raman

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

When Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman launched her bid for mayor, her decision stunned many of the city’s political players, in large part because she had endorsed Karen Bass’ reelection a few weeks earlier.

Since Raman jumped into the race, those politicos have been searching for clues as to why Raman broke so completely with Bass, going from ally to opponent.

Now, an additional data point has emerged that, at minimum, signals that Bass and Raman were not as simpatico as they seemed.

Last month, Bass quietly took steps to drop Raman from the powerful board that oversees the South Coast Air Quality Management District. Raman had been serving in that role since 2022, when she was appointed by then-Mayor Eric Garcetti.

Bass’ team said they notified Raman’s office on Jan. 16 that the mayor planned to select someone else to represent her on the AQMD’s 13-member board, which works to ensure that more than 17 million people across four counties — Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino — have cleaner air.

Raman’s term expired last month, and Bass has not announced a replacement. Until that happens, Raman will continue to serve in the post.

Bass spokesperson Amanda Crumley did not provide an explanation for Bass’ decision but said it was not prompted by any policy disagreements between the two.

“The Mayor has 60 days to appoint a new council member to the AQMD, and she and her team started conversations with council members weeks ago in planning for the end of the term,” Crumley said. “As has been the plan for weeks, Mayor Bass will be moving forward with an appointment soon.”

Raman, in a statement, said that losing the AQMD seat was not a factor in her decision to run for mayor.

“During my time on the Board, I’ve been able to meaningfully push for cleaner air, stronger accountability for major polluters, and real progress on zero-emission freight and building standards that protect the health of Angelenos,” Raman said.

Raman said she learned she was being “removed” from her post in mid-January. On Jan. 27, Bass announced that Raman had endorsed her bid for a second term. A few days before that, the mayor’s team informed Raman’s office that they would be going public with her endorsement, according to a Bass campaign aide.

Raman launched her own mayoral campaign on Feb. 7, hours before the filing deadline, saying the city “can’t seem to manage the basics.”

Bass and Raman have mostly been in sync over the last three years, frequently appearing together and only occasionally revealing points of contention.

Raman, who lives in Silver Lake, opposed a package of pay increases for police officers, saying it was financially reckless. Bass, who resides in Windsor Square, said the raises and bonuses were needed to boost recruitment at the Los Angeles Police Department, which has lost 1,300 officers since 2020.

Last year, Raman also opposed a $2.6-billion plan to upgrade the Convention Center. She called the project a budget buster, while Bass said it is needed to revitalize downtown and the region’s economy.

The mayor’s move at the AQMD suggests the two may have disagreed in another policy area. But the back story is tough to decode.

One possible clue: the AQMD’s recent approval of a major agreement to bring zero-emissions technology to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The agreement commits the ports to add electric truck chargers, hydrogen fuel pumps and other technology aimed at eliminating diesel pollution.

At one point, Raman pushed for a more aggressive “rulemaking” approach that would give the AQMD enforcement power if the ports failed to meet certain emissions goals, according to a source with knowledge of the process, who asked to remain unnamed.

Bass favored a less regulatory approach — a cooperative agreement between AQMD and the ports, the source said. That strategy was also favored by the shipping industry and organized labor.

In the end, Raman voted in favor of the cooperative agreement, while acknowledging outside criticism of the decision. She said she supported the agreement to keep the AQMD from “continuing a decade of inaction.”

Environmental groups were disappointed. Bill Magavern, policy director for the Coalition for Clean Air, said the AQMD “adopted a weak, unenforceable agreement when what the board had committed to doing for years was an actual enforceable limit on emissions.”

Magavern said he thinks there were times that Raman, as a Bass appointee, “felt compelled to go along with the mayor’s wishes.” At the same time, he expressed some concern about Raman’s departure.

“We are sorry to see her leave the board because we think the AQMD needs to face up to our air pollution challenges,” Magavern said. “We certainly hope that Bass will appoint someone who is willing to stand up for clean air and take on polluting special interests.”

For now, Raman’s name still appears on the AQMD website as a member of the board. Its next meeting is on Friday.

State of play

— BIGGER IS BETTER: The city’s Charter Reform Commission recommended this week that the City Council grow to 25 members, up from 15. The citizens panel also called for the city to switch to ranked-choice voting, with voters choosing their candidates in order of preference. Both proposals could wind up on the city’s ballot in November, depending on the wishes of the council.

— FEDS SWOOP IN: The FBI raided the home and office of L.A. Unified schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho this week, in what appears to be a probe involving a company that developed an AI chatbot for the nation’s second-largest school system. Two days later, the school board placed Carvalho on paid leave.

— HEADING TO COURT: Former Fire Chief Kristin Crowley sued the city of Los Angeles this week, saying the mayor retaliated against her in an attempt to shift blame over the city’s handling of the Palisades fire. A Bass aide said the lawsuit has no merit. The council decided to pay Crowley’s successor, Fire Chief Jaime Moore, nearly $474,000 per year.

— ‘RED HOT COALS’: Meanwhile, a Los Angeles firefighter said in sworn testimony that he sounded the alarm about the inadequate mop-up of the Lachman fire — and was blown off by a captain — days before the embers reignited into the deadly Palisades fire.

— SIGNATURE SEARCH: Wednesday’s deadline for candidates to turn in their petitions for the June 2 primary election is fast approaching. So far, six mayoral candidates have qualified for the ballot — Bass, Raman and four others: housing advocate Rae Huang, engineering manager Asaad Alnajjar, political scientist Juanita Lopez and technical architect Andrej Selivra.

— WHO ELSE IS IN? All of the incumbents have qualified: City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto, City Controller Kenneth Mejia and Councilmembers Eunisses Hernandez, Katy Yaroslavsky, Monica Rodriguez, Traci Park, Hugo Soto-Martínez and Tim McOsker.

According to the City Clerk’s latest update, the challengers so far are Deputy Atty. Gen. Marissa Roy, running for city attorney; real estate executive Zach Sokoloff, running for city controller; and council candidates Maria Lou Calanche, Nelson Grande, Jose Ugarte and Faizah Malik.

— GIVING BACK GRANTS: About $100 million in state funding for transportation projects in Boyle Heights, Wilmington and Skid Row is now in jeopardy because the city doesn’t have the staff to complete the projects. The issue is part of the fallout from last year’s $1-billion budget shortfall, when city leaders cut hundreds of vacant positions.

— RIDING THE RAILS: The long-awaited extension of the Metro D Line subway, once known as the Purple Line, will finally make its debut on May 8. The extension will take subway riders west from Koreatown to La Cienega Boulevard, with brand-new stations at La Brea and Fairfax avenues.

— ANIMAL ATTACK: A jury has awarded $5.4 million to a woman who was mauled by a dog at an L.A. animal shelter, the latest in a string of such cases. The woman said neither the shelter nor the rescue group she worked for told her about the dog’s bite history.

— BAR FIGHT: Downtown LA Law Group, the firm at the center of the scandal over Los Angeles County’s $4-billion sex abuse settlement, is fighting to keep thousands of documents out of the hands of state bar investigators. The bar launched its probe after The Times reported that nine DTLA clients said they had been paid to sue the county over alleged sex abuse.

— DON’T JUMP: An LAPD officer who went on disability and then was caught skydiving now faces criminal charges. Christopher Brandon Carnahan, 43, committed insurance fraud by exaggerating the extent of an on-duty work injury, according to the D.A.’s office.

— SIDELINED SUPERVISORS: L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger recently sounded off on the governance overhaul coming to the county. Appearing at the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum, Barger said the powerful new position of elected countywide CEO would relegate the supervisors to the realm of ribbon-cutting and little else.

“You’ll see a CEO that has autonomy to do what he or she wants with no term limits, veto power,” Barger said. “Quite frankly, I think the supervisors are going to be in name only.”

QUICK HITS

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.

Nithya Raman began her political career by defeating a well-funded incumbent with deep ties to the Democratic Party establishment.

Raman, an urban planner who was running to shake up the status quo, became the first person to oust a sitting councilmember in 17 years, stunning the Los Angeles political establishment with her defeat of David Ryu in 2020.

Now, with her surprise, last-minute entry into the mayor’s race, the 44-year-old Silver Lake resident is hoping to defeat another incumbent, Karen Bass, by expanding on the formula that led to her first upset victory.

“I was an outsider when I first ran, and I think I’ll be an outsider in this race,” Raman said after filing her candidate paperwork on Feb. 7, hours before the deadline.

But after six years at City Hall, Raman is no longer an outsider. She has her own record, which is in many ways intertwined with the mayor’s, particularly on homelessness, an issue the onetime allies have worked closely together to remedy.

As a City Council member, Raman, whose previous campaigns were backed by Democratic Socialists of America Los Angeles, has sometimes walked a political tightrope, exasperating her progressive base on issues like policing. Last week, she said that the LAPD must not shrink further — a substantial evolution from her “defund the police” declaration during her first run for council.

She has also frustrated some on the left by calling for changes to the city’s “mansion tax,” which she backed in 2022 but which she now says is getting in the way of much-needed development.

Raman shook up a mayoral race that was devoid of high-powered challengers after former L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner dropped out and L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath and billionaire developer Rick Caruso decided not to run.

“Nithya has shown that she can get votes. She’s going to be competitive,” said Bill Carrick, a longtime Democratic political consultant who worked on campaigns for former Mayors Eric Garcetti, James Hahn and Richard Riordan.

But her late entry will make it more difficult to get endorsements and raise money. With three months before ballots are mailed for the June 2 primary, she will have to work at double speed to build a campaign infrastructure and tap into bases that have helped her win before, from Hollywood supporters to DSA members and pro-housing advocates from the YIMBY — Yes in My Backyard — movement.

She has already missed DSA’s endorsement season. And last week, nine of her 14 City Council colleagues reiterated their endorsements of Bass, including another progressive council member, Hugo Soto-Martínez, who said he was “caught off-guard” by Raman’s “last-minute maneuver.”

Raman, who had also endorsed Bass, will have to combat hard feelings among some L.A. politicos who feel that her entry into the race is a betrayal of a mayor who helped her win reelection in 2024.

Raman has said that her decision to run was driven in part by her frustration with city leaders’ inability to get the basics right, such as fixing streetlights and paving streets.

Since launching her campaign, Raman has also joined a chorus of Angelenos criticizing Bass’ handling of the catastrophic Palisades fire, saying the city must be better prepared for major emergencies.

As the dust settles on her unexpected candidacy, political observers are assessing Raman’s prospects — both her strengths and the obstacles that stand between her and the mayor’s office.

Bass campaign spokesperson Douglas Herman declined to comment. A Raman campaign spokesperson, Jeff Millman, also declined to comment.

Ryu, who lost to Raman in 2020, said Bass should be “nervous” about her newest opponent.

To win, Ryu said, Raman must tap into the strengths that helped propel her to victory in the past, including her prowess with social media.

“She couldn’t speak in front of crowds at the beginning. She was super nervous,” Ryu said. “But oh my God, her social media team, the production value of her videos. It’s a science.”

Raman’s 2020 campaign will be hard to replicate. That year, the council race focused not just on local policy but also on national issues such as #MeToo and the police murder of George Floyd, Ryu said. Big-name politicians weighed in, with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders endorsing Raman and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton endorsing Ryu.

The most important difference, Ryu said, is that Raman can no longer plausibly position herself as an outsider.

“Now there’s a record. It’s easy when you’re the activist fighting the system. But when you’re in there, you realize it’s a zero-sum game,” he said. “Do you want to trim trees and fix potholes or build housing? Sometimes that is the brutal reality.”

In the coming months, Raman will have to reach beyond her district, which stretches from Silver Lake to Reseda, introducing herself and her record to voters across the city. She began a media blitz in her first week as a candidate, doing interviews with NBC4, KNX News and The Times.

Her main goal should be to make it to the November runoff, said Mike Trujillo, a Democratic political consultant.

If no candidate among the roughly 40 running for mayor wins more than 50% of the vote in the June 2 primary, the top two finishers will move to the runoff.

A runoff would allow Raman a fresh start, with each candidate starting a new round of fundraising and pitching themselves to voters in a one-on-one contest.

“If it’s Nithya and Mayor Bass, they would both start at zero,” Trujillo said. “For a challenger, that is a godsend.”

That leaves political watchers doing the math of how the mayor and the councilmember could get to the runoff, and which candidates might block their way.

After Bass and Raman, the three biggest figures in the race are Spencer Pratt, Rae Huang and Adam Miller.

Pratt is a registered Republican whose house burned down in the Palisades fire. He has been sharply critical of the mayor’s handling of the fire and has gained traction with national Republicans, including allies of President Trump.

Of the more than 2 million registered voters in the city of Los Angeles, just under 15% were Republicans as of December 2025.

Mike Murphy, a Republican political consultant, thinks Pratt could get 19% to 21% of the vote, with a ceiling in the mid to high 20s.

“Not liking Karen does not make you a Republican,” Murphy said.

On the other side of the spectrum, community organizer Rae Huang has been running an unabashedly leftist campaign, calling for free buses and the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Huang has not been endorsed by DSA’s Los Angeles chapter, but she is a member of the organization.

In 2022, leftist Gina Viola won nearly 7% of the vote in the primary.

Trujillo, the Democratic consultant, said the other wild card is Adam Miller, the tech entrepreneur who has waded into the fight against homelessness. Miller could spend a significant amount of his own fortune in the race — as Caruso did against Bass in 2022.

If Pratt and Huang combine to take 25% and Miller can take somewhere in the 20% range, then Raman and Bass would have to worry about not making the runoff.

“Suddenly, you have a three-way jump ball,” Trujillo said.

Despite having more name recognition than some of her opponents, Raman will need to raise significant funds in a short time.

“My hope is that money will flow,” said Dave Rand, a land use attorney active on housing issues who supports Raman.

Rand said that developers and people in the YIMBY movement will support Raman, who has been a strong advocate for building more housing in Los Angeles.

Mott Smith, a developer and Raman supporter, said he believes fellow developers who know Raman will “gladly” contribute to her campaign.

Smith said he is concerned about Angelenos associating Raman with DSA, which could turn off more moderate voters.

“She will win if Los Angeles gets to know the pragmatic, solutions-oriented Nithya, as opposed to the cartoon image that one paints when they hear she is the latest of the DSA candidates to run for office here,” he said.

Two years ago, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass went to Sherman Oaks to cut a quick campaign ad for a trusted ally: Councilmember Nithya Raman.

Standing next to Bass, Raman looked into the camera and praised the mayor’s work on homelessness, saying she was “honored” to have her support.

“I couldn’t be prouder to work alongside her,” Raman said.

That video, recorded at a get-out-the-vote rally for Raman’s reelection campaign, feels like a political lifetime ago. On Feb. 7, Raman launched a surprise bid to unseat Bass, saying the city is at a “breaking point” and no longer capable of providing basic services.

Raman’s entry into the race, hours before the filing deadline, shocked the city’s political elite and infuriated the mayor’s supporters. Some observers called it a betrayal of Shakespearean proportions.

Raman’s name had appeared on a list of Bass endorsers just weeks earlier. Bass’ support for Raman’s 2024 reelection bid had helped the councilmember earn 50.7% of the vote and avoid a messy runoff.

“How can she treat a relationship like this, and dispose of it once it’s served its purpose?” said Julio Esperias, a Democratic Party activist who volunteered with Raman’s 2024 campaign at Bass’ request. “It’s a breach of trust, a betrayal, and it’s kind of hard for me to stomach at the moment.”

In 2024, Bass — then at the peak of her popularity — was featured prominently in Raman’s campaign mailers. She sent canvassers to knock on voters’ doors. A speech Bass delivered at Raman’s rally in Sherman Oaks was turned into a social media video with stirring background music.

Councilwoman Nithya Raman talks to attendees during an election night party held by the Democratic Socialists of America – LA chapter at The Greyhound on Nov. 4 in Los Angeles.

(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)

That video, along with other posts highlighting Bass’ support for her, still appears on Raman’s Instagram page, which now promotes her run for mayor.

Bass, politically bruised over her handling of last year’s devastating Palisades fire, now faces an insurgent campaign from one of the City Council’s savviest players.

Esperias said he regrets helping Raman claw back the endorsement of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party in 2023, after it nearly went to her opponent.

Bass, for her part, has downplayed any hard feelings, saying she intends to run on her record — including her collaboration with Raman. Asked if she viewed Raman’s candidacy as a betrayal, she responded: “That’s not significant now.”

Mayor Karen Bass speaks before signing a rent stabilization ordinance passed by the Los Angeles City Council, the first update to the ordinance in nearly 40 years, at Strategic Actions for a Just Economy in Los Angeles Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2025.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

“I will tell you that it was a surprise, absolutely,” Bass said. “But I am moving forward, I am going to run my race, and I look forward to serving with her in my second term.”

Raman has been delivering a similarly complicated message, expressing deep respect for the mayor while arguing that the city is in desperate need of change.

On the morning of Feb. 7, before filling out her paperwork at the city clerk’s office, Raman called Bass to inform her she was running.

The next day, the two women met privately at Getty House, the mayor’s mansion. Neither would say why they met or what they discussed.

At City Hall, both supporters and critics of Bass have been retracing recent events, looking for clues as to how things went wrong.

In November, while watching election returns for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Raman told The Times that Bass was the most progressive mayor the city ever had — noting that Angelenos “vote their values.” Last month, Bass twice announced that she had Raman’s endorsement.

On Friday, Raman said she could not remember exactly when she endorsed Bass, saying she believed it came during a phone call with the mayor “probably in the fourth quarter of last year.” At the same time, she said her exasperation with the city’s leadership has been building for months.

“I have been actually frustrated by the conditions in the city for quite some time, particularly over this last year, where we are both unable to deliver basic services, like fixing streetlights and repaving streets for my constituents, but also are not moving toward a more accountable, transparent and efficient system of addressing issues like homelessness,” she said in an interview.

Gloria Martinez, center, of United Teachers Los Angeles, speaks at a rally outside City Hall featuring opponents of the effort to rewrite Measure ULA, a tax on property sales to pay for housing initiatives.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

Raman pointed to Measure ULA, the voter-approved tax on property sales of $5.3 million and up, as a catalyst for her mayoral bid. Although she has been a supporter of the tax, she has also concluded that it is a major obstacle to building new housing.

Last month, Raman tried without success to put a measure on the June 2 ballot that would have scaled back the types of properties covered by the tax, in hopes of jump-starting apartment construction.

Raman also told The Times that Inside Safe, the mayor’s signature program to move unhoused people indoors, needs to be redesigned so it is “fiscally sustainable.” She said she “simply did not see any progress” from the mayor’s office on that issue.

Asked whether she betrayed Bass, Raman said her decision to run was driven by the growing problems facing the city — and the need for change.

“My most important relationship in this role is with the people of Los Angeles, not the politics of City Hall,” she said.

Bass campaign spokesperson Douglas Herman pointed out that Raman is head of the council’s housing and homelessness committee — and that she repeatedly voiced support for Bass programs that have delivered back-to-back reductions in street homelessness.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman scans a QR code to get election updates during an election night party in March 2024.

(Myung Chun/Los Angeles Times)

“While we are developing more cost effective models, it is absolutely urgent that we get people off our streets immediately,” Herman said. “Nithya Raman is acting like a typical politician and knows it because she congratulated Mayor Bass for cleaning dangerous and long-standing encampments in her district.”

Raman’s decision has sparked an outcry from an unlikely combination of Bass allies. Danny J. Bakewell, Jr., executive editor of the Los Angeles Sentinel, condemned Raman’s actions last week in an editorial that invoked the O’Jay’s 1972 hit “Back Stabbers.”

“One of life’s greatest disappointments is discovering that someone you believed was a friend is not,” wrote Bakewell, whose newspaper focuses on issues facing the city’s Black community.

The Los Angeles Police Protective League, which represents rank-and-file LAPD officers and opposed Raman’s reelection in 2024, offered a similar take.

“If political backstabbing were a crime, Nithya Raman would be a wanted fugitive,” the union’s board, which has endorsed Bass, said in a statement.

Zev Yaroslavsky, a former county supervisor and City Council member, does not believe that Raman’s recent history with Bass — endorsing her and later running against her — will be an issue for the electorate. In L.A. political circles, however, it will be viewed as a transgression, at least in the short term, he said.

“As a politician, you don’t have much currency. What you have is your word,” he said.

Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, said he is certain that Raman and the other major candidates — community organizer Rae Huang, reality television star Spencer Pratt and tech entrepreneur Adam Miller — have looked at polls showing that Bass is politically weakened and vulnerable to a challenge.

“If Raman becomes mayor, nobody’s going to remember this, including the political class,” he said. “If she doesn’t, it’ll be a little more difficult for her. It’s not irreparable. But there will be a residue to this.”

On the council, Raman belongs to a four-member voting bloc, each of whom won office with support from Democratic Socialists of America. While Bass is generally considered more conservative than Raman on public safety issues, the two share many of the same policy priorities, particularly around homelessness.

In her first campaign for City Council in 2020, Raman ran on a promise to address the city’s homelessness crisis in a humanitarian way, by moving unhoused residents into temporary and permanent housing.

Bass, a former state Assembly speaker and 12-year member of Congress, took office two years later and made homelessness her signature issue, convincing the council to expand her power to respond to the crisis.

Raman backed Bass’ declaration of a homelessness emergency, which gave the mayor the power to award contracts and sign leases directly. A week later, Bass staged her first Inside Safe operation in Raman’s district, on a stretch of Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood.

As recently as July, Raman appeared on a Bass press release touting the city’s progress on homelessness.

Bass first announced that Raman had endorsed her on Jan. 27. Raman said she did not begin seriously contemplating a run for mayor until the following week, as the filing deadline approached.

Over a tumultuous 48-hour period, former L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner exited the race, while real estate developer Rick Caruso and L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath announced that they, too, would stay out.

“I realized we were potentially not even going to have a real competition, and that troubled me,” Raman said.

Esperias, the Bass supporter, said he is still processing Raman’s decision to run.

He said Bass tapped him to help Raman in 2023 after one of Raman’s opponents, deputy city attorney Ethan Weaver, cleared a key hurdle in his bid for the endorsement of the county’s Democratic Party.

Esperias, who lives in L.A.’s Vermont Square neighborhood, said he worked with Raman’s team on a plan to persuade party members to pull Weaver’s endorsement, then flip it to Raman. While Esperias and others called and texted party members, Bass sent a letter urging them to endorse Raman.

Weaver, in an interview, said he immediately felt the difference. After Bass’ letter, interest in endorsing him evaporated.

“It changed the amount of people that would take my call,” he said.

Once the election was over, Esperias said, Raman sent a text message thanking him for his help during a tough campaign.

“I put my credibility, I put my relationships on the line to help build this coalition to get that endorsement,” Esperias said.

Raman argued that the support has gone both ways.

During Bass’ first mayoral campaign, Raman held a fundraiser at her Silver Lake home and introduced Bass to key people in her district.

“I did help her in her election as well, just like she helped me,” she said.

Times staff writer Dakota Smith contributed to this report.

The head of the powerful Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, blasted Nithya Raman on Wednesday, calling the city council member an “opportunist” for launching a campaign to unseat Mayor Karen Bass after previously signaling her support for Bass.

Federation president Yvonne Wheeler said in a statement that her organization, which represents an estimated 800,000 workers, will “use every tool” in its arsenal to get Bass reelected.

“With Donald Trump’s ongoing war against the people of Los Angeles, our working families and immigrant communities, now is not the time for distractions from a political opportunist — especially one who backed the Mayor’s re-election campaign just weeks ago,” Wheeler said.

Raman, whose district stretches from Silver Lake to Reseda, was announced as one of the mayor’s endorsers on Jan. 27 in a campaign press release listing Bass’ San Fernando Valley supporters. Two days later, she appeared in a second campaign press release as one of Bass’ female endorsers.

Raman launched her own last-minute mayoral bid on Saturday, saying that City Hall is unable to “manage the basics.”

The primary election is June 2, followed by a November runoff if no candidate secures a majority of the vote.

Raman’s campaign team did not immediately respond to Wheeler’s assertions after being contacted by The Times.

In her statement, Wheeler described Bass as a “lifelong progressive” while suggesting that Raman, whose council campaigns were backed by the Democratic Socialists of America and several other progressive groups, falls short on that front.

“You can’t truly be progressive unless you are a true champion of working people,” she said. “Karen Bass is the only candidate in this race who meets that criteria.”

The federation represents about 300 labor organizations in L.A. County, including unions representing teachers, social workers, construction trades and entertainment industry workers. In previous city elections, the group has spent big on its favored candidates, paying for campaign materials, door-to-door canvassers and other expenses.

Raman broke with the labor federation and her colleagues in September, voting against the $2.6-billion expansion of the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Before that vote, labor unions said the upgrade would generate much-needed construction jobs at a time when housing production has been down. Raman and Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky warned the project was too financially risky and would saddle the city with significant budget shortfalls starting in 2031 — after Bass is out of office.

“What I fear is that we’re going to have a beautiful new Convention Center surrounded by far more homelessness than we have today, which will drive away tourists, which will prevent people from coming here and holding their events here,” Raman said at the time.

Bass supported the project, as did a majority of the council.

Raman also drew the ire of some construction union leaders last month by drafting a last-minute proposal to ask voters to change Measure ULA, a tax on property sales of $5.3 million and up. Raman, who described herself as a supporter of Measure ULA, brought her proposal to the council floor one day before the deadline to take action.

Raman, who backed Measure ULA in 2022, said she now believes it has had unintended consequences, putting a major damper on real estate development and inhibiting the production of much-needed housing.

On the last day of January, hundreds of people filled the pews of Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Koreatown to hear not the word of God but the gospel of the Democratic Socialists of America.

It was the local chapter’s bimonthly meeting and also a kickoff event for a year during which they planned to build on an already impressive foothold in L.A. politics. Four of their own are council members and the two up for reelection — Eunisses Hernandez and Hugo Soto-Martínez — received standing ovations after their impassioned speeches. They implored the faithful to believe that anything is politically possible in a year when President Trump is waging war on Los Angeles and one of their own, Zohran Mamdani, is the mayor of New York.

Among the true believers was someone who arrived late that day: L.A.’s original democratic socialist insurgent, Nithya Raman.

She shocked the city’s political class in 2020 by beating Councilmember David Ryu — the first time in 17 years that an incumbent lost their seat. Her upset blazed the way for Hernandez and Soto-Martínez in 2022 and fellow DSAer Ysabel Jurado in 2024. They’ve created a progressive bloc that has helped Mayor Karen Bass implement her agenda, offering Her Honor cover from critics on the left while also pushing for democratic socialist principles such as less police spending and more intervention programs.

Raman kept a low profile at the DSA-LA event, according to attendees. The 44-year-old listened to her colleagues’ speeches and those of other hopefuls, made small talk with fellow members and then left.

There was no hint that afternoon of the political earthquake she uncorked this Saturday, when Raman announced a mayoral run against longtime ally Bass. The council member described the mayor to The Times as an “icon” who nevertheless needs to be replaced because “Los Angeles is at a breaking point.”

I can only imagine Bass — whom Raman publicly endorsed just a month ago — was surprised.

The mayor seems vulnerable, for sure. From her handling of the Palisades fire to crumbling infrastructure to the economy and so much more, critics maintain Bass spent all of last year living up to the old Johnny Mathis and Deniece Williams duet: She did things too much, too little and too late. This was all before sources told The Times last week that Bass ordered an after-action report on the Palisades fire be — no pun intended — watered down to limit legal liability against the city.

Her supporters point to a drop in homelessness and homicides over the last four years as reason enough for Bass to return — but their hosannas haven’t gotten as much traction as an incumbent should be seeing at this point in a reelection campaign. That’s why the proverbial smart money had someone on the right side of L.A.’s Democratic spectrum mounting a strong challenge this year — Councilmembers Monica Rodriguez or Traci Park, L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath or even 2022 challenger Rick Caruso.

While Mamdani’s fall win got local progressives dreaming about one day doing the same in Los Angeles, the prospect of a strong challenger from the left in this mayoral cycle was considered so unlikely that DSA-LA didn’t have candidate Rae Huang — a dues-paying member and Presbyterian minister — speak at the Immanuel gathering since she couldn’t gather enough signatures to make her case for an endorsement in the fall.

Raman has proved effective enough as a council member to win her reelection outright two years ago during the primaries despite a well-funded effort to paint her as a limousine leftist. I admire her brio to take on Bass and respect her place in L.A. political history. I’m glad someone is going to make the mayor work hard to get reelected because no incumbent should ever have an automatic reelection.

But Nithya Raman?

Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman, left, talks with Mayor Karen Bass at Hazeltine Park in Sherman Oaks during a 2024 rally for Raman’s ultimately successful reelection bid. She’s now challenging Bass in the 2026 mayoral election.

(Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times)

Presbyterians, such as those who pray at the Koreatown church, have historically believed in predestination, the idea that God has determined everyone’s fate and we can’t do a thing about it. Raman doesn’t belong to the denomination, but perhaps its tenets moved her at Immanuel into believing that another unlikely political revival is in her stars. Because that’s the only way to make sense of Raman’s turn and belief that she can pull off the victory.

Raman’s 4th District is one of the wealthier in the city, a mishmash of Encino rich, Silver Lake hipster and the San Fernando Valley lower middle class — relatively sheltered from the day-to-day struggles of many working class and working poor Angelenos living in L.A. While Soto-Martínez and Hernandez draw their perspective and base from the union and activist left, Raman’s loudest supporters have struck me as folks who might have the passion and money to win over her district but don’t have the street-level knowledge and experience to sell their candidate to all corners of the city.

Raman has walked the progressive walk during her two council terms by getting arrested at sit-ins, showing up to protests and through her City Hall work. But the coalition she needs to topple Bass seems exceedingly hard to build.

She’d have to run under the assumption that enough people on the left think the current mayor is a sellout — or at minimum, just not progressive enough. That conservative and centrist voters so loathe Bass that they’ll hold their nose and vote for a democratic socialist. She’d have to win over Latino voters, who went with Caruso four years ago but who represent only 19% of Raman’s district in a city that’s nearly majority Latino.

Raman would have to peel off labor from Bass, who has counted on and rewarded their support from Sacramento to Washington to City Hall for over two decades. Needs to paint Bass as soft on Trump’s deportation deluge despite her consistently calling him out. Appeal to homeowners who won’t like Raman’s ties to YIMBY-minded folks seeking to shove multistory units anywhere and everywhere. Convince Black voters — who already must reckon with the likely reality that the city will not have three Black council members for the first time since 1963 because the leading candidates to replace outgoing Curren Price are Latinos — that dethroning the city’s first Black female mayor is somehow good for the community’s political future.

And then there’s Raman’s fellow DSA members. The rank-and-file are currently furious at her for recently, unsuccessfully trying to tweak L.A.’s so-called mansion tax. Raman can’t run in the primary with DSA’s endorsement because that process ended last fall. Supporters can petition for a vote on the matter, but that opens her anew to critics who engineered a censure of her during her 2024 reelection campaign for accepting an endorsement by a pro-Israel group while the country was bombing Gaza.

Raman — who can keep her council seat if she doesn’t beat Bass — is about to find out that L.A. isn’t as progressive as people make it out to be.

Los Angeles Councilmember Nithya Raman speaks to a crowd as she hosts an election night event in Edendale in March 2024 in Los Angeles.

(Myung Chun/Los Angeles Times)

She might have visions of a populist movement a la what happened in New York ushering her into City Hall — but she’s no Mamdani and Bass is no Eric Adams. Even fans of Raman I talked to over the weekend are upset that the progressive march that DSA-LA has successfully launched in city and county politics this decade now must deal with a curveball from within. It threatens to distract from efforts for other campaigns in a year when the left needs to concentrate on defeating true opponents — not a fellow traveler like Bass.

Raman must figure this disruption is worth the risk for her legacy and will further strengthen L.A.’s left. Let’s see what voters decide.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman is running for mayor, shaking up the field of candidates one final time.

Raman said she will challenge Mayor Karen Bass, her onetime ally, campaigning on issues of housing and homelessness, transparency and “safety in our streets.”

In an interview, Raman called Bass “an icon” and someone she deeply admires. But she said the city needs a change agent to address its problems.

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

Saturday’s announcement — hours before the noon filing deadline for the June 2 primary election — capped a chaotic week in L.A. politics, with candidates and would-be candidates dropping in and out of the race to challenge Bass, who is seeking a second four-year term.

Raman would immediately pose a formidable challenge to Bass. She was the first council member to be elected with support from the Democratic Socialists of America, which scored an enormous victory last fall with the election of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Councilmember Nithya Raman jumps in the race for mayor, challenging former ally Karen Bass in the June primary.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

At the same time, Raman has deep ties to leaders in the YIMBY movement, who have pushed for the city to boost housing production by upzoning single-family neighborhoods and rewriting Measure ULA, the so-called mansion tax, which applies to property sales of $5.3 million or more.

Raman’s eleventh-hour announcement caps what has been the most turbulent candidate filing period for an L.A. mayoral election in at least a generation. She launched her bid less than a day after another political heavyweight, L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, decided against a run.

Until Raman’s surprise entry, the field had seemed to be clear of big-name challengers. Former L.A. schools superintendent Austin Beutner ended his campaign on Thursday, citing the death of his 22-year-old daughter. That same day, real estate developer Rick Caruso reaffirmed his decision not to run.

Bass campaign spokesperson Douglas Herman did not immediately provide comment.

Raman’s announcement comes as Bass continues to face sharp criticism over the city’s handling of the Palisades fire, which killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes. Unlike some of the candidates, Raman has not publicly criticized Bass about the city’s preparation for, or response to, the disaster.

Bass, 72, faces more than two dozen opponents from across the political spectrum.

Reality TV star Spencer Pratt, a Republican, has received praise from an array of Trump supporters, including Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, of Florida. Pratt has focused heavily on the city’s handling of the fire, which destroyed his home.

Spencer Pratt poses for a portrait in Pacific Palisades.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

Democratic socialist Rae Huang is running against the mayor from her political left. Huang has called for more public housing and for a reduction in the number of police officers, with the cost savings poured into other city services.

Brentwood tech entrepreneur Adam Miller, who has described himself as a lifelong Democrat, said the city is on a downward trajectory and needs stronger management. The 56-year-old nonprofit executive plans to tap his personal wealth to jump-start his campaign.

Also in the race is Asaad Alnajjar, an employee of the Bureau of Street Lighting who sits on the Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council. Alnajjar has already lent his campaign $80,000.

At City Hall, Raman’s entrance into the mayor’s race is a bombshell, particularly given her relationship with Bass.

Mayor Karen Bass addresses the crowd at the Shine LA event at Hansen Dam Recreation Area in Lake View Terrace, Calif., on Saturday.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

In December 2022, not long after taking office, Bass launched her Inside Safe program, which moves homeless people indoors, in Raman’s district.

Two years later, while running for reelection, Raman prominently featured Bass on at least a dozen of her campaign mailers and door hangers. Raman’s campaign produced a video ad that heavily excerpted Bass’ remarks endorsing her at a Sherman Oaks get-out-the-vote rally.

Raman, whose district stretches from Silver Lake to Reseda, ultimately won reelection with 50.7% of the vote. In the years that followed, she continued to praise Bass’ leadership.

In November, while appearing at a DSA election night watch party for Mamdani, Raman told The Times that Bass is “the most progressive mayor we’ve ever had in L.A.”

Last month, Bass formally announced that she had secured Raman’s endorsement, featuring her in a list of a dozen San Fernando Valley political leaders who backed her reelection campaign.

Raman ran for office in 2020, promising to put in place stronger tenant protections and provide a more effective, humane approach to combating homelessness. On her campaign platform, she called for the transformation of the LAPD into a “much smaller, specialized armed force” — but never specified what exactly that would mean.

A woman takes a photo with her phone at the C. Erwin Piper Technical Center on Saturday.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Since then, the LAPD has lost about 1,300 officers — a decrease of about 13%. The City Council has put in place new eviction protections for tenants, while also capping the size of rent increases in the city’s “rent stabilized” apartments, which were mostly built before October 1978.

Raman does not face the same political risks as Horvath, who had already been running for reelection in her Westside and San Fernando Valley district. Horvath, had she run for mayor, would have had to forfeit her seat on the county Board of Supervisors.

If Raman loses, she would still hold her council seat, since she does not face reelection until 2028.

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass was having a really bad week.

But then it turned into a pretty good week, and she must have breathed a sigh of relief.

Until the Saturday morning surprise.

I had to set fire to my scorecard, and to the column I had just drafted, which touched on all the expected big-name challengers who had bowed out of the mayoral race in the past several days: L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, billionaire businessman Rick Caruso (who forced a runoff with Bass the last time around), and former L.A. Unified schools chief Austin Beutner.

It was looking as though we wouldn’t get a badly needed, monthslong, toe-to-toe face-off about all that’s right and wrong in the sprawling metropolis of high hopes and low expectations. In a conversation I had with Loyola Marymount University’s Fernando Guerra, a decades-long observer of the local political scene, he made this observation about the dull political season that was shaping up:

“What is interesting to me is that no one from the establishment political class is running against [Bass] when she is clearly vulnerable.”

Vulnerable because of her handling of the Palisades fire and its aftermath.

Vulnerable because of limited progress on core issues such as homelessness, housing affordability and the shameful condition of streets, sidewalks and parks.

But then came Saturday morning, when, in an unexpected move, L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman decided to step up, injecting a new element of drama into the race.

It was a surprise because Raman and Bass are not political enemies. In fact, they’ve largely been allies and have endorsed each other’s reelection bids.

So what was Raman thinking in signing up for a challenge in which she is clearly the underdog?

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

There’s more to it than that, in political terms. Raman is to the left of Bass and the traditional left in Los Angeles. She and three other council members supported by the Democratic Socialists of America have changed the conversation at City Hall, with more emphasis on social service, housing and labor issues, and less on traditional law enforcement.

Among their supporters are renters, immigrants, young adults, the underserved, and the frontline workers in the minimum-wage economy.

Raman’s candidacy — along with DSA candidates for other city offices — makes the election something of a referendum on the evolving center of political clout in L.A. It raises the question of whether the city is ready to blow things up and move further in the direction of New York City, which just elected as mayor the ultra-progressive Zohran Mamdani.

And for all of that, it also raises the question of whether progressives can both deliver on their promises and also balance a budget. No easy task, there.

As for Bass, you don’t get as far in politics as she has — from the state Legislature to Congress to City Hall — without sharp survival skills and without collecting friends you can count on, even when the road to reelection is filled with potholes.

And even when an ally comes after you.

“Wow, what a surprise,” Guerra said upon Raman’s entry into the race.

He considers her a formidable foe who was the first to prove “that the DSA can win in Los Angeles” and who brings several advantages to a campaign against Bass.

For one, she has a record of some success on homelessness in her district and was involved in that cause in the Silver Lake area before she was in public office, when she identified a startling lack of coordination and continuity. And by virtue of her age, 44, she’s aligned with younger voters hungry for change in political leadership.

It’s possible that with Raman in the race, and the nuts-and-bolts issues of governance now center stage, there will be slightly less emphasis on Bass’s handling and mishandling of the Palisades fire, which destroyed thousands of properties, wiped out a vibrant community and killed 12 people.

When I said at the top of this column that Bass was having a really bad week, I was referring to the Palisades fire and the latest story from Times investigative reporters Alene Tchekmedyian and Paul Pringle. They had already established that the Los Angeles Fire Department had failed to pre-deploy adequately for the fire, and that it had failed to extinguish an earlier fire that later triggered the epic disaster.

The reporters had also established that the so-called “after-action” report on the fire had been altered to downplay failures by the department and the city, all of which was scandalous enough.

But on Wednesday, Tchekmedyian and Pringle reported that Bass was involved in the revisions despite her earlier denials. The mayor “wanted key findings about the LAFD’s actions removed or softened before the report was made public,” according to sources.

Bass vehemently denied the allegations and blasted The Times. But even before the latest story, Bass’s Palisades report card was one that a prudent person might have fed to the dog. She had left the country just before the fire despite warnings of potentially cataclysmic conditions. And multiple other missteps followed, including the botched hiring and early departure of a rebuilding czar.

Raman has not targeted Bass’ handling of the fire, and we’ll see if that changes. I don’t consider the response to the ICE raids to be a point of contention between Raman and Bass. One of the mayor’s strengths in office has been her defense of the city’s immigrants and her pushback against President Trump.

“Bass gets high marks resisting ICE,” Guerra said of polling and public opinion surveys he has either conducted or reviewed. “But on other issues, including homelessness, she does not do well.”

Two-thirds of voters in one poll said they would not back Bass in the June primary, Guerra said. But that poll did not offer an alternative to Bass, and now there is one.

Actually, several. The others include Brentwood tech entrepreneur Adam Miller, who’s got money to spend; reality TV personality Spencer Pratt, a Republican who lost his Palisades home and has been hammering the mayor; and minister/community organizer Rae Huang, a Democratic socialist.

Do they matter, given the odds against them and the entry of Raman into the race?

Yes, they might. Bass needs more than 50% of the June primary vote to win outright. But with Raman and the others grabbing varying percentages of the vote, a two-person November runoff is likely and the candidates will almost surely be Bass and Raman.

After a crazy week in L.A., allies are now foes.

And the race for mayor just got interesting.

steve.lopez@latimes.com