Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is planning a rally Thursday evening in Los Angeles to help the ailing mayoral campaign of Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA), who is suddenly trailing in some polls as billionaire businessman Rick Caruso (D) has begun to surge.

As Breitbart News reported Sunday, Caruso — who is spending tens of millions of dollars of his own money on an insurgent campaign — has caught Bass and is how ahead of her in at least one poll of likely voters, albeit within the poll’s margin of error:

Billionaire developer and insurgent candidate Rick Caruso (D) has caught up to Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA) in a poll released as voting begins in the race for Los Angeles mayor. Caruso now leads Bass, 39.8% to 36.8%, within the poll’s 4.9% margin of error.

The poll, by J. Wallin Opinion Research, was conducted Oct. 15-17 among 400 likely voters, and is the first poll to be taken in the wake of a massive scandal at City Hall in which Democratic leaders on the City Council were recorded making racist and antisemitic remarks.

Bass is a left-wing Democrat with deep past ties to communist movements, and a history supporting the Cuban regime. She has moved toward the political mainstream and is now considered the favorite of the Democratic Party establishment.

Los Angeles Democratic mayoral candidate Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA) speaks at the annual Labor Day Parade hosted by the Los Angeles/Long Beach Harbor Labor Coalition on September 5, 2022 in Wilmington, California. Around 5,000 were expected to attend the event, which was held amid an Excessive Heat Warning issued by the National Weather Service for most of Southern California through September 7. Labor Day was first celebrated in the U.S. in 1882 in New York City. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Caruso, while campaigning as a Democrat, only joined the party recently and left the Republican Party a decade ago. He is a long-time donor and political outsider who is running on a groundswell of public discontent with crime, homelessness, corruption, and politics-as-usual.

Rick Caruso campaigns in the heavy Jewish neighborhood of Pico-Robertson, Los Angeles, May 31, 2022. (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)

Sanders is campaigning around the country for Democrats, particularly left-wing “progressive” candidates, while President Joe Biden is largely absent from the campaign trail, preferring to stay at the White House or at his beach house in Delaware, though he traveled last week to the West Coast for some fundraisers and other events.

Biden’s approval ratings are so low that he presents a liability to many Democrats. There are also questions about whether he still has the energy to lead his party in an intense national campaign.

Sanders typically draws large crowds in California, and especially in Los Angeles, so he could make a sizable impact on the race.

The Bernie Sanders rally for Bass is at the Playa Vista Central Park Bandshell, near LAX, at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday evening.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.