Nithya Raman defeats Bass to become next L.A. mayor

Nithya Raman will be the next mayor of Los Angeles, making her the first challenger to defeat an incumbent L.A. mayor in more than two decades.

Mayor Karen Bass called Raman on Thursday to concede the race after the latest tally from Tuesday's election showed Raman with 52% of the vote compared with 48% for Bass, with 76% of the expected votes counted.

"Los Angeles, I'm deeply honored to be your next mayor," Raman, 45, said in a video statement. "I also wanted to pay tribute to Mayor Karen Bass, someone who has given decades of her life to making this city what it is today."

Bass, 73, thanked her supporters and said she accepted the decision of the voters.

"While this is not the outcome we hoped for, the people of Los Angeles have spoken," Bass said in a statement. "I have called Councilmember Nithya Raman to congratulate her on her victory, and I have committed to ensuring a smooth and seamless transition. Moving this city forward is what Los Angeles needs from all of us.

"Four years ago, you elected me as the first Black woman mayor in the history of Los Angeles," Bass said. "You gave me the honor of serving the city that raised me, and every single day since, I have carried that responsibility with me."

Raman's win capped off a historic sprint of a campaign. The City Council member entered the mayoral race in the final hours before the filing deadline after deciding to run the night before, going up against a onetime ally in a move that infuriated elected Democrats in L.A. who nearly unanimously supported Bass in her reelection bid.

The initial vote count after polls closed Tuesday night had Raman slightly behind Bass, but analysts saw it as a sign that Raman would win. Polls have consistently shown Raman to be heavily favored by younger, more progressive voters, who tend to turn in their ballots later than older voters.

Late-arriving mail-in ballots pushed Raman ahead, and by Thursday morning she was leading Bass by nearly 35,000 votes.

Raman and Bass were locked in a tight and contentious race up until election day, with final polling in the race showing the second-term council member and the incumbent mayor each with support from 40% of Angelenos while 19% of the electorate remained undecided.

But a blue wave across the country that toppled Republicans in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives buoyed Raman's campaign against Bass from the left.

Raman ran with the backing of the Democratic Socialists of America, the leftist organization that endorsed Mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), among others.

Bass, meanwhile, ran on a public safety message that was meant to convince moderates and more conservative voters that she was a better alternative to Raman.

The election was, first and foremost, a generational shift, as Raman swept the youth vote throughout the city and Bass performed better with voters older than 50.

"I look at this race almost completely through a generational lens," said Dan Schnur, a professor of politics at USC, Pepperdine and UC Berkeley.

"I think this is a new coalition built by Nithya Raman based on age," said Mike Trujillo, a Democratic consultant who supported Bass in the race. "This is not a geographic coalition or racial coalition, this is a when-you-were-born coalition."

The last challenger to defeat an incumbent mayor was then-City Councilmember Antonio Villaraigosa, who defeated James K. Hahn in 2005.

None of Raman's colleagues on the City Council endorsed her bid for mayor. Raman said she wasn't bothered by the lack of support, casting herself instead as a hopeful technocrat who wanted to deliver "A City That Works," her campaign slogan, promising to make L.A. a city that fixes broken sidewalks and potholes and repairs darkened streetlights in a more timely manner.

"This city's government has made solving problems look impossible for so long that I heard from people across this city who started to believe it was impossible," Raman said in an election night speech to hundreds of raucous supporters at the Greek Theatre plaza in Griffith Park. "Hopelessness can be fatal for a city, but this campaign refused to accept that."

While Raman didn't declare victory on Tuesday, her speech had all the markings of someone who expected to win.

"In just one century, Los Angeles built itself into a global metropolis," she said. "The gateway to the Pacific. A center of ingenuity and invention. The cultural capital of the entire planet. That ambitious Los Angeles, that joyful Los Angeles, that creative Los Angeles, that entrepreneurial Los Angeles, that inclusive Los Angeles is the Los Angeles that this campaign was born to fight for."

Raman's term as mayor will begin Dec. 8, and the job pays $310,000 a year. The City Council is expected to schedule a special election to fill her vacancy on the council, where she represented a Hollywood Hills-centered district.

Raman's status as mayor-elect would have seemed nearly unthinkable at the start of the year, when Bass' challengers included former reality TV star Spencer Pratt, former L.A. Unified Supt. Austin Beutner, leftist the Rev. Rae Huang and entrepreneur Adam Miller — with L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath and billionaire developer Rick Caruso also considering bids.

Beutner suspended his bid after the death of his daughter, and it seemed Bass, despite low approval ratings, might glide to a second term without a serious challenger in the race.

But the night before the filing deadline on Feb. 7, rumors began swirling that Raman was considering challenging Bass .

"She saw the lane open before anybody else. Then she got in. Once she explained to me what the lane was, I was like, she can absolutely win," said Adam Conover, an actor and writer who volunteered on Raman's campaign for mayor.

Conover explained there was a lane for a progressive pragmatist who could capitalize on voter frustration with the status quo — similar to how Raman first won her council seat in 2020, when she unseated incumbent David Ryu.

The day after Raman announced her run, Conover and others were in Raman's backyard ADU helping set up the campaign.

"Who remembers in February when it was the end of the candidate filing and no one was, like, running for mayor?" asked City Controller Kenneth Mejia at Raman's election night party. "I was like, 'Oh my God, I'm going to be here again for another four years stuck like this.'

"And then out of nowhere — out of nowhere — Nithya Raman came out of nowhere with the three-pointer and she came out of nowhere and was like, 'I'm running for mayor!'" Mejia yelled during a rollicking speech as he mimed himself shooting a basketball.

After her speech, Raman asked that her supporters join her on the dance floor, where she shimmied to "Remember the Time" by Michael Jackson, pausing every few moments to hug her backers and pose for selfies with them.

"People want change. They are not happy with what the last four years have brought," Horvath said at Raman's election night party. "They didn't want to rubber-stamp another term of it. Councilmember Raman stepped up with courage and grace to take on the status quo. It's never easy."

"It doesn't always win you friends," Horvath added, "but she did it."

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times .