Nithya Raman called her own mayoral campaign a "long shot" during the primary. On Thursday, she became the next mayor of Los Angeles, knocking out a sitting incumbent who had the governor, a former vice president, and a billionaire in her corner. With Zohran Mamdani already running New York, democratic socialists are now on track to hold the city halls of America's two largest cities.
A Long Shot Walks Into City Hall
Raman, a city councilmember, will succeed Karen Bass after CBS News projected her win in the November general election. Bass conceded Thursday morning, saying she called Raman to congratulate her and committed to "a smooth and seamless transition." That's a more graceful exit than a lot of recent American losers have managed, and it deserves a mention, mostly because we've all gotten so used to the alternative.
The outcome landed as a stunner, per Axios, which framed it as a historic shift in urban American politics. South Asian immigrants are now positioned to lead the country's two biggest cities. Twenty years ago, that sentence would have read like the pitch for a very optimistic sitcom.
Raman, for her part, used her victory video to thank the people who knocked on doors, sent texts, and made calls. She also spoke directly to voters who backed Bass or skipped the election entirely, promising to "earn your trust in this city again." Notice the word "again." She knows exactly what kind of mood this city is in.
The Reluctant Challenger Who Wasn't
Here's the part that makes the whole thing better. Raman had previously endorsed Bass for reelection. Then in February she announced her own surprise bid for mayor, which is the political equivalent of telling your boss you support their promotion and then showing up to the interview in their chair.
She pushed past Spencer Pratt in the June primary to make it a two-way race. Yes, that Spencer Pratt, third place in a race for mayor of the second-largest city in America. We live in a country where that sentence is simply true and we all have to keep walking around.
Raman's record before running was not exactly a mystery. She was elected to the City Council in 2020 after co-chairing the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council's homelessness committee and co-founding a homeless advocacy nonprofit. In 2025 she introduced a motion capping annual rent increases for tenants in rent-stabilized apartments built before 1978. It passed 13 to 2. When a landlord-limiting measure clears a city council by that margin, you are looking at a politician with a lane.
Bass Had Everyone Except the Voters
Look at the endorsement list Bass collected. California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Former Vice President Kamala Harris. And then, a week before the election, billionaire Rick Caruso, the man she beat in 2022, who announced he would be "casting my ballot for Mayor Karen Bass."
Caruso's explanation deserves its own paragraph. "For the love of LA, I must put the past behind me because this election must be about our future," he posted on X. He added that his concerns about Raman were not "much about ideology, but about competence." Sure. A billionaire who spent a fortune trying to take the job himself is now the neutral arbiter of competence. Nothing says grassroots confidence like a late-game save from the guy who lost to you last time.
The final stretch was tight. A UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and LA Times poll released shortly before the election had Bass and Raman tied at 40% among likely voters. Raman suffered a setback with voters in the final week before the election, according to the survey, but the tie held where it counted. Bass had the establishment. Raman had the doors, the phones, and the texts.
The Woman Who Ran Out of Road
None of this erases what Bass built. She started as a nurse and physician assistant, founded the Community Coalition to help underserved South LA residents fight substance abuse, poverty, and crime, and entered politics in 2004 as a member of the California Assembly. She became the first Black woman to serve as Speaker of a state legislative body. She spent 12 years in Congress and then became the 43rd mayor of Los Angeles, and the first woman to hold the office.
Bass said this race would be her last campaign for office, so the loss closes out more than two decades in public life. Raman paid tribute to her in the victory video, thanking her for her decades of service and noting she was the first woman mayor of LA. That's a classy beat, and it's worth saying plainly: you can think it was time for a change and still respect the résumé.
Now Comes the Hard Part
Axios put the stakes bluntly. With Mamdani in New York and Raman in Los Angeles, democratic socialists will test whether their promises on affordable housing and better government can survive the pressures of actually governing. Campaigning is cheap. Running a city of nearly four million people, with its budget holes, housing crisis, and homelessness emergency, is where slogans go to be audited.
Raman's win also arrived amid what CBS described as resounding Democratic victories across the country on Election Day. So this wasn't a lone flare in the dark. It was part of a night that suggests voters are in a mood, and the mood is not "keep doing what we're doing."
The Dingo Take
In 1932, a lot of Americans decided the people who had been running things were not going to be handed another chance, and they were not particularly interested in whether the replacement came with a spotless résumé. They wanted someone who sounded like they understood the problem. Los Angeles just had its own small version of that moment, with a governor, a former vice president, and a billionaire all failing to pull the incumbent across the line.
Here's the thing the establishment keeps missing. Endorsements are not votes, and a late Caruso conversion is not a movement. Raman won with people who knocked on doors, and she won after announcing a campaign she herself called a long shot. If you can't beat that with Newsom, Harris, and a billionaire, the problem is not the messaging. It's the product.
The flip side is just as important, and the left should hear it. Raman now owns a city with brutal housing costs and a homelessness crisis that has humbled every mayor who has touched it. Mamdani is already in the fire in New York. Two cities, two democratic socialists, and one very simple test: do the rents go down, do the streets get better, does the government actually work? Win that, and the whole playbook travels. Fumble it, and every cynic with a cable hit gets a free year of material. No pressure, Madam Mayor-elect.
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