Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass withdrew from the last scheduled mayoral candidate forum before the June 2 primary, just days after a televised debate in which ex-reality star Spencer Pratt drew widespread viewer approval for his performance against her. The forum, set to air May 13 on FOX 11, was co-organized by the League of Women Voters of Greater Los Angeles and the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs, both of which publicly called the move "disappointing."
The timing tells its own story. Bass signed a confirmation form on April 22 committing to appear. Formal invitations had gone out April 20. Then, on Wednesday, she shared a debate stage with Pratt and City Councilmember Nithya Raman. By Thursday, her campaign had pulled the plug.
Former LA City Councilmember Mike Bonin, now with the Pat Brown Institute, told the Daily Mail that Bass's team initially said she would be available for the May 13 date. What changed? Bonin laid it out plainly:
"On May 7, Mayor Bass withdrew, with her campaign consultant indicating they had debated their two main opponents, who made clear they were not up for the job, and they were done with debates."
Done with debates. Three weeks before a primary. With a confirmation form already signed.
Bass's campaign offered a different explanation. Spokesperson Alex Stack told Fox 11 and LA Magazine that the mayor would be in Sacramento on May 13. The stated purpose: seeking funding for housing, homelessness, and Palisades Fire recovery, along with discussions about the city-state partnership on the Olympics and World Cup.
That framing, the mayor too busy governing to debate, might hold up better if Bonin hadn't already relayed the campaign's own earlier reasoning. The "done with debates" line and the Sacramento scheduling conflict don't exactly complement each other. One says the debates served their purpose. The other says the calendar simply wouldn't allow it.
The campaign also released a statement that went further, declaring that "people of LA saw twice last week that Nithya Raman and Spencer Pratt are not up to the job as Mayor." The statement added: "So it's time to move past debates."
That's not a scheduling conflict. That's a strategic decision dressed in one.
The League of Women Voters and the Pat Brown Institute didn't let the withdrawal pass quietly. In a joint statement released Saturday, they framed the stakes clearly:
"These forums provide voters with the opportunity to hear candidates share their perspectives, respond to questions, and engage with one another on issues facing Los Angeles."
The organizers described the forum as an "opportunity to hear directly from candidates seeking to lead the city through a period of extraordinary challenges." They also posted the signed confirmation form online, making it harder for the campaign to claim the commitment was tentative.
As the Washington Examiner reported, the organizers explicitly tied their criticism to democratic accountability, stating that "public forums such as this are a cornerstone of democratic accountability." That language, from nonpartisan civic institutions, not political opponents, carries weight.
Bonin himself added a pointed observation about what voters would lose:
"We are disappointed that voters will be denied the opportunity to see the Mayor side-by-side with her main opponents in a televised forum just as voters are beginning to really pay attention to the race."
The forum had invited five candidates total. Raman, businessman Adam Miller, and community advocate Rae Huang all agreed to attend. Pratt had earlier declined due to a scheduling conflict of his own. Bass was the only confirmed participant to back out.
The withdrawal followed a debate performance that clearly rattled the incumbent's camp. During Wednesday's televised debate, Pratt, who lost his $3.8 million Southern California home in the LA wildfires last January, went after Bass over her handling of the disaster. He has built his entire mayoral campaign around that critique, channeling the anger of residents who watched thousands of homes burn while city leadership struggled to respond.
An NBC LA poll found that roughly 90 percent of viewers declared Pratt the winner of the debate. That's a staggering number, even accounting for the self-selecting nature of online polls. It suggests a level of public dissatisfaction with Bass that her campaign cannot easily dismiss.
Bass, for her part, has tried to diminish Pratt's candidacy. Earlier this month, she accused him of "exploiting the grief" of wildfire victims. In a separate remark, she said: "Well, honestly, before this, I had never heard of Spencer Pratt." She added: "I think that's reprehensible. He is about his own celebrity."
Pratt fired back with a different kind of argument, one rooted in political math. He said he would rather face Raman alone in the election without Bass, then posed a pointed question:
"You think it's easier to run against the incumbent mayor with all the unions, or a random city councilmember who has been a failure for six years?"
His point was clear. Bass, with all her institutional backing, is the harder opponent. Pratt wasn't running from her. She was the one who left the stage.
Bass still leads the field, but the numbers suggest vulnerability. A UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs poll conducted last month put Bass at 25 percent, Pratt at 11 percent, and Raman at nine percent. A separate UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll found Bass at 25 percent, Raman at 17 percent, and Pratt at 14 percent.
Those numbers mean Bass is well short of the 50 percent threshold needed to win outright on June 2. If no candidate clears that bar, the race heads to a November 3 runoff. For an incumbent mayor backed by organized labor and the full weight of the Democratic establishment in Los Angeles, polling at 25 percent is not a position of strength. It's a warning sign.
California's broader political landscape has been shifting in ways that should concern Democratic incumbents. Recent polling in the governor's race showed two Republicans leading the field, a development that would have seemed unthinkable just a few cycles ago.
Raman, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, represents the progressive flank. Pratt represents something harder to categorize, a celebrity outsider whose personal loss in the wildfires gave him a platform and a grievance that resonates with displaced homeowners across the city. Together, they are squeezing Bass from both directions.
The New York Post reported that the withdrawal fueled criticism that Bass backed out specifically because of her poor debate showing, noting that organizers had confirmed her team agreed to the date well in advance.
The decision to skip the final pre-primary forum fits a familiar pattern among embattled incumbents: limit exposure, control the message, avoid unscripted moments. It's a rational campaign tactic. It's also the opposite of accountability.
Los Angeles voters are living through what the forum organizers called "a period of extraordinary challenges." The Palisades Fire recovery is ongoing. Homelessness remains a defining crisis. The city is preparing to host the Olympics and the World Cup. These are precisely the subjects voters deserve to hear candidates address side by side, under pressure, in real time.
Instead, the incumbent signed a form, changed her mind, and sent word through a consultant that she was "done with debates." The civic organizations that organized the forum, not partisan outfits, but the League of Women Voters and a Cal State university institute, were left to explain the empty chair to the public.
This kind of evasion from elected leaders is hardly unique to Los Angeles. California's Democratic establishment has long operated with the comfort of one-party dominance, where accountability to voters can feel optional rather than obligatory.
The wildfire crisis exposed real failures in city preparedness and response. Pratt, whatever his background in reality television, lost his home in those fires. He showed up to debate. Bass signed the form, then walked away.
And the broader pattern of Democratic leaders ducking scrutiny, whether in Washington or City Hall, is not lost on voters who are paying closer attention than the political class seems to realize.
Voters in Los Angeles will head to the polls on June 2. They'll make their choice with or without that final forum. But they'll remember who showed up, and who decided the conversation was over.