What to know about Nithya Raman

It’s official: Los Angeles City Councilmember and democratic socialist Nithya Raman, who in a dramatic episode in February filed paperwork to run for mayor only minutes before the deadline, has unseated the incumbent, longtime Dem stalwart Karen Bass. As of this morning, Raman was leading by six points, roughly 53 percent to 47 percent, with that margin expected to grow as the last votes are counted. The final numbers may settle somewhere near Bass’s ten-point win over shopping-center developer Rick Caruso in 2022. Bass conceded yesterday.

Raman took advantage of a vacuum in the race when a pair of older and more conservative candidates, Caruso and the former schools chief Austin Beutner, declined late in the game to run. After edging reality TV star Spencer Pratt for second place in a June primary, she found herself in a runoff with an incumbent mayor whose handling of last year’s massive Palisades fire left her widely unpopular and vulnerable to a challenge.

Indeed, had Bass handled one single moment better—choosing to speak even briefly with a Sky News reporter who happened to be on her flight back to L.A. as the fires raged, instead of mutely pretending he wasn’t there—her poll numbers may never have dipped quite low enough to entice Raman to run, leaving Bass on a glide path to re-election. As it turns out, Bass, 73, becomes the first sitting mayor to lose an election in Los Angeles since Jim Hahn was beaten by Antonio Villaraigosa in 2005.

As a former staffer in the L.A. mayor’s office myself—I served as chief design officer for Eric Garcetti from 2018 to 2022—I followed her campaign closely. And because of her background and academic training, her administration will be of particular interest to Punch List readers. With a master’s degree in city planning from MIT, Raman, 45, brings an unusual level of expertise in urban design, zoning, and housing policy to the job.