More than 300,000 Los Angeles voters who cast ballots for losing candidates in the mayoral primary are up for grabs in the Nov. 3 runoff between Karen Bass and Nithya Raman, and their decisions could determine who will lead the city for the next four years.
The biggest prize within that group is the nearly 218,000 Angelenos who voted for Spencer Pratt, a Republican who fared best in his home base of Pacific Palisades and the city’s more conservative neighborhoods — and who has continued to hurl jabs at both Bass and Raman from the sidelines.
“The Pratt vote is of critical importance,” said Dan Schnur, a former Republican political consultant who now is a professor of political communications at USC, UC Berkeley and Pepperdine. “It might not have been enough votes for him to make it to the runoff, but in a close election his supporters could be determinative.”
Bass and Raman — both Democrats — must make inroads with Pratt voters without putting off their base of liberals and progressives who are expected to be out in force for the midterm elections, Schnur and other analysts say.
A Karen Bass campaign shirt, a Spencer Pratt supporter and a sign for Nithya Raman.
(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times; Robert Gauthier & Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
“You don’t want to have a message to Pratt voters where you might gain one vote and lose one, two or more votes from your base,” said Fernando Guerra, a professor of political science and Chicana/o Latina/o studies at Loyola Marymount University.
To avoid alienating their core supporters, both the Bass and Raman campaigns could rely on outside spending groups and campaign surrogates — political allies who lean to the right of the candidates and thus can reach out to Pratt voters without setting off alarms.
From Bass’ side, Pratt voters will be targeted by her most credible messenger to moderate and more conservative voters: the Police Protective League, the union representing rank-and-file Los Angeles Police Department officers.
The union has polled regions where Pratt performed well — from the Harbor to parts of the San Fernando Valley and Westside.
“The more voters that supported Spencer Pratt know about Nithya Raman, her record and the DSA agenda, the more they move away from Nithya Raman,” said Tom Saggau, a spokesperson for the union.
The union plans to spend several million dollars on anti-Raman ads, which will target her membership in the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, which recently endorsed her candidacy, Saggau said. The DSA has called for defunding the police and abolishing prisons, drawing scorn from conservatives and mainstream Democrats alike.
More conservative surrogates for the mayor, notably Councilmembers Traci Park and John Lee, have been touting the mayor’s success and attacking Raman, mayoral campaign insiders noted. And even developer Rick Caruso, who lost to Bass in the 2022 election, has been speaking more positively about the mayor, the Bass insiders noted.
As the more progressive of the two candidates, Raman has fewer options in terms of surrogates who can reach out to conservative Pratt voters, analysts say. So instead, Raman is positioning herself as the anti-establishment candidate and seeking to capitalize on the strong negative opinions of Bass many Pratt voters hold, Raman campaign insiders say.
In her first news conference after securing the runoff berth, Raman acknowledged that Pratt “gave voice to the fear and anger so many in this city are feeling right now.”
“I don’t think Spencer Pratt was the candidate L.A. needed in this moment, but I understand why he was able to cultivate support,” she said. “People in this city are frustrated with the conditions on our streets and they can feel an absence of leadership here. They can feel that the city is not working and they are sick of it. So am I.”
Despite her association with the DSA, Raman is running a nonideological campaign, shying away from major culture war issues and leaning into a promise of making L.A. “A City That Works” — her campaign slogan.
At news conferences, she focuses on meat-and-potato issues such as the amount of time it takes the city to fix streetlights and potholes.
She has also made several trips to Pratt’s home turf — the Palisades — where she has met with voters frustrated over last year’s Palisades fire. Pratt lost his home in the fire, an event he said inspired him to run for mayor.
Despite Raman’s efforts to run a nonideological campaign, Ana Dahan, who runs Thrive LA, an advocacy group fighting to block the expansion of the DSA in L.A. politics, said Bass’ policy positions — on development, public safety and homelessness — are more likely to appeal to Pratt voters.
“I don’t think his base goes to Nithya because I do think they are more informed about the policies that Nithya has supported while on the council,” said Dahan, whose group endorsed Bass and Pratt in the primary.
Bass has been a supporter of the city’s anti-encampment zone law — known as 41.18 — which can be used to move encampments from outside sensitive locations like schools and libraries. Raman has often opposed the law’s use in council, saying it merely shifts encampments from block to block.
Bass has also backed growing the size of the LAPD, though the force has shrunk under her leadership.
Raman, meanwhile, has sometimes voted against hiring more cops — though she says she has also voted in favor of budgets that sought to expand the size of the force. She opposed a 2023 police union contract that she said the city could not afford, and has said the LAPD should maintain the size of its police force but not increase it.
Raman’s membership in the DSA also looms as a potential negative, according to interviews with people who voted for Pratt in the primary.
Lisa Becker, a Spencer Pratt supporter who plans to vote for Karen Bass in the Los Angeles mayoral runoff.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
“The whole DSA movement is terrifying to me,” said Lisa Becker, 65, from El Sereno. “I’ll probably vote for Bass because she is the lesser of two evils.”
But Pratt voter Jay Handal, who serves on the Sawtelle Neighborhood Council on L.A.’s Westside, said he is deeply unsatisfied with Bass’ performance as mayor and will be voting for Raman.
“I’ve worked with the current administration for over three years and it’s a failure,” Handal said. “My theory with Raman is, the devil I know is not as good as the devil I don’t know right now. I’ve seen work of the current devil and it’s not good.”
Pratt supporter Jay Handal at his Culver City dispensary, ERBA, will be casting his ballot for Nithya Raman.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
Pratt has been sharply critical of both candidates. He gave a surprisingly positive review of Bass after a recent debate with Raman, calling her a “skilled politician,” but pivoted back quickly to slamming the mayor, calling her an “evil witch” in a post on Aug. 23.
“They got cocky cuz I’ve been hammering Nithya nonstop. They thought I forgot about the evil witch who burned up my town?” he wrote on X. In a later post he added that Bass shouldn’t “get to be mayor anymore.”
While Pratt posted on X that Raman was “the worst possible choice for Mayor imaginable,” he hasn’t endorsed either candidate — and don’t expect him to, said Matt Klink, a Los Angeles-based Republican political consultant.
“If he endorses Karen Bass a lot of people will see him as a sellout. If he endorses Nithya, which I can’t see happening, people will say he’s just bitter at Karen Bass,” Klink said.
LMU’s Guerra said that he believed Pratt voters would be conflicted, and that many Pratt voters may simply choose to sit out the general election. At the most, he said, one candidate might get 70% of the Pratt vote and the other candidate might get 30%.
He didn’t predict which candidate would be on the positive side of that divide, but said, “If you’re Raman and you’re on the 30% side, how much time are you gonna spend on swinging that group?” he asked.
Guerra said the campaigns should be more focused instead on groups like Latino voters as well as voters who didn’t turn out for the primary but will for the November election.
But not everyone agrees that a slight edge with Pratt voters is unsubstantial.
“The Pratt voters could break 50-50 [to Bass and Raman] if they don’t like either candidate,” said Mike Murphy, a Republican political consultant who has worked with Rick Caruso in the past. “If someone could get a meaningful edge, that could be enough to tip the election.”