Los Angeles Councilwoman Nithya Raman overtook reality TV star Spencer Pratt on Sunday evening for second place in the city’s open primary mayoral race, catapulting her to a position to face incumbent Mayor Karen Bass in the November runoff.
But in an election that has received so much media attention, not much buzz has been focused on Raman. While Pratt has garnered millions of views online for his AI campaign videos and Bass has been pinned to defend her record in the media against her challengers, Raman has comparatively flown under the legacy media radar as she largely sticks to her left-wing policy points.
Here is what to know about Raman as she is likely to advance to take on Bass in the November general election.
Who is Nithya Raman?
A mother of two and a career urban planner, Raman got her start in public policy by advocating to provide more resources and assistance for homeless people across LA. In 2017, she founded the SELAH Neighborhood Homeless Coalition, which says it is a “community-led response” to homelessness in LA, helping the city’s “most vulnerable neighbors.” She also took part as a leader of the Hollywood #MeToo movement’s group Time’s Up.
The Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumna, who first won an LA City Council seat in 2020, also calls herself someone “a complete outsider,” with “no political machine, no insider backing.” The momentum from her grassroots campaign in her first City Council race helped her oust incumbent Councilman David Ryu in the 4th District, defeating him with 52.9% of the vote, compared to Ryu’s 47.1%. She won again in 2024, taking the majority vote in the primary by 12.1 percentage points. LA’s homelessness policy had been a major sticking point in her City Council elections.
On the city council, she takes on policy responses to matters such as homelessness, environmental issues, and planning and land use through her committee assignments.
What are her proposed policies and platform?
In her campaign to be LA’s next mayor, Raman launched a progressive, left-wing bid to oust Bass from within the Democratic Party. She has hit Bass on the city’s high cost of living, high rates of homelessness, and slow emergency response services, including to the wildfires of January 2025.
Both Raman and Pratt have slammed Bass, who was out of LA when the fires started, for her fire response and the way her administration has run City Hall. On her website, Raman says that “Angelenos know this city is not being led with the clarity or urgency this moment demands.”
“We can meet this moment with honesty and urgency,” Raman’s campaign website reads. “We can lower rents, protect tenants, clean our streets, house the homeless, support small businesses, keep people safe, and prepare for emergencies before they happen. We can fight for a bigger, more joyful future for LA. But that requires leadership willing to demand more than the status quo.”
Raman has run her platform on progressive policy ideas such as providing “intensive case management services” to LA’s homeless population, curbing local cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, making LA “the strongest sanctuary city in the country,” and expanding unarmed public safety responses across the city.
What have her opponents said about her?
Despite her lofty progressive goals, Raman’s opponents have painted her as too radical for LA.
Bass spokesman Alex Stack said in a Monday statement that Raman is “an opponent who allows encampments near schools and fights against hiring more cops, yet is MIA on saving Hollywood jobs and fighting back when ICE invades LA.”
Pratt has called Raman “terrible” and a “random city councilmember who’s been a failure for six years.” He has also ripped her for her stance on homelessness, painting her as a candidate who has no grasp on the homeless population’s drug addiction issues.
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“I will go below the Harbor Freeway tomorrow with her, and we can find some of those people she’s going to offer treatment for. … She’s going to get stabbed in the neck,” Pratt said in a May mayoral debate. “These people do not want a bed. They want fentanyl or supermeth.”
As Bass has solidified herself a spot in the November general election with 34.7% of the vote, Raman and Pratt are battling it out for the last spot with 27.1% and 26.7% of the vote, respectively. Because of the way California’s elections are tallied, it has taken multiple days for the results to come in. The early vote favored Pratt, while Raman took the lead on Sunday evening. The system has brought intense scrutiny from Republicans, including President Donald Trump, who supports Pratt.