Commentary: How the Bass campaign channels one of L.A.'s most infamous mayoral races

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Set us as preferred With less than a week until Nov.3, it seems like the Los Angeles mayor’s race is Karen Bass’ to lose.After a bad debate against challenger Nithya Raman over the summer and the fiasco that was City Hall’s response to the Lineage fire, the incumbent had no other way forward but attack, attack, attack.Now, a poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times has the two in a statistical dead heat, with 19% of voters undecided and time running out for both campaigns to grab them.

It’s a stunning reversal from just a month ago, when the same poll had Raman substantially ahead.Bass barely improved on her abysmal favorability ratings.But some Angelenos seem willing to hold their noses and cast a ballot for her, because they just don’t trust the more liberal alternative.

Raman, a democratic socialist who has served on the City Council since 2020, saw her unfavorability rating jump to 50%, as more people got to know her and didn’t like what they saw.This isn’t the first time voters have swung like this in a mayoral race involving an unpopular incumbent and an upstart representing a new L.A.In 1969, the candidate with six years on the City Council was Tom Bradley.The mayor, who, like Bass, had served in the California state Assembly and Congress was four years removed from a disastrous response to the Watts riots.

Bradley placed first in the primary and seemed a shoo-in to become L.A.’s first Black mayor in an era when cities across the country were also electing Black mayors.So Yorty — a former New Dealer turned conservative Democrat — chose the only path to victory.

He claimed that “left-wing radicals” who supported the arriviste were salivating to “take over your city.” The nattering negativity worked: He easily beat Bradley.History doesn’t rep...