They’re worth passing consideration, maybe, but you’d have to be a fool to bet your house on their accuracy. And yet there’s something that rings true about the recent poll suggesting that L.A. Mayor Karen Bass is in deep trouble among likely voters as she tries to hold on to a job that Councilmember Nithya Raman is trying to snatch away from her.
Here are the numbers, as compiled by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times: Bass has naturally tried to debunk the poll. What else could she do, when her supporters are outnumbered by people who can’t make up their minds? Bass would need to dominate the undecided vote to have a chance, but given her high unfavorability rating, that’ll be hard to do.
On the other hand, Raman certainly hasn’t put things out of reach, despite the fact that Bass carries the baggage of the Palisades fire and has made only minimal progress on her signature issue — homelessness. Election day is less than two months away, and Raman has failed to convince anywhere near a majority that she’s the answer. So what do Raman and Bass need to do between now and Nov. 3?
Some speculate that Bass may need to step up the negative attacks. We need both candidates to be bolder, more creative, more convincing, and to tell us things we haven’t heard before. All the recent L.A. mayors I’ve known had their faults and failures, whether the task was filling potholes, building out transit or addressing the high cost of housing.
But among their best qualities, Dick Riordan was arrogantly confident, Jim Hahn had a steady hand on the tiller, Antonio Villaraigosa was tireless and passionate, Eric Garcetti was a long-range thinker on earthquakes, water and energy. L.A. needs a mayor with all of those qualities. Running the second-largest city in the country is no easy task, because many of the problems at street level begin well beyond local control, related in part to an economy that leaves too many people behind.
But if you want to lead a world-class city, you need to have world-class answers on the big stuff like housing and homelessness and on the basics, too, like fractured sidewalks and neglected parks. Most voters don’t give a hoot about which candidate is more of a socialist or a moderate. City Hall is broken, and they want to know who can fix it.
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