On her first day in office in 2022, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass promised voters bold action, standing with her allies as she declared a local emergency on homelessness.
That moment of political stagecraft, meant to herald a new era of confident leadership, seems like a political lifetime ago.
Bass, running in the June 2 primary for a second and final term, faces the toughest reelection fight of her political career. Many voters now associate her with an entirely different emergency — the devastating 2025 Palisades fire — and view the response under her leadership as a failure…