As Los Angeles prepares for the 2028 Olympics, LA Mayor Karen Bass and the community agree that policy continuity and stability are more important than ever. To ensure that the city’s policies over the past four years come to fruition, it is time to empower the driving forces behind them.
Mayor Karen Bass (72) is running for reelection this November. Since Los Angeles mayors are limited to two terms, a victory would mark her final four years. Free from the pressure of campaigning again, this is the optimal time to push forward with the homelessness, housing, and transportation policies she has pursued over the past four years, unhindered by political interests.
Mayor Bassβs first term was not without hurdles. With complex, accumulated issues of homelessness, housing, public safety, transportation, and finance in a megacity like LA, there were realistic challenges to dramatically changing the city in a single term. However, what matters is that she faced these problems rather than ignoring them, establishing a framework for solutions and putting policies into action.
Following her inauguration in 2022, she declared a ‘state of emergency on homelessness’ and advanced ‘Inside Safe,’ a core policy moving street encampments into indoor housing. Through this program, more than 6,000 individuals transitioned from streets to temporary shelters and other locations by August.
The housing sector also saw expanded supply through drastically streamlined administrative procedures. The Bass administration has completed over 10,000 units of affordable housing since taking office, with approximately 47,000 additional units currently in the pipeline.
Notably, LA will host the Olympics in two years. Mayor Bass swiftly established a dedicated task force within City Hall to oversee and coordinate Olympic preparation across departments. As the chair of the LA Metro Board of Directors, she is also directly involved in establishing traffic safety and massive transit strategies. Her rich experience as a former California Assembly Speaker and U.S. Representative directly correlates with preparing for a major international event where close cooperation among federal, state, and local governments is essential.
Mayor Bass has also shown active engagement in communicating with the Korean-American community. A city official noted, ‘Mayor Bass has visited Koreatown more frequently than any past mayor.’ In an exclusive interview with this publication earlier this year, Mayor Bass emphasized, ‘Since becoming mayor, I have continuously participated in various Korean community events, and the voice of the Korean community is an important driving force in shaping the future of LA.’
Recently, even conservative figures have shown a positive appraisal of Mayor Bass. Rick Caruso, who competed against her in the 2022 election, highly praised her leadership demonstrated during the recent Palisades wildfire recovery efforts. Republican candidate Spencer Pratt, who ran in the primary, also expressed a relatively positive view of Mayor Bass compared to progressive city council member Nithya Raman, who advanced to the general election.
This publication has consistently evaluated and verified candidates based on practical problem-solving capabilities and policy effectiveness from a perspective of moderate pragmatism. In this mayoral election as well, we judge that Mayor Bass’s pragmatic city operations must continue under the dimension of ‘policy continuity.’ The reason we previously supported Caruso in the last mayoral election, yet now support Bassβwho is competing against Raman, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)βstems from this exact reasoning.
If the past four years for Mayor Bass were a time of planting seeds to solve LA’s decades-long accumulated challenges, her upcoming second and final term is the time to reap those harvests.
