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Grammy Award-winning artist Macklemore said he is getting pushback from concert venues as he brings his Free Palestine benefit concerts to the U.S.

The rapper behind hits including “Thrift Shop” and “Can’t Hold Us” said on Instagram that nine U.S. venues told him in mid-September that they had available dates for concerts, but “once they found out these were my benefit shows for Palestine, those dates were suddenly off the table. The doors were closed.”

The nine venues include Inglewood’s Kia Forum, L.A.’s Crypto.com Arena and Madison Square Garden in New York.

Earlier this year, Macklemore said he was removed from Ed Sheeran’s Loop tour after venue owners told Sheeran they would not host him at their stadiums if Macklemore was still part of the concert. Sheeran has said his promoters made the decision, according to the BBC.

Macklemore launched his Free Palestine tour in October, playing in Dublin, Paris and London. The concert proceeds benefit organizations supporting the Palestinian movement, according to the tour’s website.

Representatives for the Kia Forum and AEG, which owns Crypto.com Arena, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

MSG Entertainment, which owns Madison Square Garden, said that Macklemore is “not an arena level act.”

“We have some of the busiest venues in the world with extremely limited availability,” MSG Entertainment, said in a statement.

Spokespeople for the talent agency that reps Macklemore did not immediately return a request for comment.

Weighing in on the Palestinian issue can be a sensitive subject in Hollywood, as some people in the entertainment industry have received backlash on their social media posts on the topic.

In 2023, a prominent agent at Creative Artists Agency stepped aside from her leadership roles at the company after she reposted inflammatory comments on Instagram calling Israel’s response to Hamas “genocide.” That same year, actor Melissa Barrera was dropped from her role in “Scream VII” after she shared pro-Palestinian statements on Instagram.

When I recall the great restaurants, culture and art found in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo, one story that comes to mind is the tranquility and resilience of Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple.

The roughly 1½-acre parcel at the corner of 3rd Street and Central Avenue offers peace amid the noise and bustle of downtown. It’s an oasis I first learned about five years ago when an unknown vandal broke into the sanctuary and stole some lanterns while burning others and vandalizing the facility.

The community ultimately rallied around its shrine, helping raise tens of thousands of dollars for repairs in time for the temple to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its Nov. 7, 1976 founding.

That sense of shared community and mission can be found throughout Little Tokyo, a theme easy to recognize in a feature written by my colleague Betty Hallock entitled “This must be Little Tokyo.”

Hallock jumps into the history of one of L.A.’s most vibrant neighborhoods and picks a few of the many places and experiences that make Little Tokyo unique. Let’s jump into a few of them.

Japanese breakfast at Azay

Azay, a restaurant founded by the late chef Akira Hirose and run by his son Philip and wife, JoAnn, is one of the few places in Los Angeles serving traditional Japanese breakfast, and this one is stellar.

Composed of several small dishes, it feels like a celebration and draws a weekend crowd (reservations recommended). A wooden tray arrives at the table laden with jewel-like dishes such as grilled black cod and rolled omelet. Or order the daily bento or à la carte items, including custardy, savory chawanmushi or curry potato croquettes with shiso aioli.

Visit the family’s legacy shop next door, Anzen Hardware, for Japanese kitchen goods, knives and housewares. Philip Hirose also regularly programs community workshops and pop-ups.

Pro tip: Park all day in the Aiso Parking Garage across the street at 101 N. Judge John Aiso St., named after the first Japanese American to hold a judicial position in the continental U.S.

Mexican American muralist Robert Vargas, who was born near Little Tokyo in Boyle Heights, painted a 150-foot image of baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani on the side of the 11-story Miyako Hotel, unveiled in the spring of 2024.

The painting, titled “L.A. Rising,” is meant to promote a cultural bridge between communities celebrating Dodgers pride. Vargas painted two versions of Ohtani, the best two-way player in Major League Baseball history (he’s the first to hit at least 50 home runs and steal at least 50 bases in a single season).

The mural shows Ohtani both pitching and hitting, and you can see him come to life by using an augmented reality feature. Scan a QR code located beneath the mural and point your phone camera at the image to see Ohtani swing the bat and pitch.

Shop for souvenirs at Bunkado, where Little Tokyo began

Gift shop Bunkado stands at the location of Little Tokyo’s beginning, where Hamanosuke Sugita opened a restaurant called Kame (which means “turtle,” a symbol of longevity) in 1884, the first Japanese-owned business in Los Angeles.

In 2022, the L.A. City Council commemorated the site and “the birth of Little Tokyo” with a plaque and street sign. Bunkado was founded in the same location in the mid-1940s by renowned Japanese American oil painter Tokio Ueyama and his wife, Suye, after they returned from incarceration in the World World II internment camps.

The name means “house of culture,” and the Ueyamas built an artists’ hub and eventually became important sellers and importers of recorded Japanese music. The store is now owned by their niece, Irene Tsukada Simonian, and sells Japanese ceramics, art tools, incense, toys, T-shirts and postcards.

Check out Hallock’s entire list.

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The first volunteers gathered in the back house of Nithya Raman’s Silver Lake home with little besides a whiteboard counting down the number of days until the June 2 primary election.

Raman had jumped into the Los Angeles mayor’s race the day before, right at the Feb. 7 filing deadline. Her campaign didn’t have an office, a bank account, a campaign treasurer, or even a proper website.

It lacked, put simply, “the most basic things,” said Ian Manheimer, Raman’s campaign manager, who joined the team after a 10 p.m. call from Raman the night before the filing deadline. There would be a meeting the next day in Raman’s backyard accessory dwelling unit to get things rolling.

“For anyone who suspected Nithya had designs on this for a long time, you could just come to the ADU and that would dispel those notions,” Manheimer said.

Those unassuming beginnings in Raman’s backyard, with her parents and her husband’s parents taking turns cooking vegetarian Indian lunches for the small staff, evolved into a disciplined campaign that overcame initial struggles to unseat incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, a veteran politician who had racked up endorsements from most of L.A.’s traditional power brokers.

Raman did it on a hyper-abbreviated timeline by turning out and expanding her base of younger renters, pitching herself successfully to Latino voters, securing late but key endorsements from groups and officials that gave massive support to her campaign’s ground game and by running on a hopeful message about restoring city services against a deeply unpopular mayor.

From the moment she got into the race, there was an evident, yet narrow lane for the progressive, second-term council member to rise to the city’s highest office, but it was far from clear that she would be able to make it through.

For much of the primary, Raman and her campaign were all alone. She had few endorsements, and almost none from elected officials.

Because of her late entry into the race and some past disagreements, she failed to secure the backing of the Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America for the June 2 primary, even though the left-wing organization endorsed her in both of her council campaigns. Raman got almost no supportive outside spending in the primary, while millions of dollars were spent opposing her.

But Raman had made a name for herself on the City Council as an advocate for tenant rights, and her campaign focused on turning out L.A.’s legions of renters to secure enough of the vote to make the runoff.

She was still a largely unknown entity early on in the race, 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 Spencer Pratt, the Republican former reality television personality, whose slash-and-burn campaign on social media attacking L.A.’s liberal political establishment dominated news coverage.

While Raman’s camp hadn’t initially worried too much about Pratt, thinking he and entrepreneur Adam Miller would split the more conservative vote in the city, it became clear as the primary went on that Pratt could emerge over Raman as the second candidate in the runoff.

To dent Pratt’s appeal, the Raman campaign worked to brand him as the MAGA Republican in the nonpartisan race, knowing it would hurt his chances in a deep-blue city like Los Angeles. They chose to try out the line at the only televised mayoral debate.

Raman didn’t miss her chance.

“This is a MAGA Republican’s idea of what Los Angeles looks like,” she said during the NBC4 debate on May 6, referring to Pratt’s sometimes dystopian depiction of L.A. “This is really not the city that I love so much.”

Though Raman’s debate performance was widely panned — and Pratt’s was praised — her team felt she had gotten the point across to Angelenos: With the unpopular Bass almost certain not to win the primary outright, the runoff could either be a contest between two progressive Democrats, or Bass versus a candidate whose views echoed those of President Trump.

That debate was a learning moment for Raman and her campaign.

“She’s up against an extremely seasoned politician and a television star. She’s just a normal person who hasn’t been on stage like that,” Manheimer said.

But defining Pratt as MAGA, the campaign believed, would pull some voters to Raman from lower-performing candidates on the left and in the middle with the hopes of keeping Pratt out of the runoff.

Raman was able to eke out a win against Pratt in the primary, getting 29% of the vote compared to his 26%, with Bass taking first place at 34%.

The sole goal of the primary for Raman’s campaign was, self-evidently, to make it out of the primary.

If her team could move on to the runoff, it would be able to reset — fundraising would restart, it could build a bigger team and it would have a longer runway to increase Raman’s name recognition and build out her base.

While Bass dominated labor and elected official endorsements throughout the race, Raman began to pick up key supporters in the runoff.

In August, the Western States Regional Council of Carpenters endorsed her, sponsoring an independent expenditure group for her called Estamos con Nithya for Mayor 2026.

That was followed by the endorsement from the union Unite Here Local 11, a major player in city politics, which represents hospitality workers at airports and in hotels.

Raman also got major endorsements in the runoff from City Controller Kenneth Mejia and L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath.

Mejia especially became a pit bull for Raman at events and on social media.

“Kenneth would call every day and say, ‘Let me know what myths I can bust today,’ ” said Tessa Wick, the communications director for Raman’s campaign.

“We didn’t have time to feel particularly lonely in the primary, but once we saw what it felt like to have all these groups and people behind us, each press conference we would do was injecting more force into this movement we were building,” Wick said.

Raman’s bid also got a serious infusion of cash from Aaron Sosnick, a hedge fund manager and bike lane advocate who poured $8 million into two independent expenditure groups to support Raman, making him the single biggest spender in the mayoral campaign.

“He is a cyclist. He just wants to not die riding the streets in L.A.,” said Michael Schneider, who runs Streets for All, a transportation advocacy group that ran one of the independent expenditure groups that Sosnick funded.

Raman also capitalized on a difficult summer for Bass, during which the mayor faced turnover on both her campaign and administration teams, unsheltered homelessness rose citywide (but crucially, went down sharply in Raman’s city council district) and a massive fire burned at a cold-storage food warehouse in Boyle Heights, sending noxious fumes into the heavily Latino, working-class neighborhood.

“Many Latinos saw themselves in the Boyle Heights residents,” said Lauren Perez-Rangel, senior director of Latino outreach for the Raman campaign.

Bass had prevailed in more Latino neighborhoods than any other candidate in the primary. The Raman campaign worked to change that in the runoff, Perez-Rangel said, focusing especially on Latino voters. Raman brushed up on her Spanish and used it frequently at events.

The campaign also teamed up with Latino and Spanish-language content creators to spread Raman’s message of affordability, building more housing and solving the homeless crisis. The result: Raman led Bass among Latino likely voters throughout the runoff campaign, according to polls by UC Berkeley IGS and the L.A. Times.

Despite that growing support, Bass and her allies’ negative portrayal of Raman in attack ads had an effect, as Raman’s unfavorable ratings rose month by month. They framed the council member as too far left, allowing homeless encampments in front of schools and failing to show up for thousands of City Council votes.

“It was a race to define Nithya,” said Jeff Millman, an advisor and spokesperson for Raman’s campaign. “Their strategy was to tear down Nithya. Our job was to make sure that people knew Nithya’s strengths and record of success as a council member.”

As the campaign drew to a climax, Raman improved as a candidate and came off as more confident during the two runoff debates. Her team said she spent many hours improving her debate skills.

“There was no secret weapon, just a person really committed to practicing,” said Wick.

Still, she opened herself up to attacks from Bass’ side during the final debate Oct. 13, after she said the city used to be the “gold standard” of noncooperation with immigration authorities under controversial former LAPD Chief Daryl Gates. Bass hammered Raman over the remark, accusing the council member of romanticizing Gates’ tenure.

Despite that and other missteps during the closing days of the campaign, her team said it was Raman’s insistence on running a largely positive campaign about an optimistic vision of L.A.’s future that pushed her over the finish line.

“She was really dogged that it was a campaign that was hopeful, not nasty and cynical. She wanted the campaign to be a love letter to L.A.,” said Wick.

In her election night speech, still trailing Bass by a few percentage points that she would quickly make up, Raman spoke to that vision.

She called it a vision where the people who made L.A. extraordinary could afford to live in the city and where government is responsive and takes responsibility.

“We believed that Angelenos were hungry for that city,” she said. “And it turns out that we were right.”

Twenty years after its world premiere in Northern California — and subsequent success on Broadway and in London — “Passing Strange,” the quintessential L.A. coming-of-age musical, is finally arriving in Southern California, staging its long-awaited area premiere at Pasadena Playhouse on Sunday.

Exactly why it has taken so long for this acclaimed, Tony Award-winning show — much of it set in the heart of Los Angeles — to come here is something its creators, the artist and singer-songwriter, Stew, and Heidi Rodewald (along with this writer) have been scrutinizing since 2009, the year after it opened to critical acclaim on Broadway.

“Passing Strange” tells the story of a young, artistic “Youth” (that’s actually his name in the show) who rejects his single mother and the “Black, middle class dream” of 1970s Los Angeles in favor of leaving home to find “The Real,” an elusive state of mind and authenticity he craves.

The reasons “The Real” took so long to land in its hometown began to make sense during a recent group Zoom with the “Passing Strange” brain trust, including Stew, Rodewald and its new director Zhailon Levingston.

“At my age, at this point, I think it is absolute poetry that this gentleman [Levingston] is the one who brings it to our hometown,” said Stew, pointing to a serendipity of timing.

Levingston is the 32-year-old theatrical wunderkind who won this year’s Tony Award for best director, for the groundbreaking revival of “Cats” on Broadway by re-imagining the long-running ‘80s smash as a ballroom drag competition.

Getting Levingston to do this revival of “Passing Strange” as his immediate follow-up to “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” is a coup for Pasadena Playhouse’s Artistic Director Danny Feldman. Feldman calls Levingston a rare talent, who’s “generous and fearless.” Or as Stew says more bluntly: “Zhailon’s got the receipts. … it’s the right time because it’s him. We made this play for him — literally, I don’t mean figuratively — because me and Heidi don’t make work necessarily for the contemporary time, we make it for the future.”

One of the main themes of “Passing Strange” is how knowledge is awkwardly handed down from one generation to another. In a key scene, the narrator describes a mentor, Franklin, whose words and wisdom wash over Youth “like a Bach fugue creeping out of a cheap car stereo.” In conversation together, Stew and Levingston (the former is twice the latter’s age) seem entirely in sync, having both clearly absorbed the show’s mantra: “Just ask the song.”

Stew says he learned the virtues of “asking the song” while casting the original production at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2006. The show would go on to play 165 performances on Broadway, but it wasn’t a traditional book musical — it played more like a cabaret or rock experience. “When we had everybody audition, they had to sing a punk rock song,” Stew recounts. “That was the fast track to figure out if they could do what we needed, or not.”

That original Berkeley cast, including Eisa Davis, Daniel Breaker, Rebecca Naomi Jones and Coleman Domingo, won the 2008 Obie Award for ensemble at New York’s Public Theater before transferring to Broadway. That cast was a big part of the show’s success, so much so that Levingston calls them “the Avengers of Black talent.”

Spike Lee filmed the show’s penultimate night at the Belasco Theater. In 2010, PBS broadcast it as part of “Great Performances,” which is how a then 15-year-old Levingston learned about “The Real.”

“My grandmother’s bedroom had a TV and that was kind of my refuge as a kid. I happened to turn on PBS,” Levingston recalls, “and it just so happens that was the night that they were airing ‘Passing Strange.’ I wasn’t looking for it. I just clicked on the television, and the opening credits were happening. I stayed glued. I didn’t leave. I didn’t pee. I just watched it.”

Levingston was hooked. “It became my favorite show ever,” he says, “I had two birthday parties designated to my friends watching it.”

But more importantly, it made him ask questions. “I then went to school the next day. … I got a dictionary and I looked up every word I didn’t know. I looked up every reference I didn’t know,” Levingston says. “I didn’t know who James Baldwin was. I didn’t know who Josephine Baker was. I didn’t know the significance of the Berlin Wall. I had never been out of the country, let alone Louisiana.”

None of the creators of “Passing Strange” would wince at the musical being described as a “bildungsroman,” or a classic coming-of-age story. Its title is derived from Shakespeare’s “Othello,” and the show earned Joycean comparisons, including to “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Black Man,” from critics.

“Passing Strange” pokes fun at the pretensions of youth, how a young person can know every indie rock album or French New Wave film and still be clueless about their own emotions and need for family. The truth and timelessness of Stew’s story — about a boy in the 1970s wanting to escape what he sees as L.A.’s “fishbowl of philistines” resonated so much for Levingston that he was inspired to escape his own fishbowl (Louisiana) for a life in Los Angeles, where he enrolled in AMDA College of the Performing Arts in Hollywood.

He lived in L.A. for four years, before making his name in theater back east. He had never dreamed of directing “Passing Strange,” saying, “it felt like too ‘full circle’ to actively pitch myself as the director.” But when he took a meeting with Pasadena’s Feldman: “I mentioned ‘Passing Strange,’ kind of as a secret menu option.”

Feldman loved the idea, and now “Passing Strange” is here. Asked during a recent rehearsal whether he’s deconstructing or re-inventing the show as he did “Cats,” Levingston replied with an emphatic no.

“I didn’t want to put it on the moon … or create some kind of other, concept approach to ‘Passing Strange,’ that would make it too corny. The concept has to be the people,” he said.

Inspired by Stew, Levingston looked for actors with a punk vibe, because he “wanted a company that understood what it meant to lead a band, even if you’re not the Narrator or Stew, I wanted the authenticity of that kind of swagger.”

Ty Taylor plays Stew in the revival, along with a whole new cast. During a recent rehearsal, it was uncanny how these performers look and sound so different — yet still carry the same fiery sense of invention as the actors who created the roles. It was also moving to see that Stew and Rodewald’s Tony Award-winning book still delivers laughs and pathos two decades on. Their show about passing the torch of cultural enlightenment hasn’t lost its edge — even as it is being handed off to another generation.

During the Zoom interview, Rodewald noted that the show’s original director, Annie Dorsen, gave them the confidence “to not try to please everyone,” to just make something they thought was cool.

“And then we went, and we did it,” Stew adds, “and now it’s perfect that it’s happening here. It’s the right director. It’s the perfect cast.”

In this way, the show has not only come home to Los Angeles, but it has also come full circle.

“I was talking to a cast member the other day, and I was like, ‘I just try to make theater that my friends like.’ But now I feel like I’m trying to make this show as a thank you letter to Heidi and Stew,” Levingston said, as he sat in the house seats at the Playhouse during rehearsal.

Indeed, rather than re-imagining “Passing Strange,” Levingston dug down to the show’s roots, when Stew and Rodewald traveled from gig to gig as musicians. “One of my earliest images thinking about the show,” Levingston says, “is that I wanted it to feel for the audience as if a bus tour of artists from a band backed up here and just dumped everything from the road onto the stage because the tour schedule said we had to be in Pasadena tonight.”

Will L.A. at long last embrace “The Real” or is this revival of “Passing Strange” looking to move to New York or elsewhere?

“Just ask the song,” Levingston says with a smile.

“I did not do this show because I had some long runway vision of how to take it from Pasadena to Broadway or Chicago,” he says, “but obviously, I want everyone in the world to see it.”

Levingston then mentions the number “Arlington Hill,” which is about being torn between where you come from and where you want to be.

Levingston quotes from the scene, “The Narrator looks back and says to Franklin, ‘Thank you, Brother’…’I want to say thank you for giving me this fugue.’ ”

He then gestures to the theater around us, “That’s the intention here.”

As a Los Angeles City Council candidate six years ago, Nithya Raman gave a firm “No” when asked if she supported the Olympics coming to Los Angeles.

Responding to a questionnaire from the Democratic Socialists of America, Raman added: “There was no vetting of this process, extremely rushed budgeting outreach, and the residents of our city had no say in any of it.”

Once in office, she joined just one other council member in voting against the prime city contract outlining the city’s partnership with the LA28, the private nonprofit hosting the event. And in August she voted against a deal outlining how LA28 would reimburse the city for the extra trash collection, policing and other services that will be expanded during the 2028 Summer Olympics.

My, how time, fortune and politics can change things.

With her election this week as mayor of Los Angeles, Raman won herself a ticket to sit among the dignitaries for the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics on July 14, 2028. And she will be asked to take center stage at the closing ceremony — handing the Olympic flag to the mayor of Brisbane, Australia, host city for the 2032 Summer Games.

In the little more than 600 days before the Games begin, Raman will oversee the city’s preparations.

Those looking for signs of friction might note that the mayor-elect has closely allied herself with City Controller Kenneth Mejia, who has been locked in a battle with LA28 over its failure to publicly report some of the details of its finances.

It’s unclear what position Raman will stake out in that conflict and another one dear to several members of the City Council — getting LA28 to agree to set aside a certain percentage of as much as $4 billion in contracts to businesses based in the city of L.A.

During her run for mayor, Raman did what she has done on many other issues — project a more moderate, conciliatory stance on the Olympics.

“Nithya supports a successful Olympics that showcases the best of Los Angeles and delivers the economic boost Angelenos deserve: more customers for local businesses, opportunities for workers, and lasting improvements in our neighborhoods,” a spokesperson for the mayor-elect said in a recent statement. “She wants residents to share in the excitement and the benefits long after the closing ceremony, but not left to cover the bill unfairly.”

Raman’s rep said she also will “enforce the city’s agreements with Olympic organizers, put strict financial safeguards in place, and make taxpayer obligations public before commitments are made.”

She also pledged that the security around the Olympics will “respect every Angeleno’s dignity and rights, especially immigrants and our most vulnerable neighbors.”

Raman also signaled over the summer that she is ready to be a fan. In an Instagram video, she touted the opening of a new cricket grounds in Pomona, practiced her bowling (like pitching in baseball) and enthused: “The second most popular sport in the world coming back to the Olympics, and coming back, right here in L.A., is really exciting.”

LA28 Chairman Casey Wasserman congratulated the new mayor.

“We look forward to working closely with the mayor-elect, her team, and leaders at every level of government to deliver a safe, secure and fiscally responsible Olympic Games,” Wasserman said in a statement. “With less than two years until the LA28 Opening Ceremony, there is much work to be done. We’re confident that, together, we’ll be ready to welcome the world to Los Angeles and showcase the magic of our city.”

Harris-Dawson is running

It’s still a month away, but the City Council is going to have to cast a pivotal vote: Who should serve as its president under a Raman administration.

City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, in a quick interview Friday, said he will seek the council’s top leadership job for another two years. Harris-Dawson, who supported Mayor Karen Bass in Tuesday’s election, said he was unaware of anyone else angling for the job.

“I intend to be president,” said Harris-Dawson, who faces term limits in 2028.

Meanwhile, council members are still processing the Raman victory and what that will mean for the city. Harris-Dawson said the election revealed a divided city, with newer arrivals to L.A. backing Raman and “people who have been here for generations” lining up behind Bass.

“This race, I think, exacerbated the divisions of the city,” he said. “That showed up a lot more than I was expecting, and the divisions were a lot deeper than I expected.”

Raman’s young progressives

Gen Zers crisscrossed the dance floor, Modelos and seltzers in hand, as the DJ bumped her head to the beat.

But this was no Friday night at Zebulon. This was election night in L.A., and Nithya Raman’s campaign had taken over the plaza outside the Greek Theatre in Griffith Park for the occasion.

“We’ve had a mayor that’s failed young people,” Rutik Shinglot, a 26-year-old working in public affairs, shouted over the noise. “I think L.A. is ready for a change.”

Many of the young progressives at Raman’s election night party at the Greek Theatre had knocked on doors or made phone calls for the now mayor-elect. Unionized UCLA and USC student workers sported bright-pink United Auto Workers shirts. Others wore a red pin brandishing the Democratic Socialists of America’s logo.

Their excitement seems to have made it to the ballot box: Partial returns showed young people ages 18-34 had increased their share of the vote compared with the same early returns in 2022.

The Berkeley IGS/L.A. Times poll sponsored by the L.A. Times days before the election found Raman led Bass 74% to 16% among voters in their thirties.

Raman struck a chord with young people, many said, by hitting hard on the major issues affecting them: affordability, housing and transit.

The council member took her message directly to them. She frequently campaigned at bars and released ads spoofing popular movies and shows.

She garnered the support of niche progressive celebrities young folks trust, including comedians Brennan Lee Mulligan and Rekha Shankar of Dropout (formerly known as CollegeHumor) who emceed Raman’s election night party.

By clinching the endorsements of both DSA-LA and the regional UAW, she unlocked two major pools of young L.A. progressives — eager to build on national momentum — to campaign on her behalf. Rafael Jaime, president of UAW 4811, said the region’s members had contacted 116,000 voters in support of Raman. DSA-LA knocked on more than 110,000 doors with the help of more than 1,600 volunteers.

At DSA-LA, the endorsement created “a mechanism to build up our canvassing infrastructure citywide,” said Keshav Kundassery, 27, a member of both DSA-LA and UAW 4811. “We need to exercise those muscles right now to be ready for the fight that’s waiting for us in 2028.”

State of play

— THE ROAD TO RAMAN: Bass started election night ahead of Raman but the tide quickly changed. By Thursday, the mayor had conceded and Raman was giving her first press briefing at the Original Farmers Market.

— THE NEW AGENDA: What initiatives will Raman pursue once she’s in office? Bike lanes, housing voucher, new apartments, a new police chief and lots of data crunching. “L.A. has been flying blind when it comes to measuring the impacts of the dollars spent. That is going to change,” said former deputy mayor Rick Cole, a Raman advisor.

— WHERE WERE THE VOTES? We’ve got a preliminary map showing how different parts of the city voted in the mayoral election.

— ROY REIGNS: Deputy Atty. Gen. Marissa Roy romped to victory in her race against Deputy Dist. Atty. John McKinney. Council aide Jose Ugarte had a lead that’s been steadily shrinking over community organizer Estuardo Mazariegos in a South L.A. council race. Meanwhile, political aide Barri Worth Girvan was leading business owner Tim Gaspar in the west San Fernando Valley.

— SIGNS OF THE TIMES: On election day, Ugarte’s camp released video that appeared to show Mazariegos supporters stealing an Ugarte lawn sign and replacing it with one for Mazariegos.

— CH-CH-CH-CHANGES: L.A. voters approved all eight of the ballot measures that were on their ballot, hiking taxes to pay for the fire department, sending more city money to public parks and giving the council the power to cut the number of weekly meetings from three down to one.

— SECOND TIME AROUND: In a case of ballot deja vu, Los Angeles County voters reelected Sheriff Robert Luna, rejecting former Sheriff Alex Villanueva by a wide margin once again.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to address homelessness went to Venice, a neighborhood represented by Councilmember Traci Park, and to Sylmar, which is represented by Councilmember Monica Rodriguez.
• On the docket next week: The L.A. County Board of Supervisors will take up a motion Tuesday to lay out steps to fix the county’s restraining order system, in response to reporting by The Times on ways the system fails survivors.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to LAontheRecord@latimes.com. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

From the time I met a guy playing a violin near Pershing Square in 2005, and followed him to the Skid Row slab of pavement where he spent his nights, I’ve listened closely to what mayors promised to do about homelessness in Los Angeles.

All of them were going to fix the problem.

Antonio Villaraigosa.

Eric Garcetti.

Karen Bass.

None of them came close.

Each of those mayors invested vast sums of money and manpower and each of them made inroads. To be fair, they collectively helped thousands of people turn their lives around. But the problem is not finite, the waves keep coming, and more than 40,000 people are currently homeless in the city.

That’s one of the primary reasons Mayor-elect Nithya Raman will get a chance to do what her predecessors could not. In the most recent year of accounting, homelessness increased slightly in the city but declined significantly in Raman’s council district.

So Bass is out, and Raman is in after a contentious campaign in which Raman attacked the Bass strategy (which she helped implement) as too costly and ineffective.

“Here’s my promise,” Raman said in a video on her campaign website. “When I’m mayor, we’ll cut tents and encampments in half by the Olympics, and bring everyone in tents and encampments indoors by the end of my first term.”

Really?

Bear with me, because I’m about to explain why I have some hope that Raman might do a better job on homelessness than her predecessors. But I cringe when I hear such grandiose proclamations.

Why?

In 2006, I attended a Skid Row news conference where a gaggle of politicians including Villaraigosa touted a 10-year plan to end homelessness in L.A. County.

In 2013, Garcetti vowed to end chronic homeless, and in 2018, he said: “We can cut this problem in half in five years. And in 10 years … we can end life on the street.”

In 2023, Bass told a CNN audience that by the end of her term as mayor: “My goal would be, really, to end street homelessness. … There’ll still be people in shelters and interim housing, but to at least not have people dying on our streets.”

Have you noticed how these kinds of amped-up promises have played out?

I don’t mean to discourage lofty goals, but we’ve been let down time after time, feeding cynicism. We’re just looking for significant progress, not a miracle.

The hard truth is that homelessness is the result of a raft of problems beyond any mayor’s full control. It begins with an economy built for stark disparity, with the crippling cost of housing, and with untreated mental illness and drug addiction. A mayor can’t magically clear the decks without help from federal, state and county allies, and from strong partnerships on the City Council.

But none of that excuses the paltry returns on big investments. Mayor Bass’ Inside Safe program moved about 6,000 people into motels and other forms of interim housing as of this past spring at a cost of $300 million, and 41% of them had returned to homelessness by the end of May.

Raman wants to mothball that program and use short-term rental vouchers she claims will be far less expensive and more effective. She wants to open doors for City Controller Kenneth Mejia to audit every dollar spent on homelessness. She says she’ll demand a full accounting of county services, use Medi-Cal funds for more street medicine teams, invest in shared housing and case management.

“City Hall has put together a patchwork of programs, agencies, and dollars that were never required to prove they work together, or work at all,” Raman says on her homelessness strategy page. “No agency or program has been required to demonstrate results. No department or office has been put in charge of monitoring the spending.”

Putting a plan on paper is one thing. Pushing it through the teeth of the City Hall grinder without the wholesale shredding of good intentions is a tougher trick. And it remains to be seen whether Raman can wrangle the support of council members who shunned her and unanimously endorsed Bass.

But Raman has a few things going for her, including a penchant for defying expectations. She blitzed two incumbents, first to win a council seat and then to bounce Bass. Then there’s her urban planning education and her work as one of the co-founders of the SELAH Neighborhood Homeless Coalition. That gave her a street-level study of the challenge as well as the disjointed government response, and she then led the City Council’s homelessness committee.

“I think that situational awareness” will serve her well, said Louis Abramson, a Hollywood resident and Rand researcher who serves as chair of the SELAH board. “She’ll be able to argue from a perspective of expertise.”

Abramson is also hoping Raman will be able to deliver more affordable housing.

“She’s … proven to be uniquely tolerant of the political risks of being a YIMBY, of making Los Angeles a place that can fit everybody who wants to live here,” Abramson said.

At SELAH, and in Raman’s council district, building meaningful relationships with clients has been a central mission. That’s not always fast or easy. Some people are ready to reach for a helping hand; others are severely damaged in multiple ways, and it takes time.

I learned long ago that recovery is not linear. Sometimes it’s one step forward and two steps back. And as one social worker suggested to me, we’re so preoccupied with getting people in the front door, we barely notice when they slip out the back door.

Reversing homelessness does not end with a temporary address. Long-term case management is critical, and so is a sense of purpose and belonging. The formerly homeless people I recently met at Chrysalis, all of them working now, and all of them housed, were a testament to this idea.

I’d love to see Raman find more ways to turn able-bodied homeless people into a workforce that can help address the city’s many needs. I’d love to see her encourage more people to contribute by volunteering for organizations like SELAH, or for faith-based groups and non-profits.

In the case of my friend Nathaniel, the musician, it took me, his friends in the L.A. Phil and various outreach workers a year to convince him to move indoors 21 years ago. He is in a nursing home now, where he listens to music for hours every day and has kept a gallery of photos on his wall, including Beethoven, Bach, and another person with a “B” last name.

Actress Halle Berry.

“She’s beautiful,” Nathaniel said one day when we were going over a list of famous people from Cleveland, his hometown, and he decided that Berry deserved a prominent place on his wall of fame.

My relationship with Nathaniel, Abramson said, “is not an ancillary thing. It is THEE thing. I have come to believe that the human relationship is the necessary pre-condition to this working out.”

True enough, we are too predisposed to think of the ongoing human catastrophe in purely statistical terms. But there’s more truth in people’s stories than in their status, and more community buy-in when we recognize ourselves in each other.

For the 40,000 Nathaniels of Los Angeles, and nearly 4 million of their neighbors, here’s hoping the next mayor of Los Angeles can make a difference.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

“There’s nothing more difficult than taking something that’s really, really good and trying to make it better,” says Daniel Harding, newly appointed music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Harding is perched on a sofa at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in an office that belonged to Gustavo Dudamel for nearly 20 years. The name on the plaque outside the door is now Harding’s, but the decor — particularly the heavy Hollywood Bowl throw blanket that keeps sliding off the cushions behind him — is not. Understandably tired after flying in from Paris the night before, Harding is in town to conduct three concerts of Brahms and Bernstein this weekend.

The LA Phil is heralding a new era after Dudamel left for the New York Philharmonic, having achieved legendary status and leaving a world-class orchestra in his wake. Harding doesn’t officially begin his directorship until the 2027 season, but he has two programs on this season’s schedule.

With Harding’s arrival, the LA Phil has announced a new shared leadership model that represents a departure from the 17 seasons under Dudamel, who served as both music and artistic director. Instead, Harding will split responsibilities with Esa-Pekka Salonen, who holds the title of creative director, and Anna Handler, the new conductor-in-residence. On Wednesday, the LA Phil also announced a new row of artistic chairs: Samara Joy (McLendon) as creative chair for jazz (succeeding Herbie Hancock), Silvana Estrada as creative chair for Latin music, a new position, and Thomas Adés as creative chair for New Music (succeeding John Adams). A chair for film music is still being finalized, and veteran film composer Joe Hisaishi was recently appointed composer-in-residence.

(Hancock and Adams will join Zubin Mehta with emeritus titles. Dudamel holds an artistic and cultural laureate position.)

It’s all very exciting and just a tad chaotic — kind of like a game of musical chairs. Scheduling the interviews and photos for this article has taken nearly four months seemingly because all of these musicians are busy and scattered to the four winds. McLendon is based in Harlem, where she has started a jam session night at a local restaurant. Estrada lives in Mexico City and is currently on tour with her band. Hisaishi lives in his native Japan, and Harding resides in Paris.

President Kim Noltemy’s strategy, to divide labor and empower an array of specialists, is a bold counter to the traditional model of the all-powerful artistic and music director.

“Our new artistic leadership team brings us a remarkable breadth of perspectives and strengths across disciplines,” Noltemy said in a news release about the most recent appointments, “allowing us to imagine new forms of presentation, build unexpected collaborations, and create experiences that challenge, inspire and engage audiences. Perhaps most important of all, this team will amplify the wide range of voices, cultures and genres in Los Angeles.”

It remains unclear just how the new system will work, but all participants seem eager to find the best way as they go, and Harding still emerges as the symbolic head of the system with direct purview over the orchestra itself.

“They have a vision [that] more voices can represent better what they want to do in the future,” says Handler, whom I interviewed at Massachusetts’ Tanglewood music festival in August. “You know, one single voice is not enough to speak for everything they want to do and everyone they want to reach.”

Salonen offers a steady, familiar hand, although neither Harding nor Handler are strangers to this orchestra. Both are well-liked guest conductors, going back as far as 1997 for Harding.

Handler, who turned 30 in April, says that when her appointment was announced, “I think like 25 musicians wrote to me on WhatsApp or on Instagram, and they were all like, ‘This is so deserved,’ or ‘We are so happy, we can’t wait for the projects to come with you,’ or like, ‘We’re so happy you’re part of our family now.’”

Handler embodies the youthful and diverse future of classical music — half Colombian, half German, she speaks fluent Spanish and is interested in new technologies. She is also visibly enthusiastic about the vote of confidence from the LA Phil and the creative sandbox it represents.

“This position for me means a safe space to grow, step by step, and do projects that I couldn’t do somewhere else,” says Handler, who has something “super cool” in mind for a Hollywood Bowl concert next year and is particularly excited to work with children. “You have the Walt Disney Concert Hall which, when you set foot in this building, you are like, ‘Wow, am I in the future? Am I in the present? Am I in the past?’

“The building evokes inside of me a desire to experiment,” she says.

McLendon, 26, and Estrada, 29, have both been contracted to curate four concerts, in different LA Phil venues, for two years. McLendon says she wants to bring some East Coast influence to the L.A. scene, and — in addition to playing with her own septet — she has a dream for “a night where older musicians and younger musicians kind of share the stage in a way that maybe they haven’t done before outside of their respective projects.”

Estrada says one of her goals is exploding the idea many non-Latino people have that “the Latin sound is just one sound.”

“The Latino community is the soul of an entire continent,” she says. “So there are so many sounds and so many stories, really. And I think I’m really excited about, in one hand, bringing all this richness of the Latino culture, but also how this richness reacts to other cultures and to other sounds.”

“I think what is great about the LA Phil and all the venues they have,” Estrada says, “is it’s a really, really beautiful and empowering place to tell any story you want to tell.”

Harding, 51, arguably has the least specific and most challenging mandate.

“The genuine success of everything that’s happened here in the last 20 years is so impressive and so deep,” Harding says, “that coming in and saying, ‘Yeah, I can contribute something,’ that feels like a step. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think I could be part of the journey as we continue to grow. But yeah, that’s a big challenge.”

The Oxford-born conductor and licensed pilot, who has co-piloted the London Symphony and captained the Orchestre de Paris and Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome (among other posts on an impressive CV), brings a dry, erudite charm and a different energy than his charismatic Venezuelan predecessor.

“I inherit from him an orchestra that has great energy and flexibility and knows what it is to sell something with what they call ‘sexy music-making,’” says Harding, “and it’s all there to be enjoyed and to be nourished. It’s a huge gift.”

Still, Harding adds: “We all hear different things. We all have slightly different priorities.”

Harding recalls conducting the orchestra two years ago, in a program of Britten and Strauss, and offering tweaks to color and balance: “I thought, yeah, there’s an orchestra which has a way of doing things which is very coherent, but they have so much available space in their musical awareness, and so much technical ability, that if you give them something else to think about or to munch on, the change is strong and quick.”

“Gustavo and I share a lot of things,” he continues, “but any two musicians hear things differently, see things differently, understand them differently — and I think the orchestra is very, very receptive to that.”

Harding is keeping his big dreams and schemes for the LA Phil close to the vest, but teases that one of them “involves one of our chairs, and it involves some of the people who make this town so admired all around the world, and it involves something that chair and I both grew up with. And that’s looking possible, and even if nothing else were to happen, if we make that one happen, I’ll be very, very excited.”

How this game of musical chairs will play out is a mystery, and it will likely take some time — and possibly trial and error — for Harding and his sprawling cohort to find their rhythm together. But the LA Phil is arguably the perfect band to take a big swing and try bold new things.

Handler cites her experience as a Dudamel Fellow, in 2024, conducting “Swan Lake” selections for the orchestra’s youth series.

“I had five performances, and what the musicians said to me about what they liked was that I did something different every time,” she says. “I tried this idea of experimenting for the sake of getting better, but also keeping it alive.”

Barri Worth Girvan, a veteran government employee who ran on a platform of leveraging her experience to advocate for residents, declared victory in the race for Los Angeles City Council’s Third District seat late Friday.

Worth Girvan’s announcement came after the latest vote tally Friday evening showed her widening her lead over rival Tim Gaspar, with 51% of the vote to Gaspar’s 49%.

“I will bring competence, transparency, follow-through, and ethical leadership to City Hall, which Angelenos deserve and too often do not get,” she said in a statement, which also thanked Gaspar for stepping up to run as well.

“I know how City Hall works, and I know how to make it work for you,” Worth Girvan said. “I am ready to hit the ground running on Day One, delivering the services our neighborhoods deserve, and leading with the integrity you have every right to expect.

Earlier Friday, Gaspar’s campaign said he wasn’t yet ready to concede. The campaign couldn’t immediately be reached for comment following Worth Girvan’s announcement.

The current Third District councilmember, Bob Blumenfield, is leaving office because of term limits. The 3rd District seat includes Woodland Hills, Reseda and Canoga Park.

Worth Girvan and Gaspar were virtually tied on election night Tuesday, but on Thursday Worth Girvan began pulling ahead as more mail-in ballots were counted.

Before entering the race, Worth Girvan was L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath’s district director for three years, handling constituent services on the Westside and in the Valley.

A former insurance company owner, Gaspar is running on a pro-business platform and has been endorsed by the Valley Industry & Commerce Assn. and the Los Angeles Police Protective League, a union representing LAPD officers. He’s also been endorsed by Blumenfield, L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, real estate developer Rick Caruso and former Democratic state Assemblymember Bob Hertzberg, Worth Girvan’s former boss.

Worth Girvan was endorsed by the L.A. County Democratic Party and labor unions including the local chapters of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Service Employees International Union. She’s also been endorsed by Horvath and former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

In the race for District 9, both Jose Ugarte and Estuardo Mazariegos remain locked in a tight contest. Councilmember Curren Price is also termed out.

District 9 encompasses South L.A. neighborhoods, the Convention Center and USC. But no matter who wins, District 9 will undergo a shift in representation after decades of being represented by a Black council member.

Price is currently facing charges of embezzlement and conflict of interest and he has denied wrongdoing. Price has endorsed Ugarte, his former deputy chief of staff, whose platform includes protecting city residents from federal immigration enforcement and the Trump administration.

Mazariegos is backed by the L.A. chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. He’s worked as a community organizer for decades and said he’s running to improve quality of life in the city, including by making housing more affordable and spending money on basic services other than policing.

Ugarte’s campaign received outside support from special interest groups including Airbnb, Uber, the California Apartment Assn. and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 18, which represents workers at the Department of Water and Power.

Mazariegos was supported by groups including United Teachers Los Angeles and the Progressive Era PAC. Special interest groups have spent more than $250,000 supporting his campaign.

Bold.

That’s what I initially thought when a political novice named Nithya Raman upset an incumbent in 2020 to become the first democratic socialist elected to the Los Angeles City Council.

That’s what I felt when Raman weathered well-funded challengers and loudmouth opponents to win reelection outright in the 2024 primary, despite representing a district redrawn to her disadvantage.

Bold was Raman filing to run for mayor just before the deadline. Taking on her ally Karen Bass, an L.A. institution she had endorsed just weeks earlier. Angering members of the Democratic Socialists of America’s L.A. chapter, who hadn’t planned to mount a mayoral campaign this year. Calling out L.A. establishment shibboleths like the pricey Convention Center renovation.

Picking Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City” as a campaign theme song despite its stark lyrics of urban despair. Dancing with all the grace of Elaine from “Seinfeld” on primary night, despite being in third place at the time.

“Bold,” I texted a friend when we found out Raman was holding her Nov. 3 election night party at the Greek Theatre — either a brilliant move that would mark the start of a new day for L.A., or the worst venue choice for a political loser since Hillary Clinton threw her 2016 party in a hotel ballroom with a glass ceiling.

Bold was all Raman had going for her. Bass raised more funds and was backed by L.A.’s blue establishment. Haters, from the Los Angeles Police Protective League to the California Post to her fellow City Council members, painted Raman as an immature, insecure pinko wimp who didn’t know L.A. and barely could do her job, let alone run one of the world’s great cities.

But Raman didn’t stop. She left the hipster areas of the city where democratic socialists have found a base and campaigned in districts represented by council members who openly loathed her. She trotted out her imperfect Spanish to show that she wanted to reach Angelenos in any way possible and was vulnerable enough to reveal that she still was learning. Raman even teared up in public, which City Hall insiders have long mocked her for, when crying in the name of trying for a better L.A. is as bold as you can get.

Bold is what this metropolis needs. And bold is what Los Angeles is going to get now that Raman has taken out Bass in a campaign for the ages.

Critics will downplay the victory as more a verdict on a deeply unpopular mayor than an embrace of Raman — a tree stump could have trounced Bass, they’re already saying. But that’s not what heavyweights who have long aspired to become mayor — like billionaire developer Rick Caruso, L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath and City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez — were thinking when they had the chance to run this year and chose not to.

They saw the road to City Hall as too dangerous to risk their reputations on a potential loss. They weren’t bold.

I can’t say I saw any of this coming. I did call Raman the comeback kid of L.A. politics in a September columna, as indefatigable a politician as I’ve ever covered. But she spent the last month of her campaign apologizing for easily preventable gaffes that seemed to confirm all the skepticism about her. The attacks against Raman became nastier and more relentless, while Bass glommed on to anyone she thought might get her more votes, from walking alongside Caruso to standing next to future governor Xavier Becerra at Homegirl Cafe the day before the election.

I told a friend on the morning of the election that Bass probably was going to win. Angelenos wouldn’t be brave enough to go with Raman. As I wrote just a few weeks ago, Los Angeles has long gone with the old for mayor, when it could have gone bold.

Not this time.

As mayor, Raman will need to be bolder than ever. Angelenos yearn for safer streets, an end to homelessness, a renewal of the dreamland that the city has represented for more than a century. They want less of the bureaucracy that has slowed down rebuilding in Pacific Palisades and made running a small business more of a punishment than a reward. They don’t want someone beholden to any ideology other than that the City of Angels needs to be heaven again.

Raman will assume office with nearly half of those who voted, not to mention the entire City Council, having supported her opponent. She needs to go in with the humility to convince naysayers, the conviction to get rid of things and people that aren’t making L.A. better, the smarts to keep what works, the courage to defy the DSA and the vision to make the city believe in itself once again.

Above all, Raman needs to be bold enough to not become another Karen Bass.

The lifelong Angeleno used to be bold when she was an activist in South L.A. pioneering multiracial coalitions and taking on the old guard. She was an effective Assembly member and Congress member. But City Hall sucked out her creativity, her optimism, her drive. She became cautious, then negative. By the end of the race, Bass seemed to be running only so she could say she kept away another DSA insurgent as a final gift to the city.

Bright-eyed outsiders drowning in the swamp — that’s the story of L.A. politics. It’s a story Raman needs to show can come to an end.

“Bold” ultimately is having hope that you can be the one who breaks systems that need to be obliterated. That was the other big note Raman incessantly hit during her campaign, culminating in her election night speech at the Greek.

“Hopelessness can be fatal for a city,” she told an adoring crowd that kept getting bigger and bigger until security closed off the entrances. “But this campaign refused to accept that. You refuse to accept that. You saw hopelessness, and you chose hope.”

Angelenos chose bold. Let’s hope Raman stays bold.

Robert Martinez, a retired IT guy, stepped out of the Eagle Rock Rec Center polling place Tuesday afternoon and said he had just filled in a ballot bubble not for L.A. Mayor Karen Bass but for challenger Nithya Raman.

“You know, I’m not really thrilled about her, either,” Martinez said, but he told me what a lot of people have been telling me.

He wanted a change.

“I saw what happened these last four years,” Martinez said, citing the continuing homelessness epidemic and the broken-down condition of the city, “and I’m hoping something different goes on this time.”

He and thousands of others were ready to roll the dice, and meanwhile, Raman began to catch fire with young progressives who were voting for her rather than against Bass.

Some votes are still being tallied, but it’s now clear that Raman will be the next mayor of Los Angeles.

And that will be remarkable, and fun to watch, for a number of reasons.

She will take over despite every single one of her City Council colleagues having endorsed Bass, which is like the least popular kid in class getting elected school president.

She will take over despite having flip-flopped on several major issues, including Bass’ signature homelessness strategy, which Raman willingly implemented until just recently.

She will take over despite having unexpectedly rescinded her endorsement of Bass and eliciting whispers in and out of City Hall that she couldn’t be trusted.

She will take over despite having lukewarm support from the very organization through which she began her rise, the Democratic Socialists of America.

Raman is either a political savant or someone with really good timing, or maybe a little of both.

Everybody in L.A. knew that Bass was mortally wounded, and ripe for a takedown, but it was Raman who had the killer instinct, a trait that could serve her and the public well, putting everyone in city government on notice.

The mayor, having spent her entire adult life in public service, had made the worst decision of her career by leaving town in January 2025 despite conditions that led to the incineration of Pacific Palisades.

And she had made homelessness her marquee issue with scant progress to show despite throwing billions at the problem.

The mayor’s unfavorability rating was so epic, “undecided” voters were neck in neck with supporters of either Raman or Bass, and even the knuckleheaded former TV reality star Spencer Pratt looked like a solid contender in the primary.

But winning the election may turn out to be much easier than fixing City Hall.

Roads and sidewalks are falling apart. The Palisades rebuild is a maddeningly long work in progress. The homeless count tops 40,000. New housing takes forever. The cost of living swallows paychecks. The budget for just about everything is tight, and more of it will go to parks with the passing of the measure to set aside more for greenery. And the ‘28 Olympics are coming our way.

“You have all of these wicked problems that are difficult to solve in a perfect scenario, and [even more] in a governmental system as tangled and confused as L.A.,” Cal State Northridge political science professor Tom Hogen-Esch told The Times’ Jennie Jarvie.

Tangled and confused is an understatement. Homelessness does not get solved without the help of the county, which generally oversees mental health services and drug intervention and rehab.

On the bright side, it’s possible that L.A. will be able to wrangle more federal assistance now that the bloated carcass of President Trump’s political career is floating in the reflecting pool on the National Mall.

And Raman will have two key allies in City Controller Kenneth Mejia, who monitors and critiques City Hall’s many inefficiencies, and in Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who is a potential candidate for the new position of county executive.

“You’re right. It is daunting,” Horvath said of the countless challenges. “But I don’t think it was a secret to Nithya when she got into the race.”

Raman’s campaign, Horvath said, was about building power by acknowledging the exasperation of voters rather than building traditional coalitions in what has been an unresponsive political establishment.

“Whether or not you like each other, or formally agree or disagree, when people are able to accomplish change that the public is longing for, everybody wants to be a part of that win,” Horvath said.

Among City Hall’s problems has been a mummified tolerance of arthritic leadership and the rusted machinery of basic services. Raman, for better or worse, might be inclined to push-start the old jalopy, oil the gears and throw department heads overboard if they don’t deliver.

Early on as a council member, Raman told me she was sorting out the fragmented response to homelessness, having identified overlapping services, a lack of accountability, and broken lines of communication and coordination. In her district, homelessness has declined, and she has called out Bass for the high cost, slow pace and low returns of the mayor’s efforts.

“I know this about Raman,” Horvath said. “She is not afraid of a tough conversation.”

She’s definitely going to have them. As a YIMBY who favors greater housing density, there will be pushback in some neighborhoods. And her opposition to bans on homelessness in certain public areas (she prioritizes solving problems rather than relocating them), will test patience. As reflected in the relatively tight election, nearly half of voters are a bit wary about whether Raman would move the city’s policy and philosophy orientation too far to the left.

In San Francisco, according to USC political science professor and pollster Christian Grose, Mayor Daniel Lurie’s popularity has dipped a bit since he took office in 2024 and tackled issues similar to those in L.A., but it remains high. Grose said Lurie won immediate support and high marks among both moderates and progressives by cleaning streets and moving people indoors while also working on longer-term problem-solving.

Raman could conceivably try that formula, Grose said, and take advantage of what figures to be a honeymoon period with voters who are hungry for change. The question will be whether the honeymoon turns into a longer romance.

In Pico-Union, retired airline attendant and interpreter Aurora Corona has seen some neighborhood improvements of late. But she has long been unhappy overall with the lack of progress on homelessness, trash and infrastructure issues like broken street lights.

“It’s not working,” Corona said, telling me she visits other cities that are in better shape and wonders why L.A. can’t sort through its bureaucratic sclerosis. She doesn’t put all of that on the mayor, though, and said that after considering Raman, she voted for Bass even though she wants to see a shakeup.

“Whoever it is, I’d like to see some changes for the better,” Corona said.

In Studio City, Jon Manzanares and neighbors spent five years reporting encampments and myriad problems at an abandoned property. They tried city departments and got no help, and they tried Raman’s office repeatedly, with the same result.

In September, a fire at the abandoned property spread to an adjacent house, and finally, Raman and Bass both showed up and blamed each other.

“Between Bass and Raman, I wasn’t happy with either,” Manzanares said.

He wants a mayor who does a better job of getting homeless people whatever help they need, who respects the frustrations of taxpayers, and who demands more accountability regarding all the money thrown at various entrenched problems.

“I ended up voting with Raman,” Manzanares said. “I feel like Bass had her shot and didn’t do much with it.”

And now it’s Raman’s turn.

Good luck to her, and to nearly 4 million Angelenos hungry for change.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

For Democrats, one of the most delicious ironies of their historic victory in Tuesday’s midterms is that they won many of the congressional districts President Trump and his allies had recently redrawn to favor Republicans.

As the results rolled in on Tuesday evening, one after another of those gerrymandered Republican “safe” districts in Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Alabama got swamped by the overwhelming blue wave.

Last year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom led the charge to push back against Trump’s initiative and redraw as many districts as possible in favor of Democrats. On Wednesday, he bragged on X, “We fought fire with fire. And won.”

While it’s all laughter and high-fives for Democrats now, it’s worth remembering that in the summer of 2025 they were in utter despair.

The GOP’s redrawn maps spelled doom for Democrats

It seemed they had no hope of winning the Senate in 2026. Their razor-thin chances of retaking the House appeared to be dissolving as Republicans simply broke out their Sharpies and started doodling on maps.

Congressional districts are typically adjusted once a decade, after each census. The idea is to reflect where people actually live and distribute representation accordingly.

Redrawing the maps mid-decade was a norm-busting move by Trump and his allies who made little effort to hide that it was a naked bid to tighten the president’s grip on power. He seemed to revel in Democrats’ shock and dismay.

While others were wringing their hands and writing think pieces about the fate of democracy — as Democrats tend to do — Newsom made what felt to many like an indecent proposal.

Newsom’s ‘retaliatory’ proposal

What if California, the country’s most populous state with the most congressional districts, just as cynically redrew its maps to favor Democrats?

But there was a catch: Californians had voted for a ballot proposition in 2008 to take such gamesmanship out of politicians’ hands and entrust the drawing of the maps to a (hopefully) independent, nonpartisan citizens commission. Newsom would need to get voters to approve a new proposition to change the rules.

Local conservatives were outraged.

“Gov. Gavin Newsom’s political ambitions have reached a new low. In his efforts to look like a ‘fighter’ ahead of a potential run for the presidency in 2028, he’s willing to ignore democratic rules in pursuit of political aims,” wrote Lanhee J. Chen, a former Republican candidate for state controller, in the Los Angeles Times.

Even fellow Democrats had serious misgivings, calling Newsom’s plan obviously “retaliatory,” “misguided” and a “moral conflict.”

They were right, of course — it was all of those things. But voters approved the new maps, and it worked.

Tuesday’s blue wave

Californians elected Democrats in all five of the state’s redrawn districts, after Democrat Marni von Wilpert won in what had been the lone holdout, Republican Darrell Issa’s old haunt in San Diego and Riverside counties.

From the start, Newsom understood the moral murkiness of his maneuver and included a provision returning map-drawing to the independent commission after the 2030 census.

Will that actually happen? Time will tell.

But as his party’s victory became obvious on Tuesday night, he didn’t exactly take the high road and start talking about mending fences.

In response to a post on X about Republican losses in districts reworked by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Newsom replied simply: “RON CAN’T DRAW!”

Top stories

Raman’s lead against Bass

California’s billionaire tax

• California’s much-debated billionaire tax didn’t get the support many expected in one of the country’s most liberal states.
• Nearly 56% of California voters rejected the proposal while 44% voted for Proposition 40.
• However, with roughly 6 million votes still needed to be counted, the results are still too close to call.

A new era for Democrats

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Today’s recipe

With Thanksgiving only weeks away, now is a good time to perfect your favorite recipes that feature sweet potatoes. This sweet potato bread recipe is a good place to start. You can use any leftover sweet potato you have on hand, whether roasted or steamed, or you can microwave until tender a whole one that’s been pricked with a fork, about five minutes on high. Canned sweet potato works, though the bread will be a touch less flavorful.

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On weekends, 1st and 2nd streets between Alameda and Los Angeles swell with crowds of families, anime fans, sneakerheads and tourists and locals alike in search of ramen or sushi, manga and magazines, matcha, toys, Japanese crafts, groceries, traditional sweets, records, Shohei paraphernalia and vintage fashion.

This is Little Tokyo, one of the most walkable, vibrant neighborhoods in Los Angeles — a historic small town within a big city that has thrived, even if sometimes precariously, through waves of urban development.

The 300 block of 1st Street is known as the Little Tokyo Historic District, a nationally registered designation that’s the heart of the neighborhood. Here more than a dozen buildings preserve the pre-World War II streetscape and represent the social and cultural history of Japanese Americans in L.A.

The block is also an emblematic crossroads, where sweeping changes and cultural preservation converge.

“People want places like Little Tokyo,” says Kristin Fukushima, executive director of Little Tokyo Community Council, a nonprofit focusing on sustainable development for more than 5,000 residents and 400 businesses. “People identify with the culture and character of the neighborhood.”

In 1884 a cook named Hamanosuke “Charles Hama” Shigeta opened L.A.’s first Japanese-owned business, Kame, a 1st Street restaurant that stood where gift shop Bunkado is today. It was the seed of what’s now the largest Japanese American neighborhood in the U.S.

In the spring of 1942, Little Tokyo was emptied almost overnight, its residents forced from their homes and sent to incarceration camps. The businesses and institutions that survived and rose after the war remain part of its foundation, including confectionery shop Fugetsu-Do, Anzen Hardware and Far East Cafe, along with Buddhist temples such as Koyasan and Higashi Honganji.

Echoes of displacement resounded last summer when masked federal agents arrived in Little Tokyo and armored vehicles flanked the Japanese American National Museum — a memorial of historic trauma turned into a backdrop for immigration enforcement sweeps.

Meanwhile, generations of activists have helped save the neighborhood from being erased by eminent domain and real estate development. Every major monument and community space exists because of negotiation between activists, city government and corporate interests. “Asian American civil rights are a critical piece of the history here,” Fukushima says, referring to a movement that fought urban displacement, created services and allied with Black, Latino and anti-war groups for social justice.

The latest chapter of endurance is taking shape at the 1st Street North Residences, a mixed-use development with 100% affordable housing that used to be a city-owned parking lot. But before the 1950s the same land was a neighborhood of Japanese American businesses and homes for a growing Black community. Those buildings were demolished following evictions via eminent domain to make way for police headquarters. Now the project represents a reclamation.

Iconic Little Tokyo restaurant Suehiro and mochi maker Fugetsu-Do are expected to move into ground-floor retail spaces surrounding a cherry tree courtyard and the Go For Broke Monument, a black granite memorial honoring the more than 16,000 Japanese American men and women who served in the U.S. Army during World War II.

Philip Hirose is a third-generation owner of Anzen Hardware, an institution that disappeared from Little Tokyo in 2023 but returned to its original location on 1st Street earlier this year. He also operates Azay, a restaurant his mother and late father founded. “Being in Little Tokyo where families have known each other for generations, there’s a lot of interconnectedness,” Hirose says. “You get a kind of gem.”

When asked what it’s like to be part of this neighborhood, one that’s rooted in a century of resilience and renewal, he says, “It feels like everything.”

Just after 11 on election night, Nithya Raman took the stage in a plum-colored dress outshined only by her smile.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass had a narrow lead in early returns. But to Raman and her supporters who packed the plaza in front of the Greek Theatre, they had already won.

A blue deluge had swept across the U.S. to clear out the MAGA status quo that has gaslit Americans for too long. The clueless Republican ruling class’ only defense was that the liberal alternative was worse than the crap President Trump fed Americans while calling it apple pie.

Los Angeles is as blue as the Pacific, yet the same anti-establishment wave, fueled by voters frustrated with the high cost of living and a mayor who face-planted during crisis after crisis, had crashed hard here. Raman, a City Council member, was standing on its crest.

A campaign that started on the last possible day, dismissed by rivals as amateurish and given little chance to succeed against an incumbent with decades of experience and the support of nearly the entire L.A. Democratic establishment, was poised to win. Raman, 45, was expected to pull ahead as more ballots from younger, left-leaning Angelenos were counted.

Standing before Raman was the coalition that made her unlikely rise happen — one that, despite the obvious differences between L.A. and heartland politics, paralleled the one that made the Democratic Party’s takeover of the House and Senate possible.

There were the democratic socialists, who embarrassed mainline Democrats in L.A. once again with a blockbuster night for candidates endorsed by the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter. In addition to Raman’s strong initial showing, Marissa Roy was ahead in the city attorney’s race, and Angela Gonzales-Torres had a substantial lead in her Eastside congressional matchup against incumbent Jimmy Gomez, a scion of the fabled Eastside Latino machine.

There were young people like Arthur Johnson, a 23-year-old Cal State Northridge student who waited in a long line on campus earlier that day to vote in person, “because I wanted that old-school feeling.” Johnson told me that many of his friends were voting for the first time “because they hate Trump, they hate Karen, and they wanted change, however it came.”

There were Latinos like Eloisa Galindo, 45, of East Los Angeles, who showed me a cellphone video of her hanging a handmade pro-Raman manta — a bedsheet sign — on a freeway bridge over the weekend. In Texas and California, Latino voters turned out in huge numbers, helping to make history in each state by electing one of their own as governor for the first time. Galindo and her fellow members of Eastside Padres Contra la Privatización, a group created to help residents affected by the Lineage warehouse fire, felt that Raman represented a new, better way.

“She paid attention to us, and the mayor didn’t,” Galindo said in Spanish. “We felt discriminated against, we felt forgotten — but Nithya did none of that.”

Galindo and her crew were far in the back but cheered so loud that it practically echoed across Griffith Park. The Four Tops’ ”Reach Out (I’ll Be There)” faded out, and Raman beamed.

“Do you love Los Angeles?” she exclaimed. “Are you ready for an L.A. that loves you back? Look at the space around you. Look at what we built together.”

Her rousing speech surveyed the course of L.A. history, from its striving immigrants to Cecil B. DeMille to LGBTQ+ history to the creation of San Pedro’s harbor. She tied her campaign to an election year in which voters across America “demanded change” because they were “angry about a broken status quo, and the politicians who failed them over and over again.”

Angelenos, she said, have become convinced “that this is the best that we can do. Our City Hall became a place where we became so used to saying, ‘No,’ we forgot how to say ‘Yes.’”

She decried the “cynicism that started to take over this city, that started to make us believe that L.A.’s problems weren’t just bad, but they were permanent. That L.A.’s best days were behind us.”

Raman praised her supporters for believing in “hope” — for a better city, a better future, but also hope that even the most entrenched longtimer could be brought down by people who were just tired of being told their concerns didn’t matter.

She spoke for about half an hour and apologized for going on so long in the chilly weather — but no forgiveness was needed on a night like this. Supporters cried tears of joy and hugged one another, sharing political news of the city and also the country, as the energy in the crowd further amped up seemingly every half-hour. James Talarico won in Texas! Dr. Abdul El-Sayed took it in Michigan? Mississippi was in play?!

Was the blue wave real? Could it hold against an angry, vengeful Trump? On this night, at least, it would.

“We have shown Los Angeles” that it’s “a city that is worth fighting for every single day of our lives,” Raman said.

She ended her speech by inviting her Indian American family to the stage — parents, brother, husband and twin 10-year-old children. Faces of a new, more progressive America, now likely the First Family of L.A. They descended the stairs together, and then a crush of Raman supporters stopped her for photos and congratulations.

Another Motown classic — “Dancing in the Streets” — blared, a song of freedom and boogie and promise from a previous generation.

Early in Raman’s speech, she asked the crowd for a favor: “Will you all get on the dance floor with me?” Many obliged, joining their leader to shimmy to Selena and other SoCal favorites.

Tomorrow would come the hard part: What to do next. But on this night, Raman and blue America would dance.

A few hours later, with more votes counted, she was ahead of Bass.

The scene at Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna’s election night party was mostly buzz cuts, dark suits and high-gloss black shoes. Deputies and politicos chatted over festive music while the local news played silently on a big screen at El Pescador Bar and Grill in Carson, which served as Luna’s campaign headquarters on Tuesday.

When the newscast declared around 9:50 p.m. that the sheriff had won a second term, dozens of friends, family members and colleagues nursing margaritas and tacos burst into a rousing round of applause. After one of the sleepiest sheriff’s races in recent memory, Luna had again cruised to victory over his predecessor, Alex Villanueva.

The vibe Tuesday night was very different than it was at the intimate gathering at his home in Long Beach in June 2022, when Luna learned that his relentless retail politics had fueled a convincing win over the rest of the field in that year’s primary.

Luna has risen far from the low-income neighborhoods on L.A.’s Eastside where he was raised in the 1970s and 1980s, when gangs and violence were rampant. His parents left behind their lives in the Mexican states of Sinaloa and Michoacán, immigrating to the U.S., where he was born in an East Los Angeles hospital.

Luna’s wife Celines said Tuesday she didn’t believe he was going to win when he sat her and their two adult children down in summer 2021 and told them he wanted to come out of his brief retirement to run for sheriff. But “he worked 110% and he never gave up” during both the 2022 and 2026 campaigns, said Celines, who brought cheerleading pom-poms to shake for her husband Tuesday evening.

“He got home after 10 o’clock most nights. He basically worked two jobs,” she said.

All that work paid off Tuesday, when Luna became the first sheriff to secure a second term in L.A. County since Lee Baca, who held the office from 1998 to 2014.

Villanueva, on the other hand, has now lost three consecutive elections, including his last two sheriff bids and his failed 2024 campaign for L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn’s seat, which Hahn won outright in the primary with nearly three-fifths of the vote. The former sheriff’s brand of sharp-elbowed politics plagued by scandal and vitriol has left him effectively radioactive in county politics, according to some political observers.

Luna, meanwhile, has presided over a period of relative calm at the Hall of Justice. “There are, unfortunately, fractured relationships that need to be fixed,” Luna told The Times four days before he began his first term in 2022. “Sometimes,” he added, “the way you approach governing makes a huge difference.”

Luna has made good on that promise to improve relationships. The L.A. County Board of Supervisors took drastic measures to try to rein in Villanueva’s behavior while he was sheriff, including voting to investigate the department’s activities and freezing millions of dollars in funding. Luna, on the other hand, was endorsed by all five supervisors during this year’s campaign.

“Sheriff Robert Luna has earned the trust and support of voters, and this election is an overwhelming show of confidence in his leadership,” Hahn said in a statement. “Crime is down, he is bringing transparency and accountability back to the department, and he is working closely with me and my colleagues on the Board of Supervisors to make our communities safer.”

A vague sense that the sheriff is “always in the news” for something good was part of what drove Rafael Nolasco to support his candidacy for a second term. The 49-year-old East L.A. native said last month that he planned to vote for Luna, whom he views as a role model for his children.

“Seeing somebody from your background having a position like that, to me it’s amazing,” Nolasco said after talking with Luna outside a taqueria in the neighborhood.

For Luna, campaigning has meant long hours away from his loved ones, so he’s excited to be able to focus solely on his work as sheriff.

“I want to get back to just doing my one full-time job and get reacquainted with my wife and my family. They sacrifice so much,” he said minutes after the sheriff’s race was called Tuesday night. “You’re working so hard, and at one point you take a deep breath and go, my God, how much have I sacrificed? And is it worth it? But tonight it was.”

Luna’s tenure as sheriff will now stretch from the late COVID-19 era through the 2028 Summer Olympics and beyond. He said late Tuesday that he’s got some priorities for his second term, including making more progress on deputy gangs and determining “what are we going to do with Men’s Central Jail.”

The U.S. Department of Justice announced in September that it is investigating conditions at Men’s Central Jail, which has been plagued for years by overcrowding, violence and other issues. Luna has said in the past that he would like to see the aging jail shut down if it is first replaced with a modern facility providing clinical care to inmates.

The sheriff also said he plans to track and adapt to how the broader political changes ushered in by the Democratic wave in the midterm elections Tuesday could impact approaches on immigration enforcement and other federal initiatives with local implications.

But first he said he’s going to take some time to determine the best way forward for his department.

“I’m going to bring my team back together, and we’re going to revisit all of our priorities … We’re going to continue the things that worked, reexamine things that may not have worked,” he said. “There’s a lot of work to do. This is not a finished product.”

For more than a year, Marissa Roy has vowed to turn the Los Angeles city attorney’s office into a massive “public interest law firm.”

Now, she has a sweeping mandate to put that plan into action.

As of Wednesday morning, Roy had nearly double the vote tally of her opponent, L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. John McKinney, all but assuring the 34-year-old progressive will walk into City Hall in one of her jewel-toned blazers next year as Los Angeles’ chief lawyer. While the contest has not officially been called, McKinney effectively conceded the race in an interview with The Times on Wednesday.

For decades, the L.A. city attorney’s office has focused almost exclusively on prosecuting minor crimes and defending the city from increasingly expensive litigation. In an interview in May, outgoing City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto scowled when a reporter mentioned Roy’s campaign line about running the office as a “public interest law firm.”

“That’s insane,” Feldstein Soto said, days before her historic primary defeat.

But in Roy, an enthusiastic and tenacious California deputy attorney general, the city will have a proactive top litigator who’s ready to play offense. Roy has promised to take her experience from a years-long legal battle with Meta to aggressively pursue litigation against corporations and landlords for alleged misconduct that harms the average Angeleno.

Long before she announced her candidacy, Roy had begun courting public servants inside the sprawling city attorney’s office to ensure her plan passed muster.

What began as a series of informal coffees at Pitchoun! Bakery downtown quickly evolved into a network of trusted advisors, who helped shape her campaign promises and fine-tune policy proposals so they could be executed on Day One.

“There’s not a single word on my website that they haven’t reviewed first to make sure that we can implement it,” Roy said in an October interview. “It’s why sometimes I won’t take a hard line on something, because I talk to the deputies involved and they say they need discretion.”

Despite attack ads saying otherwise, Roy hasn’t vowed to block prosecution of certain misdemeanor crimes — even though she prefers diversion programs as a way to aid homeless defendants.

She’s been more direct about her plans to protect the city’s immigrant communities from potential future raids and aggressively fight the Trump administration in court when it targets Los Angeles. Given her affiliation with the Democratic Socialists of America, Roy’s stances on litigation involving the Los Angeles Police Department could also depart from her predecessors’.

The union representing rank-and-file LAPD officers spent millions against Roy. Feldstein Soto also steadfastly defended the LAPD’s widely criticized uses of force on protesters and journalists during immigration raids last year.

Roy also benefits from a deep bench of elected allies across the state, including her current boss, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, and fellow progressive city attorneys in San Diego, San Francisco and Oakland. Many local supporters showed up to toast her presumptive win Tuesday night, already riding high on the blue wave that crashed across the U.S. when the first Los Angeles returns dropped around 8:20 p.m.

The event at Audio Graph Brewery in downtown L.A. had all the energy of a wedding reception, with DSA acolytes munching cookies emblazoned with Roy’s face in icing and union organizers bopping up and down to the viral Slayyyter track “Dance…” as results rolled in.

Roy is an evangelist for affirmative litigation, proactive suits of the type that forced President Trump to cede control of the California National Guard late last year after he deployed thousands of soldiers to quell protests and aid immigration enforcement across the state.

“We need someone who knows how to sue the Trump administration, who also has the relationships and can pick up the phone and call the San Francisco and San Diego city attorney,” Roy said. “We’re all part of this very tiny niche of municipalities suing the federal government. We all became experts [in those methods] together.”

Despite at times amplifying inaccurate claims that McKinney was a conservative, Roy and her opponent shared some policy planks. Both were highly critical of ballooning legal costs under Feldstein Soto, as well as her penchant for hiring outside law firms to fight the city’s battles. Both also said they wanted to revive internal programs the outgoing city attorney had scuttled, such as neighborhood prosecutors and specialized units for handing child abuse and domestic violence.

“This election is gonna go her way, and I’m just really truly grateful for the opportunity to be part of this over the last nine months,” McKinney said Wednesday morning. “I met a remarkable group of people. I learned a lot about the city, the City Attorney’s office, about city politics and I’m a better person for it. I congratulate Marissa on her victory, I wish her well.”

McKinney said he hopes Roy can “uplift that office to be the finest municipal law office in the country,” but also suggested she spend her energy on more than legal combat with business leaders or the White House.

“She’s gonna have to broaden her focus to issues related to public safety, homelessness. Obviously, we both agree that city liabilities need aggressive proactive risk management,” he said.

Meanwhile, Roy could scarcely contain her excitement as she laid out her plan to supporters chanting her name.

“I’m much more comfortable when people chant things like ‘Let’s sue it’, because that’s the work that we’re going to do,” she said.

“Let’s sue it!” the crowd cheered.

In the race to become Los Angeles’ next mayor, City Councilmember Nithya Raman holds a three-percentage-point lead over incumbent Karen Bass, according to preliminary results released by county officials Wednesday.

Early leads may change as the vote count continues. So far, Raman leads with 51.7% of the vote, while Bass trails with 48.3%.

The precinct-level results include more than 730,000 votes in the mayoral race counted as of 3 a.m. on election night. The county’s latest update totals to more than 784,000 votes.

The map below shades each precinct by the leading candidate. Deeper green or orange indicate a wider lead. Precincts with more votes cast per square mile appear more solid, with areas with lower voter density fade to white. Hatched areas had 10 or fewer votes.

With the county’s latest returns, about 66.6% of the expected vote is in. The Associated Press, which estimates the voter turnout, has not called the race.

Election results will be finalized by the California secretary of state in early December.

Jose Ugarte was ahead of Estuardo Mazariegos in the race for District 9 on the Los Angeles City Council, while in District 3, Barri Worth Girvan and Tim Gaspar were nearly even, according to early returns Tuesday night.

The current council members in both districts — Bob Blumenfield in District 3 and Curren Price in District 9 — are leaving office because of term limits.

From his campaign headquarters in South L.A., Ugarte did not declare victory but said he felt confident he could hang on to the lead. Supporters watched on a big screen as live results rolled in from the county registrar’s website.

“This means everything to me,” Ugarte said. “I’m looking forward to hitting the ground running. There’s a lot of work to be done in the district.”

District 9 has for decades been represented by a Black council member. Both men vying to replace Price are Latino immigrants, reflecting demographic changes in a district that is nearly 80% Latino and that includes the Convention Center and USC.

Despite the shift in representation, both Ugarte and Mazariegos have said they are committed to ensuring Black residents are heard and represented. The 9th District is the poorest in the city and residents face an array of challenges, including homelessness, safety and street cleanliness, according to the candidates.

Mazariegos, who attended a campaign party at Paseo San Miguel, a Salvadoran restaurant, remained optimistic, saying the early returns “show us that when you show up for the community, they show up for you.”

“We still have a lot of votes to count but already you can see the impact of our campaign, increased youth turnout, and so much optimism at the polls,” he said in a statement.

Ugarte is a former deputy chief of staff for Price, and Mazariegos is co-director of the L.A. chapter of Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment. The most recent campaign finance reports show Ugarte raising $1.1 million in contributions and matching funds, and Mazariegos with about $787,000.

Ugarte’s campaign also has received major outside support through independent expenditure committees, which have no contribution limit but aren’t allowed to coordinate with a candidate’s campaign. His campaign has received more than $2.3 million in independent expenditure support, with funds coming from Airbnb, Uber, the California Apartment Assn. and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 18, which represents workers at the Department of Water and Power.

Mazariegos, who is endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America’s L.A. chapter, also has received support through several groups running independent expenditure campaigns on his behalf, including United Teachers Los Angeles and the Progressive Era PAC. Special interest groups have spent more than $250,000 supporting his campaign.

Gaspar and Worth Girvan are competing in a west San Fernando Valley district that includes Woodland Hills, Reseda and Canoga Park.

At a Woodland Hills watch party, Worth Girvan said she was feeling confident about the early returns, which showed her nearly tied with Gaspar.

“I’m extremely full of gratitude,” she said at the Local Peasant restaurant. “For me, it’s always been about the people of the west Valley and making sure we have a voice.”

In a statement, Gaspar said he was encouraged by the early results and the momentum behind his campaign.

“We saw and heard it everyday on the campaign trail,” he said. “The West Valley showed up to have their voices heard on safety, homelessness, and the cost of living. We look forward to the final votes to be counted.”

Gaspar founded an eponymous insurance company in the Valley in 2008, selling it in 2021. He has said he intends to bring a pro-business perspective to City Hall.

Worth Girvan is a longtime public employee. Prior to running, she was L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath’s district director for three years, and has said that she would leverage her years of experience in the public sector to advocate for the district in City Hall.

Gaspar has outraised Worth Girvan, raising about $1.3 million of individual contributions and matching funds. Worth Girvan raised about $753,000.

The race also has received interest from outside groups, with Gaspar’s campaign receiving more than $2.7 million in independent expenditure spending. During the runoff, special interest groups, including IBEW Local 18, the California Apartment Assn. and Uber, were among those that spent a combined $1.3 million supporting his candidacy.

Worth Girvan received about $438,000 in outside contributions during the runoff, with funding mostly from labor unions.

A ballot measure that would funnel more money to the Los Angeles city Fire Department by raising sales taxes by a half-cent was leading in early returns Tuesday night, along with seven other ballot measures before city voters.

“I’m humbled by the support of the voters,” said Doug Coates, president of United Firefighters of Los Angeles City Local 112, which spearheaded the measure. “We showed up and we did what we needed to do … Thank you to the voters.”

Partial returns also showed L.A. voters turning thumbs up on a City Charter amendment that would allow the City Council to meet just once a week, instead of the thrice-weekly meetings now required.

Measure FD would increase the city’s retail sales tax from 10.25 cents to 10.75 cents per dollar spent, with all of the extra revenue going to the Fire Department. The city still would be required to fund firefighters at its normal rate, meaning the measure would add an estimated $345 million annually to the department’s budget.

Proponents of the measure include the union representing rank-and-file firefighters, who say the department is underfunded. The tax fund is needed to lower response times across the city and increase the number of firefighters, according to the union.

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., a nonprofit that advocates for lower taxes, opposed the measure. The organization raised concerns that this would be the third sales tax hike since 2024, costing an average of $86 per person and $345 for a family of four in additional sales taxes each year.

It also was opposed by the union representing Los Angeles Police Department officers, which objected to limiting the revenue to one city department.

The measure that would allow the City Council to meet just once a week was included in Charter Amendment EE. Most City Council members supported it, with Councilmember Tim McOsker noting his time is better spent working in his district.

Councilmember Monica Rodriguez opposed the measure, arguing that having fewer public forums is a disservice to constituents, who would have less time to meaningfully engage with their representatives. She also worried fewer meetings would mean council members would rush through deliberations.

The amendment also would make smaller changes to how the city governs, including giving more power to independent inspectors to conduct audits of the L.A. Police and Fire Departments, and increase the penalties for campaign finance violations.

The number of signatures needed for a ballot referendum also would rise, and ethics commissioners would be barred from City Council or the L.A. Unified Board of Education for five years.

The six other measures were leading by wider margins.

Proposition TE was ahead in early results. Measure ULA, also known as the “mansion tax,” imposes additional taxes on L.A. property sales above $5.4 million. Proposition TE would allow Palisades fire victims who own homes in the area to avoid the tax as long as they sell the property within five years of the disaster.

Charter Amendment LA, which aims to streamline how the city delivers basic services for infrastructure in need of repair, was leading in early results. The measure would reduce the power of the city Board of Public Works and possibly lead to eliminating it.

Charter Amendment PL took a big lead in partial early returns. The measure folds in five proposals, including to consolidate the city’s planning department, to facilitate building and opening businesses in the city.

Charter Amendment PRK, which would double the minimum amount of money earmarked for the Department of Recreation and Parks, had a big early lead in early results. If it passes, the department could receive a minimum of $986 million annually by 2036, up from the current rate that would generate $493 million by that year.

A measure that would make changes to the city’s airports, harbor and Department of Water and Power had a big lead in early results. Charter Amendment PRT would require the Los Angeles World Airport’s board of commissioners to include two members who live in Van Nuys and three who live around LAX.

Charter Amendment SC, which makes small clarifying changes to language surrounding campaign finance rules for the LAUSD Board of Education, also led in early results. Those changes would affect campaign contribution limits, filing deadlines, public disclosures and fundraising windows.

Marissa Roy is on track to become Los Angeles’ next city attorney after jumping out to a significant lead over L.A. County prosecutor John McKinney based on early returns.

Roy, 34, a deputy state attorney general, campaigned on a promise to convert the city attorney’s office into a massive “public interest law firm,” vowing to champion renters and defend Angelenos from an increasingly hostile White House.

Roy, a coalition-builder, had long been the favorite in the race, leading McKinney by double digits in polls leading up to Tuesday. She won the June primary with more than 40% of the vote.

Roy and McKinney’s head-to-head race came after voters and powerful city unions turned on the incumbent, Hydee Feldstein Soto, whose June primary defeat marked the first time a sitting L.A. elected official failed to advance to a general election in nearly a century.

Supporters at Roy’s watch party at the downtown Audio Graph brewery erupted in cheers when the first batch of results dropped, showing Roy doubling up McKinney’s early vote total. The mood was ebullient as the first batch of returns trickled in, buoyed by dramatic wins for Democrats across the country and a better than expected early lead for their candidate.

Roy arrived around 9 p.m. in a plum-colored dress, her arms stacked with bangles that rang as she embraced supporters and took the stage.

“I was planning on hedging and saying, ‘It looks like we’re winning,’ but I think we won!” Roy told the crowd to whoops and cheers.

Roy ran to the left of her opponent and tried to paint him as the preferred choice of Republicans in L.A. County. McKinney is a lifelong Democrat and has been critical of President Trump.

At Hill Street bar, close to the downtown criminal courthouse where McKinney has built his career, supporters swayed to smooth jazz and Top 40 radio hits, nursing cocktails and betraying no reaction to the dismal early returns.

In a brief interview outside the bar, McKinney remained positive and said he always knew he faced an uphill battle. He announced his candidacy long after Roy and Feldstein Soto began their campaigns, yet still surged to a surprise second-place finish in June. He said he was proud he was able to inject discussion of public safety issues and real strategies for solving homelessness into the race.

“I got into this race nine months ago because the people of Los Angeles deserve better,” he said.

Although he said he had “no bitterness” toward Roy and wished her the best of luck, he did express disappointment at the efforts her campaign and some of her supporters took to incorrectly paint him as a conservative.

“I just felt that it was very misleading … it’s not a political position. It’s not a partisan position,” he said.

The candidates were a study in contrasts: Roy is a stylish progressive with savvy social media campaign videos, while McKinney is a stoic law-and-order-type. They also offered voters starkly different plans for leading the city attorney’s office.

A core part of the California Department of Justice legal team that won a historic $17-billion settlement from Meta this summer, Roy ran as a champion of the average Angeleno, promising to hold corporations and landlords accountable for misconduct. A Yale-educated lawyer, she positioned herself as the only candidate who would stand up to Trump administration policies that have harmed Los Angeles.

McKinney, who often noted he has been a lawyer nearly as long as Roy has been alive, leaned on his nearly unblemished record prosecuting some of the region’s most notorious and violent crimes and his compelling personal history. Orphaned at 5, he was raised by an older sister in a household where money was extremely tight and found himself painting houses just to afford college classes. In a 28-year career as an L.A. County prosecutor, McKinney won convictions in a number of high-profile cases, including the murder of rapper Nipsey Hussle.

The veteran prosecutor promised to focus his energy on reducing homelessness and improving public safety through misdemeanors he believed the prior administration under-enforced, including street racing and animal abuse on Skid Row. He also vowed to conduct more aggressive reviews of the way nonprofits that do business with the city spend funds meant to aid unhoused citizens.

Although they aligned in few places, both Roy and McKinney said they would work to bring down the city’s out-of-control legal costs. That figure exploded to nearly $300 million in city payouts last year.

Roy was supported by the L.A. County Democratic Party, the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). McKinney was backed by a coalition of law enforcement unions, four former city attorneys and L.A. County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna was leading challenger and former Sheriff Alex Villanueva by a wide margin in his bid for reelection Tuesday, according to early returns, in a rematch of the 2022 race between the two lawmen.

Early returns also showed L.A. County voters favoring Measure A, which would establish binding arbitration for sheriff’s deputies, firefighters and other public safety employees who by law cannot go on strike.

A second county ballot measure, Measure E, was far ahead in early returns. Measure E asks voters to create an independent ethics commission that previously was approved by another measure, and address administrative missteps that invalidated funding approved by voters in 2020 to support jail alternatives.

In the sheriff’s race, Villanueva was seeking to regain the job he lost in 2022 when Luna successfully challenged him for reelection.

This contest was lower profile than the 2022 race, but the stakes are just as high, as the new Los Angeles County sheriff will face a host of challenges, from navigating relationships with federal and local agencies to boosting recruitment and retention.

Luna pitched himself to county voters as a calmly effective operator who has brought down crime while building relationships with local, state and federal leaders that suffered under his predecessor’s tenure. The incumbent highlighted his department’s successful navigation of World Cup security and the Trump administration’s deployment of federal immigration agents and troops to L.A. as examples of the efficacy of his approach.

Villanueva, on the other hand, has sought to depict L.A. County as more dangerous under what he describes as the overly permissive approach of Luna. The former sheriff claimed Luna has presided over a deep decline in department morale and staffing while being too soft on drug users, the homeless and petty criminals.

Representatives of the Luna and Villanueva campaigns did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday evening.

Both men guided the department through tumultuous periods for the county. Villanueva was sheriff for nearly two years at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, while Luna was in office during the Eaton and Palisades fires.

The next four years promise further challenges. The Olympic Games are less than two years away, and the sheriff’s department will be expected to play a major role keeping millions of visitors and athletes safe.

The new sheriff also will be expected to rein in the department’s budget, which has experienced ballooning overtime costs as sworn vacancies have risen markedly under both sheriffs.

Villanueva claims Luna is out of touch with deputies and that they are leaving the force en masse in response to his poor leadership skills. Villanueva said he would improve staffing by redirecting overtime spending and serving as a beacon to would-be deputies who’ve been turned off by Luna.

But Luna denies that deputies are fleeing the department and says he’s taken major steps to improve the hiring process. He has hired an outside contractor to speed up applicant background checks and provided an avenue for many new deputies to go from the academy to patrol instead of first requiring a stint in one of the county’s jails.

Among the two countywide ballot measures, Measure A was the highest profile, with unions representing county deputy sheriffs, firefighters and others spending millions of dollars in support.

Measure A would mandate binding arbitration between the county government and negotiators who represent deputies, firefighters, lifeguards and other public safety employees in the event contract talks reach an impasse.

Currently, the county supervisors can impose a final offer that employees must accept because by law, public safety personnel are not allowed to strike.

Supporters say the measure adds balance to the negotiations process and removes the unilateral authority of the county Board of Supervisors. The change is backed by unions representing county firefighters, sheriff’s deputies and other public safety employees.

County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath authored the motion, which has the support of four out of the five supervisors. No formal opposition has been filed. Supervisor Holly Mitchell raised financial concerns about the measure but has not officially opposed it.

Measure E on the county ballot would fix issues with Measure J, which was approved by voters in 2020, and Measure G, which passed in 2024.

Measure J earmarked at least 10% of locally generated, unrestricted revenue to incarceration alternatives. However, some of the ballot language in Measure G unintentionally repealed Measure J — an administrative error that was discovered in June 2025. Amendment E would partly ensure the funding to incarceration alternatives remains in effect.

The amendment also would enshrine in the county charter the seven-member ethics commission and ethics compliance office that was created when Measure G passed.

The amendment has the support of Horvath and other supervisors, as well as the League of Women Voters of L.A. County, who said Measure J shouldn’t be undone by an administrative error.

Today’s the day, and the race is a dead heat: The final poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies (cosponsored by The Times) found that 40% of likely L.A. voters said they supported incumbent Karen Bass, while another 40% supported progressive challenger Nithya Raman for L.A. mayor.

That leaves 19% undecided — and it might be those voters that celebrities are trying to reach with their recent endorsements. Jane Fonda, Yvette Nicole Brown, Anthony Anderson, Cedric the Entertainer, Samuel L. Jackson, Kym Whitley, D.L. Hughley, Dustin Lance Black, George Lopez and Stevie Wonder have all voiced public support for Bass. Meanwhile Bob Odenkirk, Mindy Kaling, Adam Scott, Joel Kim Booster, Caleb Hearon, Poppy Liu, P. J. Byrne, Adam Conover, Brennan Lee Mulligan and Jaboukie Young-White have done the same for Raman.

“Battling the nationwide homeless epidemic is the hardest job in American government,” Jackson said. “Karen Bass walked toward it in one day. Her opponent chaired the City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee and canceled meetings on it. It’s easy to run a pilot in one district and call it a model. Try doing it in 15 districts with Washington cutting your funding while the whole country watches. That’s the job, and Karen Bass has done it.”

In the other camp, Kaling said: “There’s one issue that I can speak to from experience: Keeping Hollywood jobs in Los Angeles. Yes, it’s actors and directors, but I’m also talking about the crew, electricians, grips, hair and makeup artists, drivers, set builders, editors — and then there’s the restaurants, the dry cleaners and the small businesses that depend on productions being here. And Nithya’s plan is to fight for that work to stay in town. She wants stronger, dependable state tax incentives, and a film office that actively works to keep production in town.”

There have also been a few gray areas: Bass posted a video of drag queen Trixie Mattel‘s voting PSA to her account, but Mattel didn’t explicitly endorse her as a candidate. “I watch, like, 18 hours of news a day, so it was kind of crazy sitting next to Karen; she’s like my third roommate in my house,” Mattel said. “So shout out to Karen.”

Luxury real estate broker Jason Oppenheim, best known for his role on the reality series “Selling Sunset,” had a discussion with Raman, cross-posted to both of their accounts, and also interviewed her on Graham Stephan’s podcast, “The Iced Coffee Hour.” And Arnold Schwarzenegger reportedly held an off-the-record meeting with Raman and figures from Hollywood and other industries at his L.A. office.

Bass’ supporters rolled out a series of coordinated, collaborative videos from her social media accounts somewhat regularly over the past two weeks, several with matching formatting (including Fonda, Anderson, Cedric, Hughley and Lopez). Some of the videos also featured Bass.

In the most-liked celebrity endorsement included here, posted Monday, Lopez said: “Karen Bass is like that tía that shows up with a huge pot of pozole before anybody’s even hungry. She’s gonna keep fighting for us, but también we have to fight for her.”

Raman’s campaign, on the other hand, had a more organic approach, incorporating celebrities into specific events, like National Coming Out Day with Booster (and the drag queen Pickle), “Dungeons & Dragons for the City” fundraiser with gamemaster Brennan Lee Mulligan and an Election Eve Party with Young-White (and comedians Kiran Deol, Jared Goldstein and Brittani Nichols).

Hearon shouted her out while hosting Chappell Roan’s Super Graphic Spectacular fundraiser for the singer’s Midwest Princess Project supporting trans youth and LGBTQ+ communities, and Byrne posted an Instagram story with his son after casting his ballot for Raman.

Raman’s most-liked celebrity endorsement included here was not cross-posted to her account, but rather came from Mulligan’s own get-out-the-vote video. “I am supporting Nithya Raman for mayor in Los Angeles, Marissa Roy for city attorney,” he said with an “I Voted” sticker on his forehead. “And I would say this as well: There’s great candidates all over the country.”

Other celebrities simply encouraged fans to fulfill their civic duty and vote without backing any candidates, while others focused on the California gubernatorial election and key Senate races.

A newcomer, less than a year old, has soared all the way to the guide’s highest slot? Yes. Swedish chef Marcus Jernmark stunned us both with his finer-dining debut in a glamorous subterranean lair on West Pico Boulevard. “Finer,” meaning: four substantial set courses, which change every six or so weeks, for a reasonable $150 per person in our era of $400 tasting menus. The restaurant, packed nightly, doubles as a master class on how to conduct an effective introduction to Los Angeles. This isn’t someone trying to demonstrate what “California cuisine” should be; it’s someone keeping us rapt with his own story. Jernmark’s genius — pairing his Scandinavian instincts with the riches of our local harvests — doesn’t jump out through a perfunctory scroll of Lielle’s dishes on social media. Everything is meticulously plated, but you have to taste the flashbulb-bright acidity among hills of snipped vegetables and luxe seafood, and how he pairs meats and fruits for maximum dramatic tension. And the bread! Two loaves bookend dinner: Crusty-plush sourdough to be smeared with cultured butter that’s nearly cheese, and golden cardamom buns soaked in a Jernmark concoction riffing on boozy spiced Swedish punsch.

Lielle is astonishing from the outset, a rarity heightened by the front-of-house staff’s united, enlightened mode of hospitality; the surroundings, designed to evoke a sumptuous wine cave; and a spectacular, diverse wine list worthy of the atmosphere. Is it the great higher-end debut of the decade? Quite possibly, and there’s a bonus: Jernmark and his team just opened Marée, a bistro upstairs from Lielle, with fun brainstorms like mussels “gratin” and the city’s next must-have burger.
Read Bill Addison’s review of Lielle.