Councilmember Nithya Raman will be Los Angeles’ next mayor after defeating incumbent Karen Bass in the November general election, CBS News projects.
Raman’s win comes after resounding victories for Democrats across the country on Election Day.
Raman, a Democratic socialist, has been riding her momentum after pushing past Spencer Pratt in the June primary, but suffered a setback with voters a week before the election, according to the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and the Los Angeles Times.
A survey released by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and the LA Times shortly before the election showed Bass and Raman tied, with 40% support among likely voters.
Bass and Raman became frontrunners after the primary election when they rallied ahead of third-place candidate Spencer Pratt. A week before the election, 41% of Pratt’s primary voters shifted their support to Bass, up from her previous 22%.
“A lot of the voters who were previously supporting Spencer Pratt in the primary have now weighed in, and they have moved to Bass,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Berkeley IGS poll.
Raman had a slight drop among Pratt supporters, falling from 16% in September to 14% in October. However, the new poll showed that a large contingent of Pratt voters, 45%, remained undecided on the candidates.
Councilmember Nithya Raman
Raman announced her surprise bid for mayor in February after previously endorsing Bass’ reelection bid.
During the primary, Raman called her campaign a “long shot” before ultimately overtaking Spencer Pratt to face Bass in the general election.
Before being elected to Los Angeles City Council in 2020, Raman served as the co-chair of the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council Homelessness Committee and co-founded a homeless advocacy nonprofit.
One of her most notable acts in office came in 2025, when she introduced a motion capping maximum annual rent increases for tenants in rent-stabilized apartments built before 1978. It eventually passed 13-2. She said she hopes to undertake similar work to help small businesses.
Mayor Karen Bass
After serving more than two decades in public office as a congresswoman and as LA’s 43rd Mayor, Bass said this race will be her last campaign for office.
Bass was raised in LA with her three brothers. She began her professional career as a nurse and physician assistant, where she later founded the Community Coalition to help underserved residents of South LA battle substance abuse, poverty and crime.
She kickstarted her career in politics in 2004 as a member of the California Assembly, where she became the first Black woman to serve as Speaker of a state legislative body. She left the Assembly in 2010 to run for Congress, where she served in the House for 12 years.
Leading up to the primary election, Bass received endorsements from notable politicians including California Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Vice President Kamala Harris. Nearly a week before the November election, billionaire Rick Caruso threw his support behind his former rival in the 2022 mayoral race and vowed to vote for her in November.
“For the love of LA, I must put the past behind me because this election must be about our future,” Caruso said in a post to X. “I will be casting my ballot for Mayor Karen Bass.”
He also said in the video that he had concerns about Raman that were not “much about ideology, but about competence.”
