What happened in LA’s mayoral race? Two political operatives offer their takes

LOS ANGELES — Whether it was anger stemming from the Palisades and Lineage fires, frustration over labor issues or a generational and economic class divide among voters, political operatives who worked on opposing campaigns related to the Los Angeles mayoral race offered their takes on what led to Mayor-elect Nithya Raman’s win last week. Veteran political strategist Michael Trujillo, an unpaid consultant involved in discussions with several “independent expenditure” groups that supported incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, and Estevan Jose Montemayor, the chief strategist behind a group that supported Raman, appeared as part of a panel discussion hosted by the UC Irvine School of Social Ecology on Monday. Trujillo pointed to the 2025 Palisades fire , for which Bass faced severe blowback over her handling of the situation — including the fact that she was out of the country on a U.S. diplomatic trip when the fire erupted — as one reason for her lower approval rating this election cycle. Montemayor, on the other hand, suggested Bass lost supporters much earlier, pointing to the first executive directive she issued as mayor in December 2022. That order was drawn up to fast-track and lower the cost of building affordable housing . But members of the local carpenters union felt they weren’t given fair pay or adequate job protections, said Montemayor, who was hired to run a group funded by the Western States Regional Council of Carpenters that supported the councilmember in the mayoral race. There was also UNITE Here Local 11, a union representing employees who work in hotels, restaurants, airports, sports arenas and convention centers, that was part of the pro-Raman coalition. Last year, the L.A. City Council approved a $30 minimum wage plan for workers in the tourism industry, to be rolled out in phases and fully implemented by July 2028 ahead of the Olympics. The business community responded by threatening to put up a ballot measure that, if passed by voters, would eliminate a business tax that generates hundreds of millions of dollars for the city. Faced with that threat, city officials struck a deal to delay fully implementing the minimum wage increase until 2030. But UNITE Here members felt Bass “forgot” about their fight for wage increases ahead of the 2028 Olympics, Montemayor said. By the time the Palisades fire occurred, he said, Bass had been in office two years, and the fire gave people “a permission slip” to criticize the mayor. Fast-forward to this summer, when the Lineage food storage warehouse fire occurred in Boyle Heights, a predominantly Latino community that then was forced to endure weeks of rat infestation and the stench of rotting food while cleanup took place. And just as during the Palisades fire, Bass was out of town, on her way to Chicago for the dedication ceremony of former President Barack Obama’s presidential center, when the blaze broke out. “All of this anger is compounding. And part of it’s not completely fair to put on the mayor, but a large part of it is,” Montemayor said. “When she showed up, she didn’t show up in the way that people needed her to,” said Montemayor, adding voters were looking for someone to blame for these and other issues. Alex Stack, a spokesperson for Bass’ reelection campaign, said Tuesday that Bass assumed office with a mandate to accelerate the construction of affordable housing, but what the carpenters union demanded would have made construction more expensive for developers and slowed down production. Her directive still provided for labor protection, Stack said. “She decided what was best for the city is to not do everything that the carpenters wanted,” he said. “I think that’s what you want in your elected official — not just (someone) to do everything special interest groups want you to do.” As for the fires, some news outlets have reported that Bass won the majority of votes in the Palisades, a feat which Stack said shows she’s fought for residents there. Similarly, he said, the mayor worked to find temporary accommodations for more than 1,000 Boyle Heights residents after the Lineage fire so they wouldn’t have to put up with the challenging living conditions and advocated for legislative changes to prevent communities from having to go through something similar in the future. “It was a terrible crisis, and this crisis was used for political purposes during the campaign,” Stack said of the Lineage fire. Old v. new playbooks As for the independent expenditure groups that campaigned on behalf of either candidate, Trujillo said that while there were several groups that supported Bass — including ones representing labor, Latinos, African Americans, police and businesses — each had their own leader and priorities. By comparison, the group run by Montemayor was the predominant independent expenditure group supporting Raman, with one smaller group joining. They were able to coordinate, share resources and were “rowing in the same direction,” Trujillo said. He also suggested the groups supporting Bass relied on campaign strategies that worked decades ago but perhaps are less effective today. The local police union tried to appeal to supporters of Spencer Pratt , the Republican candidate who came in third in the June primary, to convince them to vote for Bass in the general election. But other groups mainly stuck to messaging within their own communities, Trujillo said. “A lot of the Bass world looked at L.A. the way L.A. was maybe 30 years ago, where it’s a quilt, and every square has their own little community, and you have to play in each little square as opposed to just viewing the blanket as one multi-fabric amazing quilt across the city, and they’re all interconnected,” Trujillo said. Montemayor suggested Bass supporters relied on an old playbook that considered the political divide among voters more based on geography. But the coalition Montemayor was involved with believed this year’s divide among voters was a generational one, with those 50 and older likely to support Bass and those under 50 likely to go for Raman. His group made the decision to invest heavily and early on in winning over Latinos and younger voters, Montemayor said. That included having a presence at local college campuses to mobilize young people to vote and investing $2 million in door-to-door canvassing. His coalition ended up knocking on 200,000 doors, of which about 95% were Latino households, Montemayor said. Latinos and renters Moving forward, Trujillo said the key is to mobilize more Latinos under age 50. “It’s not our grandmas and grandpas and aunts and uncles that we got to register. It’s our cousins and our younger brothers and sisters,” he said. “The Latino community is going to be that bolder … younger vote .” Montemayor also brought up renters — who tend to be younger — as part of Raman’s base of supporters and said her campaigns, both this year and in the past, have done a good job of talking to renters whose issues are different from those of older homeowners. “You talk to the Valley as a whole, but to talk to renters in the Valley and to talk to them really specifically about what they’re facing (is) very different,” he said, adding that younger families are moving into the West Valley, which has historically been home to more traditional or conservative voters. Whether it was talking to college students, Latinos or renters, Montemayor said, the overriding issue for voters was the question of how to afford living in L.A., a concern that Raman supporters focused on. “At the end of the day,” he said, “the issue always came back to affordability.” ©2026 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit dailynews.com . Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. More from this section Politics Supreme Court clears the way for border wall construction in Texas’s Big Bend to resume Updated Nov 9, 2026 Politics After midterm rout, Republicans can still confirm a Supreme Court