Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is under fire after mocking a Republican gubernatorial candidate’s British accent and declaring that California’s governor race is already decided.
Bass, 71, appeared on the iHeart podcast “Flagrant and Funny” to discuss her re-election bid against challenger Nithya Raman, but veered into the statewide contest between Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton. She predicted a foregone conclusion with less than six weeks until the November 3 election.
“The governor’s race right now is over,” Bass claimed on the show. “Our governor’s name is Xavier Becerra. You don’t need an election on November 3rd.”
She pressed the point about Democratic dominance in deep-blue California before turning her attention to Hilton’s background.
“A Republican cannot win in this state,” Bass said, adding with evident disbelief, “and yet a Republican with a British accent!?”
“I know, right?” one of the podcast hosts laughed in response.
Hilton, an immigrant from the United Kingdom, learned of the remarks when a Fox reporter played him the clip on Monday. He seized on what he called hypocrisy from a party that regularly champions democratic participation and anti-racism.
“These are the people who lecture us all the time about democracy, saying ‘Oh, don’t bother voting. The Democrat always wins,'” Hilton said.
“These are the people who lecture us all the time about racism, attacking people because of their accent? Attacking an immigrant — is that what Karen Bass is all about?” Hilton continued.
The candidate then pivoted to conditions in Bass’s own jurisdiction, pointing his camera toward trash accumulated on a Los Angeles sidewalk he was visiting.
“Rather than making stupid, personal insults, why don’t you clean up your city, Karen Bass?” Hilton fired back.
Former mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt also weighed in, framing the remarks as symptomatic of unchecked single-party control.
“This is what happens when you have one-party rule: these politicians take you for granted and don’t even try to earn your vote,” Pratt shared. “If you Democrats actually want your politicians to do something for you, you need to hand them an L once in a while.”
Bass’s confidence about Becerra’s prospects stands in contrast to her own precarious political position. A poll released this week showed Raman, a socialist city council member, surging to an 11-point lead in the Los Angeles mayoral contest with under six weeks remaining.
The Bass campaign pushed back hard against that survey. Campaign spokesman Alex Stack dismissed it as an “outlier” in a statement to the California Post.
“One outlier poll which got the June primary wrong isn’t reflective of the energy we see when talking to voters every day and what every other poll indicates — this is going to be a close race,” Stack said.
The California governor race pits Becerra, who has held a commanding lead in polls, against Hilton, a former Fox News host and political strategist who has made his immigrant story and critiques of Democratic governance central to his longshot campaign.