Karen Bass on Trump, Pratt, Hollywood Jobs and LA’s Future

Karen Bass is not running a glamorous campaign. She’ll be the first to tell you that. “I’m a workhorse, not a show horse,” the incumbent Los Angeles mayor told Deadline in a wide-ranging interview Wednesday, “and that’s a problem.” But with Donald Trump’s endorsement of The Hills villain-turned-candidate Spencer Pratt landing just hours before she sat down to talk, Bass looked less like a mayor on the ropes and more like one who just got handed a gift.

The Trump endorsement — expected but still striking — arrived Wednesday morning, the former president calling Pratt a “Big MAGA person” and throwing his support behind the self-styled outsider. In a city where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by a massive margin, the backing may have done Pratt more harm than good. Bass didn’t hide her read on it. “No surprises here,” she said flatly. “Both Trump and Pratt want ICE to invade our city and kidnap our neighbors. L.A. doesn’t want a MAGA Mayor, so I think Angelenos will reject him.”

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz piled on too, praising Pratt’s viral campaign ads during a Capitol Hill interview with TMZ and calling them “awesome,” saying they “speak to a real truth” about LA’s decline. Whether that helps Pratt is another question — Cruz has become so reliably associated with losses that fans and internet culture have coined the “Ted Cruz kiss of death,” the idea that his endorsement of a team or candidate tends to precede embarrassing defeat. Pratt may want to read the room.

The political math is stark. Bass is polling around 30%. Pratt is in the mid-teens. If the two end up in November’s runoff — which Bass says is a real possibility — the dynamic could mirror what happened in France in 2002, when Jacques Chirac cruised to a joyless landslide over far-right candidate Marine Le Pen simply because the alternative was unthinkable to most voters. A win by default is still a win.

Hollywood Is Backing Her — and So Is the Left She Didn’t Expect

The day of the interview also brought a significant endorsement: IATSE, one of Hollywood’s most powerful crew unions, formally backed Bass for reelection. The California IATSE Council’s statement didn’t mince words: “Karen Bass has been fighting for film and television workers her whole career. She wrote California’s original film and television production tax credit while she was speaker of the California Assembly, and as Mayor she’s done more to bring our jobs back to Los Angeles than anyone in city government.”

Teamsters 399 and the American Federation of Musicians Local 47 came in the same day. AFM Local 47 president Marc Sazer called Bass “a champion of issues of direct concern to musicians, whether we perform on film and TV scores, make music played on AM/FM radio or play in live music venues.” The union endorsements matter in a low-turnout primary — labor organizations bring the organizational muscle to actually move votes.

Bass herself traces the relationship back decades. “I have worked with IATSE, I have worked with SAG, I have worked with the unions and the entertainment industry for over the last two decades,” she told TheWrap Tuesday, the day before the IATSE announcement. “Before I ever thought of running for office, I was involved in starting a program at West LA College to deal with diversifying the below-the-line crafts.” She also noted that as Assembly Speaker she passed California’s first film and television tax credit — mid-recession — and that her family has been connected to the industry for three generations.

The union support joins a broader celebrity coalition that includes J.J. Abrams, Samuel L. Jackson, Don Cheadle, Magic Johnson and Yvette Nicole Brown. Pratt, meanwhile, has attracted a different kind of Hollywood money — Lakers owner Jeanie Buss, former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, Saban Entertainment founder Haim Saban and music executives Lucian and Elliot Grainge. And Nithya Raman has her own progressive Hollywood contingent, with Natalie Portman, Adam Conover and producer David Mandel among her backers.

But Raman’s broader progressive coalition is fracturing in a way that could seriously damage her chances. Three members of the City Council’s DSA-backed bloc — Hugo Soto-Martinez, Eunisses Hernandez and Ysabel Jurado — have all broken ranks to endorse Bass, leaving Raman politically stranded among her own ideological allies. Soto-Martinez was first, announcing in February. Hernandez and Jurado followed Tuesday, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Political consultant Michael Trujillo put it bluntly: “These endorsements suggest they don’t believe Nithya Raman has the chops to run the city. The four DSA council districts all touch each other geographically. This is the movement’s base in Los Angeles, and for them to tell supporters to stay with Bass matters.” He added: “Every vote matters, and losing votes in your base is especially hard to make up somewhere else.”

On the Paramount-WBD Deal, the Film Czar, and What a Mayor Can Actually Do

Bass is unusually direct about the limits of her own power — which is either refreshing honesty or a political liability, depending on who you ask. On the $111 billion Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery merger, which is widely expected to bring layoffs and industry pain, she was candid: “I don’t have the ability to unilaterally stop Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery merger, but that’s why I meet with the industry to say, what is it you want?”

She made a point of distinguishing between what’s in her lane and what isn’t. Federal tax credits? Advocacy. The cap on state credits? A Sacramento decision, but again, advocacy. Permitting, red tape, filming fees at city locations? That’s hers. “When it comes to what I can do here in terms of the permitting process, I’m in charge,” she said. “I can go through the red tape.”

The revelation about her film czar appointment was one of the more surprising moments in the conversation. When Bass appointed Department of Public Works Commissioner Steven Kang — a city infrastructure expert with no Hollywood background — to the role, it drew criticism from some corners of the industry. But Bass says the choice came directly from the industry itself. “I basically left it up to the industry as to who they wanted,” she said. “They came to the conclusion that they didn’t want an industry person. They wanted a person who knew the intricacies of the city. That’s why we went with Steve Kang.”

The idea, she explained, was concierge service: when a production hits a bureaucratic wall, Kang can call the relevant department heads and make things move. “He literally, when anybody hits a bump in the road, will make the general managers or departments do what’s needed to facilitate.”

She also took a pointed shot at Raman on the industry front. “My opponent has been on the city council, or been in city hall, twice as long as I have,” Bass said, “and she has never initiated one thing for the industry, and has recused herself from everything. She has not shown any leadership at all while being on council, so it’s hard for me to understand how, then you show major leadership as mayor.”

The Fires, the Feds, and the Limits of Local Power

The January 2025 Palisades Fire remains the biggest wound on Bass’s record. Pratt, who lost his own home in the blaze, has made it a central campaign issue. Bass doesn’t deflect — she goes straight to what she’s done since. “First of all, not if I get reelected, but now,” she said when asked about fire preparedness going forward.

She described overhauling fire department leadership as her first move, followed by aggressive brush clearing — including on state land she technically doesn’t control. “I actually don’t care anymore. I’m going to clear brush. I don’t care if it’s on the state.” She says over 400 homes are now actively under construction in fire-affected areas, and that the biggest remaining obstacles are the insurance and banking industries, not the city.

On ICE and the LAPD, Bass was equally direct about what she can and can’t do — even when the answer isn’t what her supporters want to hear. Asked why LAPD wasn’t actively confronting federal immigration agents, she didn’t spin it. “At the end of the day, the power of the federal government supersedes all power, state power, local power,” she said. “You’re not going to have police agencies fighting each other. That’s not going to happen.”

She described the Trump administration’s immigration raids in LA as an experiment — a test run before a broader national crackdown. “I’ve been in contact with all the other mayors. We share policies, we share strategies.” On her own Oval Office visit, she was unapologetic: “The reason I was in the White House is because I need $8 billion to rebuild the infrastructure of the Palisades.” She pushed back on the optics directly: “I know how to fight with you one day and work with you the next, because the reality is there is no city that can function without federal support. Period.”

The LAPD union endorsement came up too. Bass has spent decades in criminal justice reform — she started in the Coalition Against Police Abuse before she ever ran for office — and she rejected the idea that union support compromises her. “One thing has absolutely nothing to do with the other,” she said.

The Olympics, Casey Wasserman, and an Already-Stretched Budget

LA28 looms over everything. The city is on the hook for the first $270 million in any losses, with the state covering the next $270 million and the city again responsible for the following $540 million — a potential $810 million exposure for a budget that’s already under strain. Bass acknowledged the risk but pushed back on the framing. “What I hear from LA28 is that the fundraising is way, way, way ahead of schedule. They should not go into a deficit.”

On Casey Wasserman — who weathered scrutiny after his name appeared in Ghislaine Maxwell emails — Bass was measured. She confirmed she called for him to step down, then acknowledged it wasn’t her call to make. “A lot of people think that I run LA28 or that I’m in charge of LA28. I’m not. LA28 is an independent nonprofit organization. The deal for the costs was cut years before I was even thinking about being mayor.”

She’s leaning into the pre-Olympic events as a dry run — the World Cup arrives in LA in a matter of weeks, with the US Open for golf following shortly after the June 2 primary. “I’m going to take full advantage of those events,” she said. “Make sure our neighborhoods benefit economically.”

And she’s not done making the broader case. “I don’t care what city it is, I don’t care what year it is. There is always anxiety and criticism and reticence over the Olympics. And then they happen and everybody goes, oh, it was so amazing. I was here in 1984. I remember everybody was freaked out. 42 years later, we’re still celebrating 1984.”

The June 2 primary is two weeks out. Bass leads in the latest polling, with Pratt and Raman fighting for the second spot that determines who faces her in November. Whether the city rewards her workhorse approach or decides it wants a show horse — that’s the question LA is about to answer.