[“These are general statements, OK? But women are more
collaborative. Women are not as transactional. And I think women focus
on different issues,” Bass said. “I think women tend to lead
differently.”]
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KAREN BASS BECOMES FIRST WOMAN ELECTED AS MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES  
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Sharon Huber
November 16, 2022
New York Times
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_ “These are general statements, OK? But women are more
collaborative. Women are not as transactional. And I think women focus
on different issues,” Bass said. “I think women tend to lead
differently.” _

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Karen Bass, a veteran Democratic congresswoman, on Wednesday became
the first woman elected as mayor of Los Angeles after pledging to
build coalitions in a metropolis torn by racial tensions and fed up
with homelessness. The race was called by The Associated Press. 

Ms. Bass survived a bruising race against Rick Caruso, a billionaire
real estate developer, that had remained too close to call for more
than a week after the election. Mr. Caruso had pumped roughly $100
million into his campaign as a law-and-order candidate, hoping to
appeal to a frustrated electorate.

On Wednesday, Los Angeles County election results showed her with more
than 53 percent of the vote, with returns trending heavily for her.

“The people of Los Angeles have sent a clear message,” Ms. Bass
said in a statement on Wednesday. “It is time for change and it is
time for urgency.”

Ms. Bass’s election comes at a tumultuous moment in Los Angeles, a
city of 4 million people that emerged from the pandemic to a landscape
of tent camps, debris, economic anxiety and spiking violence. Although
matters have gradually begun to improve and crime rates remain far
below the city’s peaks of the 1990s, Los Angeles residents have
expressed fury and exhaustion, particularly at the city’s epidemic
of homelessness, according to surveys
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groups and pre-election interviews.
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In an interview last year at her hillside home — a ranch house in
the Baldwin Vista neighborhood that was burglarized in September
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thieves who stole two handguns — Ms. Bass, 69, said that the main
reason she ran for mayor was the familiarity of the current civic
unease. She said the city’s mood reminded her of the fear-stoked
distrust and divisiveness that preceded the 1992 riots.

“That’s what is frightening to me now — the anger,” she said.
“And my concern is the direction the anger can move the city in.”

Understand the Outcomes of the 2022 Midterm Elections

Ms. Bass has said that as mayor she will declare a state of emergency
on homelessness and find housing for 17,000 homeless people in her
first year. She also has promised to put more police officers on the
street, in part by freeing up sworn members to patrol the city rather
than handle administrative tasks.

She will bring to the job a long history of coalition-building, dating
to the 1980s, when as a physician assistant and emergency room worker
she applied for a federal grant to launch a nonprofit to address the
crack epidemic that was ravaging the city. The Community Coalition for
Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment — now known simply as the
Community Coalition, or CoCo — has since become one of the city’s
largest and most influential advocacy groups, working across the
city’s vast array of ethnicities.

Ms. Bass said on election night that her very family is a kind of
coalition. Married for six years in the 1980s, Ms. Bass and her
ex-husband, a Latino, went on after their divorce to jointly raise
their daughter with his four children. Ms. Bass’s stepchildren spoke
lovingly of her at her campaign kickoff rally.

Her biological daughter and son-in-law died in 2006
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an automobile accident, two years after Ms. Bass first was elected to
public office. The tragedy, she has said, made her part of a “club
that you didn’t ask to be a part of,” and left her with “a
choice as to whether to go back to work or hide.”

In a Democratic stronghold so liberal that Senator Bernie Sanders of
Vermont received the most Los Angeles votes in the 2020 presidential
primary, Ms. Bass will bring a liberal perspective to the nonpartisan
office.

As a child during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, she said,
she grew up watching demonstrations on the news with her father, a
mail carrier, and volunteered to walk precincts for Robert F. Kennedy,
who was assassinated not far from where she grew up. In the 1970s, she
joined a group of young leftists working on construction projects in
Fidel Castro’s Cuba, the Venceremos Brigade
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By California standards, however, she is viewed as more center-left
than progressive. As assembly speaker during the 2008 financial
crisis, she worked with the governor at the time, Arnold
Schwarzenegger, to negotiate billions of dollars in deep cuts to
balance the state budget. In Congress, where she has served since 2011
and was chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, she has
represented a district that spans affluent West Los Angeles and some
of the city’s poorest quarters. She was shortlisted as a running
mate by Joseph R. Biden Jr. during his presidential campaign.

She will be the city’s second Black mayor, taking office nearly
three decades after Tom Bradley retired as the longest-tenured
executive in Los Angeles history. And, as the first woman to be
elected to the post, she will join an increasingly female pantheon of
local leaders, including the city’s first female city attorney and
the county’s powerful, five-member Board of Supervisors, which is
dominated by women. 

Ms. Bass said in the interview last year that she welcomed the
opportunity to work with so many women in powerful positions.

“These are general statements, OK? But women are more collaborative.
Women are not as transactional. And I think women focus on different
issues,” she said. “I think women tend to lead differently.”

For much of the mayoral campaign, Ms. Bass was the front-runner, with
polls showing her to be the best known candidate by far in a crowded
primary field. But that changed with the late entrance of Mr. Caruso,
63, a deep-pocketed Brentwood businessman who had developed some of
Southern California’s best-known shopping destinations and served on
powerful boards overseeing the Los Angeles Police Department and the
University of Southern California.

The race was the first mayoral contest since the city’s decision to
hold local elections at the same time as the statewide general
election, and the first to follow a state law that provides every
registered active voter with a mail-in ballot. The two changes
dramatically broadened interest in the municipal election, and Mr.
Caruso’s spending set records in the city, not only for campaign ads
but also for phone banks, precinct walkers and other voter-turnout
efforts.

In the final weeks, polls showed the officially nonpartisan race
narrowing substantially. Ms. Bass, however, garnered numerous
high-profile Democratic political endorsements, including one from
former President Barack Obama. She also criticized Mr. Caruso for
stances that he argued were only tangentially related to the limited
powers of a mayor in the city — his belated switch to the Democratic
Party, for instance, and his past contributions
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conservative candidates who opposed abortion.

In a statement on Wednesday, Mr. Caruso wished Ms. Bass “Godspeed”
and congratulations. “There will be more to come from the movement
we built,” he said, “but for now as a city we need to unite around
Mayor-elect Bass and give her the support she needs to tackle the many
issues we face.”

Ms. Bass has said she will look to mend relationships when she enters
office in December. The City Council is reeling from a series of
scandals
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including the leak of an audio recording
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which a group of Latino members were caught making disparaging and
racist remarks, several of which were directed at African Americans. 

Also on the horizon are preparations for the 2028 Olympics, which Los
Angeles is hosting, and the possibility of a painful economic downturn
in a city with limited options for raising revenue.

She will have a powerful bully pulpit in her new post, but also
significant constraints; Los Angeles government was designed to resist
the concentration of authority. County officials oversee many of the
social service programs necessary to address homelessness, for
example, and any regional initiatives will require the broader buy-in
of scores of surrounding cities and other levels of government.

* Los Angeles
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* Mayoral election
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* homelessness
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* Housing
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