LOS ANGELES — After a fiery spring and a relatively quiet summer, Rep. Karen Bass and Rick Caruso will soon enter the final stretch of the Los Angeles mayor's race: a monthslong, all-out sprint to November.
The same players are still onstage, with roughly the same messaging they've had since before the primary. But the national context and political atmosphere in the city have both shifted since the spring, to Bass' benefit.
For the first time in more than a century, the mayoral race will be held in an even year, synced up with national and state elections. Against a hyperpartisan backdrop of midterm elections and dwindling national reproductive rights, Caruso's Republican past has become a difficult-to-obscure liability in this deep-blue city.
