Nithya Raman Wins La Mayoral Race In Victory For Progressives

LOS ANGELES — Nithya Raman, a progressive City Council member who upended Los Angeles politics with a surprise campaign to unseat incumbent Karen Bass, will be the city’s next mayor.

Raman’s victory sends political shockwaves through the nation’s second largest city and advances the rapid rise of Democratic Socialists of America-endorsed candidates across the country. Raman, 45, won despite the opposition of all her colleagues on the Council and a coalition of major business and labor interests that had gotten behind Bass.

“We have had enough of establishment politics”, Raman said to roars from the crowd in her election night speech at an open-air concert venue near Hollywood. “This campaign has made it clear that the days of our broken status quo are over.”

As the vote count widened in Raman's favor Thursday, Bass conceded the race. With her victory, Raman becomes the first Los Angeles mayoral candidate to oust an incumbent in more than two decades. And it bests her arrival as a politician in 2020 when she ran an upstart, grassroots campaign to defeat a sitting Council member for the first time in 17 years.

Raman’s unlikely rise to the center of power in Los Angeles almost didn’t happen at all. The Harvard- and MIT-educated urban planner filed papers to run against Bass in the final hours before the deadline in February, making the decision so suddenly she had to rescind her endorsement of Bass’ re-election.

Raman said she was motivated by a deep frustration with how Bass, 73, was running the city, casting failures to fix streetlights and sidewalks and permit housing as evidence of a broken administration.

The Council member also capitalized on the incumbent’s unpopularity. Bass’ approval ratings tanked and never recovered after the January 2025 wildfires that killed 12 people and destroyed 6,800 homes and other structures largely in the city’s Pacific Palisades neighborhood.

The fires became a defining issue in the race when Spencer Pratt, a Republican reality television personality, declared his candidacy on the fire’s anniversary. Pratt, a 43-year-old political neophyte who lost his home in the blaze, channeled voter anger at Bass and Raman, who he contended was part of the same City Hall power structure.

But Raman outlasted Pratt in the primary and finished second to Bass. In the runoff, Raman built on a base of younger renters attracted to the Council member’s progressive politics, including her support from the local DSA affiliate. A similar DSA-powered coalition led then little-known state assemblymember Zohran Mamdani to win the New York City mayor’s race in 2025.

Raman, however, did not run a campaign steeped in ideology, even running into tension with national DSA leaders over her views on Israel. Instead, Raman’s promises centered on making the city more responsive to quality-of-life concerns: faster permitting, reducing homeless encampments, painting crosswalks, adding bike lanes.

Raman dedicated a lengthy portion of her 30-minute speech Tuesday night to detailing the achievements of LA’s past, from building the nation’s busiest port to birthing the film industry and welcoming waves of returning veterans and immigrants. She promised to lead the city with the same ambition out of its recent doldrums.

“We started with a vision, and you helped turn it into a blueprint for a city that finally says ‘Yes,’” Raman told supporters. “A city that changes.”