A few weeks later Donald Trump sworn in for the first time, a 35-year-old woman with an advanced degree in one of Los Angeles’ most liberal neighborhoods sent an unsolicited direct message on Twitter to someone she thought could help her solve a problem that tormented her daily.
“When is the next meeting?” » Nithya Raman » wrote in February 2017 to the head of the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council’s homeless committee.
That message led to the recent transplant to California into neighborhood activism and from there to a long-running outsider bid for city council. Today, nine years after what could have been a fleeting and quickly forgotten interaction on social media, Raman is poised to rule the country’s second-largest city.
It’s been nearly a century since Los Angeles last elected a mayor with so little experience in the city’s civic life. (The only non-politician elected at that time, lawyer and businessman Richard Riordan, had spent a decade on public boards and commissions.) Yet after entering the race hours before the filing deadline, a two-term City Council member who moved to Los Angeles in 2013 has a strong chance of defeating the incumbent. Karen Bass in Tuesday’s Democratic-versus-Democratic general election.
Gn headline
