Karen Bass will likely be the first incumbent mayor of Los Angeles since 2005 to have to fight for her job in a runoff. It’s a sign that, despite a rebound from the depths of the pandemic, voters remain dissatisfied with life in the nation’s second most populous city.
Angelenos were frustrated by the aftermath of last year’s devastating Palisades fire — and Ms. Bass’s initial absence during the blaze. But they are also struggling with rising costs, and still see homeless encampments as a problem, even though the number of people living on the street has fallen.
Peggy Clark, 69, an accountant from Woodland Hills, said she was voting for the former reality television star Spencer Pratt because “he’s not Bass.”
Ms. Clark said that she didn’t believe the mayor’s claims that fewer people were unhoused in the city. “They’re still everywhere,” she said.
Ms. Bass’s last two predecessors, Eric Garcetti and Antonio Villaraigosa, dispatched their challengers in their re-election primaries by winning a majority of the vote. Under Los Angeles’s rules, a mayoral candidate who receives more than 50 percent of the votes in the primary automatically wins, and Mr. Garcetti and Mr. Villaraigosa never faced a runoff campaign as incumbents.
As of Wednesday afternoon, with hundreds of thousands of ballots still to be counted, Ms. Bass was in the lead with about 35 percent of the vote. She had enough support to win one of the two runoff spots, according to The Associated Press, but was well short of the majority needed to win the seat outright.
In second place was Mr. Pratt, who launched his bombastic campaign after his family’s home burned in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood last year. And in third was the progressive City Council member Nithya Raman, a former ally of the mayor who announced her candidacy just before the filing deadline.
The two prominent challengers saw an opportunity this year to harness the protest vote against Ms. Bass. Suddenly, the mayor was forced to run against an entertainer with a knack for leveraging social media and a city councilwoman with a progressive base — both more formidable opponents than Mr. Garcetti or Mr. Villaraigosa faced in their re-election bids.
The fact that Mr. Pratt, a Republican with no government experience who has drawn praise from President Trump, has garnered significant support in one of the nation’s most liberal cities is particularly notable.
Mike Bonin, a former Los Angeles City Council member who now leads the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles, said that Mr. Pratt “knows how to tell a story” — something that neither Ms. Bass nor Ms. Raman have mastered in this campaign.
The story, Mr. Bonin said, starts with him losing his home as a result of government incompetence, then extends to a sense that government is ineffective for everyone.
“The master story is, ‘Government is failing you,’” he said. “And I think his Exhibit A is homelessness.”
In a runoff, Ms. Bass would be the immediate favorite. Against Mr. Pratt, a Republican, she would have the advantage of being a Democrat in a heavily Democratic city. Against Ms. Raman, she would be a more moderate candidate whom business leaders and centrist voters would likely prefer.
And many Angelenos backed her in the primary.
“I like what Karen Bass has done since she’s been in office,” said Willie Harris, 64. “I think, across the board, she inherited a really complex scenario and she was able to come in and unravel some of this.”
Still, Mr. Bonin noted that two-thirds of voters so far have looked for an alternative, suggesting that voters are broadly frustrated with government and blame Ms. Bass for their ongoing sense that Los Angeles is in disarray.
He added that “being mayor of a big city is a ticking time bomb.” Even if mayors start out popular, as Ms. Bass did, at some point, the complexities of the job catch up to nearly all leaders, including Mr. Villaraigosa and Mr. Garcetti.
“For Karen, it happened in Year 3 instead of Year 7,” Mr. Bonin said.
Maeve Reston contributed reporting.
Jill Cowan is a Times reporter based in Los Angeles, covering the forces shaping life in Southern California and throughout the state.
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