As horrendous a job as she’s done, the alternative is even worse
Is it possible that Karen Bass, whose three decade career in politics has included stints as majority leader and speaker of the California State Assembly, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus and, now, mayor of Los Angeles, just isn’t a very good politician? After all, plenty of mediocre and subpar talents have long careers. By definition, half the U.S. workforce is below average. Not every politician is Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.
Personally, I was cautiously optimistic when she assumed office. I knew her history of sympathy for Cuban Communists and particularly Fidel Castro. But time seemed to have moderated that particular strain of bonkers. She certainly wasn’t part of the Bernie Sanders Brigade. In today’s Democratic Party that counts as moderate. To my knowledge she never sponsored any outlandish legislation.
If anything, she seemed rather dull. After a decade of Eric Garcetti’s preening, her muted approach came across as a breath of fresh air. Whereas Garcetti hurled himself in front of any camera in sight, Bass seemed almost to eschew publicity. I thought, hey, maybe a bit of boring is what we need in this town.
Boy howdy, was I wrong. In her nearly four years in office she’s lurched from one failure to another. Politicians often talk about the problems they “inherited.” This is a bit of doublespeak, a way of disavowing a chunk of responsibility. But the homelessness crisis isn’t some sort of birthright. Bass persuaded a majority of Angeleno voters that she was the one who could solve it. She didn’t “inherit” anything, she actively sought it out.
She hasn’t moved the needle a millimeter on that issue. If anything, the crisis has gotten worse on her watch. Her dramatic day one declaration of emergency amounted to nothing except more spending. During her administration, the city’s spending on homelessness exceeded $1 billion. Her signature Inside Safe program — which amounted to the umpteenth version of the same failed “housing first” approach — has been a costly $400 million failure. During her tenure on the board of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Agency (LAHSA) the agency went from incompetent, wasteful and embattled to the verge of total collapse.
Bass announced today that she’s stepping down from the board due to “time commitments.” Uh-huh. After three years, eight months and nine days, suddenly she doesn’t have time for the weekly Zoom meetings. And I have a bullet train in Fresno to sell you.
In a press release her office wrote, “The mayor’s first-hand experience at LAHSA reinforced her understanding that our current system is broken and in need of major overhaul, which is why she is developing a transition plan to build a city-led homelessness response system committed to delivering results for the city of Los Angeles.”
No one, I repeat, no one, needs a board seat on LAHSA to see first-hand that L.A.’s approach to homelessness is catastrophically broken. All you need is a pair of eyes and ears, a nose and marginally functional frontal cortex. I’m pretty sure my dog knows how bollocksed the system is.
Karen Bass promises this time she’ll really get it right.
Now, after nearly four years, she’s developing a “transition plan.” This is why the cliche of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic exists. The person who ran Inside Safe into the ground is now going to be the savior?
As mayor, she’s a political anti-Midas. When the city hits its annual budget crisis, a sort of holiday from hell, she has always championed unionized city employees over taxpaying citizens. She will never bite the hands that feed her, which is one of her biggest failings as a leader. She has intentionally logjammed the work of a new city commission charged with reforming the city’s broken charter. During her campaign she promised to reform L.A. Animal Services and, in particular, dramatically reduce the number of animals the (again, hopelessly broken and, in this case, unspeakably cruel) agency euthanizes every year. Instead, the number of kills has skyrocketed by 80%. Early in her tenure she appointed an individual to the L.A. Animal Services Commission who had no experience with the subject matter and had been saying for months that he didn’t want the job. He lasted exactly one meeting.
You can’t make this stuff up.
And we haven’t even talked about her abysmal, shameful performance before, during and after the Palisades Fire. We haven’t talked about how shockingly unprepared for the 2028 Olympics the city is under her — oh, let’s call it “leadership.” We haven’t talked about the two year backlog in tree trimming requests, the hundreds of miles of sidewalks in desperate need of repair or the epidemic of copper and wire thievery that leaves as many as a fifth of the city’s streetlights dark on any given night. We haven’t talked about her brazen flip-flop regarding illegal street vendors two weeks ago.
At this point it’s fair to wonder if we’re living in a simulation, and the simulation has decided to ask AI agents to create the worst mayor in modern U.S. history.
It’s also fair to wonder if Bass even wants the job anymore. At debates and other public appearances she has frequently appeared downright miserable. It’s not difficult to understand why. Being a mayor is a far different job than being a Congresswoman or Assemblywoman. With the exception of the occasional AOC, in the absence of a personal scandal members of Congress rarely endure direct, sustained criticism. Members of Congress in particular live pretty cushy lives inside a unique bubble.
For mayors, direct, sustained criticism is part of the job description. At times Bass seems downright resentful at being subjected to that level of scrutiny. Despite the fact that every sentient creature in the city and county of Los Angeles, including the squirrels in the trees in my front yard, knew that her performance during the Palisades Fire was its own historic disaster, in the ensuing days, weeks and months she was positively defiant. It was grotesque.
And yet.
And yet.
Somehow, some way the alternative, Nithya Raman, would be worse. She is, of course, a member of the Democratic Socialists (a contradiction in terms if ever there was one) of America. Unlike her comrades Zohran Mamdani in New York and Katie Wilson in Seattle she’s been muted about what socialism with Los Angeles characteristics would look like. She consistently dodges or talks her way around questions regarding her stance on capitalism. At least the Mamdanis and Wilsons of the world had the guts to tell people who they were. Raman’s keeping her cards close to the vest.
Frying pan, meet fire
We don’t have to hear it from her lips, we already know the sorts of policies she would push. Last week she formally accepted the DSA’s endorsement. To a considerably greater extent than Mamdani’s New York or Wilson’s Seattle, the socialists have established themselves as a political force in L.A. Raman will be under enormous pressure to do the movement’s bidding.
Indeed, there’s a very real possibility of a near complete socialist takeover of L.A. come November, which could see the election of a socialist mayor and city attorney, who would join the socialist city controller and four — potentially five after the election — socialist councilmembers. That’s almost too horrific to contemplate.
She’s also vehemently disliked by some of her colleagues on council as well as other city officials. In particular, Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez (CD 7) has repeatedly blasted her publicly for her role in perpetuating the city’s failed homelessness policies. I’ve spoken with multiple city officials off the record who expressed a surprisingly intense dislike for her. It’s surprising because elected and appointed city officials rarely air their dirty laundry. They’re all part of the same club and have an interest in singing from the same hymnal. Given that L.A. is effectively a one-party city, public spats are rare.
Likewise, the people who know her best, her constituents, have been vocal about their displeasure with her tenure. A common refrain is that she has her own idea of how things should work and refuses to accept, or even acknowledge, constituent input. I have heard this consistently from residents of her district, including those quoted in the California Post story linked above. The people I know are dedicated, passionate advocates for their communities and the city, and for the causes in which they believe.
In short, Los Angeles faces a choice between an atomic bomb in Bass, and a hydrogen bomb in Raman. Atomic bombs do less damage. Angelenos must vote for (throwing up in my mouth a little) Karen Bass.