Nithya Raman has criticized Karen Bass’ handling of LA’s intractable homelessness problem.
LOS ANGELES (CN) – Progressive City Council member Nithya Raman will try to unseat unpopular Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass in November after conservative firebrand and former reality TV personality Spencer Pratt came in third in the city’s primary.
Raman, who was behind Pratt initially in returns from the June 2 primary, sealed second place Tuesday with 29% of the vote compared to 26% for Pratt. Bass came first with 34%.
“I am extremely honored that voters have given us the opportunity to advance in the general election for mayor of Los Angeles,” Raman said in a statement. “Now our fight for a healthier, safer, more affordable and happier Los Angeles continues.”
Raman, 44, was elected to the city council in 2020 in what was then called a political earthquake, as it was the first time in 17 years that a foreigner had defeated an incumbent council member.
Born in India and with a master’s degree in urban planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Raman relied on a grassroots movement of 2,000 volunteers to enter LA’s political establishment. On the city council, she focused on efforts to lower housing costs, a perennial problem in the city of 4 million, and to more efficiently address the equally difficult issue of homelessness.
On a television DeBAte with Bass and Pratt last month, Raman chastised Bass for capitulating to the powerful police union and accepting a massive contract that gave the union more money than the city had available and saddled LA with a $1 billion budget deficit last year as well as cuts to essential city services.
“If you’re wondering why the street lights are out on your block and the Bureau of Street Lighting is telling you it’s going to take a year to fix the street lights, that’s why,” Raman said.
She also called out Bass for the vast amounts of money LA has spent to achieve only incremental improvements in the homelessness problem that has plagued the city for decades.
“Let’s use the dollars we’re spending, let’s actually build a real system that can get as many people indoors as possible, and let’s not put them in a $100,000-a-year motel room for a year or more,” Raman said. “This system is not fiscally sustainable.”
Bass’ popularity took a big boost last year when she was on a trip to Africa after an unprecedented firestorm ripped through Pacific Palisades, an affluent residential enclave on the city’s west side, resulting in the most devastating disaster in LA history.
Pratt, who lost his home in Palisades Fire last year, he took aim at Bass during last month’s debate for not allocating enough funding to the city’s fire department, which he said didn’t have enough equipment on hand to handle the massive firestorm when it first broke out.
The former cast member of the MTV reality series The Hills, and a registered Republican, had been second to Bass in early primary results.
Despite his starting 8 points LEAD on Raman, the so-called “blue shift,” in which late-arriving ballots skew heavily Democratic, proved to be his undoing.
In 2022, Republican Rick Caruso went to bed on election night five points behind Bass. Weeks later, when all the votes were counted, he had finished in second place, seven points behind the eventual winner – a swing of 12 points.
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