California’s top-two primary system is producing some genuinely strange political math in 2026, and nowhere is that math stranger than in Los Angeles.
At the state level, the governor’s race has focused attention on a scenario where two Republicans could theoretically advance out of the June primary. The mechanics are simple: with eight Democrats and two Republicans on the ballot, Democratic votes could split enough ways to let both GOP candidates finish in the top two. It’s unlikely given California’s partisan lean, but the possibility alone has rattled Democratic strategists enough that lower-polling Democrats are facing pressure to exit the race. Some political observers have started questioning the top-two system itself.
Los Angeles operates under different rules, and the differences matter.
How LA’s System Works
The June municipal election in Los Angeles is not a primary. It’s the actual election. Any candidate who clears 50 percent of the vote in June wins outright, no November runoff required. That single rule reshapes every campaign decision.
Mayor Karen Bass won comfortably four years ago. She enters this cycle weaker than she left 2022, but she still holds the office and has a durable core of support. For challengers, that combination of incumbency and institutional backing makes the mayor’s race structurally harder to crack than the governor’s race, where no one starts with that kind of built-in advantage.
Los Angeles also runs even more liberal than California as a whole, which is saying something. In the months before the filing deadline, candidates who positioned themselves to Bass’s right largely decided not to run. That wasn’t really the threat to her reelection anyway.
The Field Bass Is Actually Facing
Bass faces two challengers to her left. City Councilmember Nithya Raman has a base in progressive organizing circles and enough institutional credibility to run a serious campaign. Community organizer Rae Huang represents a similar ideological lane with deeper roots in grassroots activism.
To Bass’s right, Spencer Pratt filed for the race. The former reality TV personality has become a MAGA-aligned figure and appeared on Fox News programming in January. His political ceiling in a Los Angeles electorate is, by most assessments, low.
Then there’s Adam Miller, a tech entrepreneur who has told supporters he’s willing to loan his campaign more than $2 million of his own money. Miller positions himself outside the Bass/Raman/Huang ideological contest.
The Gambit
Here’s where the math gets interesting, and politically treacherous.
Bass’s path to a June outright victory depends on two things: running up her own numbers and keeping the opposition vote fragmented enough that no single challenger consolidates the left. If Raman or Huang absorbed the majority of the anti-Bass vote, that candidate could push Bass into a November runoff.
One strategic option that political observers have identified: Bass could direct campaign resources toward amplifying a fringe candidate, someone like Pratt, to occupy ballot space and siphon enough attention to prevent left-flank challengers from breaking through. The logic is that Pratt poses no real threat to Bass among the voters who actually decide LA elections, while his presence on the ballot and in debates creates noise that benefits the incumbent.
This story was first reported by CalMatters.
It’s a high-risk move for several reasons. Bass would essentially be spending political capital to boost a MAGA-aligned candidate in a city where that association is toxic among her base. If her supporters learned she was helping Pratt’s signal in any way, the backlash could fracture the coalition she needs. And if the gambit backfired, she could end up in a November runoff anyway, this time against a consolidating challenger who can paint her as desperate.
Two Cities, One System, Different Stakes
The governor’s race and the mayor’s race share a structural feature: both involve electoral rules that create unexpected openings and force campaigns into unusual calculations. But the comparison stops there.
In Sacramento, Democrats are managing a diffuse threat from splitting their own vote across too many candidates in a jungle primary. Their risk is dilution. In Los Angeles, Bass faces a more targeted problem: two ideologically coherent challengers competing for the same left-progressive voters she depends on.
The state-level debate over whether the top-two system still serves California Democrats is a real one. The 2026 cycle has surfaced genuine tension between a system designed to produce competitive general elections and a political reality where one party dominates so thoroughly that the competition it produces is mostly internal.
Los Angeles complicates that picture further. The city’s 50-percent-or-runoff structure doesn’t map onto the state system, but it produces its own version of strange math. An incumbent mayor with real vulnerabilities, two serious challengers splitting the opposition, and a fringe candidate whose presence on the ballot may be more useful to Bass than his own campaign realizes.
Spring filing deadlines have passed. The field is set. What happens next depends on whether Bass plays it straight or plays the board.