Billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso and U. S. Rep. Karen Bass will square off in a November runoff in their costly race to become Los Angeles’ next mayor, with the two far ahead of the rest of the primary field. Caruso held a narrow but widening lead over Bass in partial returns late Tuesday night. Los Angeles City Councilman Kevin de León was third, far behind the leaders, with progressive activist Gina Viola fourth. With a November showdown apparently looming, both candidates said the results put them in a good position to win five months from now.“This is a great night because so many people have gone to the voting booth and they sent a message: We are not helpless in the face of our problems, ” Rick Caruso told supporters gathered at the Grove, his shopping mall in the Fairfax district. “We will not allow the city to decline. We will no longer accept excuses. ”The candidate called his lead “a victory story, about an entire community that refused to let the dream of Los Angeles be extinguished. ”About the same time, Bass met her supporters on the roof of the W Hotel in Hollywood. “We are in a fight for the soul of our city, ” she said, “and we are going to win. ”Earlier, L. A. City Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson, a Bass supporter, took a swipe at Caruso’s massive spending in the campaign. “Tonight what we’re seeing already is that the big bad wolf huffed and he puffed and he blew $40 million and he still couldn’t take Karen Bass down, ” Harris-Dawson said. With voters in a sour mood after two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, a seemingly intractable homelessness crisis and increased gun violence, the vote was viewed as a referendum on whether Los Angeles would stick with the liberal Democratic leadership that has been in charge for most of the last half-century. As the early front-runner in the campaign and a longtime Democratic office holder, Bass campaigned as a coalition builder who could leverage her connections in Sacramento and Washington to bring more resources to L. A. Caruso, a onetime Republican turned Democrat, pledged to shake up the status quo and make City Hall more efficient, while hiring substantially more police and moving rapidly to clear away homeless encampments. The stark choice animated some voters but hardly galvanized the larger electorate, as early vote totals showed only about 18% of Los Angeles voters had cast ballots. Final results will trickle in, as mail-in ballots postmarked by election day will be accepted for one more week. The election will determine who succeeds Mayor Eric Garcetti, who won the maximum two terms and is scheduled to leave office in December. President Biden has appointed Garcetti to serve as ambassador to India, but his confirmation has stalled in the U. Senate. A runoff will take place if no candidate receives a simple majority of the votes cast in the primary.
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