recusing herself from several Hollywood-related City Council votes<\/a> due to potential conflicts of interest because of her marriage to Chandrasekaran.<\/p>\n\u201cHis understanding of the crisis has made it so vivid for me in a way that is unignorable,\u201d she said. \u201cHe\u2019s had friends who don\u2019t work anymore. He\u2019s had so many people he knows in the industry leave the city because of how irregular work has become.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chandrasekaran believes his occupation would lead Raman to care even more about Hollywood than past mayors.<\/p>\n
\u201cSelfishly, I would hope so,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is a thing that comes up all the time in our house.\u201d<\/p>\n
From college humorist to \u201930 Rock\u2019 writer<\/p>\n
Chandrasekaran and Raman met in 1999, when they were both undergraduates at Harvard University. Chandrasekaran applied there because he read in a college guidebook that students who work at the Harvard Lampoon often go on to careers in Hollywood.<\/p>\n
As part of a long-standing Lampoon prank, he once set out to break into the office of the rival Harvard Crimson to steal the president\u2019s chair. He broke into a different office by mistake, setting off an alarm and alerting the Cambridge Police Department, who arrested him. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a good boy,\u201d Chandrasekaran said. \u201cI was mortified.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chandrasekaran and Raman broke up in college, but the pair got together again after graduation and married in 2010. <\/p>\n
Degree in hand, Chandrasekaran was hired as a consultant for Boston Consulting Group in Los Angeles and wrote spec scripts in his free time. That helped him get an agent and begin his career as a writer on \u201cMy Name is Earl.\u201d He hasn\u2019t looked back since. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe loves people. He\u2019s curious. If you drop him off at a party he\u2019ll be talking to somebody finding out their life story \u2014 in a real way,\u201d said Steve Hely, another TV writer who worked with Chandrasekaran on the Harvard Lampoon and on Tiny Fey\u2019s \u201c30 Rock,\u201d a job that required them to live in New York City. <\/p>\n
Chandrasekaran and Hely co-wrote the 2008 book, \u201cThe Ridiculous Race: 26,000 Miles, 2 Guides, 1 Globe, No Airplanes,\u201d about each of them trekking around the world in opposite directions without using airplanes to see who could make it back to Los Angeles first. The prize? Bragging rights and a bottle of Scotch. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s very genuine and good-hearted,\u201d Hely said. \u201cVali is also a great booster of L.A.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018He takes away my blinders\u2019<\/p>\n
Despite his deep passion, Chandrasekaran doesn\u2019t necessarily see himself taking any sort of leading role on Hollywood if Raman were to be elected.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never necessarily heard him advise her. It\u2019s more of a support thing,\u201d said Tom Ceraulo, a friend of Chandrasekaran and Raman who is a former script coordinator for \u201c30 Rock.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Raman said that Chandrasekaran serves an important advisory role for her.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy husband is also just a really good gut check for me of what matters to the people of Los Angeles versus what matters in the hallways of power,\u201d she said. \u201cHe takes away my blinders and reminds me what the city is looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chandrasekaran said he doesn\u2019t solicit donations for Raman, and has no official role on her campaign. But he\u2019ll offer Raman a ride to a campaign event across town so they can spend time together, or he\u2019ll get snacks or pizza for the campaign team. He also has the role of walking the kids to their school in Silver Lake every morning.<\/p>\n
Still, Chandrasekaran\u2019s industry connections are key to her campaign, especially when it comes to raising money for her council and mayoral bids. <\/p>\n
Raman\u2019s roster of campaign donors reads like a who\u2019s who of comedy writers \u2014 and Harvard Lampoon alumni, including \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d cast member Colin Jost and \u201cDetroiters\u201d co-creator Zach Kanin.<\/p>\n
Tina Fey, Chandrasekaran\u2019s boss on two shows, gave the maximum $1,800 to Raman\u2019s primary campaign.<\/p>\n
Hely also hosted a fundraiser for Raman\u2019s mayoral campaign with a mix of Hollywood and non-Hollywood people in attendance.<\/p>\n
Chandrasekaran stresses that it\u2019s just the world he and his wife live in now and that the contributions have less to do with him than they do with Raman\u2019s vision of Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
His main role, he insists, is that of supportive, and sometimes overwhelmed co-parent and husband.<\/p>\n
He can\u2019t, for example, watch his wife when she debates.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s like being the spouse of a boxer and watching them in the ring \u2014 or, he said, it reminds him of Brad Pitt\u2019s character, Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane, in the movie \u201cMoneyball,\u201d who can\u2019t bring himself to watch his team\u2019s games and so retreats to the gym to exercise, occasionally turning the television on and off.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never related to a person more. You want to know, but, I can\u2019t do anything about it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nithya Raman was working the beer taps, refilling the glasses of tipsy patrons during a campaign stop at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507409,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[3705,26596,195902,195901,1743,4264,48,52,51,47,50,49,63,4415,136618,32081,660,130719,315,195900,18672],"class_list":["post-507408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-campaign","tag-entertainment-industry","tag-first-gentleman","tag-harvard-lampoon","tag-hollywood","tag-husband","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-mayor","tag-modern-family","tag-raman","tag-rock","tag-small-town","tag-time","tag-vali-chandrasekaran","tag-writer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}