Karen Bass heads to LA mayoral runoff after falling short of majority

• 01Karen Bass won Tuesday's primary for Los Angeles mayor with less than 50% of the vote.
• 02Bass will face either Spencer Pratt or Nithya Raman in November's general election; the race between Pratt and Raman was undecided as of Tuesday evening.
• 03Bass said in Tuesday remarks she would spend the next four years addressing homelessness and building more housing units.
• 04Bass was in Ghana on a diplomatic trip when wildfires broke out in January 2025 that killed at least 31 people.
• 05The National Weather Service had issued warnings about 'critical fire conditions' before Bass's trip.
• 06Bass later called her Ghana trip a 'mistake' and said she would not have gone if informed of fire risk.
• 07Bass declared a state of emergency on homelessness in her first month in office.
• 08Spencer Pratt is a registered Republican who entered the race in January after losing his Pacific Palisades home in the 2025 wildfires.
• 09Pratt first rose to prominence on MTV's 'The Hills,' which aired between 2006 and 2010.
• 10Nithya Raman unseated councilman David Ryu in 2020 and has touted her record capping rent increases and cutting encampments in her district by half.

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Karen Bass won Tuesday's primary for Los Angeles mayor with less than 50% of the vote, setting up a November general election against either Spencer Pratt or Nithya Raman. Bass, facing criticism over her absence during January 2025 wildfires that killed at least 31 people and subsequent budget cuts to the fire department, emphasized her focus on addressing homelessness and building housing. Pratt, a former reality TV star and registered Republican who lost his home in the fires, has made Bass's wildfire response central to his campaign, while Raman, a Democratic socialist councilmember, has positioned herself as offering a different approach to homelessness and housing.