First woman elected mayor of Los Angeles protests war and was watched by the FBI

Former community activist turned congresswoman, Democrat Karen Bass went back to her roots to be elected the first female mayor of Los Angeles, the second largest city in the US.

Trained as a nurse and medical assistant, Bass has high crime rates and an increase in homeless people among her main challenges, for which she intends to expand the police force and housing construction.

In a close race and with a record of voting, projections with almost 80% of the calculation indicated the victory of Bass, with 53% of the votes against the billionaire Rick Caruso, businessman owner of shopping malls and former Republican who registered as a Democrat in the beginning of the year (the two ran for the same party, something allowed in the US).

The 63-year-old contractor spent more than US$ 100 million (R$ 543 million) of his own fortune on the campaign, 11 times more than his 69-year-old rival.

“To the people of Los Angeles my message is this: We are going to solve homelessness. We are going to urgently prevent and respond to crime,” Bass said Wednesday. She says she wants to make Los Angeles accessible to working families.

“I received a lovely call from Rick Caruso and look forward to his continued civic involvement in the city we both love. I have great respect for his commitment to serving the people of Los Angeles.”

Bass is the second black person to lead City Hall. The pioneer was Tom Bradley (1917-1998), a former police officer who today gives his name to the international terminal at the city’s airport. The second black mayor of a major US city, the Democrat held the post for two decades, until 1993, when his popularity took a hit due to violent protests a year earlier.

Before arriving in Congress in 2011, Bass built his career in California. She made history in 2008 when she was elected the nation’s first black female speaker of a state assembly in the northern California capital of Sacramento.

But her political roots lie in South Los Angeles, where she grew up listening to civil rights protests on the radio with her father and attended anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, even being watched by the FBI.

In 1990, he rented a room and a van to create an NGO and help underprivileged children, at the height of the crack epidemic that destroyed several communities in the region. At the time, she was often seen at city hall demanding more funds for poorer neighborhoods.

In Washington, Bass was the lead author of a bill to combat excessive force and racial prejudice in the police, called the “George Floyd Justice in Policing Act”, but the proposal did not pass the Senate and ended up shelved in 2021.

Also in the capital, she was asked to be vice president of then-presidential candidate Joe Biden. However, her chances were undermined amid criticism linked to her 14 trips to Cuba since the 1970s, as well as praise for dictator Fidel Castro (1926-2016) and the Church of Scientology.

“Karen has become more practical, more realistic about what can actually be done. It’s been a really, really big change and it’s taken her a long way away from being someone on the ultra-left,” her older brother Keith Bass said in an interview with Los Angeles Times.

In her personal life, Bass was divorced in the 1980s and helped take care of her ex-husband’s four children, who are of Latin origin. She lost her only biological daughter in a car accident in 2006.

One of the challenges of the new mayor will be public safety. She disappointed more progressives by saying that the phrase “defund the police”, popular at protests against police violence, was “probably one of the worst slogans of all time”.

Bass intends to increase policing on the streets, including enforcement for removal of homeless tents. The homeless population, who in recent years have taken their tents and trailers beyond the center, occupying sidewalks in noble and commercial areas, was central to the campaign for mayoralty. With 3.9 million inhabitants, more than 40,000 are homeless in the city (in Los Angeles County, with 10 million residents, the number rises to 69,000, 17% more than in 2019).

Activists claim the number is much higher and warn of an increase with the end in January of eviction protections and rent increases created at the height of the pandemic.

Around US$ 1 billion (R$ 5.3 billion) was allocated to the cause in the city’s budget of US$ 11.2 billion (R$ 59.8 billion) for 2021 and 2022. Estimates indicate that 800 thousand new housing over the next eight years to solve the problem. The average rent in the city is US$2,300 (R$12,300) for a one-bedroom apartment.

Bass hopes to use his sources in Washington to help Los Angeles residents, while the local council (the equivalent of City Council) is mired in political drama and corruption. A month before the elections, leaked audio of a meeting between Latino council members led to the resignation of the president, Nury Martinez, who uttered racist phrases against the adopted two-year-old black son of a councilor.