Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass defended her tenure, while City Councilmember Nithya Raman addressed changes on a key policy, and tech entrepreneur Adam Miller and Reverend Rae Huang, both polling in single digits according to recent surveys, introduced themselves to voters at Los Angeles Valley College in Valley Glen.
The Wednesday forum was hosted by the Greater San Fernando Chamber of Commerce and was moderated by Alex Cohen, the national politics anchor for Spectrum News in Southern California.
Republican reality television star Spencer Pratt was absent from the forum and instead spent Wednesday night in South Los Angeles at a block party.
Here are key moments from each of the candidates one-on-one conversations, in order of when they appeared on stage:
Miller touts nonprofit experience, pressed on permitting reform and refuses to say whether he’d support another Democrat if he does not advance
During the forum, Miller brought up his nonprofit experience leading Team Rubicon, which sends veterans to assist in disaster response and Better Angels, a nonprofit focused on homelessness prevention. When asked how he’d get results running the city with no financial incentive, he said it is similar to running a nonprofit.
“I was able to lead a merger of three nonprofits in the food allergy space to create what became the world’s largest food allergy nonprofit helping people all over the world,” Miller said. “Thirty-five million Americans suffer from food allergies; they now have an advocate on their behalf.”
As his conversation was ending, he refused to say whether he would support another Democrat in the general election if he did not advance out of the primary.
“It depends who’s in it,” Miller said. “If I’m in it obviously I’m supporting a Democrat because I’m a Democrat.”
He continued by saying that if a Republican faces Bass, she will win based on the city’s political demographics and that the only way he can see Bass losing is if another Democrat is running against her.
He also outlined a four-step plan to reduce permitting time, when pressed by Cohen.
“You enable self certification by licensed architects and engineers and then audit 20% of the projects instead of reviewing 100%,” Miller said.
He said he would “eliminate permits” for “non-structural changes to [a] home” and “allow for all permits to be submitted online and have AI validation of the permits.” Miller also said he wants to “allow for parallel processing of permits” so multiple departments can review a permit simultaneously.
Huang defends opposition to law that prohibits homeless encampments near schools, says she will fire the police chief if elected
Huang bashed Inside Safe, Bass’s signature homelessness initiative which allows unhoused individuals to be placed voluntarily in temporary housing. Huang also doubled down on her opposition to Section 41.18 of the Los Angeles Municipal Code, which bans homeless encampments 500 feet from schools, saying it further “destabilizes” unhoused individuals.
“We are spending hundreds and millions of dollars into the Inside Safe program,” Huang said. “Those dollars, instead of a short term Band-Aid solution with no end in sight, need to start to convert over into building permanent affordable housing.”
She advocated for what she called “social housing” where housing is “community and publicly owned” and “is permanently affordable because it is no longer on the speculative market.”
She also said that model removes worry about rents rising in affordable housing after “the affordability clause ends under the low income tax credit clause.”
When asked specifically about homeless encampments near schools she called the policy to remove them “extremely expensive,” “ineffective” and “inhumane.”
Huang described the policy as a way to remove unhoused people’s belongings so they do not have access to their possessions.
She said if elected, she wanted to bring a co-government model to neighborhoods across LA.
“One of the biggest parts of my platform is being able to bring in a participatory budgeting process which is when the public gets to help decide and determine and give voice to where our city budget should go,” Huang said.
She also defended her desire to fire Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell and replace him with someone who will reimagine policing.
“The police has in fact been defunding other services, defunding other departments like the Department of Aging, like the Department of Youth [Development], like the Economic Workplace Development Department which supports small businesses and workers.”
She said police only can help after a crime has occurred and she hopes to prevent crime before it happens by “providing people with their basic needs.”
Bass attacks Raman as an obstacle to building temporary housing, advocates for infrastructure and quiet accountability
Bass said that while permanent housing is being built for those who are unhoused she needs the cooperation of the City Council to build temporary housing. She blamed Raman.
“Unfortunately, my opponent who chairs the Housing and Homelessness Committee has, on many occasions, held up the funding or cut the funding and has slowed down the process and we have to continue to move forward because people are dying on our streets every single day,” Bass said.
She also attacked Pratt’s plan to mandate treatment saying his “plan makes no sense,” he “doesn’t know anything about” the population, and the treatment programs he wants people forced into do not exist.
“I think he’d be surprised to know that the fastest growing sector of the unhoused population are elderly women in their late 60s and 70s who worked in the service industry, didn’t have a pension, no 401K,” Bass said.
She also explained that she has made changes to various departments, albeit quietly.
“We have needed to change a number of the leaders and I have done that,” Bass said. “Now, I haven’t done it necessarily in a public way. I don’t see why I would destroy somebody’s lifelong reputation but we have made many leadership changes.”
She said that the city has never had a “comprehensive infrastructure plan” but that is changing.
“We are moving on implementing solar lights, 60,000 lights we are implementing,” Bass said, referring to an initiative to repair and replace street lights with solar street lights to combat copper wire theft and aid in the city’s clean energy transition. “I also spent the last two years working on a comprehensive infrastructure plan which we rolled out a couple of weeks ago,” Bass said.
When Bass was asked whether she would work with Raman in the future if she loses the election and remains on the City Council she was clear: “Of course.”
Raman responds to Bass receiving the endorsements of all DSA aligned councilmembers, discusses loss of trust and why she flipped on measure ULA
In response to being asked about Raman’s Democratic Socialists of America aligned allies on the City Council endorsing Bass, she said she wants “to be able to work with colleagues even when we have political disagreements.”
“I want to be able to work with people even when we may not have strong relationships,” Raman said. “I have in my personal life and in my professional life been able to work through failings like these and a loss of trust like this and overcome it and come to a better place and you do that through engagement.”
She also addressed her new opposition to the Los Angeles mansion tax, which taxes the sales of homes between $5 million and $10 million at 4% and homes above $10 million at 5.5%.
“I changed my mind on Measure ULA [mansion tax] because I looked at the evidence and saw the impacts and changed my mind,” Raman said. “I saw that the way that the tax was structured was limiting the construction of the thing that we say we most need new housing.”
She said that this should signal to voters that she is willing to evolve based on evidence.
“I am a person who responds to evidence and changes my mind in the face of that evidence and I want to make sure elected representatives are able to do that honestly and engage with those issues,” Raman said.
Raman, who represents a district that includes parts of the San Fernando Valley, also said at the forum that she is excited for the Sepulveda Transit Corridor, a project to build an underground metro line connecting Van Nuys and Sherman Oaks with Westwood.