The new congresswoman from the 33rd District is Karen Bass, a Democrat elected in 2010 to succeed retiring Rep. Diane Watson, also a Democrat. Bass is a Watson protégé and the former speaker of the California Assembly. Read More

The new congresswoman from the 33rd District is Karen Bass, a Democrat elected in 2010 to succeed retiring Rep. Diane Watson, also a Democrat. Bass is a Watson protégé and the former speaker of the California Assembly.

She was born and raised in Los Angeles. Her father was a letter carrier and her mother was a homemaker. Her father had moved to California from Texas after World War II; her mother was a Los Angeles native who learned to speak Spanish as a child. In an interview, Bass said that the most influential part of her childhood was watching television news coverage of the civil rights movement with her father, which “absolutely, positively shaped who I am today and why I’m interested in politics.” In middle school, Bass was a student representative on a committee overseeing integration of the school. At age 14, she got involved in Democratic Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign by signing up her mother as a precinct captain and then doing all the neighborhood canvassing herself. At her high school in West Los Angeles, Bass joined her teachers in protests against the Vietnam War. Bass attended San Diego State University and stayed active in community organizing. “School wound up being rather secondary for me,” she said. Bass served on a committee that investigated accusations of police abuses in Los Angeles and participated in groups that advocated for the end of apartheid in South Africa.

Bass ultimately received a nursing certificate from the University of Southern California and her bachelor’s degree from California State University Dominguez Hills. She was married in 1980 and had a daughter; the couple divorced in 1986. She and her ex-husband stayed in contact, cooperating on raising their daughter and four stepchildren. In 2006, Bass’s daughter and son-in-law died in a car accident.

In 1990, Bass founded the Community Coalition, a nonprofit that works with African-American and Latino communities in South Los Angeles to combat drug use and gang violence by shutting down liquor stores and motels. The group also campaigned against Proposition 187, which sought to deny public services to illegal immigrants, and Proposition 209, which prohibited affirmative action admissions policies in public universities. Bass served as executive director of the organization for 14 years.

In 2004, she won election to the state Assembly. In the legislature, she sponsored several bills aimed at reforming the state’s foster care system and expanding health insurance programs for children. In her first term, she was the majority whip; in her second, she was majority leader; and in her third term, she became the first black female speaker of the Assembly. Trying to balance California’s budget in the midst of a fiscal crisis consumed much of her tenure. She negotiated budget compromises that included deep cuts to education and social spending. Bass described her two years as speaker as “painful” and said, “I ran for office because I wanted to create, build, and expand programs, not tear them apart.”

In February, Watson announced she would retire from Congress at the end of her term. A few days later, Watson joined Bass at a press conference where Bass declared her candidacy. Other prominent Democrats stayed out of the race, assuming that Bass would easily win on turf she had represented in the legislature. She won the June Democratic primary with 85% of the vote; her nearest challenger was Felton Newell, a prosecutor with the Los Angeles city attorney’s office, who finished with about 6%. In the general election, she easily defeated Republican lawyer James Andion.