LOS ANGELES (AP) — As Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass seeks a second term, she isn’t sidestepping the obvious: her tenure at city hall has been difficult. “I haven’t always got it right,” she says plainly.But the first Black woman to hold the post insists she should keep leading the struggling city of nearly 4 million that will host the 2028 Olympics. Homicides have dipped. Street homelessness is down. Homes destroyed in last year’s wildfires are being rebuilt, though critics say too slowly.“There’s more work to do,” Bass says.Los Angeles mayoral races — indeed, some of the mayors themselves — often are forgettable in a city where politics takes a back seat to the Lakers, Dodgers and Hollywood. But this year has been different as Bass attempts to overcome lingering fallout from the Palisades Fire, the most destructive in Los Angeles history. Bass was in Ghana as part of a presidential delegation when the flames ignited.
Among the thousands of people who lost their homes was reality television personality Spencer Pratt, now running to replace the mayor who he blames for the destruction. In another sign of how political media has evolved, the biggest sensation in the race has been campaign videos created with artificial intelligence where Pratt takes on a superhero persona to battle street criminals and Democratic politicians. Created by filmmaker Charles Curran, Pratt has shared the videos on his own platforms.
