Nithya Raman is trying to unseat Karen Bass as mayor. Jonathan Alcorn for CA Post It was in the Spring of 2022, near the tail end of the pandemic when I sat down at an outdoor café in downtown Los Angeles to interview city councilmember, Nithya Raman.
At the time, Raman — the first elected council member backed by the Democratic Socialists of America — was halfway into her first term while two other DSA backed candidates, Eunisses Hernandez and Hugo Soto-Martinez, were vying to join her on the 15-member council.
I was working on a story for Los Angeles Magazine about where on the political spectrum LA stood as a city, and was eager to include Raman in my reporting. It didn’t go well.
Within minutes it was clear that Raman was not interested in exploring this idea with me nor did she want to be a character in my larger narrative. Despite my best efforts to draw her out, Raman kept repeating that she didn’t approach her policy work from any one political standpoint.
She wasn’t keen on discussing political labels nor did she want to take credit for the emergence of Hernandez and Soto-Martinez, both of whom went on to victory. After 15 minutes of what was supposed to be an hour-long interview, Raman politely stood up and excused herself.
But the question of political labels has hovered over Raman and her campaign.
When she announced that she would be running against current mayor and her former political ally Karen Bass in March, there was an immediate rush to compare Raman to New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, also a DSA-backed candidate. Both are young, attractive and of Indian descent. Raman, however, does not nearly possess the political skills of Mamdani, witnessed by her flaccid debate performances and some of her flubbed media appearances. An even bigger distinction is how deeply conflicted she has been about the defining element of her political identity — her affiliation with the DSA.
During the primary, Raman seemed keen on staying friendly with the DSA-LA chapter while not actually seeking their endorsement. It was a high-wire act which was ultimately foiled by the candidacy of former reality star Spencer Pratt. When Raman found herself polling behind Pratt she pivoted to the left, appearing on left-wing commentator Hasan Piker’s show in May just weeks before the primary.
It was during that interview she stated that she believed Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. In September, DSA-LA officially endorsed Raman but the national organization recently indicated that they may rescind the endorsement over Raman’s position on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Her awkward dance with the DSA has come at a cost of defining her own political identity.
“She’s been painted by everyone; the Spencer Pratt voters, all slices of the DSA, by her colleagues on the council and the mayor. Yet very few people have a good understanding of who she is and that’s her own damn fault,” said one city hall insider.
Over the past six weeks, several polls showed Raman with a sizable lead over Bass, but last week a LA Times poll cast them in a dead heat. With a 28-year gap in their age some outlets have characterized the race between Raman and Bass as a generational one while other outlets have called it a referendum on where the party is headed.
As a city, LA remains a Democratic stronghold. The last Republican mayor was Richard Riordan and the city council and county board of supervisors are almost entirely populated by registered Democrats. But between the sprawl, the overlapping bureaucracies and its unparalleled mix of religions and ethnicities, LA has never been easy to paint with one political brush — especially at the mayoral level. If Raman proves victorious, it may ultimately come down to a climate where disgust with the status quo wins out.
“Voters don’t want ideology from their mayor,” said political consultant Marc Adelman. “They want things to work and for their city to operate at a varsity level when it comes to safety and fixing street lights. They aren’t looking for party platform bullet points.”
