What just happened?
As Nithya Raman tried to question Mayor Karen Bass’s record on the LAPD, a name drop dredges up an earlier, racist era of the department
LA City Council member Nithya Raman’s name drop, at Tuesday’s mayoral debate, of Daryl Gates, a police chief whose racist policies made his tenure one of the worst eras in LAPD’s history, unfurled into a big reaction from her opponent Mayor Karen Bass this week.
Raman had meant to attack Bass’s record around a lack of trust in the LAPD within the immigrant community, by referencing (while not naming) Special Order 40, a 1979 policy created under Gates’ administration that prohibited LAPD from questioning people about their immigration status. But Raman had described that time as a “golden era,” and even though that description was aimed at the policy and not the chief, the framing drew out a visceral reaction for those who lived through the Gates era.
One of those people happened to be Bass, who was sitting across the debate table from Raman on Tuesday when the name was uttered in connection with the words “golden era.” It took “a minute to sink in” amid the intensity of the debate, Bass said at a news conference held Thursday at her campaign office in Baldwin Hills.
“Daryl Gates inflicted serious harm to the African American community,” Bass said. And she painted the repressive mood of the time. “It was a sense of terror in the community,” Bass said. “I know, myself personally, I went through years and years of surveillance… a number of us were involved in a massive lawsuit over the surveillance that we went through, and the harassment that we went through, and I was one of 120 plaintiffs.” Bass said that Gates had “focused on five plaintiffs,” and one of them was her. “He pulled me out of the bunch and had a press conference and said I was a terrorist,” she said.
Several prominent figures from the Black community who lived through or were involved in civil rights activism during Gates’ tenure appeared alongside Bass to call out Raman’s words as a gaffe – one that evidently revealed that Raman does not know the history of LA well enough to be able to lead it.
Among those who joined Bass was Carl Douglas, a well known civil rights attorney who has represented many families of people who were killed by LAPD officers and Sheriff’s deputies. He was there to bolster the argument that Raman had revealed a blind spot, and to support Bass for another term. “Angelenos deserve to know their candidate understands their history, that their candidate feels the pain of their history,” Douglas said. “You can’t build trust on a faulty timeline. You gotta have facts that work. You gotta know the people that are involved.”
Raman meanwhile, released a video on Thursday, saying that Bass was “trying to twist my words” as an alternative to answering her “pointed questions” during Tuesday’s debate “about LAPD’s relationship with ICE, what information they’re sharing.”
“Let me be clear, Daryl Gates was a racist, abhorrent, militaristic police chief,” Raman said in the video. Then Raman dropped yet another name. She credited Mayor Tom Bradley, under whose administration Special Order 40 was enacted, for “actually took strides to ensure that immigrant residents of Los Angeles were able to reach out to our law enforcement without fear of being reported to immigration authorities.”
Raman then turned her attention to the current mayor’s record, saying, “Mayor Bass, we need these answers, and we need them now.”
A few more things…
Matt Hamilton at LA Material lays out the odd tale of the obscure but influential Los Angeles Professional Managers Association, which has been submitting political documentation with a dead man’s signature – and that recently helped fund a LAPPL’s anti-Nithya Raman attack ad.
The Los Angeles City Ethics Commissions just released its latest quarterly report on lobbying. Fox Corporation, San Antonio Winery, BARDAS Investment Group, Phillips 66, JCI Jones Chemicals, SRM Development, Warren Resources, Harridge Development and Milken Community School top the list for payments to lobbyists. The report says $17.8 million were paid to lobbyists to grease wheels at City Hall during the second quarter of 2026.
And the U.S. Department of Justice just filed a lawsuit against the state of California alleging that the people who have received ballots to vote in the Nov. 3 general election might include non-citizens. Just a couple days ago, the U.S. DOJ had sent LA County Clerk Dean Logan a USB drive attached to a letter that said it contained the names of possible non-citizens who have received vote-by-mail ballots. Logan at the time said that they were not opening up the USB drive. “We do not consider the device to be a secure medium,” Logan said. Today, Logan also gave an update on that, and the lawsuit, saying in a statement that the justice department “has not provided the underlying evidence, source, or methodology supporting its assertions that individuals identified in its records are ineligible to vote.” Logan also said that they “cannot withhold or refuse to count ballots based solely on unverified allegations, nor can we disregard the legal requirements governing our election – and we certainly have no authority to act on records that are outside of our jurisdiction.” His statement also said that the County Clerk’s office was focused on conducting a “safe, secure, accurate and transparent General Election.” You can also read LA County’s response to the U.S. DOJ here.