Los Angeles mayoral race tests the city’s progressive direction

Los Angeles voters turned the mayor’s race into a test of whether a progressive coalition can not only win a big city but also govern it under pressure from homelessness, affordability and public safety. Karen Bass advanced to the November 3 runoff, while Nithya Raman’s late rise pushed Spencer Pratt out of the race after days of ballot counting.

The June 2 nonpartisan primary stayed unsettled for nearly a week as mail ballots were tallied. By June 9, Los Angeles County said 2,212,124 ballots had been counted, equal to 37.55% of registered voters, and officials said about 23,000 ballots were still outstanding at one point. Some voters also faced signature-curing notices, with a June 24 deadline to return the notice so the ballot could count.

Pratt, a Republican and former reality television personality from The Hills, had led in early returns. But Raman, a Los Angeles City Council member and Democrat, kept closing the gap until Pratt’s advantage was no longer mathematically viable. At that point, the race narrowed to Bass and Raman, two candidates who represent different versions of the city’s future even as both speak to voters anxious about how Los Angeles handles housing, encampments, policing and the cost of living.

Bass entered the runoff with the backing of a broad coalition that included organized labor and business leaders, a sign that the city’s governing center of gravity still reaches beyond the left. The runoff now becomes a larger verdict on urban progressivism in America’s second-largest city: whether a coalition built to win elections can also deliver amid fiscal limits, bureaucratic drag and intense public demands for visible results.

The final round will set up a choice between continuity and a more assertive progressive push, with the outcome set to shape how Los Angeles balances social spending, order on the streets and the politics of a city where every policy failure is measured in plain view.