Rep. Karen Bass grew her lead over developer Rick Caruso in the Los Angeles mayoral race to nearly 30,000 votes Monday, according to the latest update from the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk.
Bass led Caruso by over 9,000 votes after Saturday’s update. An additional 191,312 ballots were added to the tally Monday for a total of nearly 1.8 million ballots counted so far, with Bass now holding a 52% to 48% lead over Caruso.
Hundreds of thousands of countywide ballots still remain uncounted, however, and a winner might not be determined for days or even weeks. It was unclear how many of the uncounted votes are from voters in the city of Los Angeles.
The last four updates after Election Day have all resulted in gains for Bass, who took the lead in the vote count on Friday and has expanded it since.
“I am honored and grateful for the support we are continuing to see,” Bass said in a statement on Twitter. “I am optimistic and looking forward to the next update.”
The next update will be released Tuesday afternoon, according to election officials.
“As predicted, this is a close race,” Caruso said last week. “There are hundreds of thousands of votes to count and as expected we are going to see different results each time. I continue to be cautiously optimistic about these numbers and look forward to the next series of results in the coming weeks.”
Bass, a six-term member of Congress, is seeking to become the first woman and only the second Black person to lead Los Angeles. Caruso, a billionaire developer, is looking to win a campaign that’s on track to spend more than $100 million — much of it from Caruso’s own fortune — to propel him into office.
The winner will inherit leadership of a city grappling with a worsening homelessness crisis and a scandal that has embroiled City Hall for the past month, after three council members and a top county labor official took part in a leaked conversation in October 2021 that included racist comments and attempts to manipulate redistricting.
