Nithya Raman, a member of the Los Angeles City Council, has defeated incumbent Mayor Karen Bass in the city's mayoral race, NBC News projects. The outcome completes a swift political rise for the progressive challenger, who campaigned against what she called the broken status quo in the nation's second-largest city.
Raman, 45, belongs to the Democratic Socialists of America. Her victory removes Bass, a former six-term congresswoman who had been a fixture of California politics for decades. When Raman takes office, three major American cities will be led by democratic socialists: she joins New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Janeese Lewis George, who won the mayoral race in Washington, D.C., this week.
Bass entered the race under heavy criticism over her handling of a January 2025 wildfire in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, the most destructive in Los Angeles history. The fire broke out while Bass was in Ghana attending a presidential inauguration. It went on to destroy thousands of homes and kill 12 people.
Raman, a former urban planner and activist, accused Bass of mismanaging the city's homelessness crisis and soaring housing costs. She criticized City Hall for what she described as "a reluctance to move forward with the transformative policy change that this city needs right now." Bass countered that Raman was "not ready for primetime" after six years on the City Council.
The two Democrats also split sharply over Israel's war in Gaza, a divide that reflected a broader generational rift within the party. At a September forum co-hosted by the Jewish Federation Los Angeles, Raman said she agreed with left-wing influencer Hasan Piker that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians. Bass rejected that characterization.
Raman's run drew comparisons to Mamdani's campaign in New York, which energized voters frustrated with the political old guard. While highlighting her progressive record, Raman also emphasized her "independence" from the Democratic Socialists of America.
Her path to the mayor's office was an unusual one. Raman endorsed Bass at the beginning of the year before mounting a last-minute campaign of her own. Bass and Raman finished in the top two spots in a June 2 primary, advancing to a runoff ahead of populist insurgent Spencer Pratt, a former reality television star who attacked the city's political establishment with provocative social media videos.
On the City Council, Raman represents a district stretching from the San Fernando Valley to the Santa Monica Mountains. She was born in India and moved to the United States with her family as a child, later attending Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Raman's agenda as mayor will be shaped in part by the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, a complex undertaking expected to test the city's physical infrastructure, public transportation and security systems.
