Los Angeles mayoral candidates sought Wednesday evening to convince voters and business leaders they could make City Hall work better, using a San Fernando Valley forum to pitch ideas on homelessness, housing and public safety.
Hosted by the Greater San Fernando Valley Chamber of Commerce and Los Angeles Valley College, the forum featured one-on-one conversations between candidates and Spectrum News 1 political anchor Alex Cohen. The event came less than two weeks before the June 2 primary election and after the cancellation of a separate television debate last week when Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Nithya Raman withdrew.
Four candidates appeared at the forum: Bass, Raman, tech entrepreneur Adam Miller and housing advocate Rae Huang. Former reality television star Spencer Pratt, who debated Bass and Raman on KNBC Channel 4 earlier this month, was invited but didn’t attend due to a schedule conflict, organizers said.
Topics throughout the evening included homelessness, housing, businesses, public safety and government accountability. But much of the discussion focused on whether Los Angeles has become too expensive, too difficult to navigate and too slow to deliver basic services for residents and businesses.
Bass defended her first term as a period of measurable progress after years of stagnation, pointing to a decline in homelessness and violent crime, accelerated housing approvals and new infrastructure initiatives.
“We have to continue to move forward because people are dying on our streets every single day,” Bass said.
Bass also emphasized coalition-building and collaboration with community organizations, labor groups and council members. She argued the city needed more police officers, particularly ahead of the 2028 Olympics, and expanded alternative public safety and crisis-response programs.
Raman, meanwhile, framed her campaign around reforming City Hall operations, accelerating housing construction and improving basic city services, while arguing that stronger mayoral leadership and clearer departmental priorities were needed to make government function more effectively.
“I think the departments need to know what their direction is,” Raman said. “They need to know that they’re going to be held accountable by a strong mayor that has that power invested in that seat.”
She also defended shifts in some of her policy positions during her time on the council, including on policing and Measure ULA, the so-called mansion tax that funds affordable housing and homelessness prevention efforts, describing them as responses to evidence and changing conditions rather than political calculation. Raman said the city needed to maintain sufficient police staffing levels while also expanding unarmed crisis response programs and improving 911 response capacity.
Miller positioned himself as an outsider focused on management and measurable results, arguing that Los Angeles’ affordability, homelessness and public safety challenges stemmed from government inefficiency and poor management.
“We don’t have the transparency, the accountability that we need, and we have way too much waste and inefficiency across L.A.,” Miller said. “We can fix that, but it’s going to require somebody that knows how to operate at scale.”
Miller repeatedly referenced his background building companies and nonprofit organizations. He pitched proposals centered on streamlining permitting, cutting bureaucracy, expanding police staffing and using technology and performance metrics to improve city services. He also argued that business taxes and regulations had driven employers and developers out of Los Angeles.
Huang called for structural change and community-led governance, arguing that Los Angeles needed to invest more heavily in affordable housing, mental health services and public participation in city decision-making.
“What I have experienced both in running this campaign, as well as just being a neighbor on my block, is that people are frustrated with our current situation,” Huang said.
Huang criticized the city’s current approach on homelessness and policing, arguing that enforcement-heavy strategies destabilize homeless residents and fail to address underlying causes such as mental health needs and economic insecurity. She also called for shifting more city resources toward social services and small-business support.
Questions about the city’s business climate and gross receipts tax also emerged repeatedly throughout the evening, particularly after city leaders reached a deal with business and labor groups to phase in certain hotel and airport worker wage increases tied to the city’s Olympic wage ordinance, in exchange for proponents withdrawing a ballot measure that sought to eliminate the city’s $800 million-plus business tax.
Bass defended the gross receipts tax as essential to preserving city services and highlighted her role in helping broker Tuesday’s labor-business agreement that led proponents to withdraw the ballot measure.
Miller called for eliminating the gross receipts tax entirely, arguing that city regulations and business costs had driven employers and developers out of Los Angeles.
Raman criticized how negotiations over the Olympic wage ordinance unfolded, saying business and labor leaders should have been brought together earlier in the process, while Huang said the tax placed too much pressure on small businesses and should fall more heavily on large corporations.
Wednesday’s forum marked one of the final major mayoral events before the June 2 primary election. If no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, the top two finishers will advance to a Nov. 3 runoff.