Make California Post a Preferred Source Los Angeles mayoral candidate Nithya Raman‘s campaign has been accused of secretly paying social media stars to promote her – while allegedly keeping voters in the dark about who was cashing in.
Influencers Kaitlyn Hennessy and Beatrice Gomberg have filed complaints with city and state ethics watchdogs alleging Raman’s campaign failed to properly disclose payments connected to a comedian’s company, a campaign staffer with a large following, and several anonymous meme pages.
“When people go through their feeds, they need to know that what they’re seeing is either paid or not,” Hennessy told the California Post.
California law requires social media influencers paid by campaigns to create promotional content for or against a candidate to disclose the sponsorship.
Los Angeles imposes additional disclosure requirements.
The complaint, obtained by the Post, alleges a “sustained” effort to conceal who was being paid.
At the center of the allegations is comedian Adam Conover, creator and star of “Adam Ruins Everything,” who has more than 400,000 Instagram followers.
The complaint says Raman’s campaign paid his company, SwizzleCorp, during a period when Conover was posting in support of Raman.
Campaign finance reports initially labeled the payments “online ads” before they were amended to “video production services,” according to the complaint.
The change is also documented in reporting by the Los Angeles Times.
“If you’re being paid by a campaign or a committee, it’s the law, you need to disclose,” Hennessy said.
“But even ethically, why are you running from that?”
Los Angeles political consultant Michael Trujillo put it more bluntly, saying the “influencer industrial complex don’t get to have fake moral superiority while being paid off.”
“If they want to post about the candidate or cause they love, great, but the second they accept $1, they need to disclose every post as being paid for by the campaign,” Trujillo said.
Raman’s campaign called it “a frivolous complaint.”
“Nithya’s campaign has been fully transparent and in compliance with state and city law,” the campaign told the Post.
“We proactively sought and received guidance from the City’s Ethics Commission staff on this matter to ensure our compliance with the law.”
Conover called the complaint “a flimsy political attack that’s easily debunked” and accused the influencers behind it of “secretly working on behalf of the Bass campaign.”
“I’ve publicly supported Nithya’s campaigns since 2020, including on social media, and I’ve never been paid to do so,” he told the Post.
He said a member of his staff did “a few weeks of hourly work” for the campaign this spring “while the campaign office was still staffing up,” and that the invoices account for every dollar the campaign paid.
Invoices Conover gave the Post show five bills from March 9 to April 4 totaling $2,447.13: 80 hours at $30 an hour, plus $12.13 for sign supplies and $35 for cookies.
“All of these expenses were properly reported, in accordance with ethics standards,” Conover said.
The complaint also targets Eric Cheng, who posts as “ericsaymore” to nearly 35,000 Instagram followers and 47,000 TikTok followers.
Cheng joined Raman’s campaign staff in September but continued posting about the candidate on his personal accounts, according to the complaint.
When he announced the job, Cheng wrote that he was “not getting $ to make videos or content about the race.”
Campaign staffers are exempt from the state’s paid-influencer disclosure requirement unless creating social media content is their principal job, according to the Times.
The complaint alleges Cheng was hired in a way that allowed his posts to fall under that exemption.
The complaint also alleges that from about May 14 through at least Sept. 1, anonymous accounts bashed Mayor Karen Bass and Spencer Pratt, the reality-TV star who ran in the mayoral primary, while promoting Raman.
The posts carried a “Paid for by Nithya Raman for Mayor 2026” tag but did not state that the poster was paid or include other wording required by the city, according to the complaint.
Many were also not filed with the Ethics Commission within 24 hours, as required under city rules, it alleges.
Violations of Los Angeles’ rules can carry fines of up to $15,000 or three times the amount of money at issue.
But the complaint itself has become part of the increasingly bitter mayoral battle.
It was prepared by Kaufman Legal Group, the law firm used by Bass’ reelection campaign. A copy obtained by the Post lists its author as Haley Rosenspire, a staffer at the firm.
The Los Angeles Times first reported Thursday that the Bass campaign referred Hennessy and Gomberg to the firm and said it would cover their legal costs.
The Bass campaign told the Times it was not paying the women themselves.
Hennessy disputes the Times’ account of how the arrangement came about. She told the Post that she and Gomberg only asked for a referral and learned about the Bass campaign’s offer to pay their bills along with everyone else.
“We learned with the rest of the world that that was something that the Bass campaign was offering,” she said.
“We have every intent of paying our own legal bills.”
Hennessy said the pair previously filed three complaints against Tom Steyer’s campaign for governor, filed one this week against Steve Hilton’s campaign, and have filed others in Michigan and with the Federal Trade Commission.
The Ethics Commission, Cheng and Kaufman Legal Group did not immediately respond to the Post.
