It’s a fight to the finish in LA’s wild mayoral primary

The embattled mayor. A rational democratic socialist. A TV star who has become a regular on TMZ.

Three candidates for Los Angeles mayor — incumbent Karen Bass, Councilwoman Nithya Raman and Spencer Pratt of MTV’s “The Hills” — are vying for a chance to run in Tuesday’s election, capping one of the most unusual election seasons in the city’s history.

LA voters have seen the arrival of AI campaign videos, an influx of dark money transmitters and national media coverage from US Weekly, Vanity Fair and many other outlets, thanks in large part to Pratt.

Raman is neck and neck with Bass, with Pratt close on their heels, according to a recent poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, sponsored by The Times.

“I think somebody got shot,” said Parke Skelton, a Democratic political strategist who worked on Bass’s first mayoral campaign. “There are two seats and three contestants, the music will stop and one will not have a seat.”

If none of the candidates wins a majority in Tuesday’s primary, the top two vote-getters will face off in the general election on November 3.

Such competition would have been unthinkable two years ago. By 2024, Bass was riding high in the polls and a number of politicians, including Raman, were counting on his support for their campaigns.

But Bass’s approval ratings plummeted after the Palisades fire, which destroyed thousands of homes and left 12 people dead.

Angry residents of Pacific Palisades, including Pratt, who lost his home, lashed out at city leaders over the empty dam, the fire department’s mismanagement of resources and the fact that it sparked a week-long wildfire. On the day the fire broke out, amid increasingly urgent warnings of high winds, the mayor was away on an official trip to Ghana.

Bass now finds himself running for a second and final term, one that could take a political turn that has already taken him to Sacramento and Washington.

Mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt, left, gives his phone number to Erica Helon as her niece and granddaughter stand by her side at a campaign event in Baldwin Village on Saturday.

(Noah Haggerty/Los Angeles Times)

On the campaign trail, Bass pointed to a 17.5% drop in “street homelessness,” the number of people living outside or in their cars. He pointed to a drop in violent crime, including a homicide rate not seen since the mid-20th century. He spoke of his push to convert black streetlights, many of which have been stripped of their copper wires, to solar power.

“We have laid the groundwork,” he told The Times last week.

Raman, who approved Bass’s re-election bid to launch an impromptu impeachment campaign, said the incumbent lacked urgency on a number of issues, including building new apartments, repairing deteriorating roads and streets, and halting job losses in the entertainment industry.

Voters are “hungry for a different future for this city — affordable, efficient, smart, and safe,” Raman said in a statement.

While launching his campaign, Raman positioned himself as a challenger to the status quo. But he was angered by Pratt, who has portrayed both himself and Bass as part of the failed City Hall establishment.

Pratt, a Republican, has been portraying the city as a hellhole filled with drug-addled homeless “zombies.” He talked about moving them to the united states and vowed to make sure the police enforce all the city’s laws.

“The people I work with are people who have to jump naked drug addicts into the wild to get their $20 matcha,” said Greg Gutfeld, host of the late night show “Gutfeld!” on Fox News, last week.

Pratt even got a shout-out from President Trump, who said he heard Pratt is “a big MAGA guy.”

The battle for mayor of LA is actually one of 10 contests going on at City Hall right now. City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto is facing a tough re-election bid, with three seeking one term.

City Administrator Kenneth Mejia was facing a tough challenge from real estate developer Zach Sokoloff, whose campaign received a major boost from his mother, Sheryl Sokoloff. By Friday, she had put $7.5 million of her own money into attack ads and other campaign efforts aimed at promoting her son.

There are also seven competitive councilor races. Four of them have candidates supported by the Democratic Socialists of America, which is looking to advance the city’s goals. DSA’s LA chapter is campaigning for Deputy Atty. Gen. Marissa Roy, who wants to unseat Feldstein Soto.

The Central City Assn., which relies heavily on money from Airbnb, has been working against those efforts. A group of downtown businesses is pushing Deputy Dist. He said. John McKinney, who is also looking to introduce Feldstein Soto. It also supports candidates in several councils who are closer to the political center than their DSA rivals.

Some DSA council candidates have also faced attacks from Neighbors First, a so-called dark money 501(c)(4) non-profit group because it is not required to disclose the source of its funding.

In the mayoral race, each of the top three is in a different political position.

Bass is a lifelong Democrat who served in the state Legislature — including speaker of the House — and twelve years in Congress. He has argued against the humane treatment of the homeless in LA and has called for hiring in the Los Angeles Police Department.

On the left is Raman, who was supported by DSA in his two winning council campaigns. He is also a YIMBY – part of the Yes in My Backyard movement – a person who wants to increase the productivity of housing, including single-family homes.

Los Angeles mayoral candidate Nithya Raman, right, chats with Maryam Zar during a campaign stop last month at the empty site of a home that burned in the Palisades fire.

(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)

Raman, whose husband, Vali Chandrasekaran, a prominent Hollywood writer and producer, was welcomed by the left in his first council campaign but moved on to police recruitment and other issues in recent years.

Pratt, who has appeared twice on Infowars’ “The Alex Jones Show,” is counting on many Republican political figures to join his campaign. He also received praise from GOP politicians and media figures aligned with Trump.

“No one is in the lead,” said Sara Sadhwani, a political science professor at Pomona College. “The margin of error is so tight that this race is completely up in the air.”

Trailing behind are two others—community organizer Rae Huang, a leftist who has criticized Raman as too moderate; and tech entrepreneur Adam Miller, a Democratic centrist who has promised to bring his management skills to City Hall.

The campaign was largely dormant until Pratt, with his big Hollywood connections, put on a strong debate on live television. Known for his reality TV bad boy, he has given hope to Republicans and MAGA loyalists who dream of an end to Democratic control of the blue town West.

If Pratt breaks out of the top two, he still faces an uphill climb. Less than 15% of voters are Republicans, compared to 55% Democrats, according to party registration statistics from April.

In the races against Bass and Raman, Pratt is down by double digits, according to a Berkeley-Times poll released last week.

Pratt has repeatedly stated that the mayoral election is nonpartisan. But that hasn’t stopped Raman from focusing on his GOP connections, particularly his appearance on Infowars and his remarks in 2009 about 9/11 being an “inside job.”

In another campaign video, Raman warned voters that Pratt would make the city “more hateful and more stupid.”

Pratt, who appeared on CNN last week, said he is a “very different person” than he was two decades ago. He also heavily criticized Raman for opposing the law banning homeless people near schools.

“This social organization is a great danger to your children,” Pratt wrote in X.

In some ways, the mayoral race is similar to the 2005 municipal election, when then-Mayor James Hahn faced a team of opponents: then-Council members Antonio Villaraigosa and Bernard C. Parks, a former police chief; former Democratic Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg and Democratic state Sen. Richard Alarcon.

Hahn was criticized by voters in South LA, who criticized him for firing Parks as police chief, and in the San Fernando Valley, where he successfully defeated the separatist movement. He made it into the top two but lost to Villaraigosa in the walk-off, drawing one term.

Raphael Sonenshein, who runs the Haynes Foundation, which sponsors research on governance in Greater Los Angeles, said the contest has some similarities to 1989, when incumbent Mayor Tom Bradley ran for his fifth and final term.

That year, Bradley faced a challenge from then-Council Member Nate Holden, who criticized the incumbent for public safety and quality of life issues. Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky also considered running against Bradley, but decided against it.

This time, Sonenshein noted, political veterans such as real estate developer Rick Caruso and county Supervisor Lindsey Horvath are eyeing the contest to get out.

Still, Angelenos are less satisfied with the direction of the city than they were in 1989, he said.

“It is a very difficult road for those in positions,” he said. “It certainly wasn’t like that in LA decades ago.”

Times staff writer Sandra McDonald contributed to this report.