Karen Bass

Assembly Speaker Karen Bass takes pride in being a consensus-builder, a soothing and maternal let's-get-along kind of leader. Now please pardon the interruption -- Madam Speaker is ticked off. She simmered as efforts to tame California's $26.3-billion deficit threatened to shred the health and welfare safety net she helped stitch together as a Democratic lawmaker from Los Angeles.

Anyone who knew Wilhelmina Bass might understand why her daughter Karen Bass, the Los Angeles Democrat elected Thursday as the next leader of the California Assembly, has devoted her Capitol career to making the state a better parent to its 80,000 foster children.

Los Angeles Democrat Karen Bass vowed urgent action to address California's budget crisis Tuesday when she was sworn in as Assembly speaker, the first African American woman to lead a legislative body in U.S. history. Bass struck some of the few somber notes in a joyous celebration of the occasion, telling a chamber packed with well-wishers that "we have to respond to the current economic crisis the way we would a natural disaster."

The daughter and son-in-law of Assemblywoman Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) were killed over the weekend in a car crash near Los Angeles International Airport, officials said Monday. Emilia and Michael Wright, both 23, were married this year. They met while students at Loyola Marymount University, where Emilia was due to graduate in December. According to a California Highway Patrol report, Michael Wright was driving a 1997 Hyundai -- his wife was the only passenger -- about 4:20 a.m.

As her colleagues attended a budget-signing ceremony in Sacramento, state Assembly Speaker Karen Bass was a world away as she visited her alma mater in West Los Angeles on Friday morning to address a younger but no less demanding group. Inside a music classroom at Hamilton High School, less than 36 hours after state legislators ended months of intense budget negotiations, she pressed headphones to her ears and bobbed her head, a bewildered half-smile creeping across her face.

Karen Bass: The year of the car accident that took the life of California Assembly Speaker Karen Bass' daughter was incorrect in the June 27 Patt Morrison Asks. The accident occurred in 2006, not 2008.

The storied political career of former Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden appeared to end Tuesday, as he conceded his attempt for the 47th Assembly District seat to activist Karen Bass. Elsewhere, the political muscle of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was evidenced again in Orange County as the only state legislator he endorsed, John Campbell, appeared headed to an easy victory over a candidate backed by the state's powerful prison guards union.

Community activist Karen Bass achieved a decisive victory in the Democratic primary for the 47th state Assembly district by assembling a coalition that extended beyond the traditional base of African American voters to include Latinos and organized labor. That broader coalition, which allowed her to trounce two candidates who have long been part of the African American political establishment in the area, may signal a changing of the guard in South Los Angeles.