Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass currently leads in her reelection race despite having an over 50 percent disapproval rating among likely voters.
A UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times found that Bass leads the race with 25 percent of support from likely voters, followed by City Councilmember Nithya Raman at 17 percent and reality TV star Spencer Pratt (The Hills) at 14 percent. Roughly a quarter of voters remain undecided. The poll also found that 56 percent of likely voters had an unfavorable view of the mayor, while only 31 percent viewed her favorably.
Dan Schnur, politics professor at USC, UC Berkeley, and Pepperdine, said the poll is “borderline catastrophic” for Bass despite her lead.
“That she’s having this much trouble against this field, against such a little-known field of opponents, bodes very, very poorly for her,” Schnur said. “The only thing saving her at this point is that the top tier of potential candidates who were considering running against her decided to stay out of this race.”
The poll comes after several sources confirmed to the Los Angeles Times that Mayor Karen Bass ordered the watering down of the after-action report to provide a smoother picture than what happened following the devastating Palisades Fire of early 2025.
The first draft of the report in August, overseen by the then-interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva after Mayor Karen Bass fired Kristin Crowley, also had side notes in the margins with suggestions to replace the cover page from a “negative” photo of flaming palm trees to a “positive” photo of firefighters hard at work. As many as seven drafts of the report were created before the final publication. No names were attached to the edited drafts.
According to a report from the Los Angeles Times, those edits were ordered by Mayor Karen Bass, most especially, regarding the city’s “failure not to fully staff up and pre-deploy all available engines ahead of dangerously high winds.” Though Mayor Bass consistently denied ordering the edits, two sources indicated that she did:
Two sources with knowledge of Bass’ office said that after receiving an early draft, the mayor told then-interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva that the report could expose the city to legal liabilities for those failures. Bass wanted key findings about the LAFD’s actions removed or softened before the report was made public, the sources said — and that is what happened.
The sources told The Times that two people close to Bass informed them of the mayor’s behind-the-scenes role in watering down the report. One source spoke to both of the people; the other spoke to one of them. The sources requested anonymity to speak frankly about the mayor’s private conversations with Villanueva and others.
One source said flatly that Bass “didn’t tell the truth when she said she had nothing to do with changing the report,” with the source saying that a confidant close to Bass said that altering the report “was a bad idea.”
The sources said that two confidants will testify under oath if the matter were to be litigated in court.
“All the changes [the Times] reported on were the ones Karen wanted,” a source said.
Bass’s office denied that the mayor ever demanded changes. The statement said:
The Mayor has been clear about her concerns regarding pre-deployment and the LAFD’s response to the fire, which is why there is new leadership at LAFD and why she called for an independent review of the Lachman Fire mop-up. There is absolutely no reason why she would request those details be altered or erased when she herself has been critical of the response to the fire — full stop. She has said this for months.
“This is muckraking journalism at its lowest form. It is dangerous and irresponsible for Los Angeles Times reporters to rely on third hand unsourced information to make unsubstantiated character attacks to advance a narrative that is false,” it added.
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