policies and broadsides against other nations.
“You have a choice,” Bass said. “Do you want a quality workforce? Or do you want a workforce that has one foot in the door and one foot out of the door?”
Inside Safe and the hard tradeoff
Bass’s presidency-style style—rooted in organizing and urgency—has been most clearly tested in her homelessness policies. She came into office four years ago with what some voters saw as a mandate to marshal resources to address encampments that had spread into nearly every part of the city during the pandemic.
Voters elected Bass. founder of the South L.A.-based nonprofit Community Coalition. over real estate developer Rick Caruso. known for creating the Grove. the Americana at Brand and other large-scale shopping complexes. Caruso spent more than $100 million on his campaign, only to lose by about 10 percentage points.
A week after taking office, Bass launched Inside Safe, an effort meant to move homeless people out of sprawling encampments and into hotels and motels, and eventually into permanent homes. She secured $50 million from the City Council to start the initiative and secured more funding after that.
Even early, the warning signs were present. Bass said her team was “building the plane while flying it.” She quickly acknowledged hotel and motel costs were financially unsustainable and would require the city to purchase its own temporary housing facilities.
Mercedes Marquez, the mayor’s first homelessness advisor, stayed less than a year. Marquez’s successor moved to another agency a year after that. By the program’s third year, a steadily growing percentage of participants were winding up back on the street.
According to Inside Safe’s most recent dashboard, nearly 43% of the people served have returned to homelessness, up from 32% in December 2024.
Bass credits Inside Safe with achieving a 17.5% reduction in “street homelessness”—the number of people living in vehicles or outside—cutting it from 33,000 to under 27,000. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority said that figure represents the first two-year decrease in city history.
On the campaign trail, Bass says she plans to use a second term to strengthen Inside Safe’s services to keep more people indoors. She also defended launching the program without an extensive planning process.
“There was no way in the world I was going to come into office and launch a study. How many studies and papers have there been done on homelessness? The people on the street are the people I used to take care of in the emergency room,” Bass said. She is a former physician assistant.
Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson credited Bass with clearing encampments without relying on enforcement practices that punished homeless people for sleeping outside.
“She made the case to the voters that she would take street homelessness seriously and actually deliver results,” Harris-Dawson said. “And she’s done that.”
It remains unclear whether L.A. will see a third year of progress, given the ongoing struggles facing the homeless authority. But Bass has also aimed for another front: fast-tracking 100% affordable housing projects with approval required within 60 days. Bass said that effort has pushed the city to green-light more than 40. 000 units. with about 6. 000 starting construction as of last month.
Police hiring, budget strain, and political backlash
Bass’s approach to public safety began with a staffing problem. When she took office, sworn staffing at the Los Angeles Police Department was in free fall, as hundreds of officers left after protests over the 2020 murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, without new hires to replace them.
Bass early in her term said she wanted to restore the LAPD to 9,500 officers. Working with council leadership. she negotiated an expensive pay package with the city’s police union. hiking starting salaries while offering raises and retention bonuses. She also reduced some bureaucratic obstacles to hiring.
By the time the police contract was finalized in 2023, the department had already shrunk to 9,000 officers. Bass began to see police hiring progress last year. but by then the city was also facing a $1-billion budget shortfall fueled in part by increased personnel costs. In her 2025-26 budget, Bass recommended layoffs for about 1,600 civilian workers.
To avert those cuts, the council slowed police hiring just as recruitment was picking up steam. The council did so in part to save the jobs of civilian LAPD personnel specializing in fingerprinting, DNA rape kits and crime scene photography.
By mid-April, the LAPD had 8,640 officers.
Raman, who voted against the raises, seized on the shrinking numbers. She said the department is still shrinking, arguing the pay increases were costly and ineffective.
The raises “did not get us the public safety results that we wanted,” Raman told an audience in Sherman Oaks. “And now it has impacted our ability to figure out how to keep people safe.”
Bass still views her 9,500-officer goal as the right one. She argued the pay raises were “absolutely essential” to keep officers from taking other law enforcement jobs, and said officers spent two years gaining “unbelievable training and experience” before leaving for other agencies.
“If you believe we need more cops, then you’ve got to pay them,” Bass said. “If your salaries are not competitive around town, then don’t be surprised that they’re leaving.”
Trial by fire—and trial by politics
For the Palisades fire, Bass’s story is inseparable from timing. On the day the fire broke out, Bass was more than 7,000 miles away appearing at a diplomatic function in Ghana. The blaze—later determined to be a rekindling of a week-old fire—spread out of control. destroying more than 6. 800 structures in Pacific Palisades. Malibu and nearby areas.
Video from the first week wasn’t favorable. Bass stood mute when a reporter confronted her at Los Angeles International Airport about her absence. When she returned, she struggled with questions about the emergency response.
Six weeks later, Bass ousted Fire Chief Kristin Crowley, saying Crowley failed to properly deploy firefighters amid forecasts of dangerous Santa Ana winds.
Bass later told a podcaster that the city had “botched” its wildfire response. On multiple occasions, she said she felt terrible about being in Ghana and that she would have stayed had she known what was coming.
Recovery did not come smoothly. The effort included additional stumbles: reversing course on traffic checkpoints, offering tax relief for wildfire victims, and calling for a need for a single recovery chief.
Bass’s relationship with her recovery leadership was also fraught. The mayor, known for relationship-building, never clicked with her recovery chief, Steve Soboroff, who left after 90 days. She also had strained relations with Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who represents the Palisades.
Pratt entered the race in January and turned the spotlight back toward wildfire response. He voiced anger over an empty reservoir, idled fire trucks and what he called dangerous brush clearance policies.
“My mission is to make sure the Palisades Fire isn’t forgotten in the dustbin of history like we’ve seen with so many other disasters,” Pratt wrote in a social media post weeks after entering the race.
Bass said she understands the anger—not just from Pratt but from residents across the Palisades. She vowed to keep focusing on rebuilding, pressing for changes from the insurance industry and seeking funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“My role is to make sure they get back in their houses as soon as possible,” Bass said.
ICE raids and the last stretch of campaigning
Six months after the Palisades fire, L.A. was hit by another crisis tied to the Trump administration. Federal immigration agents fanned across the city, apprehending workers at car washes, garment businesses, Home Depots and other locations.
Bass appeared more certain of her response with immigration enforcement. On June 6, 2025, federal agents raided a downtown garment business, detaining workers and arresting David Huerta, the head of Service Employees International Union California and a labor leader.
Bass responded to the scene, where devastated family members were still collecting belongings of loved ones taken by federal agents, said Martha Arévalo, executive director of Carecen, the Central American Resource Center.
“She was there to offer help, to see what was happening, to make sure that we were OK, to see how she and her administration could help families that were devastated and separated,” Arévalo recalled.
Bass worked with city agencies on strategies for keeping Immigration and Customs Enforcement off city property. When immigration agents moved into MacArthur Park, she showed up again and demanded that they leave. At one point, she spoke by phone with then-Border Patrol Sector Chief Greg Bovino.
“She has shown courage and a commitment to protecting vulnerable communities, rather than demonizing them,” said Angelica Salas, president of the Californians for Human Immigrant Rights Leadership Action Fund.
In the final weeks of the campaign, Bass ramped up criticism of her two main opponents. She portrayed Raman as weak on public safety and argued Pratt lacks the experience to run the city.
It did not move every ally. Garry South, a Democratic political strategist, said he was so appalled by the choices in the mayor’s race that he left that portion of his ballot blank. South called Raman “completely out of her league.”
Bass, he said, “has acted for all the world like a glorified member of Congress whose district just happens to include the whole city of L.A.”
“She’s never really stepped into the role of strong executive of the nation’s second-largest city,” South said.
Harris-Dawson took the opposite view. He said Bass has been focused on “what’s working in Los Angeles and what can work better.”
“I look at the field. I look at her record. And I talk to voters,” Harris-Dawson said. “I think the mayor will be the mayor until 2030.”
Karen Bass Los Angeles mayor Palisades fire homelessness Inside Safe Nithya Raman Spencer Pratt LAPD Steve Soboroff ICE David Huerta Marqueece Harris-Dawson