The Los Angeles mayoral race was too close to call after polling closed Tuesday night, with incumbent Mayor Karen Bass facing off with competitor Nithya Raman, the councilmember from Los Angeles City Council District 4.
At the time of writing, with 50% of the votes counted, Bass held a narrow lead over Raman, securing 50.7% of the vote to Raman’s 49.3%.
Bass fought to keep her spot as Los Angeles’s leader against Councilmember Raman in the general election on Tuesday, with the mayor hosting an election night party in Hollywood at the Loews Hotel and Raman hosting at the Greek Theater.
The final poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies found the mayoral candidates neck and neck with 40% of likely L.A. voters said they supported Bass, while another 40% supported challenger Raman. The poll also found that about 20% of Angelenos were still undecided just a week before Election Day.
For the incumbent, the poll comes as a sigh of relief after a September poll
found Raman ahead with an 11-percentage-point lead. Bass had not led a poll since August.
Polling closed in Los Angeles at 8 p.m., but the final results are unlikely to come in until later this week. During the pandemic, California began mailing every registered voter a ballot, giving every voter the option to mail-in their ballots. Those ballots require far more time to process than in-person ballots, often delaying the results.
Bass gathered with supporters at the Loews Hotel in Hollywood at the L.A. County Democratic Party Election Night. Bass was joined at the event by actress Yvette Nicole Brown; Yvonne Wheeler, the first executive vice president of the California Federation of Labor Unions; David Green, president of SEIU 721 and Mark Ramos, chair of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party.
“Let me just say, it takes a while to count the vote in our city, but pretty soon we shall know. And I am confident with all of the work that is done here … we will achieve victory,” Bass told party attendees. “I believe in the city, and I will always fight for the city that we deserve. Are you with me? Will we win this? Will we have [four more years]?”
The crowd responded enthusiastically, responding to each of Bass’ calls to action. Elsewhere in her speech, Bass addressed the nationwide midterm election results. Specifically, that the House and Senate flipped for the Democrats.
“This is a critical day in our city, but it is a critical day in our country,” she said. “We have taken back the house. We have taken back the Senate. Hakeem Jeffries is getting ready to be the Speaker of House. Oh my goodness! You talk about change. We will now be able to put some brakes on the White House.”
Raman was across town at The Greek Theater in Los Feliz. She was joined by Dropout star Brennan Lee Mulligan, LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia and Lindsey Horvath, a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.
“Thank you to every single one of you for believing in the promise of this beautiful, weird, magical place that we get to call home,” Raman told her event attendees. “There are still a lot of ballots to count, and we’re going to let that count finish. I’m hopeful. I’m hopeful. I’m very hopeful. But I’m also really superstitious. So we’re all just going to be cool, okay?”
Like Bass, Raman addressed the Democratic Party’s big wins Tuesday evening, noting, “All across America, voters demanded change. They are angry about a broken status quo and the politicians who failed them over and over again, but change feels good, doesn’t it?”
“This election is about change, too,” she continued. “A city that was engineered over the last few decades to resist change, and the people right here who said enough is enough, because for too long our broken and unjust status quo has convinced Angelenos that this is the best that we can do. Our city hall became a place where we became so used to saying no, we forgot how to say yes.”
Bass asked voters for four more years to continue progress on homelessness, housing, affordability issues, public safety, and other issues, despite her record during the Palisades fires and slow progress ahead of LA28. Her campaign has taken more aggressive tactics in an attempt to dissuade voters from electing Raman, who Bass says is “not ready for prime time.”
Raman had previously endorsed Bass but decided to put her own hat in the ring, entering the race just hours before the deadline earlier this year. She is running to “fix a broken city” under Bass. The councilmember has criticized the current mayor for her efforts on budget-breaking contracts, including billion-dollar agreement to raise salaries for police officers, and a costly effort to modernize the downtown convention center.
Jeremy Fuster contributed reporting to this story.
