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Urban planner, homelessness organizer, maybe mayor: Nithya Raman pulls ahead of Karen Bass in LA
The race is not called. Here's where the count stands and who the challenger is.
The Los Angeles mayor's race is too close to call. As of Wednesday afternoon, with 67% of expected city ballots counted, Councilmember Nithya Raman led Mayor Karen Bass 51.7% to 48.3%, about 24,000 votes, NBC Los Angeles reported.
This race is uncalled. Blue Wire will not project it.
Where the count stands
Bass led narrowly when first returns posted Tuesday night, but the lead flipped overnight; after an early-Wednesday update Raman led 51.1% to 48.9%, LAist reported. By Wednesday afternoon, with 67% of expected city ballots in, Raman had 51.7% to Bass' 48.3%, a lead of about 24,000 votes, per NBC Los Angeles, which called the race too close to call.
Bass told supporters it "takes a while to count the vote" and said she was confident, LAist reported. Raman said: "For too long our broken and unjust status quo has convinced Angelenos that this is the best that we can do," and "Hopelessness can be fatal for a city, but this campaign refused to accept that."
The LAPD officers' union, which spent heavily for Bass, warned against Raman, and Raman has said she plans to fire LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell, NBC LA reported.
Who is Nithya Raman?
From her public biography on Wikipedia:
- Born in Kerala, India, she moved to Louisiana at 6 and grew up in Burlington, Massachusetts.
- Harvard, then MIT: a social studies degree from Harvard in 2003 and a master's in urban planning from MIT in 2008.
- Chennai sanitation work: she returned to India at 23 and founded the research firm Transparent Chennai, aimed at improving sanitation.
- Homelessness organizer: after moving to LA in 2013, she founded the SELAH Neighborhood Homeless Coalition in 2017 and was executive director of Time's Up Entertainment.
- Door-knocking insurgent: she unseated incumbent David Ryu in 2020 with a volunteer canvassing operation that knocked over 83,000 doors, winning the runoff with 52.9%.
- Housing-first message: her mayoral campaign focused on increasing housing production, improving city services and reviving LA's film industry, and she criticized Bass' Inside Safe program as fiscally unsustainable.
What's next
L.A. County keeps counting. We'll update when a reliable outlet calls it.