After rough first term, LA Mayor Karen Bass fights for job against DSA-backed Nithya Raman

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Los Angeles voters are weighing Tuesday whether to stick with Mayor Karen Bass or turn to a city council member who is backed by the Democratic Socialists of America, Nithya Raman.

The outcome will determine if the nation’s second most populous city will follow New York’s lead, where democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor last year, or keep an establishment figure in charge despite a difficult first term.

Bass continues to face fallout from the deadly 2025 Palisades Fire, which became the most destructive blaze in city history. Los Angeles also struggles with an ongoing homelessness crisis — filthy encampments and rows of rusting RVs are a common sight in many neighborhoods. In the city known as the birthplace of the film industry, Hollywood jobs have been fleeing for years for cheaper locales. There are widespread complaints over the lack of basic services, from street paving to streetlight repair.

The choice voters make will have implications beyond the city limits, with Los Angeles preparing to host the 2028 Olympic Games.

Bass, 73, has argued that she’s made enough progress to merit another term leading a city of 3.8 million people. She says Raman, 45, is “not ready for primetime” after only six years on the council.

Raman endorsed Bass before changing her mind and entering the contest herself. Now, she says, “we cannot afford another four years of decline, of mismanagement, of excuses.”

Bass was out of the country when the Palisades Fire ignited and caught the fire department unprepared despite days of warnings about the potential for powerful winds and bone-dry weather. This past June, a fire east of downtown in a massive frozen-food warehouse caused weeks of foul smells and frustration.

One of the unknowns is where supporters of former candidate Spencer Pratt will turn, if they vote at all. Pratt — a Republican and one-time reality personality who lost his home in the Palisades Fire — picked up about a quarter of the primary vote but did not advance to November.

Key issues in the race include public safety.

Bass wants to hire more police officers, and she has branded Raman’s views on policing and homelessness as “extreme.” Raman has said she would replace the police chief, which Bass has said would be reckless in advance of the Olympics.

Raman once talked of a department that would be much smaller and posted “defund the police” on social media in 2020. She did not support the mayor’s 2023 police contract, which she said was too expensive for the financially strapped city. More recently, she said the police department should remain at its current size.

On homelessness, Bass stresses the city has cleared dozens of encampments and brought thousands of people into shelter, but data show nearly half of them dropped out of the system and presumably returned to the streets.

Raman has opposed efforts to prohibit homeless people from setting up tents within 500 feet (152 meters) of schools and daycare centers. However, she appears to have softened her opposition to no-camping zones, which were intended to curb the spread of encampments and clear streets. She voted against dozens of them on the council but later said she would not block them if elected mayor.

If elected, Raman has said she would reduce the number of people sleeping in tents and encampments by at least 50% by 2028. She wants to expand medical teams that would bring care to encampments and others living on the streets, in an effort to build trust with those individuals to bring them indoors. She also wants to provide more housing to move people out of hotels rented by the city for the homeless.

Bass is backed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Vice President Kamala Harris and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, along with nearly every member of the city council, including several aligned with the democratic socialists. She served in the state Legislature and Congress before becoming mayor in 2022 and was under consideration to be former President Joe Biden’s running mate in 2020.

In an important signal to the business community, billionaire developer Rick Caruso said he was voting for Bass, but stopped short of formally endorsing her. The two are former adversaries; Bass defeated Caruso in the 2022 mayoral race.

Raman, an urban planner, has picked up notable support from advocacy and political groups, including Our Revolution, which was founded by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and the Sierra Club. She’s thin on endorsements from prominent local politicians. She landed a widely publicized private meeting with former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is not involved in the race, that hinted at her efforts to broaden her circle.

Raman sought to seize on voter anxiety over long-running problems in the city. A Berkeley IGS/LA Times poll conducted from Oct. 19-25 found that about 4 in 10 likely voters said reducing the number of homeless encampments should be a top priority for the next mayor to address, while about 3 in 10 said that about ensuring public safety or building more affordable housing.

“Homelessness is rising despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent. Storefronts are closing,” Raman said in the sole televised debate. Bass, she said, has been "missing in action.”

Los Angeles mayoral candidate Nithya Raman reacts during a campaign event Monday, Nov. 2, 2026, on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass sits in a restaurant during a campaign event Saturday, Oct. 31, 2026, in the Boyle Heights section of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)

Los Angeles mayoral candidate Nithya Raman speaks during a campaign event Monday, Nov. 2, 2026, on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass talks to the media at a campaign event, Monday, Nov. 2, 2026, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Voters struggling with high prices and angry over an unpopular war with Iran will decide whether to drastically shift power in Washington in midterm elections Tuesday that will serve as a referendum on President Donald Trump's second term.

Democrats were cautiously optimistic about their prospects as they watched Republicans spend the campaign's final stretch pumping tens of millions of dollars into states and districts that Trump won handily just two years ago. They are betting that discontent over Trump’s failure to deliver on his promise to tackle rising costs and perceptions that he has been more focused on gilding the nation’s capital than their pain at the pump will depress Republican turnout and drive their own voters to the polls.

Republicans held out hope that their overwhelming money advantage would help stem the tide, but they were bracing to lose control of the U.S. House and fighting to hang onto the U.S. Senate — an outcome that seemed unlikely earlier this year, given a map widely seen as favoring their party.

Still, the margins are tight in both chambers, and just one or two seats could tip the balance. Democrats need a net gain of four seats in the 100-member Senate to win the majority, an uphill climb because many of the most competitive races are in historically red states. In the 435-member House, they only need three.

More than 57 million people had already cast ballots as of Monday, with turnout surpassing the early vote four years ago in many closely watched states.

Trump, whose party has struggled when he is not running to turn out the low-propensity voters who have fueled his victories, has told voters to act as though he is, even as many Republican candidates have tried to keep their distance.

“I really want you to pretend I’m on the ballot,” he told the crowd in Salina, Kansas, on Sunday evening at the final of several dozen rallies in the closing weeks of the campaign.

Trump's aggressive schedule included stops in the reddest states, including Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas, underscoring his party's challenges.

The president has also continued to make false claims about voting fraud, such as insisting noncitizens are casting ballots en masse. His administration has already filed lawsuits in Alaska and California, and Democrats fear interference and voter intimidation as his Justice Department threatens to prosecute local election officials.

The results will shape the final two years of Trump’s second term after the Republican-controlled Congress acted as a rubber stamp to much of his agenda. While Trump has proven adept at steamrolling efforts to rein him in, Democrats taking control of even one chamber of Congress would open the floodgates to investigations as well as possible impeachments. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and tech titan Elon Musk, a former top Trump adviser, are among the possible targets.

An especially strong showing for Democrats would also provide a boost to the crop of potential presidential candidates waiting in the wings, from California Gov. Gavin Newsom to Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker to former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. It could also complicate the paths of Vice President JD Vance and other Republicans who may be looking to turn their loyalty to the president into momentum.

Republicans had tried to buck historical precedent — a president’s party almost always loses seats during the midterms — with an aggressive redistricting effort aimed at creating a more favorable congressional map. But the plan may fall short as new districts drawn in Florida and other states to be safely red may not vote that way.

Other Trump choices could prove costly. In Texas, Trump worked to oust longtime incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in favor of scandal-plagued Attorney General Ken Paxton, setting the stage for an extraordinarily expensive race against Democratic nominee James Talarico, who Democrats hope may finally help them realize their dream of flipping the state.

And in North Carolina, Sen. Thom Tillis chose to retire after clashing with Trump. The president's chosen replacement, former Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley, has struggled to gain traction against the Democrats' candidate, former Gov. Roy Cooper.

“Everything depends on turnout. If we turn out our voters we win, and that's what we've been planning for," said Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters, expressing optimism on the eve of the election.

The vast majority of Republican television ad spending in the general election, 88.1%, was spent in states and districts that Trump won in 2024, according to an Associated Press analysis of data from AdImpact, a media tracking firm. That included more than $850 million spent on ad reservations in states and districts Trump won by 10 percentage points or more.

Polling shows that only 35% of U.S. adults approve of Trump's performance as president, according to the most recent polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. And most blame him for high prices as they struggle to afford gas and groceries.

What was once his strongest issue is no longer. Only 25% of U.S. adults now say they approve of Trump's handling of the economy. Overall, about 7 in 10 say the country is heading in the wrong direction.

“The American people are angry. They want change. They want folks who are going to stand up for them,” said Rep. Suzan DelBene, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, who said momentum was on her party’s side, despite what seemed like Republicans’ infinite money supply.

The results, she said, should deliver a resounding message that people "have soured on his agenda.”

In the Senate, Democrats have been most confident in their chances of picking up North Carolina and holding Georgia, where Sen. Jon Ossoff is facing Republican Rep. Mike Collins. Other key battlegrounds include Ohio, where Democratic former Sen. Sherrod Brown is challenging Republican Sen. Jon Husted, and Alaska, where the Trump administration has filed a lawsuit to block certification of the state’s Senate results if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan loses the race, citing the presence of a second candidate named Dan Sullivan on the ballot.

Republicans, meanwhile, are hoping they can hold seats in states like Iowa, Kansas and Maine and pick up Michigan, where Mike Rogers is facing progressive Abdul El-Sayed — one of a crop of left-wing candidates who prevailed in Democratic primaries this election season. El-Sayed's former primary opponent, Haley Stevens, upended the race Sunday by endorsing Rogers, renewing focus on tensions over Israel and the direction of the party that dominated Democratic primaries.

In the House, Republicans, who had hoped to pick up seats with their redistricting efforts, are now trying to hang on to their narrow majority, as Democrats try to flip seats in states Trump has repeatedly carried, from Florida to Texas to Iowa.

Beyond Washington, 36 states will be electing governors. Democrats hope to take over a majority of statehouses for the first time in two decades as they ride a wave of voter discontent. Competitive races include those in heavily populated states such as Texas and Florida, plus reliably red states such as Iowa.

In Ohio, Republican Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign faced backlash for an ad featuring Democrat Amy Acton’s estranged mother, who lost custody of Acton decades ago after her husband, Acton’s stepfather, was indicted for raping Acton as a child.

Trump’s final two years in office will likely be defined in part by the outcome of the race for control of Congress.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who is in line to make history as the nation’s first Black speaker of the House if his party sweeps to power, has outlined an ambitious 100-day agenda focused on lowering the cost of living and aggressive oversight of the Trump administration.

The Senate, where leadership is unlikely to change, could emerge as a key backstop for Trump’s priorities if Republicans retain control or as a new power center for Democrats who could use it to halt presidential nominees and challenge the White House agenda.

The 2026 elections will likely go down as the most expensive in history. Republican committees have dramatically outraised and outspent their Democratic counterparts thanks, in large part, to money from Trump-affiliated groups and Musk. But at the candidate level, Democratic candidates outraised their Republican opponents.

Associated Press data writer Aaron Kessler contributed to this report.

Voters cast their ballots at Public School 321 elementary school in the Brooklyn borough of New York on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

A volunteer places a "Vote Here" sign at the Brooklyn Museum in New York on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

Voters cast their ballots at the Brooklyn Museum in New York on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

A volunteer sorts "I Voted" stickers at the Brooklyn Museum in New York on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

A person walks to the City of Arlington South Service Center ahead of the polling place opening on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, in Arlington, Texas. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Josh Turek speaks during a campaign rally, Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026, in Council Bluffs, Iowa. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)

People listen to Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who is running for reelection, outside an agricultural business as she makes a campaign stop, Monday, Nov. 2, 2026, in Van Buren, Maine. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., introduces Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed during a campaign rally at Eastern Michigan University, Monday, Nov. 2, 2026, in Ypsilanti, Mich. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, speaks to members of the media before sign-waving with supporters at the edge of Midtown Mall, Monday, Nov. 2, 2026, in Anchorage, Alaska. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

People wait in line to cast their ballot at a polling location open for early voting at the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center, Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026, in Wasilla, Alaska. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)