The key facts
- Nithya Raman leads incumbent Mayor Karen Bass: 51.7% to 48.3% with 67% of votes counted (AP)
- If she wins, she will become the first mayor of Los Angeles of Asian descent
- Her priorities include affordable housing, infrastructure, and protecting residents from ICE agents
Raman leads the incumbent mayor
In the Los Angeles mayoral election, Indian-American politician and urbanist Nithya Raman, according to the website Decision Desk HQ, is highly likely to become the city's next chief executive. According to Associated Press tallies, as of Wednesday evening she was leading with 51.7% of the vote against 48.3% for incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, with 67% of ballots counted. If the result holds, Raman will become the city's first mayor of Asian descent.
Who she is and what her campaign was built on
Raman was born in 1981 in the Indian state of Kerala, moved with her mother to the Boston suburbs at age six, graduated from Harvard in 2003, and then worked with NGOs defending the rights of slum dwellers in Delhi and Chennai. After earning a master's degree from MIT in 2008, she founded a nonprofit in Chennai that pushed for investment in sanitation in unregistered slums, and in 2013 she moved to Los Angeles. In 2020 she won a seat on the Los Angeles City Council, and in 2024 she was re-elected to a second term.
Priorities and campaign context
According to her campaign website, Raman lists affordable housing, repairing urban infrastructure, ending the 'pay to play' approach, job creation, and protecting residents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents as her priorities. Last summer, Los Angeles was swept by protests over immigration raids, after which President Donald Trump sent the National Guard into the city. Raman's campaign drew support from Hollywood figures — among her donors, in particular, were Tina Fey, Mindy Kaling, and Colin Jost. Speaking about her decision to run, she said the city was 'falling behind,' and that this feeling intensified after the January fires, the authorities' slow response, and the 'lack of accountability at City Hall.' The National also notes that her victory would extend a string of successes for democratic socialists in local elections — following Zohran Mamdani in New York and Katie Wilson in Seattle, as well as six candidates heading to Congress.
