The first volunteers gathered in the back room of Nithya Raman’s Silver Lake home with little more than a whiteboard, counting down the days until the June 2 primary.
The day before, the Feb. 7 filing deadline, Raman entered the race for mayor of Los Angeles. Her campaign has no office, bank account, campaign treasurer or even a proper website.
In short, it lacked “the basics,” said Raman’s campaign manager Ian Manheimer, who joined the team after getting a call from Raman at 10 p.m. the day before the filing deadline. There will be a meeting at Raman’s backyard accessory dwelling unit the next day to get things moving.
“For anyone who has any doubts that Nithya has had plans for this for a long time, you can come to ADU and that will put those thoughts to rest,” Manheimer said.
Those humble beginnings in Raman’s backyard, where her parents and her husband’s parents took turns cooking Indian vegetarian lunches for a small staff, evolved into a disciplined movement that overcame its initial struggles to oust current mayor Karen Bass, a veteran politician with the support of most of Los Angeles’ traditional power brokers.
Nithya Raman speaks at a campaign phone bank event at UCLA on May 31.
Rahman did this in a remarkably short period of time: She found and expanded her base of young renters, successfully marketed herself to Latino voters, secured belated but critical endorsements from groups and officials who had heavily backed her campaign, and delivered a hopeful message of restoring city services against a deeply unpopular mayor.
From the moment she entered the race, the progressive second-term alderman had a clear but narrow path to the city’s top office, but it’s unclear whether she’ll be able to pass it.
Raman and her campaign were alone for much of the primary. She has received virtually no support from elected officials.
Because of her late entry into the race and some past disagreements, she failed to win the endorsement of the Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America in the June 2 primary, even though the left-wing group endorsed her in both of her congressional races. Rahman received virtually no support from outside spending in the primary, and millions of dollars were spent against her.
But Raman has earned a reputation on the City Council as an advocate for tenants’ rights, and her campaign has focused on attracting a large number of Los Angeles tenants to ensure she gets enough votes to advance to the runoff.
She remains a little-known entity early in the campaign, with 51% of likely voters in a March poll saying they didn’t know enough about Raman to form an opinion of her.
On top of that, Raman was quickly upstaged by former Republican reality TV personality Spencer Pratt, whose aggressive social media attacks on Los Angeles’ liberal political establishment dominated news coverage.
While Raman’s camp initially wasn’t too worried about Platt, thinking he and entrepreneur Adam Miller would split the city’s more conservative votes, as the primary wore on it became clear that Platt might surpass Raman as the second candidate in the runoff.
Spencer Platt (from left), Karen Bass and Nithya Raman participate in a televised debate at the Skiball Cultural Center during the May 6 primary election.
(Jason Almond/Los Angeles Times)
To weaken Platt’s appeal, the Raman campaign worked hard to pitch him as a “MAGA” Republican in the nonpartisan race, knowing it would hurt his chances in deep blue cities like Los Angeles. They chose to try the phrase during the only televised mayoral debate.
“This is a great Republican’s view of Los Angeles,” she said during the May 6 NBC4 debate, referring to Platt’s sometimes dystopian description of Los Angeles. “It’s really not a city that I like that much.”
While Raman’s debate performance was widely criticized and Platt’s was praised, her team believes she has communicated this to Angelenos: With the unpopular Bass almost certainly not going to win the primary outright, the runoff will be either a battle between two progressive Democrats or Bass versus a candidate whose views align with those of President Trump.
That debate was a learning moment for Rahman and her campaign.
“She was dealing with a seasoned politician and a TV star. She was just an ordinary person who had never been on that stage,” Manheimer said.
But the campaign believes that defining Platt as a “MAGA” will draw some voters to Laman from weaker-performing left-wing and centrist candidates in the hope of excluding Platt from the runoff.
Raman defeated Platt in the primary, receiving 29% of the vote to his 26%, with Bass finishing first with 34%.
It goes without saying that Rahman’s sole goal in running for the primary is to stand out in the primary.
If her team can make it to the runoffs, it will be able to reboot—fundraising will restart, it can build a larger team, and there will be a longer runway to raise Raman’s profile and build her base.
While Bass dominated Labor throughout the campaign and was elected as an official supporter, Rahman began to win over key supporters in the runoff.
In August, the Western States Carpenters Regional Council endorsed her, sponsoring an independent spending group called Estamos con Nithya for Mayor 2026.
It was later endorsed by the Unite Here Local 11 union, a major player in city politics that represents airport and hotel hospitality workers.
Raman also received strong support in the runoff from City Finance Director Kenneth Mejia and Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath.
Mejia especially became Laman’s bulldog at events and on social media.
“Kenneth calls every day and says, ‘Let me know what myths I can bust today,’ ” said Tessa Wick, communications director for the Raman campaign.
“We didn’t have time to feel particularly alone in the primary, but once we saw what it felt like to have all these groups and people behind us, every press conference we did gave more strength to the movement we were building,” Wicker said.
Raman’s campaign also received a major cash infusion from hedge fund manager and bike lane advocate Aaron Sosnick, who poured $8 million into two separate spending groups to support Raman, making him the largest single spender in the mayoral race.
“He was a cyclist. He just didn’t want to die on the streets of Los Angeles,” said Michael Schneider of Streets for All, a transportation advocacy group that manages one of the independent spending groups Sosnick funded.
Raman also capitalized on a difficult summer in Bath, during which the mayor faced turnover in his campaign and administration, a citywide increase in homelessness (but, most importantly, a sharp decline in homelessness in Raman’s City Council district), and a fire at a refrigerated food warehouse in Boyle Heights that sent toxic smoke into the Latino, working-class neighborhood.
Nithya Raman (right) reviews notes in Spanish with Lauren Perez-Rangel before an interview with Univision on October 22.
“Many Latinos see themselves reflected in the residents of Boyle Heights,” said Lauren Perez-Rangel, senior director of Latinx outreach for the Laman movement.
Bass won in more Latino communities than any other candidate in the primary. Pérez-Rangel said the Raman campaign worked hard to change that in the runoffs, focusing specifically on Latino voters. Raman brushed up on his Spanish and used it frequently at events.
The campaign also partners with Latinx and Spanish-language content creators to spread Laman’s message about affordability, building more housing and solving the homelessness crisis. The result: Raman led Bass among Latino likely voters throughout the runoff, according to UC Berkeley IGS and Los Angeles Times polls.
Despite growing support, Bass and her allies have had an impact by negatively portraying Raman in attack ads, as Raman’s negative reviews rise month by month. They accuse city council members of leaning too far to the left, allowing homeless people to camp in front of schools and failing to show up for thousands of city council votes.
“This is a race that defines Nithya,” said Jeff Millman, an adviser and spokesman for Rahman’s campaign. “Their strategy is to destroy Nithya. Our job is to make sure people understand Nithya’s strengths and record of success as a council member.”
As the campaign reached its climax, Raman improved his performance as a candidate and appeared more confident in the two runoff debates. Her team said she spent a lot of time improving her debating skills.
“There’s no secret weapon, just someone who’s really committed to practicing,” Wick said.
Still, she came under fire from Bass’s side during the final debate on Oct. 13 after she said the city had been the “gold standard” for not cooperating with immigration authorities under controversial former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates. Bass blasted Raman for his comments, accusing the council member of romanticizing Gaetz’s tenure.
Despite these and other missteps in the final days of the campaign, her team said it was Raman’s persistence in running a largely positive campaign with an optimistic vision for Los Angeles’ future that propelled her across the finish line.
“She’s really insistent that this is a hopeful campaign, not a hateful and cynical campaign. She wants this campaign to be a love letter to Los Angeles,” Wick said.
Nithya Raman hugs her husband, TV writer Vali Chandrasekaran (left) at Greek Theater Square on election night.
Raman spoke of that vision in her election night speech, and she’s still a few percentage points behind Bass, a point she’ll soon make up for.
She calls it a vision to make Los Angeles extraordinary so people can afford to live in the city and the government is responsive and accountable.
“We believe Angelenos are hungry for this city,” she said. “It turns out we were right.”