But when I suggested that Bass, a lifelong progressive who has traveled to Fidel Castro’s Cuba to study alternatives to capitalism, was borrowing from the conservative playbook to portray her opponent Nithya Raman as a dangerous extremist, a different side of Bass came out. Suddenly I was sitting across from a stern political veteran who had little patience for people challenging her judgment.
“That’s not true,” she shot back defensively.
I mentioned a campaign email that I thought implied Raman might be antisemetic. Bass and an aide disputed my characterization, insisting that the campaign has simply criticized Raman for skipping a Jewish heritage event at City Hall.
Did she believe Raman was antisemetic? “I don’t know what she is,” Bass replied. “It depends on the time of day and day of the week.”
At one point when I asked whether she would warn her successor about the city’s dysfunctional homelessness bureaucracy, Bass took another swipe at Raman.
“Well, if she’s my successor, no, she knows it all,” Bass said with a sarcastic undertone.
Just four years ago Bass was embraced by the local progressive movement in LA. But now she’s getting flak from both sides of the political spectrum and finds herself courting conservative voters to defeat Raman, who is running to the left of Bass.
For over a year, wealthy donors have been trying to find her replacement. Rick Caruso, the billionaire developer who spent more than $100 million trying to defeat Bass in 2022, says he was encouraged by Ari Emanuel and former Governor Jerry Brown to consider another run for elected office. Spencer Pratt, the reality television villain whose house burned down in the Palisades fire, transformed his personal tragedy into an insurgent mayoral campaign, attracting wealthy Hollywood supporters and massive amounts of attention on social media that was driven by his atypical political ads and AI-generated promotional videos made by his supporters.
But neither man became Bass’s 2026 general-election opponent. Instead, the challenge came from the left, in the form of Raman, a Harvard-educated democratic socialist who even endorsed the mayor’s reelection before entering the race. Now Bass finds herself vying for Pratt supporters on the right. She’s made public safety—an issue Pratt harped on—central to her reelection campaign, and has tried to paint Raman as soft on crime. Raman is also making a play for Pratt supporters, even invoking Ronald Reagan at the beginning of the only televised debate between the two candidates since June’s primary.
