Another ‘Political Earthquake’? Los Angeles Councilmember Nithya Raman Enters Mayoral Race

Hours before the noon filing deadline on Saturday, Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman made a last-minute entry into the city’s mayoral race, setting up what could be a historic moment for Indian American political representation: if successful, she would join Zohran Mamdani in leading two of America’s largest cities.

The 44-year-old urban planner and progressive Democrat, who made headlines in 2020 with a stunning upset victory that the Los Angeles Times called a “political earthquake,” announced her challenge to incumbent Mayor Karen Bass just hours before the February 7 deadline, according to ABC7.

“Los Angeles is at a breaking point, and people feel it in the most basic ways,” Raman said at a news conference after filing her paperwork, according to multiple sources. “Housing costs are forcing families out of the city. A homelessness system that lacks clear ownership and accountability is leaving people stuck in crisis, while the city cycles from emergency to emergency.”

From Kerala to City Hall

Born on July 28, 1981, into a Malayali family in Kerala, India, Raman immigrated to the United States when she was six years old, moving with her family to Louisiana, according to her official biography.

Her path to Los Angeles politics was anything but conventional. After earning a bachelor’s degree in political theory from Harvard University and a master’s degree in urban planning from MIT, Raman returned to India for seven years, working with impoverished populations in informal settlements in Chennai and Delhi.

In India, she founded Transparent Chennai, a research initiative focused on improving sanitation systems and mapping expanding tenement clusters often excluded from official municipal plans, according to her official bio. She advocated for delivering essential services such as water and toilets to evicted slum-dwellers and collaborated with organizations including Hazards Center and the Unorganized Workers’ Federation to challenge slum evictions, according to the same source.

Her work focused particularly on the Yamuna River clearance in Delhi that displaced over 100,000 homes, pushing for land rights and better resettlement to preserve livelihoods rather than relocating residents to remote outskirts, according to Grokipedia. These initiatives integrated women’s rights by highlighting how evictions disproportionately harmed female-headed households and informal women vendors, according to the same source.

In 2013, Raman joined her husband in Los Angeles and worked in city government, according to the Forward. One of her assignments was writing a report on what the city was spending on homelessness.

“What I found in my research shocked me,” she said on her campaign website, according to the Forward. “The city was spending over $100 million on homelessness — and almost 90% of that money was being spent on jailing people experiencing homelessness. Very little, meanwhile, was going toward services, outreach, treatment, and other effective paths to stable housing.”

She also served as executive director of Time’s Up Entertainment, the women’s rights organization that emerged from MeToo activism, according to Ballotpedia.

The 2020 “Political Earthquake”

In 2020, Raman ran for Los Angeles City Council District 4, challenging incumbent David Ryu. Few gave her a real chance.

Mobilizing an army of grassroots volunteers, many of whom had never been involved in politics before, her campaign knocked on over 70,000 doors. She received the endorsement of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and was supported by the Democratic Socialists of America’s Los Angeles chapter, which is heavily populated by young Jews drawn to her policy positions, according to the Forward.

When she won the November 2020 runoff with 52.7 percent of the vote, defeating Ryu by approximately 5.7 percentage points, it marked “a rare defeat of an incumbent—the first in District 4 in over a decade and one of few citywide upsets that year,” according to Grokipedia.

The Los Angeles Times called it a “political earthquake.” Raman became the first Asian-American woman and the first South Asian ever to serve on the Los Angeles City Council. She was sworn in on December 14, 2020, according to Wikipedia.

A Historic First in 2024

Despite facing fierce opposition—including a failed recall campaign just six months into her term and a secretly recorded conversation revealing a backroom plot by powerful political figures to gerrymander her district—Raman ran for reelection in 2024.

She faced Ethan Weaver, a Deputy City Attorney who received support from local landlords, business groups, and police and firefighter unions. In March 2024, Raman won decisively in the primary with 50.6 percent of the vote, avoiding a November runoff, according to Sunday Guardian Live. Her nearest opponent, Weaver, received 38.6 percent.

Mayor Karen Bass endorsed Raman’s reelection campaign and praised her work on homeless issues.

Her Record on the Council

As chair of the City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee, Raman has prioritized what she calls “housing-first strategies” over displacement and enforcement, according to NRI Today and multiple sources.

In April 2021, Raman proposed amendments to a draft ordinance on tenant harassment that classified cash buyout offers and threats to report false information to law enforcement as forms of harassment, and included a rent adjustment penalty preventing landlords who violate the ordinance from raising rents, according to Wikipedia. The ordinance was passed in June 2021.

In 2024, amid a housing shortage in Los Angeles, Raman proposed to permit mid-sized apartment buildings near public transit stations in some neighborhoods zoned exclusively for single-family houses, according to Wikipedia. The proposal was rejected by a 10-5 margin in the City Council, which instead pursued larger apartment buildings in already dense urban areas.

She has worked with Mayor Bass to clear encampments humanely in areas like Los Feliz, Studio City, and Sherman Oaks, often using motel conversions and outreach services.

The 2026 Mayoral Race

Raman’s District 4 encompasses communities in the southern portion of the San Fernando Valley and eastern Santa Monica Mountains, including Encino, Sherman Oaks, Studio City, Hollywood Hills, Griffith Park, Los Feliz, and Silver Lake.

Raman joins a field that includes Bass, reality television personality Spencer Pratt, coalition senior organizer Rae Chen Huang, longtime city engineer Asaad Alnajjar, and approximately 19 other candidates in the nonpartisan primary scheduled for June 2.

Her entry into the mayoral race came at a volatile moment. On Wednesday, February 4, the Los Angeles Times published a bombshell story alleging Bass directed the watering-down of an after-action report critical of the Los Angeles Fire Department’s handling of the deadly January 2025 Palisades Fire, according to The San Fernando Valley Sun. Bass vehemently denied the accusation.

The same week, real estate developer Rick Caruso, who lost the 2022 mayoral election to Bass, contemplated another run following the Times story but announced Thursday he would not run, according to the same source. Former Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Austin Beutner, considered the best-known potential challenger, also announced Thursday he would not run because of the unexpected death of his 22-year-old daughter Emily.

Late Friday night, Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath ended weeks of speculation by announcing she would not run, instead focusing on her reelection campaign for the Board of Supervisors, according to Daily News.

Raman joins a field that includes Bass, reality television personality Spencer Pratt, coalition senior organizer Rae Chen Huang, longtime city engineer Asaad Alnajjar, and approximately 19 other candidates in the nonpartisan primary scheduled for June 2.

Raman’s Campaign Message

“I have deep respect for Mayor Bass. We’ve worked closely together on my biggest priorities, and there’s significant alignment there,” Raman told the Los Angeles Times. “But over the last few months in particular, I’ve really begun to feel like unless we have some big changes in how we do things in Los Angeles, that the things we count on are not going to function anymore.”

Raman said she fears the city “is no longer a place of opportunity,” according to NBC Los Angeles.

“Los Angeles needs a mayor who’s going to take responsibility for the whole system,” Raman said, according to Daily News. “Who’s going to demand accountability across departments, who’s going to prepare for emergencies before they happen, who’s going to communicate honestly when things go wrong, and fix what fails.”

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She told reporters: “I do feel like Angelenos have really given us a lot of faith — voted for more taxes to address affordable housing issues, to address homelessness, to address some of our biggest crises, and if we don’t show results to them, I think we will lose them,” according to ABC7.

“We are making decisions about our budget that are based on political calculations, as opposed to what is best for Angelenos and what is best for Los Angeles’ middle class. I think we can change,” she added.

Raman recently expressed frustration over Bass’s approach to Los Angeles Police Department funding as the city faces serious budget issues, and what she described as Bass’s focus on hosting major sporting events rather than the city’s housing shortage, and the cost of the mayor’s Inside Safe program, according to ABC7.

She acknowledged that her late entry into the race will likely impact her prospects for endorsements from labor groups, political organizations and others.

“It’s very late in the process to get in the game,” Raman said, according to ABC7. “I was an outsider when I first ran, and I think I’ll be an outsider in this race, and I’m OK with that.”

The Bass Campaign’s Response

A spokesperson for Bass’s campaign released a statement that did not mention Raman by name but appeared to reference her record on homelessness.

“The last thing Los Angeles needs is a politician who opposed cleaning up homeless encampments and efforts to make our city safer,” the statement said, according to ABC7 and CBS Los Angeles.

The statement continued: “Mayor Bass will continue changing L.A. by building on her track record delivering L.A.’s first sustained decrease in street homelessness, a 60 year-low in homicides, and the most aggressive agenda our city has ever seen to make our city more affordable,” according to CBS Los Angeles.

Raman resides in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles with her husband, Vali Chandrasekaran, a television screenwriter and fellow Harvard alumnus, according to her official bio. The couple has twins, Karna and Kaveri, now approximately eight years old.

If Raman were to win, she would join Aftab Pureval, who made history in 2021 as Cincinnati’s first Asian American mayor and was reelected in November 2025 with nearly 80 percent of the vote. More significantly, if she wins, she’d be joining Zohran Mamdani to make America’s two largest cities run by Indian Americans.

Can Raman Win?

Political analysts suggest Raman faces significant headwinds. Her late entry limits her ability to secure major endorsements and raise campaign funds. Bass, despite recent controversies, remains the incumbent with substantial institutional support.

However, Raman has defied expectations before. In 2020, she was the first challenger to unseat a sitting councilmember in 20 years, according to LA Progressive. In 2024, she won reelection outright in the primary, avoiding a runoff entirely.

The June 2 primary will determine whether the race advances to a November general election runoff. In Los Angeles mayoral races, if no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote in the primary, the top two finishers advance to the general election.

Raphael Sonenschein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles, told the Forward in 2020 that Raman’s first victory was likely to encourage other progressives to run for the Council. “Big cities like L.A. are clearly surging toward progressive,” he said, describing the district Raman won as “moderate or center-left just four or five years ago.”

Whether that progressive surge can carry Raman to the mayor’s office remains to be seen. But her entry into the race ensures that questions of housing, homelessness, accountability, and the city’s future direction will be central to the 2026 campaign.

This story was aggregated by AI from several news reports and edited by American Kahani’s News Desk.