Just south of Sunset Boulevard in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, where burned-out lots and vacant business fronts dotted the street, there was nothing subtle about a sign on the side of the road.
“No More Bass,” it read.
It summed up the way some locals feel about Mayor Karen Bass, who is running for re-election in Tuesday’s primary. One of her principal challengers is Spencer Pratt, a former reality TV star and podcaster who grew up in the Palisades and lost his home in last year’s Palisades fire.
Nearly 18 months after the flames wiped out much of their community, voters lined up at the Pacific Palisades Women’s Club. They hugged neighbors they had not seen in months and compared notes on the latest toxin and engineering tests on their homes and their piles of paperwork from insurance companies.
But few dared to ask each other whom they were voting for.
“It’s been a really rough year,” said Christine Kellman, 66, a retired University of California, Los Angeles, researcher who is still living in temporary housing in West Hollywood. She said she had been “deeply, deeply disappointed” in Ms. Bass.
Still, Ms. Kellman said, the likely alternatives — particularly Mr. Pratt — were even worse. “I voted with no enthusiasm for the candidate,” she said, “but I felt like I really needed to vote to block another disaster from happening.”
But Jenny Lupe, 40, a stay-at-home mother who also has been unable to move back home, said that it would be disastrous to leave the current mayor and a Democratic governor in charge.
“Our state and our city has been just continuously going downhill,” Ms. Lupe said.
A Democrat, Ms. Lupe said she had just cast her ballot for Steve Hilton, the former Fox News host and leading Republican candidate for governor. She also said she had voted for Mr. Pratt, who is a Republican and has made outrage at city government part of his brand.
“All the stuff with the fires I think really just opened our eyes to how things are being run,” Ms. Lupe said. “It’s scary and nobody is doing anything.”
Even if outrage persists in the Pacific Palisades, a neighborhood of 27,000 residents, it is only a tiny slice of Los Angeles, which has 3.8 million people. In the last mayoral election, in 2022, the Palisades represented only 1.4 percent of the citywide vote. About 72 percent of Palisades voters in that election chose Rick Caruso, the billionaire developer who lost to Ms. Bass.
Mr. Pratt has spent the last several months using social media to rail against the city’s response to last year’s fires. Similarly, Mr. Hilton has repeatedly criticized Democrats for doing too little to address homelessness and what he describes as lawlessness on the streets.
Several houses in the Pacific Palisades displayed a sign that proclaimed, “This home will rise again.”
Ms. Kellman, who described herself as a moderate Democrat, said she was surprised by the level of support for Mr. Pratt among some in the neighborhood.
“He would be in over his head so far on day one that I don’t think he would be able to manage,” she said. “But maybe people think that doesn’t matter anymore.”
Shawn Hubler contributed reporting.
Jennifer Medina is a Los Angeles-based political reporter for The Times, focused on political attitudes and demographic change.
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