Karen Bass Widens Lead in L.A. Mayor Race as Late Ballots Are Counted

Democratic Party favorite Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA) has widened her lead to more than four percentage points in the race for Los Angeles mayor over billionaire developer Rick Caruso (D) as the tally of ballots continues.

As in the primary, Caruso jumped out to an early lead on Election Night, which slowly disappeared as vote-by-mail ballots were counted. The Democratic Party machine, which backs Bass, excels at turning out mail ballots.

As of Monday afternoon, with nearly two-thirds of the vote counted, according to the Los Angeles Times, Bass has 52.2% of the vote, while Caruso has 47.8%. In raw terms, that is a growing lead of 29,000 votes for Bass.

Other left-wing candidates also improved their results as vote-by-mail ballots have been counted. All ballots are counted if they are postmarked by Election Day, and are received by county officials within 7 days of that date.

Caruso vastly outspent Bass, tapping some $100 million of his own fortune to run a massive TV advertising campaign that saw him boost his name recognition and poll numbers. It appears not to have been enough.

Bass ran on abortion — an issue that has nothing to do with local government — and on the idea that she was the only true Democrat in the race. Caruso was once a Republican and only registered as a Democrat this year.

Caruso hoped to tap into public outrage at the city’s failure to deal with rising crime and homelessness. Bass did not offer solutions but expressed empathy for angry voters; she herself was a victim of a burglary this year.

Bass also overcame concerns about her ties to a corruption scandal at the University of Southern California, which gave her a $95,000 scholarship while she was a member of Congress that she failed to report on time.

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.