May 13 was all set to be an important day in the race for Los Angeles mayor. Four of the five leading candidates had agreed to share a debate stage that day on live TV.
Two of them, Adam Miller and Rae Huang, had been excluded from a previous televised forum. This would be the first and only time both would face incumbent Mayor Karen Bass on stage, giving voters a golden opportunity to weigh their temperaments, policy positions and ability to think on their feet.
Just $33.33. It's less than a tank of gas or a bag of groceries. But that's all it would take from each of our readers to keep Golden State going through 2026.
But it didn’t happen. A week before the main event, Bass pulled out. Then City Councilmember Nithya Raman did the same. (Spencer Pratt had never agreed to participate.) The organizers, the League of Women Voters and the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs, had no option but to cancel the event.
Huang, a housing advocate affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, and Miller, a tech company founder who started a nonprofit addressing homelessness, missed that chance to make their case alongside Raman and Bass. So we took the debate to them, quizzing them on homelessness, housing, public safety and other topics.
