Karen Bass becomes the first female mayor of Los Angeles
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The congresswoman Karen Bass was elected mayor of Los Angeles, defeating billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso and becoming the first woman to run the second-largest city in the US.
The Democrat, who has served as a US representative for more than a decade, had amassed an insurmountable lead of nearly 47,000 votes, with 70% of the votes counted, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday, nearly one one week after the election. Caruso had a slight lead in the first counts after the polls closed, but Bass soon surpassed him and steadily increased her lead as ballots were counted.
Bass, who will also become the second Black mayor in LA’s history, overcame a huge financial disadvantage. Caruso poured more than $100m (£87m) of his own money into his campaign, which spent roughly 10 times as much as the congresswoman’s.
Her win, coming after an unexpectedly hard-fought race with a billionaire who was once registered as a Republican, was announced as Republicans took control of the House of Representatives after winning key congressional races in California.
“The people of Los Angeles have sent a clear message: it is time for change and it is time for urgency,” Bass said in a statement marking her victory. “Tonight, 40,000 Angelenos will sleep without a home – and five will not wake up. Crime is increasing and families are being priced out of their neighborhoods. This must change.”
She said Caruso had called her to concede the election on Wednesday night and said she hoped he would continue “his civic participation in the city that we both love”.
That Bass, always the campaign’s frontrunner, ended up winning was not a surprise, said Fernando Guerra, a political scientist who has studied Los Angeles politics for decades.
“She represents what I think Los Angeles aspires to be,” he said.
After a closer-than-expected race, Bass is likely to face pressure from newly elected progressives in city government to embrace a more forward-thinking agenda, Guerra said. He added that he expected them to be successful in moving Bass, who is seen as more of a moderate, to the left.
Bass, 69, is stepping up at a particularly charged moment for LA city hall. Recordings leaked last month captured three councilmembers making bigoted and racist remarks about Black, Indigenous, Jewish, Armenian and gay people while discussing redistricting behind closed doors. The comments of the three Latino councilmembers, including the council president, who resigned, included offensive stereotypes about Oaxacans in LA and derogatory statements about the Black toddler of a fellow councilmember.
The scandal led to widespread outrage and condemnation from Joe Biden, and exposed longstanding racial tensions and anti-Black racism of some lawmakers in a city that is roughly 50% Latino and 9% Black. The three moderate Democrats captured on the leaks also derided progressives while crudely discussing ways to diminish the power of renters and their Black colleagues in the redistricting process, prompting a state investigation.
Bass, who called for unity after the leaks, has a long track record of organizing across racial lines in south Los Angeles, and was an influential community voice during the city’s response to the 1992 uprising that followed Black motorist Rodney King’s beating by white police officers.
Related: Rodney King: 30 years after brutal beating, activists say LAPD ‘still corrupt and violent’
She is also taking over city hall at a time when the region’s homelessness crisis has become a humanitarian catastrophe. LA county recorded 69,000 unhoused people in this year’s annual estimate, including more than 48,000 living outside. Both numbers are considered an undercount. Bass has pledged to move more than 17,000 people indoors within her first year and to “end street encampments”.
But Bass does have a few advantages in the challenges she faces: the congresswoman has an effective management style and “she’s conciliatory, and brings people together”, Guerra said.
Los Angeles voters have also provided her with some additional money to tackle the city’s housing crisis, Guerra said, by approving a ballot measure that will increase taxes on property sales above $5m, a policy expected to generate as much as $1bn a year.
Caruso, a mall developer and former Republican who recently registered as a Democrat, had adopted tough-on-crime messaging and at one point suggested arresting unhoused people who decline to move into shelters. But leftist activists and advocates for unhoused people have said they were also concerned that Bass’s pledge to eradicate encampments could lead to a crackdown or escalating sweeps that shuffle people around without getting them permanent housing. Bass has said, “You can’t arrest your way out of this,” but some progressives have expressed disappointment about her plan to expand the LA police department.
Caruso’s loss comes despite his campaign running “the best funded and focused Latino get-out-the-vote effort in the history of Los Angeles”, Guerra said, an effort that focused on Latino neighborhoods on the east side of Los Angeles, including in the San Fernando Valley.
Bass was raised in south LA, the same area she has represented in Congress. Early in her career, she worked as an emergency room physician assistant and went on to found a community non-profit organization focused on social justice, substance use and poverty in the neighborhood. In politics, she rose from California state representative to state assembly speaker to congresswoman to Biden’s shortlist to become vice-president.
Related: As police crack down on homelessness, unhoused end up in Mojave desert
In another closely watched race, LA voters ousted the incumbent county sheriff, Alex Villanueva, a scandal-plagued leader of the largest sheriff’s department in the US. Robert Luna, the former police chief of the city of Long Beach, was declared winner by the AP on Tuesday, a major upset and only the second time in more than a century that a challenger has defeated an incumbent.
Villanueva, a Democrat who took a hard turn to the right since his election in 2018, was derided by some as the “Donald Trump of LA” due to his steady stream of controversies surrounding obstruction, abuse and misconduct cases. He has aggressively targeted watchdogs and elected officials tasked with holding him accountable, and his department recently raided the home of a county supervisor who has been a vocal critic.
Luna has pledged to reform the department and jail system and end the “dysfunction and chaos” of Villanueva’s tenure. He grew up in east LA, a neighborhood that has long been heavily patrolled by the sheriff’s department. The incoming sheriff, however, also faced scandals while serving as Long Beach chief from 2014 to 2021, including claims of racism in the department and concerns about killings and excessive force by his officers.
