Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has announced plans to seek reelection in 2026, telling supporters in an email that being mayor has been “the honor of a lifetime” and that “we cannot afford to stop our momentum.”
Bass is about a year-and-a-half into her first term as L.A.’s 43rd mayor. She made history in 2022 when she became the first female mayor and only the second Black mayor in the city’s history.
A former California state Assemblymember and member of the U.S. Congress who will turn 71 in October, Bass announced her intention to seek a second term as mayor days after L.A. officials welcomed the news that the city’s homeless population hadn’t increased for the first time in years.
Combatting homelessness has been a top priority for Bass, who declared a local emergency on homelessness her first day in office and soon after launched Inside Safe, her signature program to bring people living on the streets indoors — by placing them in interim housing in hotel or motel rooms.
That program appears to explain, at least in part, why the number of unsheltered homeless people living on the streets fell 10.4% in the city while the number of homeless people living in shelters shot up 17.7% year-over-year, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s latest homeless count.
“Together with locked arms, we brought down street homelessness for the first time in years – bringing thousands more people inside last year than the year before,” Bass said in a campaign email to supporters this week.
She highlighted the work of her administration over the past year-and-a-half, saying the city has reduced the time it takes to build affordable housing by 75% and responded to 100,000 more service calls to address issues like fixing potholes or removing graffiti.
Bass noted that she led the city in preparing for a hurricane last August. (Experts later downgraded the weather event, saying it was not a hurricane – or even a tropical storm – though it still resulted in record amounts of rain and mud flows and flooding.)
In addition, the mayor highlighted her role in getting the 10 Freeway reopened just days after a massive fire broke out underneath a freeway overpass in downtown L.A., so badly damaging the freeway that motorists were temporarily banned from using the major transportation corridor.
On Wednesday, July 3, a spokesperson for shopping mall tycoon Rick Caruso, who ran for mayor against Bass two years ago, declined to comment on Bass’ reelection bid or whether he plans to run for mayor again. Caruso lost to Bass by nearly 10 percentage points in 2022.
Since then, Caruso – a billionaire real estate developer who has been affiliated with different political parties, Republican and independent, but is now a registered Democrats – has been raising money for Democratic candidates. Some have wondered if he will run for mayor – or another office.
A person familiar with Caruso’s strategy recently told the media that he hadn’t closed the door on a mayoral or gubernatorial run in 2026.
Back at City Hall, Bass has her eyes set on a second term, telling supporters in this week’s email that “we cannot afford to stop our momentum.”
“Let’s keep moving L.A. forward,” she said.