Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is staring down a primary challenge from City Councilwoman Nithya Raman, whose internal polling now shows her leading the incumbent, a shift that echoes the kind of left-wing upset that rattled New York City's political establishment.
A survey of 600 likely voters conducted by Hart Research Associates in early September put Raman ahead of Bass 44 percent to 39 percent, with 17 percent undecided and a four-point margin of error. The poll was commissioned by Raman's campaign, and Breitbart reported that the Bass campaign declined to release any internal polling of its own, a silence that rarely signals confidence.
The numbers mark a sharp turn in a race that, until recently, most observers expected Bass to win without serious opposition. Now both campaigns are spending heavily on television, streaming, and social media advertising, and the contest is drawing comparisons to Zohran Mamdani's upset of an establishment-backed candidate in New York City.
Raman's Hart Research survey is not the only data point. A separate survey paid for by a group supporting Raman initially showed Bass at 38 percent and Raman at 37 percent, a statistical dead heat within the poll's 3.7-point margin of error. After respondents received additional information about the candidates, Raman jumped to 41 percent and Bass dropped to 34 percent.
An outside group backing Bass pointed to its own poll from early August. That survey showed Bass ahead 41 percent to 35 percent, with nearly a quarter of voters undecided. After voters in that poll received candidate information, Bass's lead widened to 45, 33.
Neither the outside groups nor the pollsters behind those competing surveys were named in available reporting. But the pattern is clear enough: even the most favorable data for Bass shows an incumbent who cannot crack 50 percent and who depends on how, and whether, undecided voters learn about her record. That is not the position a sitting mayor wants to occupy heading into an advertising blitz.
Bass has faced mounting scrutiny over her handling of the city's homelessness crisis. A congressional panel summoned Bass to testify over the alleged misuse of more than $1 billion in federal homeless funds, a controversy that has dogged her administration for months.
Raman's campaign released a Hollywood-themed advertisement featuring the voice of actor and screenwriter Bob Odenkirk, best known for his starring role in "Better Call Saul." The ad shows Raman visiting a taco stand and embracing a dog, imagery designed to cast her as approachable and rooted in the city's everyday life. The campaign's message centers on "change" and "affordability," two themes that cut against an incumbent presiding over one of the most expensive cities in the country.
The affordability pitch is not subtle. Los Angeles residents have watched housing costs, grocery bills, and utility rates climb while city government has struggled to deliver basic services. Raman is betting that voters are tired enough of the status quo to replace Bass with a candidate running well to her left.
Bass, meanwhile, refused to face Congress over the billion-dollar homelessness funding scandal, a decision that handed her opponents an easy line of attack about accountability and transparency.
The mayor's first major digital ad takes a different tack entirely. Rather than defending her record on housing or public safety, Bass built her spot around footage of herself confronting federal immigration agents at MacArthur Park in July 2025. The ad frames Bass as a fighter willing to stand between her constituents and the Trump administration's enforcement operations.
Bass delivers the ad's central line directly to camera:
"When someone comes after your family, you don't hesitate. You stand up. You fight."
The strategy is a familiar one for Democratic incumbents in deep-blue cities: when local results are hard to defend, nationalize the race. Bass is asking voters to judge her not on homelessness, not on affordability, and not on public safety, but on her willingness to oppose federal immigration enforcement.
Whether that trade works depends on what Los Angeles voters care about more. The city's LAPD staffing crisis has left the department hundreds of officers short, and the homelessness emergency that Bass promised to address remains a daily reality on streets across the city.
Internal polls from challengers always deserve skepticism. Campaigns release numbers that make them look competitive; they bury numbers that don't. Raman's team chose to publicize the Hart Research survey because it showed her ahead, and there is no way to know what other data they may be sitting on.
But the broader picture is harder for Bass to dismiss. Three separate polls, one from her own allies, two from groups aligned with Raman, all show the same basic shape: a race where the incumbent is stuck in the high 30s to low 40s, where a large share of voters remain undecided, and where the challenger gains ground once voters learn more about both candidates.
Bass also exited the embattled homeless authority as Congress demanded answers on the federal funds, a move that looked less like reform and more like distancing herself from a political liability.
Raman, for her part, is not without her own political baggage. The Los Angeles City Council stripped her of the homelessness committee chairmanship in a near-unanimous vote, a rebuke from her own colleagues that raises questions about her ability to govern a city of nearly four million people.
Still, the dynamic favors the challenger. Bass is the one defending a record. Bass is the one declining to release her own polling. And Bass is the one whose opening ad pitch to voters is not "look what I've done" but "look who I'm fighting."
When an incumbent's best argument is that she stood up to someone else, it usually means she doesn't want voters looking too closely at what she did, or failed to do, at home.
