Bass and Raman tussle in final debate of L.A. mayoral runoff election

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Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Nithya Raman traded verbal blows on Tuesday, scrapping over public safety, the Palisades fire and the fate of Police Chief Jim McDonnell in the only televised head-to-head debate of the Nov. 3 runoff election.

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, is someone with extreme views who has “a tendency to take different positions on different days of the week.”

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 is now experiencing “a crisis of trust,” Raman said.

Much of the one-hour debate, hosted by NBC4 and Telemundo 52, revolved around McDonnell, who was appointed by Bass to lead the Los Angeles Police Department in 2024. At the time, Raman voted with a majority of her colleagues to confirm McDonnell.

Raman, seated across from Bass, called for McDonnell to be replaced, saying the LAPD had improperly collaborated with federal immigration agents. Raman declined to give a timeline for that — even after NBC4’s Conan Nolan pressed her on whether she would remove McDonnell before the 2028 Summer Olympic Games here.

“It is not a unilateral decision by the mayor,” she said. “It takes agreement with the Police Commission, even agreement with the council. It’s not something I can immediately set a timeline on,” she said.

Bass warned that removing the police chief before the Olympics would send the LAPD into “disarray.”

“It’s absolutely in the power of the mayor to fire the police chief,” Bass said. “You have said that you would get rid of him before the Olympics. What worries me about that is, I don’t think you have any idea what it takes to identify a police chief.”

Bass also criticized Raman for appearing last week in an Instagram video where she criticized McDonnell and uttered the phrase “only you can stop fascist liars.” Raman has said since then that an Instagram influencer edited her remarks in a way that distorted her message.

“As soon as we realized it was a mis-edited video, we took it down,” Raman said Tuesday night. “It was up maybe an hour or two. That’s it. Yes, we made an error. But it was an error, and I have never, I would never imply that the city is fascist, or that this mayor is fascist, or that our police chief is fascist. That’s not what I said at all.”

“You called the police chief, you called me fascist. It made me wonder whether you understood what the word fascist meant. But it also just showed that you are not ready for prime time,” Bass said.

Raman and Bass emerged as the top two vote getters in the June 2 primary, with the mayor winning 34% of the vote and the council member receiving 29%. Reality television personality Spencer Pratt came in third.

Since then, several polls have put Raman in first place, although the size of that lead has varied depending on the survey.

A poll conducted last month by UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by The Times, showed Raman with support from 39% of likely voters and Bass at 28%, with a third of the electorate still undecided. Weeks later, a poll conducted by the firefighters’ union showed Bass trailing by a much smaller margin.

With Bass trailing Raman in multiple polls, the mayor and her allies have attempted to portray Raman as unprepared for the job. Raman, in turn, has sought to show she is ready to lead immediately, staging a rally last week where she unveiled plans for her first 100 days in office.

During that event, she promised to appoint a new recovery czar for the burned areas of Pacific Palisades and hire a chief financial officer to improve coordination between city agencies.

Raman and Bass were once political allies, campaigning together in 2024 as Raman faced a tough reelection fight in a district stretching from Silver Lake to the west San Fernando Valley. Bass endorsed Raman and helped her secure the backing of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party.

Things were sharply different on Tuesday. Bass told the councilmember she had been “contemptuous of her constituents,” forcing residents of her district to reach out to the mayor’s office for city services.

“I made a deal with you four years ago because you had so many problems with your constituents, and I offered to take care of your constituents,” Bass said.

Raman called that claim “a lie.” She questioned the mayor’s decision to give her personal phone number out to residents of Sherman Oaks, a neighborhood in her district.

“She said that things get responded to when you call her personally,” Raman said. “This is a sign of departmental dysfunction.”

“Do the residents of Boyle Heights have your number?” Raman asked the mayor.

“That’s not what they told me,” Raman said.

Bass and Raman have been mostly evenly matched in their most recent campaign fundraising reports, with each collecting about $2.5 million for the runoff. Meanwhile, powerful interests have been waging much more expensive campaigns on behalf of their chosen candidates.

The Los Angeles Police Protective League, which supports Bass, has committed at least $3.5 million this year, running ads that have highlighted Raman’s opposition to a law barring homeless encampments near schools. The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor is also waging an independent campaign supporting the mayor.

Meanwhile, the Western States Regional Council of Carpenters has put $9 million into a campaign supporting Raman, running commercials that slam the mayor over this year’s increase in citywide homelessness and her handling of the Palisades fire.

Two-thirds of that has come from Reno-based hedge fund manager Aaron Sosnick, who has been pressing city leaders on the expansion of bike lanes and bus lanes.

Noah Goldberg covers Los Angeles City Hall for the Los Angeles Times. He previously worked on its breaking news team and has also written an array of offbeat enterprise stories. Before joining The Times in 2022, Goldberg worked in New York City as the Brooklyn courts reporter for the New York Daily News and as the criminal justice reporter for the Brooklyn Eagle. He graduated from Vassar College.

David Zahniser covers Los Angeles City Hall for the Los Angeles Times.

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