Raman Pulls Ahead of Bass in Uncalled LA Mayor's Race

Where the count stands

Bass held a narrow lead when the first returns posted Tuesday night. The lead flipped overnight. After an early-Wednesday update, Raman led Bass 51.1% to 48.9%, LAist reported.

By Wednesday afternoon, with 67% of expected city ballots counted, Raman's lead had grown to 51.7% to Bass' 48.3%, a margin of about 24,000 votes, according to NBC Los Angeles. NBC Los Angeles called the race too close to call.

Bass told supporters it "takes a while to count the vote," and said she was confident, per LAist. Raman told supporters: "For too long our broken and unjust status quo has convinced Angelenos that this is the best that we can do," and added, "Hopelessness can be fatal for a city, but this campaign refused to accept that," according to the same report.

The LAPD officers' union, which spent heavily backing Bass, warned against a Raman win. Raman has said she plans to fire LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell, NBC Los Angeles reported.

Who is Nithya Raman?

According to her public biography on Wikipedia, Raman was born in Kerala, India, moved to Louisiana at age 6 and grew up in Burlington, Massachusetts. She earned a social studies degree from Harvard in 2003 and a master's in urban planning from MIT in 2008.

She returned to India at 23 and founded Transparent Chennai, a research firm aimed at improving sanitation. After moving to Los Angeles in 2013, she founded the SELAH Neighborhood Homeless Coalition in 2017 and served as executive director of Time's Up Entertainment.

Raman unseated incumbent David Ryu in 2020, running a volunteer canvassing operation that knocked more than 83,000 doors. She won that runoff with 52.9% of the vote. Her mayoral campaign centered on increasing housing production, improving city services and reviving LA's film industry. She has criticized Bass' Inside Safe program as fiscally unsustainable.

What's next

Per Wikipedia, L.A. County keeps counting. Plank News will update when a reliable outlet calls the race.