LOS ANGELES – Nithya Raman entered the Los Angeles mayoral race as an outsider. The democratic socialist failed to secure a single endorsement from her 14 colleagues on the City Council. The police union opposed her, she faced tensions with the Jewish community, and the Democratic establishment rallied behind incumbent Mayor Karen Bass.
Now, as mayor-elect, Raman must prove she can lead.
Her stunning victory puts her in charge of a divided City Hall and a city confronting problems that have frustrated previous administrations. Those challenges include the yearslong homelessness crisis, the loss of Hollywood jobs and miles of deteriorating roads and sidewalks — all while Los Angeles faces a tight budget.
Speaking to reporters Thursday for the first time since being elected, Raman offered a concise outline of her priorities.
“Homelessness, housing costs and public safety,” she said. “These will have to be the priorities that I take on in the city.”
Even after a closely watched campaign, the India-born millennial will remain unfamiliar to many Angelenos in a city where local politics often struggle to command attention. Her leadership of the nation’s second-largest city, however, is likely to draw national scrutiny — particularly as Los Angeles prepares to welcome the world for the 2028 Olympics.
Raman joins a new generation of democratic socialist mayors
When she takes office in mid-December, Raman will join a growing group of democratic socialists leading major cities, including Zohran Mamdani in New York and Katie Wilson in Seattle. Janeese Lewis George was elected mayor of Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.
Although she is expected to move Los Angeles to the political left, Raman has emphasized that she is willing to break with the Democratic Socialists of America when she believes the group’s agenda conflicts with the city’s interests. “My independence will always be paramount,” she said at a candidate forum in September.
As the Democratic Party remains sharply divided over the war in Gaza and U.S. aid to Israel, Raman has also faced questions about an interview last spring with progressive commentator Hasan Piker. Asked whether she believed Israel had committed genocide, she replied, “I do, yes.” At a forum co-hosted by the Jewish Federation Los Angeles, Raman acknowledged that genocide is “a deeply painful word,” but said images of “the targeting of hospitals, the deaths of children” compelled her to speak out. Her comments prompted murmurs from the audience.
She also drew criticism from some DSA members, who felt her position on Israel was not sufficiently forceful.
Following Raman’s upset victory, the federation urged her to “rebuild trust with Jewish Angelenos that was strained during the campaign.”
A democratic socialist victory without Mamdani’s star power
Caroline Heldman, a political scientist at Occidental College, said Raman will need to offer practical answers to the everyday problems that shape life in Los Angeles — from potholes and thousands of broken streetlights to the removal of homeless encampments.
“She didn’t win the election by positioning herself as being really ideologically distinct from Karen Bass,” Heldman said. “She positioned herself as the pothole politician, very similar to Zohran Mamdani. I see her taking a page out of his playbook.”
Raman, however, never possessed the kind of celebrity and political star power associated with Mamdani. The Los Angeles contest was relatively subdued, overshadowed by turmoil in Washington and the battle for control of Congress.
Mike Bonin, a former Los Angeles City Council member and executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles, described Raman as philosophically progressive but temperamentally moderate.
“She got painted in this campaign as a crazy socialist ideologue or a flip-flopper with no core values,” said Bonin, who served alongside Raman from December 2020 through 2022. But, he added, “she wanted to work with people. She is very focused on results.”
Raman is only beginning to build her City Hall team
So far, Raman has not presented a detailed financial plan for tackling some of Los Angeles’ most persistent problems.
Few issues generate more complaints in Los Angeles — the birthplace of car culture, where driving remains part of daily life for most residents — than traffic and potholes. Former Mayor Eric Garcetti campaigned in 2013 on a “back to basics” promise that included street repairs, but little progress followed.
Under Bass, the city shifted its focus toward filling potholes instead of resurfacing entire streets. Raman has said she intends to rethink that approach, but it remains unclear how much funding will be dedicated to road repairs or how quickly streets can be repaved.
On election night, before the race had been officially called, Raman portrayed Los Angeles as a city that had lost its momentum and offered a broad vision for its future.
“LA stopped being a place where we could build things, where we could open things, where we could film things, where we could create things,” she said. Raman added that she wanted to restore “that ambitious Los Angeles, that joyful Los Angeles, that creative Los Angeles, that entrepreneurial Los Angeles.”
Reaction at City Hall was relatively restrained. Council member Traci Park, who supported Bass and said she had “concerns about the leadership and effectiveness” of both candidates, said in a statement that she looked forward to working with Raman in a city facing “great challenges.”
Raman prevailed against a weakened incumbent
Raman, who is raising 10-year-old twins with her husband, a television writer and producer, in the Silver Lake neighborhood, reached the mayor’s office in part by running against a damaged incumbent at a moment when voters nationwide were seeking change. Bass was hurt politically by the deadly Palisades Fire, which began while she was out of the country and caught the fire department unprepared.
An urban planner educated at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Raman also founded a Los Angeles nonprofit focused on homelessness outreach.
Los Angeles mayors do not wield the same influence as their counterparts in New York and Chicago. Power is shared with the City Council. Bonin compared that authority to an accordion, expanding or contracting depending on who occupies the mayor’s office.
He said former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, known for his charm and conversational style, “swung for the fences.” Bass, by contrast, was naturally inclined toward compromise. Raman will have to define her own approach.
“I can’t think of a mayor who had to take office with so many problems,” Bonin said. “Everybody leaves unpopular. … It’s not a job that makes you well loved.”
