Rep. Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, on Saturday, Oct. 16, kicked off her campaign for mayor of Los Angeles, imploring a crowd of more than 400 supporters to help her form a movement to launch her into City Hall and tackle her “top priority” — the homeless crisis.
“Our city faces an unprecedented emergency,” Bass told a cheering crowd at Los Angeles Trade Technical College. “Every night over 40,000 Angelenos sleep in the streets, in tents, in cars, in doorways, parks and on beaches. And every day three or more people die on these streets. This is not Los Angeles.”
“Solving homelessness will be my No. 1, overwhelmingly top priority as your mayor.”
Karen Bass: “Los Angeles you have called me home and I’m ready to serve.” #lacityhall Bass kicks off campaign for mayor of Los Angeles. pic.twitter.com/yFj7PT2ESS
— Ryan Carter (@ryinie) October 16, 2021
Bass pointed to the region’s response to the Northridge Earthquake in 1994, when the city responded with haste to house those who needed shelter amid the disaster.
“In 1994, we treated the emergency as an emergency,” Bass said. “We mobilized local, state and federal governments. The private and nonprofit sectors. Neighbors helped neighbors. We built temporary shelters and we rebuilt our city in record breaking time. So we can rebuild our city again.”
It was Bass’ most public exclamation of her candidacy, since she announced in a Sept. 27 tweet that she would run for the seat, being vacated by Eric Garcetti whose term ends next year. She would be the first woman to occupy the post.
Experts have long thought that if Bass got into the race it would be a battle for who could win the hearts of L.A.’s diverse, sometimes divided, tableau of voters.
It was clear on Saturday that Bass was reaching out to a broad-based alliance of voters, much in the spirit of Tom Bradley and Antonio Villaraigosa who won their respective mayorships with coalitions of Black, Latino, White progressive and Asian American voters.
The crowd at the school campus was indeed diverse, even geographically, represented by residents from Studio City to South L.A.
Bass — whose congressional district encompasses a swath of area south and west of Downtown L.A. — was surrounded by dozens of family, supporters and current and former elected officials, including Villaraigosa, former Rep. Diane Watson, Supervisor Holly Mitchell and Rep. Judy Chu.
Loraine Lundquist, a San Fernando Valley resident who ran against John Lee for the City Council seat vacated by Mitch Englander, said that Bass was just the leader to build coalitions needed in the city.
Absent from the stage was L.A. City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, a Bass ally who was indicted by a federal grand jury this week on allegations that while he was a county supervisor he supported favorable county contracts worth millions to USC in exchange for a scholarship and professorship for his son at the university. Ridley-Thomas has denied the charges, vows to fight them and said he will not step away from this City Council post.
The two have long been allies. When Bass announced her run in late September, Ridley-Thomas promptly tweeted, “Let’s go! All in!! Proud of you!!!”
Bass did not speak to the issue in her speech, but noted the need to reform City Hall.
It was bittersweet for rally attendee Christopher Hurd, who said allegations against Ridley-Thomas’ issues were difficult to hear about. Still, she and many others said it shouldn’t tarnish the moment for Bass.
“This is about Karen, not about him,” said Retoin Abram, of Inglewood.
For Bass, the journey to an L.A. mayoral run has woven from L.A.’s Venice/Fairfax areas, where she grew with three brothers to the cutting edge of high-profile and potentially historic civil rights legislation in Congress.
She attended Hamilton High School, Cal State Dominguez Hills and the University of Southern California’s School of Medicine Physician Assistant Program. She served as a clinical instructor at USC’s program, parlaying her nearly decade of experience as a physician’s assistant.
All the while, threads of community activism and social justice ran through her pursuits, even after 2006, when her 23-year-old daughter and son-in-law died in an auto crash.
She would go on to establish the non-profit Community Coalition with a goal of engaging residents and addressing issues of social injustice. Propelling her crusade in part was the explosion of liquor stores in South LA neighborhoods, where they’d become a kind of breeding ground for drug deals and violence. She led an effort to get rid of them.
She made her way to the Assembly, where she would become the first Black woman to ascend to the role of speaker, in 2008.
Bass’ Assembly tenure coincided with the 2008 recession, and it was underpinned by her own legislative pushes on foster care legislation and healthcare reform.
Both issues remained with her as she made her way to Congress, where as chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus she also pushed hard on criminal justice reform, and amid the nation’s recent social unrest she called for greater law enforcement accountability.
Her latest efforts on major criminal justice reform in the wake of the death of George Floyd fell short last month, however, when negotiators in the Senate and House could not reach an agreement on the legislation.
The veteran L.A. congresswoman is the highest-profile leader so far to jump into the mayoral race, which includes City Council members Joe Buscaino and Kevin de Leon and City Attorney Mike Feurer. The field also includes longtime San Fernando Valley business leader Mel Wilson and Jessica Lall, CEO of the Central City Association of Los Angeles — and about two dozen others. Rumored to be considering campaigns are real estate developer Rick Caruso and former L.A. Unified School District chief Austin Beutner.
“This was not an easy decision to leave Congress, but it was a necessary one,” Bass said Saturday. “Because of what I saw and what I felt and what I heard from you. You shared your concerns with me. Your fears about where are city was headed.”
All would be competing initially in the top-two June primary, and then on to the general election in November.
On Friday, Villaraigosa endorsed Bass, joining Supervisors Sheila Kuehl and Mitchell, among others.
Garcetti, who is expected to leave office early pending the U.S. Senate’s confirmation of his appointment to ambassador of India, said at an unrelated news conference Monday: “I love Karen Bass and it’s going to be a very exciting race with all sorts of candidates in it, and the nice thing about being a former mayor … is that I’ll get to assess the candidates and I get to be a voter, so I can’t wait to hear what all the candidates have to say.”
