Rep. Karen Bass and Rick Caruso were locked stubbornly neck-and-neck in the race to be mayor of Los Angeles on Wednesday morning.
Caruso was edging Bass out in the poll by a narrow margin at 51.2% to 48.8%, NBC reported. It is still too early to call, though, as only 38% of votes have been tallied.
The current numbers are the result of a heated race, which pitted former social worker and career politician Bass against Caruso, a billionaire real estate developer who owns Los Angeles’ iconic outdoor mall The Grove.
But while Caruso has been the celebrity favorite of the campaign effort– picking up endorsements from Kim Kardashian, Chris Pratt, and Snoop Dogg– Bass won support in political circles, and garnered nods from President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Bass was optimistic late Tuesday when she addressed her supporters and thanked them for their efforts, KTLA reported.
“We wanted to run a campaign where we would bring people along on this journey, where we would have hundreds of volunteers, because we wanted to do more than build a campaign, we wanted to build a movement, a movement of people committed to our city, a movement where everyone has skin in the game, a movement where people wanted to see a new vision for Los Angeles,” she told supporters.
If elected, Bass would be the city’s first female mayor and the second Black person to hold the position.
Caruso also was confident about his prospects Tuesday night, and described running his multi-million dollar campaign as a pivotal learning experience.
“The wonderful thing I never knew as a candidate, when you’re running for mayor, is that you develop a larger family alongside the people that you would never have met in communities, because we’ve all come together for a cause,” he told supporters. “And that’s a very uplifting thing.”
Both Democrats, the candidates ran on promises to fix Los Angeles’ ongoing homelessness and crime problems, FOX11 reported. Bass, in particular, hopes to house 15,000 people by the end of her first year in office.
Caruso, on the other hand, adopted a harder-line stance that included adding 1,500 new officers to the Los Angeles Police Department within his first term.
The winner will replace outgoing two-term Democrat Eric Garcetti, who is currently awaiting his appointment to be US Ambassador to India.
