Bernie Sanders Rallies for Karen Bass in L.A. Mayor’s Race; Focus on National Issues

LOS ANGELES, California — Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) delivered the keynote address Thursday evening at a rally in Playa Vista for mayoral candidate Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA), who faces a tough fight from insurgent developer Rick Caruso (D).

Sanders told the crowd of about 500 that Bass is “a very good and decent human being who has been a leader in Congress” on policies favored by the left. He said she would become “the leading mayor of a major city in this country” once elected.

The vigorous 81-year-old Vermonter has played an unusually prominent role in the closing days of the 2022 midterm campaigns. President Joe Biden, his former rival, has not traveled the country much to campaign, though he visited New York earlier Thursday.

Much of Sanders’s message was about global and national issues — abortion, climate change, and campaign finance reform, a signature issue during his two presidential campaigns. He did not seem to have much to say about local issues in Los Angeles.

Nor, for that matter, did Bass. Cast as something of a warmup act to Sanders, she briefly mentioned homelessness, crime, and the high cost of living in the city before pivoting to attacks on her self-funding opponent, whom she accused of lying about her record.

Bass and other speakers attacked Caruso for being a former Republican, for being allegedly “anti-choice,” and for being an “adviser” to former President Donald Trump (he accepted an invitation to join an economic renewal council during the COVID pandemic).

But she said little about what she would do for L.A., other than calls to “end homelessness” in the city, which has skyrocketed under outgoing Mayor Eric Garcetti. Bass and other speakers often focused on abortion; one led the crowd in chants of “Abortion justice!”.

Caruso trailed Bass, the Democratic Party favorite, by double digits among likely voters at the beginning of October, but has since passed Bass — within the margin of error — in a recent poll. He has outspent Bass in the closing days with heavy TV advertising.

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.