Karen Bass Is First Woman Elected Mayor Of Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES, CA — Rep. Karen Bass will be the next mayor of Los Angeles, making her the first woman ever elected mayor of an American city as large as LA.

The Associated Press officially projected Bass the winner Wednesday, eight days after Election Day ended with her opponent developer Rick Caruso in the lead. With more than 70% of the vote tallied, Bass had amassed an insurmountable lead of nearly 47,000 votes. Bass led Caruso with 53 percent of the vote to Caruso's 47 percent.

In addition to shattering the glass ceiling as the city's first woman to be elected mayor, she is only the second Black person to hold the position. Bass has yet to officially comment on her historic victory.

Bass was working in her congressional office in Los Angeles when she was informed by an aide she had won the race.

“We are in a fight for the soul of our city,” Bass said at an election night rally. “We are going to build a new Los Angeles.”

Bass will take the helm of the city at a challenging time of high-profile crime, an unprecedented homelessness crisis, a looming recession and another winter coronavirus surge. She made the case to voters that she is ready for the challenge thanks to a lifetime of community involvement and years of legislative leadership at the city, state, and federal levels.

Bass will also inherit leadership of a city grappling with a scandal that has embroiled City Hall for the past month, after three council members and a top county labor official took part in a leaked conversation in October 2021 that included racist comments and attempts to manipulate redistricting.

The election tested whether voters in the heavily Democratic city were willing to turn away from their liberal tendencies and embrace an approach that would place a strong emphasis on public safety.

Caruso, a former Republican who became a Democrats shortly before entering the race, had represented a turn to the political right. He argued that Bass and other longtime politicians were part of the problem who led LA into multiple crises. He promised to expand the police department to deal with rising crime rates and quickly get ubiquitous homeless encampments off the streets.

Bass, a former state Assembly leader, had the advantage of being a lifelong Democrat in a city where Republicans are almost invisible. She was backed by Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic establishment.

Caruso has not commented on this week's results. Last week, when the race was essentially even, Caruso described it as "a close race" as predicted.

The mayoral campaign was the city's most expensive ever largely because Caruso spent more than $100 million, dwarfing Bass's spending by more than 10 times. The two went into Election Day neck and neck in the polls. Weeks of domination on the airwaves allowed Caruso to eat into Bass's lead considerably.

An additional 103,126 ballots were added to the tally Wednesday by the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk for a total of nearly 2 million ballots counted so far.

An estimated 565,050 ballots were left to be processed after Tuesday's update, according to the clerk's office, but it was unclear how many of the uncounted votes are from the city of Los Angeles.

City News Service and the Associated Press contributed to this report.