Who is Karen Bass, the new mayor of Los Angeles?
Rep. Karen Bass made history becoming the first woman to be elected mayor of Los Angeles beating out billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso.
Six-term congresswoman Karen Bass was declared the winner in the race to be the next mayor of Los Angeles by the Associated Press. The long-time Democratic lawmaker will become the first woman and the second Black person to hold the top job in America’s second largest city.
Bass beat out real estate mogul Rick Caruso, also a Democrat, who pumped over $100 million of his own money into the campaign. The billionaire, who was endorsed by Elon Musk, reached out to his rival with “a gracious call.”
She ran on a platform to resolve the city’s homelessness problem. She pledged to declare a state of emergency on homelessness and in her first year she said she’ll find housing for 17,000 homeless people. Bass also plans to calm residents’ anxiety about crime rates that had been rising by putting more police officers on the beat.
Who is Karen Bass?
Los Angeles’ new mayor will replace Democrat Eric Garcetti in the Democratic stronghold. By California standards she is more center-left than progressive despite her activism as a community organizer in her youth.
Bass grew up in 1960s during the civil rights movement watching the demonstrations on the news. Her childhood home was not far from where Robert F Kennedy was assassinated at the PIH Health Good Samaritan Hospital. She had volunteered for his campaign.
In the 1970s she was an organizer for the Venceremos Brigade, a pro-Cuban group that organized trips for Americans to Cuba to work on construction projects. She made the trip eight times herself to Fidel Castro’s Cuba.
In the 1980s she when she was a physician assistant in the emergency room, Bass secured federal funding to launch a nonprofit, the Community Coalition for Substance Abuse Prevention. The group now known as the Community Coalition, or CoCo, brought together Black and Latino groups to address the crime and the crack epidemic that had beset the city.
She entered the California State Assembly in 2005 where she served until being elected to the US House of Representatives six years later. There she has been the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus. In 2020 she was shortlisted to be Joe Biden’s running mate in his bid for the White House.