Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass says she does not expect to run for office again. Speaking with reporters for the first time since she conceded the city's mayoral race to Nithya Raman, Bass described her time leading the city as "the greatest honor possible."

Bass spoke Tuesday in Vernon, California, a few days after a fire broke out there and spread across the area. Her defeat makes her the first Los Angeles mayor to be denied a second term since 2005, when Antonio Villaraigosa unseated Jim Hahn.

"The voters made a decision and democracy prevails," Bass said. She offered Raman her good wishes and said her loyalty has always been to Los Angeles and whatever helps it succeed.

'These waves happen'

The outgoing mayor placed her loss inside a bigger national picture. She said she had lived through political swings before even if they never cost her personally. In her view voters were simply fed up and ready for something different. "They just want change, they got it," she said.

A first loss after decades in office

Until this race Bass had never been beaten at the ballot box. She served in the California State Assembly in Sacramento before winning a seat in Congress. In 2022 she defeated businessman Rick Caruso to become the first woman elected mayor of the nation's second-largest city.

Raman proved to be a tough opponent. The Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America endorsed her and she was lifted by a surge of progressive candidates around the country. She now becomes the third self-described democratic socialist in charge of a major U.S. city. The other two are Zohran Mamdani in New York and Janeese Lewis George in Washington, D.C.

'That moment is here'

When reporters asked whether she might one day return to politics, Bass, who has held elected office since 2004, called it "doubtful."

She said she had devoted her whole life to service without ever pausing to ask what she wanted for herself. "That moment is here," she said. Bass added that the causes she took on as mayor were the same ones she championed as a community organizer long before she pictured a career in public office. She called her term "the culmination of a life's work."