Nithya

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s David Zahniser and Noah Goldberg, giving you the latest on city and county government.

It’s one of the most exacting tasks to face a left-leaning candidate running for office in L.A.: filling out the Democratic Socialists of America’s questionnaire.

During the candidate endorsement process, the DSA’s L.A. chapter issues a lengthy form that ends with a spate of yes or no questions, mainly around hot-button topics: Do you support Medicare for All? Do you favor the policies of the Green New Deal? Would you put a halt to police exchange programs with Israel?

When filling out the form, mayoral candidate Nithya Raman voiced support for all three. But unlike some DSA-endorsed candidates, the council member declined to give a yes or no answer on an assortment of other topics, opting for longer explanations.

Raman, a DSA member, declined to check either box when asked if she would work as mayor to repeal a law prohibiting homeless encampments near schools. She did the same on whether to divert funds from law enforcement into other public services.

She also declined to say yes or no on removing police from K-12 schools, and on banning the use of facial recognition and other surveillance technologies.

The answers offer the latest sign that Raman has been proceeding with caution on some of the DSA’s litmus test issues. Raman, who tweeted “defund the police” six years ago, said in February that the ranks of the Los Angeles Police Department should not get any smaller.

Appearing Wednesday in Pico-Union, she said she was proud to have the DSA as part of her coalition but also described herself as politically independent.

“I’ve made sure that the decisions that I’m making, the votes that I’m taking, are ones that are based on an understanding of how these policies are actually going to improve the lives of Angelenos,” said Raman, who received the DSA endorsement earlier this month.

Mayor Karen Bass, Raman’s opponent, did not seek the endorsement, saying she was not aligned with some of the group’s positions.

Raman’s questionnaire stands in contrast with those of some of her DSA colleagues.

Hugo Soto-Martínez answered nearly every yes-no question posed by the DSA during his first run for City Council in 2022. Ysabel Jurado did the same during her successful council campaign two years later.

So what were Raman’s longer answers? On homeless encampments, she wrote that she has repeatedly voted against increasing the number of locations where tents are prohibited — and doesn’t want to saddle homeless people with criminal records that could stifle their ability to find permanent housing.

Regarding cuts to the LAPD, Raman said she would expand the city’s network of unarmed crisis response teams, ensuring that “trained professionals” — not police officers — respond to mental health and substance use calls.

On campus police, Raman said schools “should never default to armed officers for discipline or student well being.” And on facial recognition software, Raman said she would prohibit surveillance technologies that lack “clear evidence of need and completely enforceable safeguards for civil rights and privacy.”

“I will also require real oversight and consent before the city deploys any of it,” she wrote.

Raman even declined to say yes or no when asked if she wants noncitizens to vote in local elections. But she explained in writing that she voted earlier this year to put a proposal from Soto-Martínez on the ballot that would give the council the ability to enact noncitizen voting for city and school board elections.

The council later dropped that measure.

Picking apart the Paramount deal

Raman and Bass weighed in recently on the deal struck by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and Paramount Skydance Chief Executive David Ellison on the studio’s merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.

Both mayoral candidates said Paramount should be held accountable for the promises contained in the settlement, which requires the company to distribute 30 films per year in theaters for the first two years after the merger, then 32 films per year for the next three years.

Of the two, Raman sounded more dismayed by the deal.

“There was a better outcome than this,” Raman told reporters at a recent news conference. “But this is the outcome that we have, and now it’s incumbent upon us to fight for the best results for workers here.”

For much of this year, Bass and Raman voiced concern that the merger would trigger mass layoffs within the film and television industries. But last month, Bass began calling for the two parties to engage with each other in good faith, saying too many productions had come to a standstill, putting people out of work.

“The prolonged uncertainty around this decision has already led to job losses and left workers wondering what it would mean for their futures,” Bass said in a statement this week.

The settlement alleviated the anxiety felt by some at City Hall that Paramount might follow through on its threat to leave California.

Bass’ stance aligned her more with IATSE, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, whose leaders voiced their own concerns about uncertainty while appearing with the mayor at City Hall last month.

Raman was more in sync with Writers Guild of America West, which denounced Bass for pressing Bonta to seek a resolution, saying “industry workers deserve a mayor who believes in upholding the law.”

Bass’ campaign is supported by IATSE Local 33 and the California IATSE Council, which said earlier this year that the mayor has “done more to bring our jobs back to Los Angeles than anyone in city government.”

On Thursday, the Writers Guild endorsed Raman, saying she is a “true pro-labor candidate who walks the walk.”

State of play

— POLLING PRESSURE: A new poll put Raman decisively in the lead in the mayor’s race, showing her with a double-digit advantage over Bass. The findings will ramp up the pressure on Bass and her allies to go sharply negative against Raman while courting the huge number of voters who say they are still undecided.

— MAKING THEIR CASE: Bass and Raman sat down with The Times for two separate, wide-ranging interviews, discussing issues like homelessness, the Palisades fire and the biggest mistakes they’ve made in office.

— PEOPLE MOVER POSTPONED: The opening date of the People Mover train being built at Los Angeles International Airport has been delayed yet again, with contractors now aiming for early January. The 2.25-mile automated train, which has been over budget for years, was originally supposed to open three years ago.

— EXECUTIVE ORDER: Bass ordered a review of the LAPD’s dealings with mentally ill people this week, saying the training that police officers are receiving is “woefully inadequate.” The mayor said she was particularly troubled by a July 29 incident in which police fatally shot a man who approached them with an aluminum bat.

— HURDLES TO HOUSING: Why has housing production been lagging in L.A.? Real estate developers pointed to a list of reasons, including high interest rates, pandemic-era policies like rent freezes and Measure ULA, the voter-approved tax on high-end property sales.

— TRUMP REBUFFED: An appeals court blocked the Trump administration from stopping the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority from applying for millions of dollars in federal funding. The agency had applied on behalf of homeless service organizations from across the county.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to address homelessness went to the area around 11th and Irolo streets, a location represented by Councilmember Heather Hutt.
• On the docket next week: Bass and Raman are slated to appear Tuesday at the Skirball Cultural Center for the 2026 Jewish Los Angeles Mayoral Forum. The event is hosted by the Jewish Federation Los Angeles, the Skirball Cultural Center, ADL Los Angeles and other groups.

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.

On the night of the June primary, standing before cheering supporters at a downtown brewery, Nithya Raman was in a familiar position:

Outspent by rivals. Mocked by online haters. Her political career left for dead.

In early returns for Los Angeles mayor, Raman was in third place behind incumbent Karen Bass and reality TV villain Spencer Pratt. The City Council member thanked everyone for helping her “little campaign” but seemed resigned to defeat.

“We may not get an answer we like,” Raman said. “But regardless of what happens next, nobody — nobody — can take away what all of us have built together.”

She ended her short speech by going on the dance floor to greet well-wishers and boogie for a bit. The move came off to me as someone losing herself in happiness so she didn’t have to think about the sad reality.

But when I think about that moment now, it seems clear that she was embracing another familiar position:

Confident in what was ahead. Content with being underestimated. Ready to upend City Hall yet again.

As more votes were counted, Raman overtook Pratt to face Bass in the November runoff. Raman’s last-minute decision to enter the race had shocked L.A.’s political class and drawn accusations of betrayal for challenging Bass, a longtime ally whom she had endorsed. Yet Raman managed to pull off a hard-fought campaign, with Pratt as an unexpectedly strong insurgent from the right — a winning streak that continued this week when she scored two key endorsements.

The L.A. chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and Unite Here Local 11, the powerful hospitality workers union, will now bring their renowned get-out-the-vote operations to L.A. doorsteps, street corners and smartphone screens on Raman’s behalf. Unite Here gives Raman’s campaign a working class cred it has sorely lacked. The DSA will unleash the democratic socialist trade winds that have swept across elections nationwide and helped five of its six endorsed candidates in L.A. County either win outright in the June primary or move on to the general election.

Neither endorsement was guaranteed. Even though Raman is a member and the L.A. chapter had endorsed her two City Council campaigns, the group didn’t officially support her in the mayoral primary. Some members openly questioned whether having a democratic socialist run a city seemingly destined for the dumpster was the best look for their movement. Raman’s positions on police funding, the mansion tax and the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks also ran counter to the party orthodoxy.

Unite Here had regularly endorsed Bass throughout her 22-year political career and seemed likely to join the dozens of other unions backing the mayor.

But with the one-two punch, Raman has shown yet again that she’s the comeback kid of L.A. politics. Every time critics throw her a curveball, she smacks it to the opposite field and gets on base, ready to grind her way to a win.

People line up to attend a Democratic Socialists of America fundraiser May 17 in Los Angeles.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

In 2020, the city’s establishment initially dismissed Raman, then a political novice, as a wokosa fluke, until she beat David Ryu, who became the first L.A. council incumbent to lose in 17 years.

A year later, Raman was seen as such a threat that the powers that be sought to torpedo her for good. In the infamous City Hall leaked audio, then-Councilmember Kevin de León suggested to then-Councilmember Gil Cedillo, then-council President Nury Martinez and labor leader Ron Herrera that Raman’s district could be “put in the blender and [chopped] up, left and right” during redistricting to dampen her reelection chances.

On the recording, Martinez enthusiastically endorsed the plan, telling the other three that Raman had complained about her redrawn district.

“Go f— do the work,” Martinez said she told Raman, “and see if you can” win again.

Raman did win, scoring an outright victory in the 2024 primary (Martinez, of course, resigned in disgrace). A censure from DSA-LA because Raman accepted the endorsement of a pro-Israel group proved no more debilitating than a stray eyelash.

In this year’s mayoral primary, Raman raised less money than Bass and Pratt and flopped during their one debate against each other. Her fellow democratic socialist council members — Eunisses Hernandez, Ysabel Jurado and Hugo Soto-Martínez — all endorsed the mayor.

None of it mattered. Raman is now easily scoring off of Bass mishaps, like the mayor’s response to the Lineage warehouse fire and her random broadside against street vendors during a debate in Sherman Oaks last month. The Dodgers should sit Raman in their dugout come playoff time, because her knack for rallying from behind is almost preternatural.

The road to victory remains hard, of course. Bass has never lost an election and won’t easily fold, even as her first term has careened from one crisis to another. Raman’s fiercest critics on the council — Marqueece Harris-Dawson, Traci Park and Monica Rodriguez — lord over South L.A., the Westside and the eastern San Fernando Valley, respectively, regions where Raman needs strong showings. The DSA endorsement will make it easier for critics to paint Raman as left of Lenin, even though her record is more pragmatist than pinko puppet.

She’s even drawing the ire of Pratt, who spent most of his campaign deriding the mayor as “basura” — trash — but is now blasting Raman, while the 26% of Angelenos who voted for him and are a key swing constituency are waiting to see who, if anyone, he’ll favor.

Raman anticipated all of this when she jumped into the race, she told supporters on primary night.

“These powerful interests spent millions of dollars against this little campaign, spent millions trying to preserve this city’s broken and unjust status quo,” she said. “And we said no.”

But the words I recall the most from that party at Boomtown Brewery came from Raman’s father, Venkit. After joking that his daughter didn’t go into a profession that most Indian immigrant parents wish for their children, he explained that her full name — Nithya Varsha — means “forever monsoon” in Sanskrit.

“If you think about it more, that’s exactly what she is,” Venkit said to cheers. “A constant, unstoppable force that brings life to the land.”

Let’s see how far the Raman storm goes.

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s David Zahniser, with an assist from Sandra McDonald and Noah Goldberg, giving you the latest on city and county government.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman is waiting to hear whether she has secured a prize coveted by many of the city’s left-of-center candidates: an endorsement from the Democratic Socialists of America.

Earlier this year, the DSA’s Los Angeles chapter took up the idea for the June 2 primary, only to decide against it. They made that decision after hours of debate, all under the watchful eyes of local reporters. The group later recommended Raman in its June 2 voter guide, but that didn’t give her access to the DSA’s vaunted get-out-the-vote apparatus, which goes only to endorsed candidates.

This time around, endorsement discussions for the Nov. 3 runoff were held behind closed doors, followed by an online vote now under way. But the debate has been playing out publicly on a somewhat obscure platform: Geese magazine, which bills itself as “a daily review of American Communism.”

Contributors to that online publication — which declares on its website “We answer to no one” — have been going back and forth for weeks over whether the DSA should endorse Raman, a DSA member herself, in her campaign to unseat Mayor Karen Bass.

Things got rolling on Aug. 11, when Geese posted a 4,400-word essay supporting a DSA endorsement of Raman, arguing that such a move could “open the floodgates for socialism in Los Angeles.”

The four writers, DSA-LA members themselves, conceded that Raman is “no Zohran” — a reference to New York City’s charismatic DSA mayor, Zohran Mamdami. They acknowledged that she’s had a sometimes turbulent relationship with the group, which endorsed her council campaigns in 2020 and 2024 but also censured her at one point, in part because she accepted an endorsement from a pro-Israel group.

Still, the essayists praised her work on homelessness and tenant protections. And they commended her for seeking greater cooperation with the organization in recent months, hiring DSA-LA members to lead her campaign.

“What this signals is that with a DSA-LA endorsement, we may anticipate more constructive collaboration with the Nithya campaign going forward,” the group wrote.

Not so fast, argued another group of Geese contributors. On Monday, those five writers — also DSA-LA members — panned the idea of an endorsement, saying Raman hasn’t earned it.

These writers assailed Raman for voting to confirm former Sheriff Jim McDonnell as Los Angeles police chief and for seeking a rewrite of Measure ULA, the so-called mansion tax, which she views as an impediment to housing production. The authors also portrayed her as woefully out of touch with the DSA on Israel’s war in Gaza.

“If we endorse Raman, a candidate who lacks the inspirational leadership and collaborative political relationship that forms the foundation of a strong DSA endorsement, we risk spending the next four years managing the consequences; explaining, defending, and organizing around the shortcomings of a mayor who was never meaningfully accountable to our democratic socialist movement in the first place,” the group wrote.

Two days later, third Geese essay showed up, arguing that Raman is “the nerd that can dig our city out of this crisis.” That piece sought to rebut some of the criticism contained in the previous essay, while conceding that Raman can be “overly fixated on details, slightly thin-skinned, obtuse, and argumentative.”

“But let’s not forget that Nithya also has a long list of positive attributes as well: she is an exceptional administrator — reducing homelessness in her district by 49% through careful service provision,” the group wrote, anointing her as “Our Pothole Populist.”

A fourth piece, also pro-Raman, posted Friday. Meanwhile, Bass has not emerged unscathed during the back-and-forth.

Geese’s contributors criticized Bass for refusing to let City Controller Kenneth Mejia audit her Inside Safe homelessness program, saying she showed a “disregard for democratic processes.” They assailed her over her handling of the Palisades fire, the Lineage fire, police spending and other issues.

The pro-Raman rebuttal piece had some of the harshest language, accusing Bass, who made many trips to Cuba earlier in her life, of being “puppeted by business interests, landlords, the more reactionary segment of labor, and a smattering of liberal NGOs.”

Bass has not sought the DSA’s backing, either in the primary or the runoff. But she does have endorsements from the council’s other three DSA members.

Raman needs to win 60% of the vote to secure the endorsement. More than 6,000 chapter members have received emails with online ballots.

Monday is the last day to vote.

Tracking Traci Park

City Councilmember Traci Park represents a Westside district that runs along the coast. But that didn’t stop her from heading to Sherman Oaks for the raucous Aug. 19 mayoral debate.

Her appearance in the audience immediately sparked questions. Was she trying to make a decision on whether to weigh in on the mayor’s race?

After all, Park is the only council member who has not publicly picked a horse. Thirteen of the council’s 15 members have come out for Bass. (Raman also endorsed Bass at one point, but then jumped into the race at the last minute.)

Park has made clear she is no political ally of Raman, diverging on such issues as the city’s anti-encampment law. Still, an endorsement of Bass could pose risks.

Park represents the Pacific Palisades, where residents have sharply criticized Bass over her handling of the Palisades fire, which destroyed thousands of homes and left 12 people dead.

On Friday, Park declined to say whether she plans to endorse, saying she simply wanted to “hear what both candidates have to say.”

“It was a mayoral debate. I’m a City Council member, taxpayer, and resident,” she said in a statement. “The progress we’ve made on the Westside is at stake.”

Back to school for Mazariegos

It’s supposed to be a little like traffic school — but instead of learning to drive more safely, you learn to run a by-the-book political campaign.

Community organizer Estuardo Mazariegos, who is running to replace City Councilmember Curren Price in a South Los Angeles district, is now enrolled. He agreed to take a seven module, roughly three-hour class on the state’s campaign finance laws to resolve a complaint filed with the Fair Political Practices Commission, said Jesse Alson-Milkman, a strategist for the campaign.

That complaint accused Mazariegos of failing to pay for community space during at least six “postcarding party” events held by his council campaign at Mercado La Paloma. The complaint was filed by Josh Rothstein, a member of the Mid City West Neighborhood Council, who says he submitted the paperwork in his own capacity.

Mazariegos is on leave as co-director of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, which hosts its corporate office at Mercado La Paloma. That facility charges for certain types of meeting space, yet Mazariegos’ spending report initially showed no payments or in-kind donations for such costs, Rothstein said.

Alson-Milkman said five of the postcarding events were held at the market’s public dining area, so no payment or in-kind donation was needed.

The campaign did have a sixth event where it rented a room for two and a half hours, Alson-Milkman said. But the invoice for $137.50 was lost, he said, delaying payment for months.

The FPPC concluded the violation can be remedied without an enforcement action or financial penalty by having Mazariegos take a Political Reform Education Program, or PREP class, Alson-Milkman said.

The class was created by the FPPC to help candidates who commit minor violations to avoid getting “a mark on their record” — or a financial penalty.

State of play

— CRUNCHING THE NUMBERS: We’ve told you in recent weeks about issues surrounding the Homeless Count: the failure to count a 600-bed homeless shelter in 2024 and 2025, which may have skewed this year’s numbers, and the wildly diverging numbers in Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson’s South L.A. district. On Wednesday, the council instructed the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority to report back on some of the discrepancies.

— VENDORS VEXED: Bass has ordered the LAPD to stop issuing criminal citations to street vendors and remove any that were erroneously issued. The mayor’s office took that step after learning that citations were being incorrectly handed to vendors in MacArthur Park, a situation reported by LA Public Press. The street vending issue has been a flashpoint in the mayor’s race in recent weeks.

— UNDER THE MICROSCOPE: With the mayor’s race heating up, Raman’s record on homelessness has come under fresh scrutiny, particularly her time overseeing the council’s housing and homelessness committee. Raman has touted her work in identifying less expensive strategies for tackling the crisis. Critics say her tenure as chair hasn’t adequately met the moment.

— AUDITING THE GAMES: Mejia, the city controller, called on LA28, the committee organizing the 2028 Summer Olympic Games, to turn over reports on its finances. Mejia said the private committee has fully complied with only two out of nine requirements of its contract with the city. The controller issued his statement on the same day that several lawmakers called on Trump to provide much-needed transportation funding for the event.

— NO IFS, AND OR PHENIBUTS: The City Council instructed the city attorney to regulate phenibut, a drug that’s available at gas stations and being abused as a nervous system depressant. The regulations would include warning labels, a prohibition on sales to people under 21 and a ban on sales near schools and daycare centers.

— WHISTLE BLOWER SPEAKS: The police officer who recorded his colleagues making racist remarks told The Times that the LAPD “ruined my life.” Council members had been planning to formally condemn Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman over his filing of 16 felony counts against Officer Daniel Flores. But they shelved that plan on Tuesday after those charges were reduced to misdemeanors.

— PROGRAMMING NOTE: Our newsletter will be going dark for the Labor Day holiday weekend. We’ll see you again on Sept. 12.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature homelessness program went to the Westside, focusing on an area around Venice Boulevard and Glendon Avenue, which is represented by Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky.
• On the docket next week: As we mentioned previously, the DSA will wrap up its endorsement vote in the mayor’s race.

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.