By Jose Herrera
City News Service
LOS ANGELES (CNS) – Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was preparing Wednesday for November’s general election in her bid for a second term, with former reality television personality Spencer Pratt shaping up as her likely opponent, although City Councilwoman Nithya Raman was holding out hope for a late surge as vote-counting continued.
It was unknown how many ballots still remain to be tallied, but at press time unofficial results from Tuesday’s primary showed Bass leading the field of mayoral hopefuls with 34.97% of the vote, or 183,701 votes. Pratt had 29.91%, or 157,116 votes, and Raman had 22.81%, or 119,809 votes.
Tech entrepreneur Adam Miller was fourth with 20,593 votes, or 3.92%, while housing advocate Rae Chen Huang was fifth with 14,591 votes, or 2.78%.
Additional election-day ballots will be counted throughout the day, although final results are not expected for several days as county officials continue processing vote-by-mail, provisional and other outstanding ballots.
“I am so glad to be here with everyone … in a couple of hours, we will declare victory,” Bass told supporters at her election night watch party Tuesday at The LINE LA Hotel.
Bass also pledged to continue efforts to reduce homelessness, speed construction of affordable housing and improve public safety.
“We’re going to build a city where parents and kids do not have to navigate tents, because in the nation’s second largest city, there should never be anybody that is sleeping on our streets,” Bass said.
Responding to the early returns, Pratt said he was confident he could persuade voters to back him over Bass in a runoff.
“I have five months now to prove that to them. … I’m confident with five months in their own communities with their community leaders,” Pratt said.
“This is the first time since 2005 that an incumbent is going to a runoff. This is not a candidate that I’m too concerned about,” he added.
Pratt emphasized that he was prepared to lead the nation’s second- largest city.
“I’m ready for whatever God puts in front of me. Obviously I was going to accept whatever God’s plan was tonight,” Pratt said. “I was going to be happy if I wasn’t moving forward because I would have known God didn’t want me to be the mayor. But now I feel very confident that I’m going to continue to work hard, learn everything I need to learn, build my teams, show all the experience I’m going to surround myself with. … We have five months to put the best team the city could ever dream of around me.”
Speaking at her downtown election night watch party, Raman said her campaign had challenged powerful interests.
“They came at us with everything that they have – the corporate landlords, the city hall insiders, the corporations who have spent years making sure City Hall worked for them and not for the people,” Raman said. “These powerful interests spent millions of dollars against this little campaign, spent millions trying to preserve this city’s broken and unjust status quo. And we said no.”
The returns generally mirrored recent polling that showed support concentrated among Bass, Pratt and Raman, with the three candidates emerging as the race’s leading contenders.
It has been 21 years since a sitting LA mayor was forced into a runoff after a first term in office. In 2005, then-City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa defeated incumbent Mayor James Hahn, who was seeking reelection.
Hahn became the first incumbent to lose reelection in 32 years since Sam Yorty lost to Tom Bradley in the 1973 mayoral election.
Bass, who was elected in 2022 after defeating billionaire developer Rick Caruso, has said she deserves another four-year term to continue progress under her administration.
However, she’s been dogged by frustration surrounding the dual homelessness and housing crisis, dirty streets and broken streetlights and what critics described as a botched response to the January 2025 Palisades fire.
The incumbent has received endorsements from several labor, business and community organizations, as well as prominent Democratic politicians such as former Vice President Kamala Harris and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
While Bass had the benefit of being the incumbent, many residents have criticized her for being absent at the onset of the devastating 2025 Palisades Fire that resulted in the destruction of thousands of structures and killed 12 people. On Jan. 7, 2025, the day the fire broke out, Bass was in Ghana for the inauguration of President John Dramani Mahama in Accra, as part of a U.S. delegation.
She’s also been criticized for negotiating a significant pay increase for the city’s police union, boosting starting salaries, raises and retention bonuses. City workers represented by their respective unions also received a substantial pay raise.
The pay packages, critics argue, have limited the city’s ability to fund basic city streets and maintain vital programs.
Bass has defended the pay raises, citing a need for LA to stay competitive to hire and keep police officers and other city staff. She has also enacted policies to increase the repair of streets, place more solar-powered street lights and enacted the first city infrastructure plan.
Pratt, whose home was destroyed in the Palisades Fire, announced his candidacy on the one-year anniversary of the tragedy. He has campaigned on bringing change to City Hall, going after corruption and helping to rebuild the Pacific Palisades.
He has been a vocal critic of Bass, primarily over the handling of the Palisades Fire, but he has also taken her to task for the city’s homelessness crisis, arguing that she has not done enough.
Bass countered that Pratt – best known for his work on “The Hills” – has no experience as a politician or running a city. Pratt is a registered Republican, but has not self-identified as MAGA. In May, President Donald Trump showed support for Pratt, though he did not outright give an endorsement.
Raman announced her mayoral candidacy in February at the final moment before a filing deadline. Her decision took long-time allies such as Bass and members of the City Council by surprise, as weeks before the councilwoman had endorsed Bass for reelection.
Council District 4 voters elected Raman as their City Council representative in 2020, and again in 2024. Raman has said she felt compelled to run for mayor because LA is heading in the wrong direction.
As a councilmember, she led the city in approving a Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance in 2021, which was later strengthened in 2024. She also led the city in updating the Rent Stabilization Ordinance to lower annual rent increases, among other policies she supported.
Raman has faced criticism from Bass and Pratt.
Raman was backed by the Democratic Socialists of America-LA in her council seat races. The group, however, did not endorse Raman for mayor, though DSA-LA has recommended her to its members. DSA-LA was split between the councilwoman and mayoral candidate Rae Chen Huang, but ultimately the group decided not to outright endorse either candidate.
The councilwoman has criticized Bass’ signature program, Inside Safe, for being too costly. Raman has said she will take on homelessness through a data-driven approach, and focus on strengthening time-limited housing subsidies as means to place homeless people into permanent housing, among other initiatives.
Raman also said she would introduce policies to spur the creation of new housing and boost what she described as “gentle density” into single-family zoned neighborhoods.