When Angelenos chose Nithya Raman as their next mayor, Karen Bass wasn’t the only pillar of the establishment who received a sharp rebuke.
Here in the nation’s Latino capital, the metropolis that gave California its first Latino U.S. senator and pioneered the type of winning political machine that Latinos across the country have replicated for decades, nearly every Latino power player in the city — politicians, nonprofit leaders, labor activists, celebrities — is betting big on longtime ally Bass, only to now find themselves on the outside looking in.
All that could and all that hype has been worse than nada for Bass, who finished first in the June primary thanks in part to support from Latinos, winning 35 majority-Latino precincts compared to just seven for Raman. The opposite happened in last week’s general election, with Raman winning many of the city’s key Latino neighborhoods — from South Los Angeles to the Eastside, from Pico-Union to Wilmington — according to a Times analysis of neighborhood data.
It was a fitting denouement to Mayor Bass’s tenure and the capstone of a terrible four-year campaign for Los Angeles’ Latino political establishment, beginning with the leak of a profane and racist conversation that disgraced four prominent politicians.
The bass should have moved as far away from our caudillos as possible Yes caudillas. But she just couldn’t leave them. Attend a lunchtime rally on October 24 at Plaza Del Valle in Panorama City, the nexus of the San Fernando Valley’s legendary Latino political machine.
Volunteers handed out “Latinos Con Bass” signs to customers and store owners. A slate of high-profile elected officials — City Council members Monica Rodriguez and Imelda Padilla, Assemblymember Celeste Rodriguez (no relation to Monica) and Rep. Luz Rivas — gathered in a community room to make the case that Bass was the better choice.
“You have tías and cousins and first who ask you: “Who should I vote for?” What should I do? How do I fill out the ballot?’” Rivas told a crowd of about 60 people, most of whom were not Latino. “You have to remind them that Mayor Karen Bass is the right leader.”
“This is where we win elections,” Rodriguez said, describing the mayor — whom she fiercely opposed until colleague Raman entered the race — as a “valley girl” and the election as “our moment.”
The level of enthusiasm struggled to exceed that of a line at the DMV. Half an hour later and a few miles east of Sylmar, a very different scene unfolded.
DJ Danny Guerrero played quinceañera classics like Pacoima native Ritchie Valens’ “Vivir mi Vida” and “Come On Let’s Go” as Raman’s team hosted a canvas — free tacos for everyone to fuel an afternoon of canvassing. LA Unified school board member Kelly Gonez was the only elected official from Carpenters Local 818. The others were union activists, Latino hipsters or kids too young to vote.
“His passion for protecting our community — that compassion resonated with me,” said Guerrero, a 21-year-old political science student at Cal State Northridge who helps undocumented students at his school’s Dream Center. “I stand for that in my life, and I see Nithya doing that. She meets us where we are.”
Guerrero applauded as Raman began his remarks with a “¡Hello, Sylmar!”, pronouncing the “y” like an “i” like a Spanish speaker would. The candidate shouted out Latino Valley icons like Lenchita, Centro Cultural de Tia Chucha and even Plaza Del Valle. But she received the biggest applause when she said: “The Latin community is more beautiful.”
Latinos deserve more.
Ultimately, Raman captured most of the precincts in the Padilla and Rodriguez districts, even after the two council members beat her up during the election like kids hogging the piñata stick at a birthday party.
Without institutional support, Raman has focused on a new generation of Latino leaders who are not part of traditional political machines.
“Maybe they (establishment Latino leaders) felt obligated to support her,” Rocío Rivas said of Bass. The Los Angeles Unified school board member and democratic socialist supported Raman and attended his election night at the Greek Theater, where a crowd of hundreds chanted, “If you can.»
“Or maybe they’re not as connected to the community as they once were,” Rivas added.
The trouble for the establishment began in 2022, when three city council members and a powerful union leader became pariahs after playing starring roles in the audio leak scandal. The same year, new democratic socialists Hugo Soto-Martínez and Eunisses Hernández won seats on the city council, despite the lack of support from the Chicanosaurus who mocked their chances.
In January 2024, former city councilman José Huizar – once a rising star aspiring to higher office – was sentenced to 13 years in prison after pleading guilty to corruption. In the fall of that year, Eastside Assembly and City Council seats held by Latinos for decades went to Filipino Americans Jessica Caloza and Ysabel Jurado. Meanwhile, former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s campaign for governor failed with just 1% of the vote.
In the race to succeed Nury Martinez, who resigned from the city council after the audio leak, Padilla won with the support of the Valley Latino political machine.
Marco Santana lost to Padilla in the primary. despite Raman’s endorsement, and supported Raman’s mayoral campaign.
“The mayor followed a very institutional strategy of bringing together a bunch of Latino politicians so they could tell Latinos how to vote,” Santana, 36, said. “It doesn’t work anymore. Latinos want action.”
Instead, Bass only had outdated ideas.
It all started with the choice of chief campaign strategist: Julie Chavez Rodriguez, who served as campaign manager for President Biden’s disastrous 2024 re-election bid and then for Kamala Harris’ failed attempt to pick up the pieces. I quickly ignored the time Chavez Rodriguez described his vision for Latino outreach, which would have been revolutionary in Los Angeles two generations ago.
While Bass’s campaign mounted a vigorous media outreach effort in English and Spanish, its own attempts to court Latino voters continued to backfire. The crowd at the annual Mexican Independence Day celebration at City Hall booed when Padilla, in a green outfit matching Bass’s, saluted the mayor as “good.”
At Chinatown’s Homegirl Cafe the morning before the election, customers largely ignored Bass as they swarmed gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra. She stood next to Becerra at the restaurant, only to have him clarify to reporters that he wasn’t supporting anyone in the mayor’s race.
Michael Trujillo is a longtime political consultant who served as an unpaid advisor to an independent pro-Bass spending committee and participated in the rise and struggles of the Eastside and San Fernando Valley machines.
“It’s going to take a long time” for Los Angeles’ Latino political establishment “to be rebuilt, and it’s ironic when you now have Latinos in charge in Sacramento,” he said. But he predicted that Raman would bear no ill will to his former adversaries, because “they are going to give him a fair chance” – because what else can they do?
The Raman era will undoubtedly give rise to a new generation of Latino leaders. But institutions don’t disappear so easily – and insurgents don’t automatically flee them.
On Saturday, Raman attended a press conference to condemn the arrest of two people by federal immigration agents during an anti-ICE protest outside the Adventist Health White Memorial Center. The mayor-elect shook hands with Sen. Maria Elena Durazo, SEIU California President David Huerta, and Angelica Salas, executive director of the Los Angeles-based Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, all of whom endorsed Bass and recorded social media videos in support of the outgoing president.
When it was Raman’s turn to speak, she led the crowd in singing “ICE out of Boyle Heights” and praised Huerta, Durazo and Salas. Raman concluded by promising Angelenos in Spanish that she would “stand up” for immigrants.
And then the Los Angeles Latino political establishment did the only thing it could: They applauded.
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