Karen Bass

She was Speaker of the California Assembly from 2008 to 2010 and a US representative from 2011 to 2022. She is a candidate in the 2026 Los Angeles mayoral election, which went from the 2 June primary to a 3 November runoff against Nithya Raman.

Career

Bass worked in community organizing and medicine before entering politics. She sat in the California State Assembly from 2004 to 2010, serving as Speaker from 2008, the first Black woman to lead a US state legislative chamber. She represented a Los Angeles district in the US House from 2011 to 2022 and chaired the Congressional Black Caucus from 2019 to 2021. She won the 2022 mayoral election and in the 2 June 2026 primary took first place with 34.27% of the vote.

Positions

Bass, a Democrat, supports criminal justice reform, LGBTQ+ rights, child welfare and foster youth causes, affordable housing and defence aid to Israel, according to Wikipedia. As mayor she limited fast-track approval of affordable housing in single-family neighbourhoods, which housing advocates criticised.

Summarised automatically from the linked sources. Wikipedia