WASHINGTON — When Karen Bass landed in Washington in early 2011, the newest member of Congress from California wasn't merely geographically distant from the Democratic-controlled Sacramento she left behind.
She was elected to a House of Representatives that had just been taken over by Republicans, including a mammoth freshman class of 87 GOP lawmakers, many of them members of the tea party. By contrast, she was one of only nine freshman Democrats that year.
The GOP grip on Congress forced Bass — at that point, she was most recently accustomed to running the Democratic majority in the state Assembly — to pivot into trying to notch wins from deep in the minority and from the lowest rungs of seniority.
