Commentary: Bass vs. Raman: Here's who won the L.A. mayoral debate

As election season draws to a close, Los Angeles is stuck in a housing market where no one seems to be winning. Developers aren’t building new apartments. Many tenants can’t afford rent, even though prices have largely been frozen for the last four years and home values are dropping. L. A. is one of the most expensive cities in the country, so a key question in the race for mayor is which candidate can make living here a bit cheaper. Both Mayor Karen Bass and challenger Nithya Raman champion the cause of housing affordability. Bass signed a handful of directives during her first term that fast-tracked affordable housing projects and created incentives to build new apartments, while Raman has spearheaded strong tenant protections during her time on the City Council. The two have spent much of the last few years working in political parallel — Raman even endorsed Bass before joining the race herself. Now that they’re running against each other, the candidates are laying out similar visions for housing, but with subtle differences that could affect affordability.

In the race to become L. A.’s next mayor, the city’s top cop — LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell — has become a lightning rod for debate. The two candidates — incumbent Karen Bass and City Councilmember Nithya Raman — have staked out differing positions about how the Los Angeles Police Department has performed under McDonnell. Raman has vowed to replace McDonnell, saying he has not “met the moment” given the department’s response to federal immigration raids. Bass has publicly backed the chief she hired two years ago, saying the LAPD could be thrown into disarray if McDonnell is removed before the 2028 Olympic Games. Raman’s potential ouster of McDonnell and desire to push reforms on the LAPD has pitted her against the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the powerful union for rank-and-file officers that campaigned against Bass during her first election but is now backing her. The union has poured millions of dollars into attack ads against Raman, who has said she declined contributions from the organization in the past.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has launched a new line of attack against City Councilmember Nithya Raman, accusing her opponent of romanticizing the era of former police chief Daryl F. Gates. Bass, surrounded by about two dozen Black community leaders at her campaign headquarters Thursday, said Raman’s mention of Gates during their televised debate this week showed a lack of knowledge about the city’s history of police abuse and the suffering of Black and Latino residents during the former chief’s tenure, including the 1991 videotaped police beating of Rodney King. Raman brought up Gates briefly while criticizing the mayor over the Los Angeles Police Department’s handling of federal immigration enforcement during Tuesday night’s debate. She said the LAPD under Bass’ watch shared information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, undermining the trust of the city’s immigrant communities. “This city used to be the gold standard in terms of noncooperation with immigration enforcement years ago, under the era of Daryl Gates,” Raman said.

With three weeks left to go until election day and polls showing her on the brink of losing, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has begun to channel the Sun King himself, Louis XIV:L’État, c’est moi. Gaslighting voters by insisting the political establishment that has left Los Angeles a mess and that she personifies is worth keeping in office for four more years is her only hope for victory. It’s a wild strategy that reached a crescendo during Tuesday night’s debate, as Bass kept bringing up the fact that L. A.’s ancien régime just doesn’t like her democratic socialist opponent, Nithya Raman. “Your colleagues have a very difficult time working with you,” Bass snapped at one point, later claiming that Raman’s constituents don’t care for her even though the council member won reelection two years ago.

The gloves came off in the final debate between Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Nithya Raman this week, with the two candidates trading verbal blows over public safety, the Palisades fire and the fate of Police Chief Jim McDonnell. Bass, now in a tough battle for a second term, portrayed Raman as someone who isn’t ready to lead the city. Raman, she said, has “a tendency to take different positions on different days of the week” — and has struggled to work collaboratively with others at City Hall. “Now is not the time to turn the city over to Nithya Raman,” she said. Raman, for her part, said the mayor had been “missing in action” during the massively destructive Palisades fire in January 2025 and the more recent Lineage cold storage warehouse blaze in Boyle Heights. City Hall, Raman said, is now experiencing “a crisis of trust.”“We cannot afford another four years of decline, of mismanagement, of excuses,” Raman said. Tuesday night’s hourlong event in Universal City, hosted by NBC4 and Telemundo 52, is expected to be the only televised head-to-head debate of the Nov.

Add Us On GoogleAdd as a preferred source on GoogleLEEDS, Ala. (WBRC/Gray News) - A 70-year-old man died after falling from a lift at Bass Pro Shops in Alabama on Sunday. Authorities said Kurt W. Kralovec was hanging holiday lights outside of the store and fell from a bucket lift. Kralovec’s death is under investigation. Copyright 2026 WBRC via Gray Local Media, Inc. All rights reserved.