Bass and Raman come out swinging in final debate. Here’s who landed the most punches

Karen Bass and Nithya Raman faced off Tuesday night in a debate hosted by NBC4 and Telemundo52 in Universal City. It was the L.A. mayoral candidates’ last head-to-head before the Nov. 3 election.

Times columnists Lorraine Ali, Gustavo Arellano and Steve Lopez weigh in on the highlights and lowlights.

The gloves came off in the final debate between Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Nithya Raman this week, with the two candidates trading verbal blows over public safety, the Palisades fire and the fate of Police Chief Jim McDonnell.

Bass, now in a tough battle for a second term, portrayed Raman as someone who isn’t ready to lead the city. Raman, she said, has “a tendency to take different positions on different days of the week” — and has struggled to work collaboratively with others at City Hall.

Councilmember Nithya Raman in closing comments stressed her message that Karen Bass is an “MIA” mayor. Raman argued that Angelenos “cannot afford another four years of decline, of mismanagement, of excuses.”

Bass, on the other hand, touted her long career in public service, her work on the city’s homelessness crisis and her stance against the Trump administration — saying she stood up “when they invaded our city.”

Raman said that L.A. homelessness is on the rise “despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent.”

A vote for her, she said, would help build a “city that’s functional, that’s affordable and where people are welcomed here to build their dreams once again.”

Bass, though, asked viewers, “Do we really want to turn our city over to someone who has repeatedly voted to not remove encampments from in front of schools? Repeatedly voted to not hire additional police officers?”

“We are 640 days away from the greatest sporting event in U.S. history, and I believe that the city would be destabilized with someone who has extreme views and basically has not been able to build relationships, not on city council and not with her constituents,” she added.

With a fire recently ripping through a historic Black church in South Los Angeles for the third time in 13 years, Telemundo 52 news anchor Alejandra Ortiz asked the mayoral candidates why it was taking the city so long to address complaints with the property.

Councilmember Nithya Raman said her office had dealt with “problem properties” in her district, and “the departments that are responsible for addressing these kinds of properties simply do not work fast enough and don’t talk to each other enough to actually get results fast enough.”

If elected, she said she would ensure that the Department of Building and Safety and the city attorney’s office communicated to “actually bring the kinds of charges against building owners that will force them to take action.”

Mayor Karen Bass said that when there are nuisance issues, constituents call her office “to get the situation handled.”

“We need to expedite the clearing of these properties, and so I put $2 million in the budget so that we could clear it because we can clear the properties and then charge the owner,” she said. “But unfortunately, the council took that out, and so I’ve asked that the council put the money back into the budget.”

As film and entertainment jobs leave L.A., both candidates offered their plan for retaining jobs.

Karen Bass highlighted her appointment of a film czar, a job meant to retain jobs by making it easier to film in L.A.; streamlining filming permits; and lowering filming fees.

Nithya Raman, whose husband is a writer, said the decline of the industry had affected her household. She vowed to push for uncapped tax credits to ensure productions remain local.

Ali: Good Night, and Gustavo for Mayor.

Ali: And that’s it. We’re done. This was not a win for Raman, so Bass comes out in front by default.

Arellano: Both Bass and Raman struck out on the Dodger question at the end -- but did anyone of them get a hit that will advance their campaign? Someone grab Steve Garvey somewhere...

Lopez: Gustavo for mayor.

Mayor Karen Bass was asked why her 2025 budget proposal excluded funding for Represent LA, a program that provides legal services for undocumented Angelenos facing deportation.

Bass said it was not due to budget strains and instead because the city “knew that we could get resources outside from philanthropy.”

“I was there fighting against ICE, even went to MacArthur Park and confronted them, which was something that I was so appalled [by] because I knew that L.A. was being used as an experiment,” Bass said.

Councilmember Nithya Raman, who has called for eliminating Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said she would as mayor ensure that the Los Angeles Police Department would not share data with ICE. Raman took a shot at Bass’ response to the federal government’s immigration raids.

“What we have seen over and over again is that this mayor has lost the trust of immigrants in this city in their response to ICE,” Raman said.

Bass defended herself, saying she was on the frontlines of the issue since the first day and has spent time convening with the City Council and other mayors to respond to the Trump administration.

“I think it’s very important not to lie to the people and not to make them believe that what you can do can supersede federal policy, because it cannot,” Bass said. “It is important to prepare and to fight back and to resist.”

Measure ULA, the so-called “mansion tax” that places a transfer tax on home sales above $5.4 million, came up during the debate Tuesday for its chilling effect on apartment development. Many developers claim that they’re not building apartments because the tax digs into their profits.

Interestingly, both candidates have been somewhat aligned in trying to fix the chilling effect.

Raman initially supported the tax, but has since tried to tweak it, proposing an exemption for newly built apartment buildings. The proposal fizzled out in City Council, but Raman said she’s not finished.

“I’ll fight for that reform if I am mayor,” Raman said.

Bass said that the most important thing is to get affordable housing built. Bass pushed for a reform of her own at the state level that would’ve reduced taxes on apartment buildings last year, but ended up pulling it before it went to a vote.

Mayor Karen Bass apologized for being out of the country when the Palisades fire erupted and asserted that the city is prepared should another disaster strike Los Angeles.

“I am so profoundly sorry that I was not in my city when my city needed me,” she said. “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of the lives lost, the families that lost their home, and the families where the home is still standing but they’re not able to be in it” due to contamination.

Councilmember Nithya Raman hit the mayor on the city’s failure to pre-deploy fire engines and firefighters ahead of the blaze despite risky fire weather and it being a week after a smaller fire had burned in Pacific Palisades, leaving it vulnerable.

Bass argued the city had made significant progress since the fire to prepare. The city has a new fire chief who has already implemented more than 90% of the recommendations of the city’s internal review of the disaster.

When asked if the city was ready, today, for a potential disaster, Raman wasn’t so confident.

“I hope we are ready,” she said.

Fire weather, with Santa Ana winds, is expected to return to Los Angeles County this week.

When asked how she would handle an aging fire engine, Karen Bass urged Angelenos to take matters into their own hands — as she has before — with Measure FD, which would increase local sales taxes by 0.5% to bolster the L.A. Fire Department’s budget.

“Voters have an opportunity to participate in this,” she said.

Raman said she supported the measure as well.

“I know this is an additional tax on residents who are feeling the pinch already, but we do need more firefighters,” she said. “We need more fire stations. We need to update our engines.”

In Boyle Heights, the Lineage cold storage warehouse was the site of a massive fire that started June 17 and took about a week to put out.

Council member Nithya Raman said she felt there was a similar lack of response to the Palisades Fire and, “a failure of leadership on the part of this mayor and of this city, as black smoke billowed from the warehouse fire into the surrounding communities.”

“This mayor, against public health advice that was being provided, told residents multiple times that the air was safe, that the smoke was safe to breathe,” Raman said. “When I spoke to residents who were in the communities around when I door knocked them, every single resident told me that they had gone to the hospital, they had visited doctors, they faced respiratory illness, and they had not seen enough presence from this mayor’s office in their neighborhoods.”

Raman said she would have done things very differently.

Mayor Karen Bass acknowledged there was confusion, “at the point of the fire.”

“One of the things that I did right away was walk the neighborhood, talk to the neighbors, ask them exactly what they needed, which resulted in us relocating over 1,300 residents, providing food, providing cash assistance, healthcare, ways to deal with the rodents and the flies,” Bass said.

The mayor added that she was “proud that we advocated for three pieces of legislation to hold companies accountable to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

On the topic of automatic license plate readers, Nithya Raman said she’s skeptical of “mass surveillance” technologies.

“I want to see proof that they are effective at addressing crime, and I want to see hard proof that this data will not be used to surveil our populations, will not be shared with ICE,” Raman said.

Karen Bass, however, said she believes license plate readers have a place in crime prevention.

“I do think there’s tons of hard data about that,” Bass said. “The problem is the Flock cameras, which I certainly do not support renewing the contract with Flock because Flock has been completely uncooperative and refuses to curtail who they share their data with.”

Raman argued there is mistrust between residents and City Hall as well as a “crisis of trust in law enforcement.”

“We need to restore that trust, and the way we do that is by making sure that the city can trust these kinds of data data collection,” she said.

Last week on the social media platform X, Raman said that the city should “cut ties with Flock Safety.”

“Cities across the country are canceling their Flock contracts over the risks its license plate readers pose to privacy, civil liberties, and immigrant communities,” Raman’s post read.

Bass stressed her support in anti-drug raids that took place in MacArthur Park and Skid Row. She said giving people the choice between jail or addiction treatment is a good model, but requires ample access to treatment beds.

“The problem we have here, though, is that if you’re to detain somebody who is addicted, you don’t have the treatment beds for them to be in,” Bass said. “The first thing we need to do is expand treatment in the city.”

Raman said a whole-of-government approach is necessary to address homelessness, which includes working with LAPD to ensure laws are being enforced. She pointed to the lack of available shelter as another issue that hinders the city’s ability to address homelessness.

“Through that diligent work, you actually make progress on the streets,” Raman said.

LAPD officers have fired their weapons in 47 incidents so far this year — killing 14 people and wounding 23 others — a roughly 70% increase compared with 2024 and the highest annual shooting total by the department since 2015. Police shootings have fallen by roughly 50% this year.

Bass has previously said she was concerned about the rise in shootings, particularly those involving people in crisis. Last month, she signed an executive directive calling for an outside review of the LAPD’s policies. She said that police training for officers was “woefully inadequate.”

Bass was asked about why the department hadn’t yet released its annual use-of-force report, saying that she would like the information to be made public quickly.

Raman countered that under Bass, the LAPD is becoming more opaque. She said the LAPD has stopped releasing information on things such as crime trends and other important information.

In response to questions about a video interview posted online last week where Councilmember Nithya Raman renewed a call for the removal of the Los Angeles police chief and urged viewers to “stop fascist liars,” Raman said her comments were directed at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

“The interview questions that were asked to me were about ICE, whether ICE was racist, whether ICE is undertaking terrible actions on our streets, and I stand by that,” Raman said, referencing immigration raids that took place in the city.

“Immigrants are terrified here in the city of Los Angeles, and I will speak up against the actions of ICE and the actions of the Trump administration on our streets every single day, because this is a city of immigrants.”

Raman said the city has lost the trust of residents under Bass’ tenure because the Los Angeles Police Department has reportedly shared data with ICE.

Raman said she wouldn’t seek to appeal the city’s anti-camping zone law, but said the law doesn’t do enough to protect children.

“When I first started in office, I had encampments around the schools. Now we don’t. We don’t have them in our parts because of the steady, relentless work of my office. And I want to bring those results to every block of the city.”

Anti-camping zones have been a point of contention for the candidates. Raman voted against a law that would prohibit homeless encampments within 500 feet of a public school or daycare centers. She argued the legislation does nothing to address child safety.

Bass supports the anti-camping law, but previously said it should be used sparingly, and has criticized Raman for voting against it.

Nithya Raman would not respond when asked whether she would replace LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell before the Olympics. She said that McDonnell has failed to “meet the moment” and suggested that she would like a change in leadership, but declined to give a timeline.

“I believe he’s lost the trust of Angelenos, especially in light of the ICE raids,” she said, adding that it is not a “unilateral decision” by the mayor and that she would need buy-in from the Police Commission, the department’s civilian oversight body.

McDonnell’s term ends in late 2029.

Bass countered that the mayor does have the authority to fire a police chief and that replacing McDonnell before the Olympics would throw the department into disarray.

Last week, Raman caused a stir when she appeared on a since-deleted Instagram video by content creator Ed Choi, in which she appeared to criticize both McDonnell and the mayor. Raman has since said her comments were mischaracterized and denied that she’s committed to immediately removing McDonnell if elected.

Mayor Karen Bass has publicly backed McDonnell since selecting him in November 2024 after a lengthy nationwide search. She has continued to stand by him, at least publicly, even as the chief has come under fire over a dramatic rise in police shootings last year and for the department’s heavy-handed response to pro-immigration protests.

Bass has praised McDonnell for offering a steady hand in preparing the LAPD for the Olympics.

Nithya Raman said that Karen Bass’s Inside Safe homelessness initiative is too costly and ineffective. Raman said Bass has faltered on the issue, and that was part of the reason she chose to challenge her.

“I decided to push back against a system that I saw was failing Los Angeles,” Raman said. “What I saw right now was that conditions in the city were unacceptable — that I didn’t want to wait four more years for change to happen simply because that’s what establishment politics decided to do.”

The Inside Safe program has moved more than 6,000 people into hotels, motels and other interim housing, but has struggled to achieve long-term success. About 42% of unhoused residents served by the $300-million program have returned to homelessness by the end of July this year, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

Bass defended the program, and noted that Raman signed off on many of her initiatives over the past three years, including putting millions of dollars into Inside Safe.

“Every dollar that was spent on Inside Safe was approved by you,” Bass said.

Karen Bass made her case to the large swath of undecided voters in the city, touting her focus on homelessness during her first term as mayor.

“I ran for mayor because we had an absolute crisis in our city. On our streets, homelessness has exploded. I don’t believe any Angelenos should be on the streets,” Bass said.

Nithya Raman argued that Angelenos don’t feel better off today than they did four years ago. Raman has made grand promises to constituents, committing to cutting unsheltered homelessness by 50% before the 2028 Summer Olympics and eliminating it entirely by 2030.

“We’ve had a mayor who has been M.I.A. and for me that is simply unacceptable,” Raman said. “I know the city can do better. I’ve delivered real results in my district.”

Bass made homelessness a central issue of her first term, declaring a state of emergency on her first day in office. The first half of her term saw a slow decline in unsheltered homelessness, but Bass suffered a setback as this year’s homeless count showed the numbers are growing once again. Unsheltered homelessness went up by 7.9%, according to numbers published in July.

Bass blamed the rise on various issues, including funding cuts by the state and federal government and a lack of adequate county services, like mental health and substance counseling.

The Nov. 3 election is a “significant choice for voters,” according to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.

She urged voters to look at her challenger, Councilmember Nithya Raman, who Bass said during her tenure has “produced very little.”

“The first job of a mayor is public safety, she has consistently voted against police officers,” Bass said. “She has consistently voted to not remove encampments in front of schools, so parents and kids have to navigate their way through.”

“To go with this candidate is really taking a serious risk,” Bass said.

Spencer Pratt may have been eliminated in the mayoral race, but his supporters still loom large.

Mayor Karen Bass enters tonight’s debate with a clear objective — to win over as many of the 33% of voters who said they were undecided in a recent Berkeley IGS/L.A. Times poll as possible.

A large number of undecided voters can be linked to the elimination of Pratt in the June 2 primary, said Mark DiCamillo, the director of the Berkeley IGS Poll.

Among those Pratt voters who have decided their preferred candidate for next month’s general election, 22% favored Bass compared with 16% for Councilmember Nithya Raman.

Another complication to Bass’ campaign is her dwindling support from Latino supporters.

Among Latino voters, Raman leads Bass, 45% to 21%, with 34% undecided, the Berkeley IGS/L.A. Times poll showed.

That would be a shift from the primary, where Bass carried 35 Latino-majority neighborhoods compared with seven for Raman, according to a Times analysis of election data.

We’ve been covering the mayor’s race for more than a year now, and we’ve finally reached the final televised debate. Here are a few things we’ll be watching for in tonight’s head-to-head between Mayor Karen Bass and her challenger, Councilmember Nithya Raman.

Police Chief Politics: Bass criticized Raman last week for appearing on an Instagram video where she used the phrase “only you can stop fascist liars” before calling for the removal of Police Chief Jim McDonnell.

Raman countered that she used the words “fascist liars” to refer to President Trump, not McDonnell or the Los Angeles Police Department. She said an Instagram influencer had edited the video in a way that distorted her words.

We’ll be looking to see how hard Bass will go after Raman on the issue, and whether Raman will clarify her timetable for replacing McDonnell.

Stressed or Serene?: The last time these two candidates took the stage for an NBC4/Telemundo52 debate, critics agreed that Raman struggled to find her footing. She stumbled over some of her answers, dealing with Bass’ calm experience on one side and Spencer Pratt’s bombastic, outsider energy on the other.

With Raman now leading in several polls, keep an eye out for whether she is more comfortable on the debate stage than in the past. Meanwhile, will Bass ramp up the attacks even further than she did in the Sherman Oaks debate in August?

Fire and Fury: The January 2025 wildfires haven’t played a large part in any of the one-on-one debates between Bass and Raman, despite being one of the major reasons that Bass’ favorability ratings tumbled last year.

At the last NBC4/Telemundo52 debate, which came before the June 2 primary, Bass was asked to defend her record over the wildfires, but it was Pratt (not Raman) who took the opportunity to critique the mayor over the fires.

Tuesday could be Raman’s last chance to remind voters of one of Bass’ biggest liabilities.

Weeks away from the Nov. 3 election, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and challenger Nithya Raman will face off in their only live televised debate.

The debate, being conducted in partnership with Loyola Marymount University, will run from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. and be moderated by NBC4 news anchor Colleen Williams, NBC4 chief political reporter Conan Nolan and Telemundo 52 news anchor Alejandra Ortiz.

You can follow along the L.A. Times live coverage of the debate here.

Both NBC4 and Telemundo 52 will air the debate live, and stream the event at nbcla.com and telemundo52.com. LAist is also streaming the debate live at 89.3 FM.