When Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass showed up for the race’s sole televised debate Tuesday night, we bet she wished she had been up against Spencer Pratt, the reality-TV MAGA jerk who came in third in June’s primary. The man is utterly unfit for any job other than “rightwing conspiracy theory dipshit,” so it would have been both easy and entertaining to watch Bass dismantle his inevitable lies and dogwhistles, with very little chance that Angelenos would elect him.
Instead, Bass debated her former ally, LA City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who’s currently polling ahead of Bass, although a late September LA Times-UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll showed a whopping one-third of respondents were still undecided. In earlier elections, Bass and Raman each endorsed the other, but in the debate, Raman argued that Bass has failed to lead, referring to her over and over as “the current mayor,” a state of affairs that should change. Bass tended to refer to Raman as “my colleague” on the City Council, while repeatedly framing Raman as “not ready for prime time,” even suggesting that if Raman becomes mayor, Los Angeles could be at risk from crime or even a terrorist attack during the 2028 Olympics. (We don’t think a mayor can really stop a terrorist attack, probably.)
As we say, a debate between Bass and Pratt would have been more “entertaining,” but it’s just as well that he’s safely locked away on Twitter, taking credit for James Talarico returning to public view, just like my Labrador retriever, Paxil, always congratulated himself for scaring away the postal carrier. Instead, Bass and Raman, who both take policy seriously, had a mostly substantial debate about how they’ll address matters like homelessness, housing, policing, and standing up to the Trump regime’s ethnic cleansing agenda. Spoiler: There’s a lot to like about both candidates, either of whom will make a good mayor going forward.
Here’s the full debate video from NBC’s Los Angeles affiliate NBC4, and Telemundo 52.
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Things went weird right off the bat. We weren’t quite expecting Rahman, the Democratic Socialist candidate, to start by borrowing Ronald Reagan’s old “Are you better off today than four years ago” line, without a trace of irony. It was enough of a surprise that we had to go back and listen a second time to what followed it. (She argued that for many Angelenos, the answer would be “nope.”)
We also weren’t ready to hear Bass, frequently accused of being a danged commie by rightwingers, go after Raman for having “consistently voted against police officers,” and for voting against removing homeless “encampments from in front of schools.” As the debate went forward, Raman explained that she doesn’t want encampments near schools, but believes the issue isn’t solved by moving them across the street or just down the block, either.
Bass touted her success in reducing homelessness during her tenure, largely through her “Inside Safe” initiative that emphasizes getting people off the streets and into housing — motels and interim housing situations — and then working with them to get help through social services. She pointed to an 11 percent reduction in overall homelessness and a 50 percent reduction in homelessness among veterans (thanks also to Joe Biden, although Trump has slashed federal help). Bass also called for the City of Los Angeles to have control over homelessness policy, arguing that sharing the job with LA County creates needless red tape and duplication of effort.
Raman countered that Inside Safe has been “incredibly expensive” while not doing enough to get people into long-term housing, noting that homelessness has ticked up in the last year. She also noted that in her City Council district, unsheltered homelessness has fallen by nearly 50 percent, although she didn’t explain how a City Councilperson would be responsible for that while a mayor wouldn’t.
Bass apologized for being out of the country on a diplomatic visit to Ghana when the disastrous Palisades fires hit in 2025; her approval ratings have never recovered since then, although short of being psychic, we don’t know how she could be blamed. Raman dinged Bass for the slow rate of rebuilding since the fires, while Bass argued that LA’s fire department is far more ready for a major blaze, under new leadership. We kind of wished both of them had said more about the role climate change played in the catastrophe, but that’s us being a climate nerd again.
Bass played up her high-profile opposition to Trump’s ICE invasion of the city last year, including her trip to confront Chief Goon Greg Bovino outside MacArthur Park, after which Bovino and his orcs bravely ran away. Raman raised the very legitimate criticism that LAPD was too often friendly with ICE, saying, “This city used to be the gold standard in terms of non-cooperation with immigration enforcement. Now, under this mayor, we've actually lost trust from our immigrant community.”
Also too, as the New York Times notes (gift link), Spencer Pratt was a sort of ghost presence at the debate, as both candidates tried to appeal to segments of the electorate that supported the rightwing crapsack in the primary, if they end up voting at all. Bass was clearly going after the law-n-order voters, while Raman “courted the outsider contingent” by calling for more transparency from police and warning against proliferating surveillance tech. Neither, however tried to appeal to election deniers, January sixers, or believers in chemtrails, so a lot of Pratt voters may just stay home.
The debate closed with a brief discussion of how to revive film production in Hollywood, which has been hit by filmmakers heading to places with generous tax breaks; Bass noted her long support of the film industry — and tax credits to encourage production in California — going back to her time as a state legislator. Raman called for an uncapped state tax credit like competing states have, and somehow neither of them mentioned Bass’s role in pushing the awful Paramount-Warner Bros-Skydance merger, which will be bad for everyone on the creative side of the business, as well as for anyone watching at home.
Yr Wonkette is agnostic on the LA mayoral race; we have long admired Bass, although as Yr Editrix pointed out a while back, mayoring Los Angeles or any huge city often chews up really good people who get little credit for successes that are incomplete, and endless blame for the millions of problems inherent to big cities. Watching the debate left us fairly confident that they’re both up to the job, and that’s a pretty rare thing.
[ NYT (gift link) / LAist / LAT]
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Gotta say, it is damn refreshing to see two intelligent POC women having a spirited but substantive debate over actual issues affecting real people. This is what democracy really looks like. And trust, I will take boring over corruption, name-calling, and mudslinging any day (even though that's our default here in the Bayou State).
Speaking of debates, did anyone read about Andy Harris trying to blame rising gas prices on Democratic environmental regulations, only to have the debate audience laugh at him?