Karen’s Big Mistake

GELFAND’S WORLD - Have you noticed that every time the tv news features Karen Bass, it then cuts to some homeless tent camp? It’s not unfair, really. Bass made curing homelessness her core issue, and has presided over the spending of zillions of dollars in the attempt to make good on her promise. It’s fitting that the news media remind viewers of her failure, even if she wants to tell us that she has been a teensy bit successful. I think that it is hard for the mayor to climb out of the hole she has dug for herself. Hence the primary election results and the current polling data.

But there are two more ideas I’d like to float about this election season.

Here is the first: I think that Los Angeles voters are not particularly interested in the mayoral election. As evidence, may I offer the observation that – were the voters interested – they would have found and supported some stronger opposition candidate. You might argue that we didn’t have somebody with the name and money of Rick Caruso (like, for example, Rick Caruso) but there were well over a dozen candidates at the time, even if some of them were the usual suspects. The fact that Raman has taken the lead in at least one poll is further evidence that the voters are feeling distant and disrespected.

The second idea is a bit surprising if we compare Los Angeles to other major cities. Los Angeles voters have now established that they are willing to defeat incumbents who are running for a second term. They defeated the incumbent City Attorney (Carmen Trutanich) a few years ago, they have defeated the incumbent City Attorney (Hydee Feldstein Soto) this year, and they seem to be willing to replace an incumbent mayor. In this sense, the voters of Los Angeles have joined in that once-small group of people who would write angry letters-to-the-editor arguing that we should defeat every incumbent. And by the way, notice that Nithya Raman got elected to her City Council seat in precisely this way – she defeated an incumbent City Councilman who was liked and respected by neighborhood council participants from all over the city. When it comes to electoral results, Los Angeles is once again the Wild West.

The fact that Nithya Raman is ahead at this moment suggests that the voters aren’t all that interested in Raman’s actual record, nor do they care much that she is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

It’s curious to compare the post-disaster careers of Karen Bass and Rudi Giuliani. Both were mayors when an unprecedented disaster took place. Maybe not unprecedented in terms of the firestorms and destroyed buildings of WWII, but new and different to U.S. citizens. Giuliani became something of a hero for just being there when the buildings were burning. He turned himself into America’s Mayor, at least for a while. Bass got off a plane a day into the Palisades fire, and has been made the goat of it ever since.

Bass actually had more to do post-destruction than Giuliani. There was oversight of the fire department to begin with, and then the need to deal with the Trump administration over funds for repairing and rebuilding. There was the need to stifle her pride when Trump came to town, even though he said and did things (throwing away a billion gallons of water well upstate from here) that made no rational sense.

Bass did manage to get the Palisades rubble removed by action of FEMA, a process that would have taken years if left to the homeowners and their insurance companies.

But Bass has come out of it looking weak and irresolute, whether or not she is or isn’t.

And so here we are, a few weeks from election day, and Nithya Raman has taken a substantial lead in the mayor’s race. So what does this mean? And by this question, I refer to the question as to what the mass of Los Angeles voters are thinking.

I think the simplest explanation is that Bass does not show leadership in the traditional way and, as a result, lacks followers in government and likewise lacks followers among the voters. When disasters such as the Palisades Fire or the building fire that stunk up the east side happen, she doesn’t seem to generate the public support that other political leaders have managed to build.

It’s not that people dislike her. It’s that they haven’t really bonded with her. They just look at city government as if from a great distance, they notice the homeless encampments on their television screens, and they are willing to give somebody else a shot.

Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected]