City Council member Nithya Raman defeated incumbent Karen Bass in the race for Los Angeles mayor, according to NBC News, capping the rapid political rise of a progressive challenger who railed against the “broken status quo” in the nation’s second-largest metropolis.
Raman, 45, who is with the Democratic Socialists of America, unseated Bass, a former six-term congresswoman and a fixture on the California political scene for decades. The result means three major cities will be led by democratic socialists, with Raman joining New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Janeese Lewis George, who won the mayoral race in Washington, D.C. this week.
Bass has faced scrutiny over his response to a January 2025 wildfire in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, the most destructive in Los Angeles history. The fire broke out while she was in the West African country of Ghana to attend the presidential inauguration. It then destroyed thousands of homes and killed 12 people.
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Raman, a former urban planner and activist, accused Bass of mismanaging the city’s homeless problem and rising real estate prices. She blasted City Hall for what she called an “unwillingness to move forward with the transformative policy change this city needs right now.”
Bass, for his part, argued that Raman was “not ready for prime time” after six years on the city council.
The two Democrats also differ sharply on Israel’s war in Gaza, highlighting a generational divide within the party. Speaking at a September forum co-hosted by the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles, Raman said she agreed with left-wing influencer Hasan Piker that Israel had committed genocide against the Palestinians; Bass rejected this label.
Raman’s candidacy has been compared to that of Mamdani, whose campaign rallied New York voters unhappy with the political establishment. Raman touted his progressive bona fides while emphasizing his “independence” from the Democratic Socialists of America.
The new mayor’s agenda will be defined in part by the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, a complex undertaking that will test the city’s physical infrastructure, public transportation services and security systems.
Raman backed Bass early in the year before launching his own last-minute bid. Bass and Raman won the top two spots in a June 2 primary runoff, advancing to a runoff against populist insurgent Spencer Pratt, a former reality TV star who has lambasted the city’s political establishment with provocative videos on social media.
On the City Council, Raman represents a district that stretches from the San Fernando Valley to the Santa Monica Mountains. She was born in India and moved to the United States with her family as a child, before attending Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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