The Palisades is furious with Karen Bass. Nithya Raman still has a hard sell.

Por Liam Dillon — POLITICO – TOP Stories

LOS ANGELES — This isn’t the mayoral race voters in fire-scarred Pacific Palisades wanted.

Fairly or not, many in the coastal Los Angeles community blame one candidate, incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, for last year’s devastating wildfire that killed 12 people and burned down 5,800 homes.

And Bass’ opponent, Nithya Raman, pushes a brand of progressivism that is anathema to many in the Palisades, where voters are overwhelmingly white and trend older, wealthier and more conservative than the rest of the city.

Yet the Palisades has emerged as a key battleground in the election — for both its many undecided voters and potent symbolism. The destruction the Palisades suffered is emblematic, Raman campaign insiders say, of Bass’ mismanagement of the city and fodder for her to sway voters there and more broadly in contested areas of the westside and San Fernando Valley. And its furious residents present a test case for whether moderate and conservative voters are so dissatisfied with the status quo that they’re willing to cast ballots for Raman, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

“It’s a question of just how fed up are people?” said Sara Sadhwani, a politics professor at Pomona College who served on the California Citizens Redistricting Commission.

A University of California, Berkeley/Los Angeles Times poll released last week showed the Bass campaign teetering. She trailed Raman, a City Council member, by 11 percentage points, though a third of voters remained undecided. Driving down Bass’ numbers was the fire: 56% of likely voters believed she’d done a poor or very poor job responding to the disaster, the poll found.

Despite warnings of intense winds and tinder dry conditions, she was on a diplomatic trip to Ghana when the blaze tore through the Palisades. Her fire department failed to extinguish an earlier blaze that reignited into the disaster, didn’t predeploy firefighters to the area and didn’t have sufficient water from hydrants or backup tankers to battle the flames. In the aftermath, Bass clashed with her initial recovery czar and has since cycled through consultants. Palisades residents still fret about the pace of rebuilding. As of last week, just 49 homes have been completed on burned lots in Pacific Palisades, according to a POLITICO analysis of city data. That’s less than a third of the number built in Altadena, the inland Los Angeles community destroyed in a separate fire the same day.

Soon after the blaze, signs calling for Bass’ resignation littered burnt-out yards.

“She should have been removed from office the day after the fire,” said Jeremy Padawer, a toy-maker who lost his home and led an anniversary protest directed at Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom titled, “They Let Us Burn.”

At the protest, former reality TV star Spencer Pratt, who also lost his home in the blaze, announced what appeared to be a long-shot candidacy for mayor. But the political neophyte channeled the community’s rage into a bomb-throwing campaign against Bass and City Hall, finishing third in the primary with 26% of the vote.

Pratt’s message resonated especially in the Palisades, where he won a majority. Bass ended up a distant second in the community with 18% support. Raman, who represents a district snaking through the Hollywood Hills and the San Fernando Valley, finished with 14%, landing her fourth in the neighborhood behind a tech entrepreneur who garnered less than 4% citywide.

The Palisades’ lack of love for Raman, residents say, is owed to her relatively low name recognition on the city’s westside and progressive stance on social issues. That hasn’t stopped Raman, however, from trying to convert voters using her principal message: Los Angeles’ basic functions are broken, and Bass can’t fix them.

Raman released a wildfire recovery proposal in the spring calling for targeted city financing and a designated mayoral point person to handle reconstruction. She has visited the community eight times during the campaign, a Raman spokesperson said.

On one such trip in late August, an informal meet-and-greet with state and local candidates in a commercial parking lot, the council member made her case.

“I hear from residents — and I’ve had the opportunity of touring the neighborhoods and speaking to many residents, including friends of mine who lost their homes — that the city has let them down,” Raman said. “I don’t want to let you down. I want to meet you with the same urgency that you feel for recovery.”

Palisades residents crowded around her. Their questions alternated between fire recovery and skepticism over Raman’s progressive positions:

You’ve voted against banning homeless encampments near schools and day cares. Why? 

Raman said that it’s better to offer homeless people shelter and resources: “I’ve been very effective at reducing encampments in my district.”

You’ve said you wanted to “defund the police.” I’m worried about public safety.

Raman acknowledged that she’d used the phrase before but emphasized that she voted for multiple budgets that expanded the police force: “I am not anti-police at all.”

You identify as a democratic socialist. What does that mean?

“There’s a lot of gaps when you have a system that is defined by profits,” Raman replied. “I believe in a big, progressive government that is stepping in and filling the gaps.”

Raman answered questions for nearly three hours. Many residents told POLITICO they were left unconvinced. Others lamented the choices before them. And some said the mayor’s underwhelming response to the fire has made them turn to Raman.

Jacqueline Calavan, who asked Raman about defunding the police, said the issue matters to her because it took officers hours to show up after she called 911 about trespassers outside her home. She worried Raman’s election would make matters worse.

Calavan chose Bass in the primary because “she was the lesser of all the evils at the time.” But nothing the mayor’s done since has given her confidence, she said. She is distressed that the community’s reservoir, which was offline before the 2025 blaze, remains unfilled as another fire season approaches. Asked if she planned to vote for Bass again, Calavan replied, “I just don’t know.”

Morgan Goldberg, a realtor who lost her home in the fire, backed Pratt because she believed that without his in-your-face advocacy, the Palisades would have been forgotten. Now, Goldberg said she was voting for Bass. Despite a dismal review of the mayor’s performance, Goldberg believed a Raman victory would lead to more homelessness and crime.

“If you think it’s Armageddon now, look out,” she said.

But for Robert Lempert, any concerns about Raman’s affiliation with democratic socialists or lack of executive experience were outweighed by his belief she’d be a more creative leader in the fire recovery.

Raman, he said, “is a lot less patient with the status quo.”

Since his loss, Pratt has not given his supporters clear direction about who to choose in the runoff, and he has instead relished taking shots at both Bass and Raman. He ripped into Bass last week after she trashed him in a recent interview.

“This incompetent communist burned down my town, she’s wrecked the city, homelessness is getting worse…she must be fired,” Pratt posted on X. “Vote out Karen Bass.”

Last month, he called Raman “the worst possible choice for mayor imaginable.”

Asked by POLITICO if he planned to endorse in the race, Pratt replied in a direct message on X, “You expect me to endorse dumb and dumber? LMAO.”

Other Bass detractors, however, have softened their tone.

Billionaire developer Rick Caruso and City Council member Traci Park greeted the mayor warmly this month when she made a rare public appearance in the Palisades to celebrate the groundbreaking of the community’s recreation center.

Previously Caruso, who lost to Bass four years ago, had blistered the mayor over her handling of the fire. Caruso used private firefighters to save his upscale shopping center in Pacific Palisades, and many Palisades residents speak ruefully about the moderate Democrat’s decision not to run again.

At the groundbreaking, Caruso praised Bass as “a great leader” for ushering the rec center through the city bureaucracy. The developer said he planned to meet with Raman before deciding whether to endorse one of the candidates but called the Democratic Socialists of America a threat to the city.

Park, who spoke at the They Let us Burn protest and took nearly 90% of the vote in Pacific Palisades in her June reelection bid, has pushed fiercely against Raman. She called into a radio show this month to blast the candidate’s interest in the Palisades as “political expediency” and criticize her positions on homelessness and policing.

The Bass campaign has amplified Park’s remarks and leaned into the newfound friendliness from her critics.

“Working alongside local leaders like Councilmember Traci Park and Rick Caruso, Mayor Bass has delivered tremendous progress in the Palisades,” campaign spokesperson Alex Stack said, citing the reopening of schools and businesses and home permitting. The mayor’s campaign manager told POLITICO this month that they intended to deploy Park as a “surrogate” to reach Pratt supporters.

That was a bridge too far for Park, who is the only member of the City Council — aside from Raman — not to endorse Bass. Park reiterated her shots at Raman in a statement to POLITICO but added that she wasn’t anyone’s surrogate.

“As an LA resident and councilmember, I have deep concerns about the leadership and effectiveness of both candidates,” Park said.

Perhaps more encouraging for Bass than her reception at the groundbreaking is what happened beforehand.

The mayor ate lunch at a bustling Palisades cafe, and according to multiple people in attendance, she posed for pictures and answered questions from residents without encountering angry outbursts — an outcome unimaginable nine months ago. Moreover, the signs that called for her resignation no longer appear around the community.

Even Padawer, who organized the anniversary protest against the mayor, said he saw a path to voting for her.

Padawer is turned off by Raman’s public safety positions and has noticed that Bass is speaking more openly about the failures leading up to the fire. Should the mayor take greater accountability and be open to compensating Palisades residents who’ve sued the city, he said it would be “an easy vote for Bass.”

But if the mayor doesn’t, Padawer intends to give Raman a closer look.

Fonte: POLITICO – TOP Stories