Bass and Raman court Latino voters as L.A. mayor’s race comes down to the wire – Los Angeles Times

Bass and Raman court Latino voters as L.A. mayor’s race comes down to the wire  Los Angeles Times

With mail-in voting just days away, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and challenger Nithya Raman are stepping up their efforts to reach Latinos, whose votes are expected to be a decisive factor in the Nov. 3 election. The candidates are courting Latino leaders and hosting rallies in Latino neighborhoods. Both campaigns are also getting crucial assists in targeting Latino voters from independent expenditure groups, which aren't bound by the same contribution limits as campaigns are. "Latinos are about a third of the voters in L.A.," said Fernando Guerra, a professor of political science and Chicana/o studies at Loyola Marymount University. "While they show preferences, they are not deeply committed to either candidate, so they are the quintessential swing voters who decide late." Recent polling by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by The Times, found that likely Latino voters favor Councilmember Raman over incumbent Bass by a wide margin — 45% to 21%, with 34% undecided.

That's an even bigger lead than Raman had over Bass with voters overall in the most recent Berkeley IGS/L.A. Times poll. Raman's 24-point lead among Latinos contrasts sharply with the results of the June 2 primary, where Bass carried 35 Latino majority neighborhoods compared with seven for Raman. The mayor's campaign disputed the methodology of the poll, which was conducted online in