The upset is notable for the company Bass kept.
Nithya Raman, a progressive member of the Los Angeles City Council, has defeated incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, according to Al Jazeera, which reports that the Associated Press called the race on Thursday with Raman holding 52 percent of the vote. The result puts her on course to become the first South Asian to lead the second largest city in the United States.
The upset is notable for the company Bass kept. The incumbent drew support from prominent Democrats including California Governor Gavin Newsom, former Vice President Kamala Harris and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, yet still lost. Raman, 45, was born in India and worked as an urban planner before entering politics. Once an ally of Bass, she initially endorsed the mayor's re-election before reversing course and entering the race in February, hours before the filing deadline.
Her campaign was backed by the Democratic Socialists of America, and the victory sits within a wider surge for the American left. Al Jazeera reports that a record number of DSA-backed or affiliated candidates won federal offices in Tuesday's midterm elections, with the organisation claiming credit for contributing to at least 300 candidacies or ballot referendums and saying it is on track to count 105 of those as victories. Among the congressional winners named in the report are Darializa Avila Chevalier, Claire Valdez, Melat Kiros and Chris Rabb. Raman's win in Los Angeles follows Zohran Mamdani's mayoral victory in New York City last year.
In her victory speech, Raman promised to restore what she called an ambitious, creative and entrepreneurial Los Angeles. "For too long our broken and unjust status quo has convinced Angelenos that this is the best that we can do," she said. She pledged to expand affordable housing, improve neglected city services and take a different approach to homelessness by deploying more medical teams to assist people who are unhoused, and she called for replacing the city's police chief over concerns about cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Bass becomes the first Los Angeles mayor in nearly two decades to lose a re-election bid, following four years marked by criticism over the city's homelessness crisis and its response to the deadly Palisades Fire, which broke out while she was overseas. In a statement, Bass congratulated Raman and committed to a smooth transition, writing that moving the city forward is what Los Angeles needs from all of us.
The scale of the task is considerable. Raman must deliver on her promises in a city of more than 3.8 million people, which also faces the hurdle of hosting the 2028 Olympic Games from July of that year. What the report does not establish is how her proposals on housing, homelessness and policing would be funded, how the city council will receive them, or what the replacement of the police chief would entail in practice. Those questions will shape whether the upset becomes a durable shift in Los Angeles politics or a single electoral shock.
