Commentary: No undecideds here: Why Bass backers are on board, and Raman fans are fired up

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Set us as preferred Late one afternoon, at the intersection of South La Brea Avenue and Obama Boulevard, Shirley Dace cold-called fellow Angelenos and encouraged them to give L.A.Mayor Karen Bass a second term.“I love Karen Bass because of all the experience she has,” Dace, a retired flight attendant, told me between phone calls.

“Karen Bass was raised here.She knows the city.

...I’ve seen her around at different events.”Meanwhile, roughly 10 miles to the northeast, Christian Perez and Marium Mohiuddin organized a night of door-knocking for Bass challenger Nithya Raman in Boyle Heights.“I think she’s incredibly intelligent and I want to give her an opportunity,” said Perez.Given the ICE raids and general denunciations of immigrants, Mohiuddin, a Muslim and Canadian immigrant, said he’s been impressed by Raman’s outreach to minority communities.

And Raman is an immigrant, too.“I want a mayor that’s going to protect me,” said Mohiuddin, who speaks out against Islamophobia and antisemitism, “and I really feel like Nithya would go to bat for us.”You may have noticed a pattern here.Lots of positivity.Years of delays for the SkyLink people mover at LAX have led to finger-pointing, litigation and a grand jury probe into how a $1.9-billion project has become a $3.3-billion boondoggle.I figured that with just hours to go before election day, you’ve heard plenty from me and others about City Hall dysfunction, about each mayoral candidate’s flaws, and about undecided and uninspired voters here in the land of budget-busting rent, broken sidewalks and blue tarps.It appeared for a while as if Raman wouldn’t even make it out of the primary, and then it looked as though she had a comfortable lead over Bass in the runoff.

But if the latest poll can be trusted, it’s hard to pick a winner.So today I’m going to shed every cynical bone in my body — only temporarily, I promise — and han...