Why 2025 Will Be a Pivotal Year for Mayor Karen Bass and LA

Opinion

By CalMatters

Published 4 months ago on

January 5, 2025

As Karen Bass enters a pivotal year, she faces a changing political landscape that will test her leadership and priorities. (AP/Damian Dovarganes)

Bass faces new challenges as Trump replaces Biden, potentially complicating her efforts on homelessness and immigration.
The mayor's success in 2025 will hinge on demonstrable progress in addressing homelessness, her key campaign promise.
New leadership in public safety and shifting political alliances will test Bass's ability to navigate complex city issues.

Here comes the hard part.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has plenty to be proud of in her first two years as the chief executive of the largest city in the largest state in America. Violent crime is down. Public transit ridership has fought its way back up. She’s replaced the city’s police chief and outlasted an irksome district attorney.

Jim Newton

CalMatters

Opinion

Most importantly, she has made inroads against the city’s tragically central issue, homelessness. Since taking office in 2022, Bass has concentrated on bringing the unhoused residents of this city inside, and she has made progress despite frustratingly severe obstacles. During a period where homelessness nationally increased by 18%, it has actually fallen in Los Angeles, though by an exasperatingly small 5%.

That is positive news for LA and its mayor, whose work and public standing was ratified recently when voters agreed to increase and extend their own sales taxes in support of local efforts to combat homelessness. Measure A, which appeared on the November ballot, was approved by 57% of county voters, issuing a clear vote of confidence in Bass. The mayor was the measure’s most visible supporter, and she argued that its approval was essential for her to press forward.

A Changing Political Landscape Presents New Hurdles

But as Bass moves to the second half of her term, her work is about to get a great deal more difficult, and the coming year may test her formidable energies.

There is, foremost, the change of the guard in Washington. Bass was elected two years ago in large part because of her experience and relationships. She could boast of allies in the state Legislature, in the governor’s office, in Congress and in the White House.

As 2025 gets underway, many of those will disappear.

Most conspicuously, Joe Biden will be replaced by a president who could hardly be further from Bass’s politics or priorities. Donald Trump will almost certainly make life for Bass more difficult in areas ranging from immigration — where the city of Los Angeles has pledged to not support federal deportation efforts — to homelessness — where Bass’s attempts to coax people off the street are sure to be at odds with Trump’s desire to crack down more forcefully.

Bass could call on Biden and did — to support the city’s work on housing, on immigration and even when a fire temporarily shut down the Santa Monica Freeway. Those calls are unlikely to be returned as quickly, or be as fruitful, under a Trump administration.

Shifting Alliances and New Challenges in Sacramento

Moreover, Bass’s friends in Congress have lost sway, too. Republicans run the House and the Senate, and many are unsympathetic to her approach to issues. And the Supreme Court moves ever-away from the real-life experience of Americans in its strange mission to restore the nation to 18th-century norms.

Sacramento promises to be more protective. There, Gov. Gavin Newsom is entering his lame-duck period, but he’s sure to be replaced by another Democrat, and the legislature remains firmly in the hands of liberals and moderates philosophically closer to Bass. They recognize that solving issues in California requires tending to Los Angeles, the largest population center of the state as well as the hub of its Latino political future.

Newsom has been an unsteady ally for Bass, helping with funds and support but also striking out in unexpected areas, especially on homelessness. Even as Bass was making headway locally, Newsom changed course last year, seizing on the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Grants Pass case to declare that California would begin forcibly removing encampments on state property.

Unhoused people wait in line for dinner outside the Midnight Mission in the Skid Row area of Los Angeles, on Oct. 25, 2023. (AP/Jae C. Hong)

His rhetoric did not change much on the ground in Los Angeles, but it was both a distraction and a reminder that treating homelessness with compassion is hard political turf to hold.

New Leadership in Public Safety Brings Opportunities and Challenges

In the area of public safety, Bass has a new lineup for 2025. She named Jim McDonnell, an experienced police officer and former county sheriff, to head the LAPD. That was a smart pick, and it ensures that Bass at last has a kindred spirit in that all-important post.

At the same time, voters helped her move on from District Attorney George Gascón, with whom she was never close nor endorsed, only to see have him replaced with Nathan Hochman, a recently converted Republican whose vacuous, opportunistic campaign won him the office.

Hochman suggested throughout the race that he would use the district attorney’s office to bring down crime. That’s a dubious claim at best — district attorneys don’t have much to do with crime rates — and calculated to antagonize Bass, who was touting the decline in crime as proof of her leadership while Hochman was portraying Los Angeles as a criminal hellscape.

Still, Hochman has demonstrated a willingness to change stripes to suit his political interests, so he may bend. Don’t be surprised to see him complete his transformation from Republican to independent to — wait for it, Democrat — and to suddenly start seeing Los Angeles as a happier place, now that he’s responsible for it.

If that happens, it may smooth relations with the mayor’s office.

Homelessness Remains the Key to Bass’s Political Future

For Bass, though, political success will be almost exclusively measured by progress on homelessness. It’s what she ran on, and what she will be judged by.

That makes 2025 pivotal. Her focus on the issue is commendable, and Measure A showed that the electorate remains with her. But the well is not bottomless.

Already, some council members and others are grumbling that the attention to homelessness is preventing other concerns from receiving attention. Environmental advocates and neighborhood representatives are among those who want their issues at the top of the city’s agenda. Bass has so far convinced them to be patient and to recognize that the city’s homeless problem is so crippling that addressing it must eclipse all other priorities for the moment.

They grudgingly have stepped back, but patience is a hard-won commodity in politics. Unless Bass begins to produce demonstrable results on homelessness soon, those voices will grow louder. That makes 2025 vital for Bass, and for the city she governs.

About the Author

Jim Newton is a veteran journalist, best-selling author and teacher. He worked at the Los Angeles Times for 25 years as a reporter, editor, bureau chief and columnist, covering government and politics. He teaches at UCLA and founded Blueprint magazine.

CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters.

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