Karen Bass’ Allies Are Starting To Worry: ‘the Energy Is With Nithya’

LOS ANGELES — Karen Bass is in trouble.

For months, the Los Angeles mayor’s allies had expressed confidence that Bass, despite her low public approval ratings, was likely to hold off her progressive rival, Nithya Raman, and win anyway.

Now they’re starting to see a race that Bass could lose.

“I think you have to give Nithya the advantage. I really do,” said one Bass ally, who was granted anonymity to frankly assess the state of the race. “I think we could turn that around but the energy is with Nithya, and it’s unfortunate.”

That energy is not necessarily showing up in polls. In one late July survey reviewed by Playbook, Bass held a lead in the mid-single digits. Other polls described to Playbook also show the mayor ahead. But that margin is not overwhelming, and she has been hammered in recent weeks by a relentless parade of unlucky breaks and self-inflicted wounds.

A partial accounting: a massive fire at a cold storage warehouse that sickened hundreds and, in its wake, left millions of pounds of decaying food that took nearly two months to fully clean up; the revelation that a close, unpaid adviser was doing crisis PR for the company operating the burning warehouse; new data showing a slight uptick in the city’s homeless population, undercutting a key campaign talking point; staff shakeups in both her campaign and City Hall operations; and her campaign touting a dubious poll that later was exposed as fake.

And then there was Bass’ social media attempt to emulate New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani by filling a pothole pointed out by a constituent — only to find a parked car in her way. The road was fixed the next day but by then the ‘pothole’ video’ became shorthand for the mayor’s hapless summer.

“I have a version of this assessment or conversation every 30 minutes,” another Bass ally said of the state of the race, adding, “People are very worried about it and focused on it.”

In an implicit acknowledgment of the competitiveness of the campaign, Bass’ operation has begun lacing into Raman, portraying her as an absentee and ineffective council member. The campaign launched a website and related X account blasting Raman as ‘No Show Nithya’ for missing council votes — moves that many supporters viewed as a sign of life for her campaign. The team widely circulated searing remarks by Traci Park, the council member who represents the Pacific Palisades who accused Raman of neglecting the neighborhood in the aftermath of last year’s wildfire.

And it could get uglier fast, with some backers convinced her only shot is to pivot to a mercilessly negative campaign.

“I would run one of the meanest, nastiest campaigns ever — if I was advising her,” said Rick Taylor, a Los Angeles-based Democratic strategist who is not working on the campaign. “I’m not saying she should make things up about Nithya. Telling the truth means it will be one of the meanest, nastiest races ever.”

Bass’ chief strategist, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, said nervous supporters are a feature of any campaign. She insisted the mayor has seen no loss of momentum.

“Nothing that we're seeing right now is really showing any shift in the race. We've always known that this was going to be a tight race, and so that's what we've been operating on, and it remains so,” said Chavez Rodriguez, a Biden-Harris alum who replaced Doug Herman, Bass’ top strategist, in June. “But we continue to see the mayor ahead, especially with her base supporters, which is where we've invested a lot of time and energy early on.”

The idea that Bass, the former lawmaker who once appeared on Joe Biden’s shortlist for vice president, might not survive her reelection would once have seemed improbable. Even after her popularity tumbled after last year’s wildfires — making her the first incumbent in more than 20 years to be forced into a runoff — politically-minded Angelenos spent most of the year marveling at Bass’ good fortunes.

Her 2022 rival, billionaire developer Rick Caruso, decided not to run. She collected a wide spectrum of endorsements, from the city’s police union to the Democratic Socialists of America-aligned City Council members (including, initially, Raman herself). She had the backing of most of the city’s labor unions and a newly-active business community, not to mention establishment imprimatur from the Democratic Party and leaders like Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris.

Raman, meanwhile, had minimal support from the city’s political power centers, with no major labor groups or any of her City Council colleagues backing her.

But in the last month, that began to change. Raman racked up endorsements from the carpenters union (which switched to her from Bass) and the hospitality workers’ Unite Here Local 11, which has a vaunted field program.

“Those are serious unions with people and money,” a third Bass ally said. “That was a bit surprising.”

Raman still lags far behind Bass in fundraising — not to mention independent expenditures, given Bass’ allies’ deep pockets.

But by going negative, Bass risks undermining her identity as a relationship builder who can work with anybody.

“It feels a little bit like they're falling into that trap of, ‘let's just go negative because we don't know what to say about ourselves,’” said Jeremy Oberstein, a Democratic consultant not affiliated with either campaign.

Oberstein said Bass should instead prioritize laying out her vision of a second term. But Bass supporters nervously watching the race unfold fear that may not be enough. They argue Bass must go further in pillorying her opponent, flanking Raman to the right on public safety, homelessness and her ties to democratic socialism — an incongruous tack for a politician who once served in the pro-Castro venceremos brigades and has identified as a progressive her entire elected life.

“She’s got to figure out how to get those [Spencer] Pratt voters,” Taylor said, referring to the iconoclastic reality star who amassed a viral following in the primary. “She’s got to give them a level of comfort that she is better than her opponent. That her opponent is the most dangerous thing that will happen to LA.”