Face progressive challenger

Bass will face progressive challenger in LA mayor runoff

Incumbent Karen Bass will compete with City Councilmember Nithya Raman in November after Spencer Pratt failed to advance from the primary.

By Liam Dillon

Karen Bass, the embattled Los Angeles mayor, has been forced into a runoff against progressive challenger Nithya Raman, after Spencer Pratt failed to advance from the primary in the nation’s second-largest city.

Pratt, the former reality television personality whose mayoral campaign attracted wall-to-wall tabloid coverage, was in third place on Monday. Bass will instead contend with a challenge from Raman, a Democratic city council member and her former ally, who has built a campaign around what she has cast as the incumbent’s management failings, including during and after the January 2025 wildfire in the Pacific Palisades.

“For too long, City Hall has prioritized giving political advantage to powerful interests that fund elections. Meanwhile, working people pay the price in higher rents, depleted services, and a city that has stopped working for them,” Raman said in a statement Monday after the Associated Press race call.

“If you’re as frustrated by the broken status quo as I am, I hope you’ll join our movement to build a city that works for everyone.”

Raman, 44, has argued that Los Angeles needs a stronger hand to address its housing and homelessness crises, emergency response times and struggles in Hollywood production. She’s released detailed housing, small business, transportation and climate plans with an eye toward overhauling the city’s bureaucracy.

Pratt, a 42-year-old Republican, became Bass’ chief antagonist after his home and thousands of others burned down in the massive wildfires. A political novice, Pratt declared his candidacy on the fire’s one-year anniversary at a “They Let Us Burn” rally.

Pratt’s relentless social media posting and viral AI videos created by supporters that feature the candidate as an avenging superhero turned him into a serious contender to make the runoff. He raised $3.3 million through mid-May, more than Bass and Raman.

But Pratt’s inexperience, dystopian description of life in the city and, most significantly, his party affiliation doomed him. While Pratt emphasized that the race is nonpartisan, just 15 percent of city voters are registered Republican, and he attracted support from President Donald Trump and numerous other conservative figures.

Pratt’s demise hardly clears the way for Bass’ reelection. A recent poll from UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies found Raman with an edge over Bass in a head-to-head general election matchup, with 32 percent saying they’d vote for Raman and 28 percent supporting Bass.

Bass, 72, is the first mayoral incumbent to be pushed to a runoff since 2005. She was on a diplomatic trip to Ghana when the wildfire erupted and has had a wavering response to the crisis. Her approval ratings have not recovered since the blazes, with 57 percent of voters viewing her unfavorably, according to the IGS survey. By contrast, about 35 percent of voters surveyed had an unfavorable view of Raman.

After better-known potential candidates decided not to run against Bass, Raman entered the race hours before the deadline in February.

Raman was the first in what’s become a wave of progressive LA city leaders elected since 2020. In that year’s race, she defeated an incumbent councilmember for the first time in nearly two decades and was the first candidate endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America to win public office in Los Angeles. She won more votes than any other councilmember in the city’s history.

Raman was reelected two years ago despite a redistricting effort that changed many of the neighborhoods she represented and getting outspent by challengers who argued she was too progressive.

Bass has retained the support of the city’s political establishment, including other city councilmembers and key labor and business groups. But Raman’s showing and Bass’ low favorability numbers sets up the councilmember as a formidable threat.