Karen Bass has won the heated Los Angeles Mayoral race against billionaire businessman Rick Caruso and will now become the first elected female and second Black mayor of Los Angeles.
According to reports, Karen Bass narrowly defeated billionaire developer Rick Caruso in the highly contested mayoral race on Wednesday.
With 70% of the vote tallied, Bass had amassed an insurmountable lead of nearly 47,000 votes.
After a week of counting, the longtime congresswoman, 69, who has represented California’s 37th District in D.C. since 2011, won the mayoral race with just over 53 per cent of the vote as called by the Associate Press.
Karen Bass fought off a late run by the 63-year-old Caruso, who gained ground in the election’s late days by converting undecided voters, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Bass, who is a Democrat, had widespread support from the city’s liberal base, while Caruso, a newfound Democrat who’s previously registered as both Republican and independent, garnered votes in the San Fernando Valley and from Latinos, per the newspaper.
The developer also found support from a number of celebrities who called for a solution to the city’s issues with crime and homelessness.
Caruso spent about $100 million of his own money to fund his bid, which included attack ads that had many doubting Bass, despite her long-held tenure in politics, Politico reported.
Prior to joining Congress, Bass served in the California State Assembly, where she made history in 2008 as the first Black woman in U.S. history to serve as speaker in any state legislature, according to her online biography.
In the early 1990s, the leader founded the Community Coalition, known locally as CoCo, which helped to transform social and economic conditions in South Los Angeles.
Caruso, dubbed by Forbes as the “Walt Disney Of Real Estate,” founded a self-named real estate company in 1987, where he created tens of thousands of jobs, per his campaign website bio.
The upscale outdoor L.A. shopping mall The Grove is among the mogul’s most notable projects.