Red handed: Republicans Spend $130,000 in Apparent Effort to Reelect Bass
ELECTION 2026 - More than a year into ambushes and abductions of Angelenos by masked federal agents acting on orders of the Republican President, voters in L.A. get to have our say on the party in power in Washington with our ballots. That verdict comes Tuesday and is likely to be damning.
Revulsion at the GOP brand, more ferocious locally than ever before, may help explain a bit of intricate disclosure on campaign-finance documents in recent weeks involving the contest for L.A. mayor. Official records appear to show the Republican Central Committee of L.A. received $200,000 from a pro-Mayor Karen Bass police political committee in October to spend on a mailer to members in the final days of the mayoral campaign.
On October 6 and October 23, the L.A. Police Protective League made a pair of $100,000 donations to the Republican Party’s committee in L.A. The police committee is on record in the mayoral runoff not only supporting Mayor Bass, but also spending more than $2.1 million to denounce, discredit, and defeat her progressive Democratic rival, Nithya Raman, through mailings and other channels.
According to the official disclosures, the L.A. Republicans mailed to members on October 27, costing more than $130,000. That mailer is disclosed on the same filing as the second six-figure donation from the pro-Bass, anti-Raman police committee.
The cost of this mailer by L.A. Republicans is a drop in the bucket of the overall multi-million-dollar spending in the mayoral contest. But it comes at a time when Democrats are rising up with fervor to defeat and replace Republicans at all levels of government.
Indeed, calls to “reject every Republican on every ballot” echo loudly from the grassroots here in L.A. Affiliation or dependence on Republican money could be a scarlet letter for an incumbent Democrat.
Having a mayor whose reelection might rely on Republican support in the eleventh hour, using money funneled through police committees, is a jarring right turn from the L.A. mayor many Democrats thought they had in City Hall.
The late disclosure of Republican spending in L.A. with the apparent aim of swaying the mayoral runoff is something last-minute voters here in the nation’s second largest city might factor into their decision.
(Hans Johnson is a longtime advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, environmental justice, and public education. His columns have appeared in USA Today and leading newspapers across more than 20 states. Based in Eagle Rock, he serves as president of East Area Progressive Democrats (EAPD), California’s largest grassroots Democratic club with over 1,100 members. Hans brings decades of organizing and policy experience to his work, advancing equity and accountability in local and national politics.)
