Nithya Raman advances to runoff against Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass

Nithya Raman’s advance to a November runoff against Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass set up an intramural fight on the city’s left flank, one that now reads less like a local personality contest than a proxy battle over the future of Democratic urban politics. The matchup pairs Bass, the city’s first Black woman mayor, with Raman, who could become the first South Asian woman to lead Los Angeles if she wins on November 3.

Raman entered the race late, had once endorsed Bass for reelection, and still managed to push out Republican and former reality television personality Spencer Pratt after a vote count that kept shifting as mail ballots were processed. The contest underscored how Los Angeles voters are weighing familiar progressive arguments against the power of incumbency in a city of nearly 4 million people.

The June 2 primary drew 2,090,485 ballots, a turnout of 35.48 percent, according to Los Angeles County election officials. With 92.4 percent of expected votes counted, Bass led at 34.3 percent, Raman had 28.5 percent and Pratt had 25.8 percent. As additional ballots were tallied, Raman moved past Pratt and stretched her advantage to nearly 22,000 votes, sealing a runoff in a race with 13 challengers to Bass.

The ideological divide is clear even though the ballot was nonpartisan. Raman, a Democratic Socialist with support from the Democratic Socialists of America, built her appeal around tenant protections, public services and a sharper response to the city’s housing crisis. That message resonated most strongly in renter-heavy neighborhoods, where frustration over rapidly rising rents, homelessness and deteriorating streets and sidewalks has sharpened into impatience with incremental change.

Bass has leaned on the authority of office and broader establishment backing, while her campaign quickly moved to frame the runoff around public safety. Campaign strategist Douglas Herman said the race would focus on encampments near schools and claims about police-force cuts, a sign that Bass intends to make governance and public order central to her defense.

The historical stakes are unusually high for Los Angeles. The city has not seen a sitting mayor forced into a runoff since 2005, when Antonio Villaraigosa defeated incumbent James Hahn. Raman’s own rise adds another layer to the race: her city biography says she first became the first Asian-American woman and the first South Asian ever elected to the Los Angeles City Council in 2020, after years of homelessness activism and co-founding the SELAH Neighborhood Homeless Coalition.

For Los Angeles, the runoff is now a referendum on whether voters want a more assertive left-wing answer to the city’s most visible crises or a continuation of Bass’s incumbent stewardship. For Democrats watching beyond California, it may offer one of the clearest signals yet about the direction of big-city politics.