Nithya Raman is the comeback kid of LA politics

On the night of the June primary, standing before cheering supporters at a downtown brewery, Nithya Raman was in a familiar position: Outspent by rivals. Mocked by online haters. Her political career left for dead. In early returns for Los Angeles mayor, Raman was in third place behind incumbent Karen Bass and reality TV villain Spencer Pratt. The City Council member thanked everyone for helping her “little campaign” but seemed resigned to defeat.

“We may not get an answer we like,” Raman said. “But regardless of what happens next, nobody — nobody — can take away what all of us have built together.” She ended her short speech by going on the dance floor to greet well-wishers and boogie for a bit. The move came off to me as someone losing herself in happiness so she didn’t have to think about the sad reality.

But when I think about that moment now, it seems clear that she was embracing another familiar position: Confident in what was ahead. Content with being underestimated. Ready to upend City Hall yet again. As more votes were counted, Raman overtook Pratt to face Bass in the November runoff. Raman’s last-minute decision to enter the race had shocked LA’s political class and drawn accusations of betrayal for challenging Bass, a longtime ally whom she had endorsed.

Yet Raman managed to pull off a hard-fought campaign, with Pratt as an unexpectedly strong insurgent from the right — a winning streak that continued this week when she scored two key endorsements. The LA chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and Unite Here Local 11, the powerful hospitality workers union, will now bring their renowned get-out-the-vote operations to LA doorsteps, street corners and smartphone screens on Raman’s behalf.

Unite Here gives Raman’s campaign a working class cred it has sorely lacked. The DSA will unleash the democratic socialist trade winds that have swept across elections nationwide and helped five of its six endorsed candidates in LA County either win outright in the June primary or move on to the general election.

Neither endorsement was guaranteed. Even though Raman is a member and the LA chapter had endorsed her two City Council campaigns, the group didn’t officially support her in the mayoral primary. Some members openly questioned whether having a democratic socialist run a city seemingly destined for the dumpster was the best look for their movement. Raman’s positions on police funding, the mansion tax and the Oct.7 Hamas attacks also ran counter to the party orthodoxy.

Unite Here had regularly endorsed Bass throughout her 22-year political career and seemed likely to join the dozens of other unions backing the mayor. But with the one-two punch, Raman has shown yet again that she’s the comeback kid of LA politics. Every time critics throw her a curveball, she smacks it to the opposite field and gets on base, ready to grind her way to a win.

In 2020, the city’s establishment initially dismissed Raman, then a political novice, as a wokosa fluke, until she beat David Ryu, who became the first LA council incumbent to lose in 17 years.

A year later, Raman was seen as such a threat that the powers that be sought to torpedo her for good. In the infamous City Hall leaked audio, then-Councilmember Kevin de León suggested to then-Councilmember Gil Cedillo, then-council President Nury Martinez and labor leader Ron Herrera that Raman’s district could be “put in the blender and (chopped) up, left and right” during redistricting to dampen her reelection chances.

On the recording, Martinez enthusiastically endorsed the plan, telling the other three that Raman had complained about her redrawn district. Raman did win, scoring an outright victory in the 2024 primary (Martinez, of course, resigned in disgrace). A censure from DSA-LA because Raman accepted the endorsement of a pro-Israel group proved no more debilitating than a stray eyelash.

In this year’s mayoral primary, Raman raised less money than Bass and Pratt and flopped during their one debate against each other. Her fellow democratic socialist council members — Eunisses Hernandez, Ysabel Jurado and Hugo Soto-Martínez — all endorsed the mayor.

None of it mattered. Raman is now easily scoring off of Bass mishaps, like the mayor’s response to the Lineage warehouse fire and her random broadside against street vendors during a debate in Sherman Oaks last month. The Dodgers should sit Raman in their dugout come playoff time, because her knack for rallying from behind is almost preternatural.

The road to victory remains hard, of course. Bass has never lost an election and won’t easily fold, even as her first term has careened from one crisis to another. Raman’s fiercest critics on the council — Marqueece Harris-Dawson, Traci Park and Monica Rodriguez — lord over South LA, the Westside and the eastern San Fernando Valley, respectively, regions where Raman needs strong showings.