Do Angelenos care about a ‘first woman mayor’?
Bass, Caruso sharpen efforts to appeal to female voters
During much of the lead-up to the primary, Rep. Karen Bass appeared to shy away from the barrier-breaking aspects of her campaign.
You occasionally heard surrogates tout her potential to be the first Black woman elected mayor of the city, but it was usually on their own time. The messaging was largely absent from official campaign events and almost never came out of the mouth of the candidate.
That has changed as of late.
At a Zoom fundraiser this month, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke about how Bass “would be the first woman to run the city of Los Angeles.”
Standing with Bass to pledge her support earlier this month, City Council President Nury Martinez described the moment as one “we could have only dreamed of as little girls: the first Latina council president endorsing the first woman mayor of the city of Los Angeles.” (Cue a very loud chorus of applause from the crowd.)
A week later, Bass herself leaned into gender identity as she took aim at her opponent Rick Caruso’s newly announced women’s economic agenda.
“My opponent is going to elevate women by having a deputy mayor of women. To me, it seems a little tokenistic,” she told a group Thursday over breakfast in Sherman Oaks. “But I have another idea for him. How about having an actual woman mayor?”
Only two women, Laura Chick and Wendy Greuel, have held citywide office in Los Angeles. Greuel, the former city controller who was sitting a few feet from Bass when she spoke on Thursday, was backed by Emily’s List and some of California’s most prominent female politicians in her 2013 bid for mayor. She lost to Eric Garcetti, an ideologically similar candidate, in the general election.
There are plenty of reasons why Bass might have been hesitant to embrace the “first woman mayor” story line earlier in the election. But recent history provides one obvious theory: Running an #Imwithher campaign that puts gender and history-making in the foreground is not an inherently winning strategy. (Just ask Clinton. Or Greuel.)
“I really believe that voters aren’t going to vote for her just because she’s a woman. … Voters are almost offended if you imply that you should vote for someone
What does change people’s calculus, and potentially their vote, is if you explain to them why having a woman in a particular seat matters, Bubar said.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade, which came a few weeks after the June primary, fundamentally shook the American political landscape. It remains a looming presence in this local race, where hot-button national issues like abortion typically get little play. The Roe decision played into the Bass campaign’s shift to start talking about the importance of electing a woman mayor, it said.
If Bass wants to frame the race as — to quote a recent press release — a “stark choice” between a self-described “lifelong advocate for women’s healthcare and equality and Rick Caruso’s anti-choice record,” her identity as a woman only strengthens that narrative.
(Caruso has been outspoken and unwavering about his support for abortion rights throughout the campaign. The Caruso campaign has said he “has always been pro-choice,” although a 2007 interview and his previous financial support of antiabortion politicians paint a less-clear-cut picture.)
Making his own bid for women voters last week, Caruso unveiled his “Make L.A. Work for Women” policy agenda during a brief Zoom roundtable Wednesday with women business leaders.
The plan’s Day 1 commitments include pledging gender parity in his administration, using the mayoral bully pulpit to market L.A. as a city that protects women’s freedoms and appointing the deputy mayor focused on women and the economy, whom Bass criticized in her speech. Other policy priorities include expanding the number of city contracting opportunities for women-owned small businesses and using institutional resources to provide care for families.
Tracy Hernandez, chief executive of the Los Angeles County Business Federation and an informal, unpaid Caruso campaign advisor who consulted on the plan, praised it as serious and comprehensive.
Hernandez also touted Caruso’s track record at his company. Fifty-one percent of employees in leadership positions at Caruso’s eponymous company are women, according to the campaign. Further, Caruso has named a woman to succeed him as chief executive; Corinne Verdery, the chief development officer, will take over as CEO on Sept. 1.
“Rick put forward a solution to build on what his proven record is: that he values women, and he knows how to get parity and equity to them,” Hernandez said, adding that Caruso would bring that same lens to the city.
Bass campaign spokesperson Sarah Leonard Sheahan criticized the Caruso announcement as non-substantive and tone-deaf. She took particular issue with the deputy mayor aspect: “He’s treating 50% of the population as a category that needs a special office.”
Caruso’s announcement took flak on Twitter along similar lines from a number of prominent Bass supporters, including actress Rosario Dawson, Women’s March Action founder Emiliana Guereca and Los Angeles County Democratic Party chair Mark J. Gonzalez.
Hernandez, the Caruso advisor, suggested that the Bass campaign is trying to deflect attention from the fact that it hasn’t yet released a plan on gender equity. A platform touching on that will be released in the coming weeks, said Leonard Sheahan, the Bass spokesperson.
“She has a lifetime of experience lifting up women and families,” Leonard Sheahan said.
Women voters turned out at a slightly higher rate than male voters during the primary, according to analysis from consulting firm Political Data Intelligence.
There are no gender-specific data breaking down how Angelenos voted in the primary. But the final Times/Berkeley IGS poll conducted before the primary (which included all 12 candidates on the ballot) portrayed a large gender gap, with Bass leading Caruso by 19 points among women, and Caruso leading by eight points among men.
