Nithya Raman Projected to Win LA Mayor, Beating Karen Bass

Councilmember Nithya Raman is projected to oust incumbent Mayor Karen Bass for Los Angeles’ top leadership position with the latest ballot count drop on Thursday.The District 4 councilmember took 52.1% of the vote with the incumbent falling just 4.2% behind with 47.9%. She leads Bass by about 34,000 votes. AP reported 76% of the votes have been counted as of Thursday morning at the time of this publication. The next ballot count will be dropped around 4 p.m. PT. Raman, who initially endorsed Bass for mayor, entered the race hours before the deadline in February and still came out on top. The mayor-elect will be the first Asian-American mayor elected to lead L.A., and the second woman elected to the highest citywide office. She is also an affiliated member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Her election follows in the footsteps of New York City’s Mayor Zohran Mamdani and most recently Washington D.C.’s elected mayor Janeese Lewis George. Raman’s advantage of 405,193 to 379,069 votes Wednesday night expanded Thursday to 429,450 to 394,796 votes, according to figures from county elections officials. The mayor-elect gathered with supporters at The Greek Theater in Los Feliz on Election Night, cautiously optimistic about the pending election results. “Thank you to every single one of you for believing in the promise of this beautiful, weird, magical place that we get to call home,” Raman told her event attendees. “There are still a lot of ballots to count, and we’re going to let that count finish. I’m hopeful. I’m hopeful. I’m very hopeful. But I’m also really superstitious. So we’re all just going to be cool, okay?” She was joined by “Dropout” star Brennan Lee Mulligan, LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia and Lindsey Horvath, a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. The District 4 Councilmember has always made Hollywood a core tenant of her campaign. The councilmember’s husband Vali Chandrasekaran is a TV writer-producer, working on “Modern Family,” “30 Rock” and “The Four Seasons,” to name a few. The progressive candidate ran a campaign staunchly against establishment Democrat Bass. She complained that under the current leadership, city permitting is slow and unpredictable, departments contradict each other and fees rack up even on the smallest shoots. If elected, she said that she will staff the L.A. Film Office with individuals with industry experience. Raman also stated she would advocate for an uncapped film tax credit program at the state level and a federal film tax credit program, which lawmakers are hoping to push through this year. Raman was endorsed by the Writers Guild Association. As of Wednesday evening, Bass had not reached out to Raman to concede the race, and the mayor’s campaign team said that they wanted to let the ballot counting process play out, according to the L.A. Times. Though the Associated Press has not yet called the race with 24% of the vote still being counted, Raman is expected to continue to increase her lead in the race. Many of the votes counted now are late-arriving mail-in ballots, which historically come from younger, more progressive voters in the city, many of which voted for Raman this year. Raman is a six-term congresswoman, who has been a fixture of California’s political scene for decades. Her opponent Bass argued Raman was “not ready for primetime” after six years on the City Council. During Raman’s term as mayor, she will be on an international stage as L.A. hosts the 2028 Olympic Games. The city is still in the preparation stages readying its physical infrastructure, public transportation services and security systems.