Bass’ lead widens over Caruso in L.A. mayor’s race
Lawmaker leads by 6 points in latest count, which also boosts progressive hopefuls.
Rep. Karen Bass has widened her lead to more than 6 percentage points over developer Rick Caruso in the Los Angeles mayor’s race, according to results released Friday by the county Registrar-Recorder’s office.
Bass has 42.9% to Caruso’s 36.3%, with a vote margin of more than 40,000, the results show.
Caruso initially led Bass by 5 percentage points after the June 7 election. But that order flipped as hundreds of thousands of vote-by-mail ballots were processed by county workers in subsequent days.
Friday’s updated results also boosted several progressive candidates, including one who appears to be on the path to beating a twoterm Los Angeles city councilman. Most of the remaining ballots will be counted by Tuesday, when the next update will occur, said Registrar-Recorder spokesman Michael Sanchez. County officials estimated that 74,100 ballots countywide remain to be processed, a fraction of the 1.57 million votes counted so far.
Regardless of the final tally, Bass and Caruso are assured spots in the Nov. 8 runoff because they are the top two finishers and neither will top 50% plus one of the votes cast.
Friday’s tally in the Los Angeles mayoral race is in line with the results of a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll cosponsored by The Times that showed Bass leading Caruso by 6 percentage points. The poll was conducted in late May.
The updated vote count also helped two candidates challenging incumbents on the Los Angeles City Council. Community activist Eunisses Hernandez now leads