Bass and Raman tussle in final debate of L.A. mayoral runoff election

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Set us as preferred Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Nithya Raman traded verbal blows on Tuesday, scrapping over public safety, the Palisades fire and the fate of Police Chief Jim McDonnell in the only televised head-to-head debate of the Nov.3 runoff election.Bass, now in a tough battle for a second term, portrayed Raman as someone who isn’t ready to lead the city.

Raman, she said, is someone with extreme views who has “a tendency to take different positions on different days of the week.”Raman, for her part, said the mayor had been “missing in action” during the massively destructive Palisades fire in January 2025 and the more recent Lineage cold storage warehouse blaze in Boyle Heights.City Hall is now experiencing “a crisis of trust,” Raman said.Much of the one-hour debate, hosted by NBC4 and Telemundo 52, revolved around McDonnell, who was appointed by Bass to lead the Los Angeles Police Department in 2024.

At the time, Raman voted with a majority of her colleagues to confirm McDonnell.Raman, seated across from Bass, called for McDonnell to be replaced, saying the LAPD had improperly collaborated with federal immigration agents.Raman declined to give a timeline for that — even after NBC4’s Conan Nolan pressed her on whether she would remove McDonnell before the 2028 Summer Olympic Games here.“It is not a unilateral decision by the mayor,” she said.

“It takes agreement with the Police Commission, even agreement with the council.It’s not something I can immediately set a timeline on,” she said.Bass warned that removing the police chief before the Olympics would send the LAPD into “disarray.”“It’s absolutely in the power of the mayor to fire the police chief,” Bass said.

“You have said that you would get rid of him before the Olympics.What worries me about that is, I ...