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      US vice-president Kamala Harris will swear in Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass

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      US vice-president Kamala Harris will swear in Los Angeles mayor Karen BassThe ceremony will be a nod to the barriers broken by the two most powerful women in California politics and beyond US vice-president Kamala Harris will swear in Karen Bass as Los Angeles mayor, marking the historic election of the first Black woman to lead the second largest city in the country.The swearing-in ceremony on Sunday will bring together two elected leaders who have repeatedly broken barriers in California politics and beyond. In 2020, Harris became the first woman, first Black person and first Asian person to be US vice- president. In 2008, as a California state assemblymember, Bass became the first Black woman to serve as the speaker of any US state legislature; she was elected to represent Los Angeles in the US congress in 2010 and later became chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.The mayor-elect asked Harris to administer the oath of office as a way to recognize their positions as two of California’s most powerful Black women, the LA Times reported, citing an aide to the vice-president. Harris was honored to participate, the aide told the paper. The vice-president tweeted that it was “an historic moment for the people of Los Angeles”.This is an historic moment for the people of Los Angeles. I look forward to swearing in Mayor-elect Karen Bass this weekend. https://t.co/uzV29F9PZv— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) December 5, 2022
      The inauguration will take place on the steps of LA’s city hall and will include musical and other performances, according to a Bass spokesperson.Bass, the first woman to lead LA and second Black mayor in the city’s history, defeated her opponent, billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso, in the closely watched race in November. Caruso had spent more than $100m (£87m) of his own funds on his campaign, which spent roughly 10 times as much as Bass’s campaign.It took a week for the race to be called, with Bass ultimately earning 55% of the vote and Caruso earning 45%.Bass is stepping up at a pivotal moment in LA politics after a leaked audio recording captured three councilmembers making racist and bigoted remarks about colleagues and marginalized communities in the region, prompting an ongoing scandal. Several progressive candidates defeated more moderate opponents in key LA races this year.The congresswoman is also taking over city hall at a time when LA county has recorded 69,000 unhoused people, including more than 48,000 living outside. On the campaign trail, Bass pledged to move 17,000 people indoors in her first year.TopicsCaliforniaKamala HarrisLos AngelesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      From homeless to city hall: the Hmong American mayor making history in Oakland

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      From homeless to city hall: the Hmong American mayor making history in OaklandSheng Thao says her experiences will help her lead the city through its severe housing crisis At the steps of city hall, surrounded by supporters and a gaggle of press, Oakland’s new mayor-elect Sheng Thao exhaled.“It’s been a long journey,” she began. “We’ve been through a lot to get to this moment right here.”Just 15 years ago, Thao was living in her car with her infant son. She had just escaped an abusive relationship and had nowhere to go. This week Thao, 37, became the first Hmong American woman to lead a major US city, the youngest Oakland mayor in 75 years and the first renter to hold the position.“There have been so many people in this beautiful city that have held our hands and lifted us up,” she said on Wednesday, in her first press conference since her history-making victory.The daughter of of refugees who fled Laos during a genocide, Thao was born and raised in Stockton, California, the seventh of 10 children. She left home at 17, and in her early 20s fled an abusive partner while pregnant with her son Ben. She spent months sleeping in her car or on stranger’s couches before she was able to secure a shelter.Now, as she steps into the role of mayor, Thao said her experiences with poverty and homelessness will help her lead the city through its own severe housing and homelessness crisis, and increasing gun violence. Over the past five years, Oakland saw a steeper rise in homelessness than any other city in the Bay Area.While many other Democratic midterm candidates across the state and country have responded to voters’ worries about homelessness and community violence with harsh, tough-on-crime rhetoric, Thao has promised policies that will treat unhoused people with dignity and investment in public health and violence prevention programs.Thao’s victory is a sign that voters “don’t want to vilify and punish poor people”, said Aimee Allison, founder of She the People, a national network elevating the political power of women of color.Allison, who lives in Oakland, said she has known Thao since she was an intern for Oakland vice-mayor Rebeecca Kaplan. Thao eventually became Kaplan’s chief of staff, before successfully running for city council herself. “Her values are clear,” said Allison. “It makes her very popular amongst lots of different people, because they feel seen and heard with her.”And Thao has built a long reputation of community involvement and action. At UC Berkeley, she organized the Bear Pantry – named after the university’s mascot – which collected food donations from local restaurants and grocers to help feed students in need. While working for Kaplan, she created a food delivery program for seniors and homebound residents. And amid the pandemic, she helped establish a mutual aid collective to distribute masks, hand sanitizer and public health information to underserved communities.“Sheng is a down to earth candidate who actually knows what it’s like for people who are marginalized in this city,” said Pamela Drake, a local activist who advised Thao’s campaign. “She’s not as progressive as I am,” Drake said. “I won’t always agree with her. But I do think what she’ll do is listen. And she won’t just ignore the people that are really in need.”Thao has hopes to see at least 30,000 new housing units built over the next eight years, provide safe RV parking sites for those who live in their vehicles and trash and sanitation services for encampments. Ultimately, Thao said, she wants the city to offer “adequate housing and shelter to all 3,300 unhoused residents in Oakland” over two four-year terms. She has also suggested stronger protections for renters, including rent controls, to keep people from ending up unhoused in the first place.The proposals had earned her the support of social justice group Oakland Rising, as well as a coalition of unhoused Oaklanders and homelessness advocates.To address public safety issues, Thao said she would like to fill vacancies in Oakland’s police force, which has been under federal oversight for nearly two decades following a corruption scandal. But she said she would also like to see more investment in education and violence prevention programs.In a ranked-choice election, she narrowly secured a victory by just 682 votes over the more moderate Democratic frontrunner Loren Taylor after nearly two weeks of ballot counting. Thao’s victory is considered something of an upset; while she had the backing of the local Democratic party, labor unions and progressive figures including California congressman Ro Khanna, her opponent Taylor was endorsed by key figures in Bay Area politics including Oakland’s outgoing mayor Libby Schaaf and San Francisco mayor London Breed.She is one of several newly elected progressive officials in Oakland, which will have a progressive majority in city council starting next year. And progressive civil rights attorney Pamela Price became the first Black district attorney of Alameda county, with encompasses Oakland.“We finally have the opportunity for progressive policies and changes to actually happen for the city,” Allison said.TopicsOaklandCaliforniaUS politicsUS midterm elections 2022DemocratsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Los Angeles mayor hopefuls Karen Bass and Rick Caruso locked in tight race

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      Los Angeles mayor hopefuls Karen Bass and Rick Caruso locked in tight raceThe margin of votes between the Democratic congresswoman and billionaire developer remains too close to call A billionaire real estate developer and a Democratic congresswoman are still locked in a tight race to become the next mayor of Los Angeles, in a record-breaking campaign where political spending topped $120m.US midterm elections 2022: Senate remains tight as ‘red wave’ fails to materialize – liveRead moreOn Wednesday morning, the margin of votes between Rick Caruso and Karen Bass was still too close to call, with the candidates virtually tied, the Associated Press reported.Caruso was ahead by 12,000 votes on Wednesday morning local time, with nearly 80% of expected votes remaining to be counted.Bass told supporters at her election party that the vote counting could take days, but added: “We will win, because we are going to build a new Los Angeles.” Caruso told his crowd: “We don’t know the outcome yet, but I’m happy to say that we’re starting out strong.”In another closely watched LA race, the incumbent county sheriff, Alex Villanueva, was trailing his opponent, the former police chief of the city of Long Beach Robert Luna. Villanueva, a Democrat who took a hard turn to the right since his election in 2018, has been derided by some as the “Donald Trump of LA” due to a steady stream of controversies surrounding obstruction, abuse and misconduct cases.Both nominally Democrats, Bass and Caruso come from starkly different backgrounds, and their down-to-the-wire contest comes at a particularly fraught time for Los Angeles.The region’s homelessness crisis has become a humanitarian catastrophe, with LA county recording 69,000 unhoused people in this year’s annual estimate, considered an undercount, including more than 48,000 living outside.During the campaign, Caruso made it clear he would like to roll back some criminal justice reforms in order to impose tougher penalties for theft, and suggested he would be willing to arrest unhoused people who were unwilling to move into shelters.City government is also in crisis. Recordings leaked last month captured three councilmembers, including the council president, making bigoted and racist remarks about Black, Indigenous, Jewish, Armenian and gay people while discussing redistricting. The closed-door remarks of the three Latino councilmembers included derogatory statements about the Black toddler of another councilmember and offensive stereotypes about Oaxacans in Los Angeles.The scandal sparked international outrage and exposed longstanding racial tensions and anti-Black racism of some lawmakers in a city that is roughly 50% Latino and 9% Black. The leaks captured the three moderate Democrats deriding progressives and crudely discussing their efforts to reduce the power of renters and their Black colleagues in the redistricting process, prompting a state investigation.If she wins, Bass, who rose to a position of influence in Congress after decades as a community organizer in Black and Latino neighborhoods, would be Los Angeles’ first female mayor and its second Black mayor.While Bass has a long track record of building multiracial coalitions, including in times of political crisis, she is also the candidate of the city’s Democratic establishment, and was backed by some of the Latino politicians whose leaked comments portrayed them as primarily interested in preserving their own personal power.With an estimated net worth of $5.3bn, Caruso, who developed some of Los Angeles’ most beloved luxury malls, presented himself as an outsider businessman with the skills to clean up corruption in city government and disorder in the city streets. He outspent Bass by more than 10 to one, pouring more than $100m of his own money into an election that shattered previous campaign finance records in the city.Los Angeles’ rising Latina leader on the fallout from leaked racist tapes: ‘They took us back decades’Read moreCaruso’s campaign ran “the best-funded and -focused Latino get-out-the-vote effort in the history of Los Angeles”, implementing a strategy that more leftwing Latino activists and academics had been urging candidates to deploy for years, political scientist Fernando Guerra said.During the general election, Caruso’s campaign poured millions into on-the-ground paid canvassing efforts in Latino neighborhoods, Guerra said, with young Latino and Latina canvassers presenting Caruso as a champion of small businesses and as the product of an immigrant success story, whose Italian American family had roots in Boyle Heights, now a predominantly Latino neighborhood.Caruso generated mockery and criticism during a campaign debate when he disputed a description of himself as a white man by calling himself “Italian”, and said, “That’s Latin.”TopicsCaliforniaLos AngelesDemocratsUS politicsUS midterm elections 2022newsReuse this content More