Roy

Democratic socialists are looking to extend their power in Los Angeles City Hall this fall with their biggest prizes yet: mayor and city attorney.

Mayoral candidate Nithya Raman and city attorney hopeful Marissa Roy, both members of the Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, are heading into the Nov. 3 general election with strong showings in the June 2 primary as tailwinds.

If she prevails in November, Raman would join the ranks of democratic socialists leading big U.S. cities, including New York’s Zohran Mamdani and Seattle’s Katie Wilson. Washington, D.C., looks to be next: Janeese Lewis George won the Democratic primary for mayor there this month, all but ensuring her a general election win in that deep-blue city.

In Los Angeles, a democratic socialist mayor and city attorney could mean added clout because of an ideological lockstep between the two offices, said Fernando Guerra, a political science professor at Loyola Marymount University. In such a scenario, he said, the city attorney’s office is less likely to be a check against the mayor’s authority to set policy on issues such as land use and public safety.

“It’s incredibly substantive that the city attorney will interpret much of the policy that the mayor may push to be the right policy, and not challenge it,” Guerra said.

The election of Raman and Roy would also underscore the leftward tilt of Los Angeles, which has four City Council members, including Raman, who are DSA members — two of whom were reelected in the primary. City Controller Kenneth Mejia, who was recommended (although not formally endorsed) by DSA, was also reelected.

The DSA champions ideas sharply to the left of more establishment Democrats, such as incumbent L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. The L.A. DSA chapter, for example, says its objectives include abolishing prisons and defunding the police.

DSA-L.A. co-chair Sean Wakasa said his organization is thriving in L.A. and across the country because it has destigmatized the concept of socialism.

“Democratic socialism ultimately, at the end of the day, is about making the politics that working-class Americans can see themselves in,” Wakasa said.

In Los Angeles, Wakasa said, a DSA mayor would be expected to build more public transit, strengthen protections for renters, fight for workers’ rights, raise the minimum wage and defend local immigrants from the federal government.

The city attorney, he said, would be expected to defend working-class Angelenos by enforcing renter protections, resolving wage-theft issues and enforcing sanctuary city policies.

Business groups and public safety advocates have voiced concerns over the prospects of DSA members calling the shots at City Hall.

“They would run roughshod over the city,” said Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. He said Raman and Roy “don’t just drink the DSA Kool-Aid, they live it.”

Waldman said he would expect Los Angeles under democratic socialist leadership to adopt overzealous tenant protection policies that would discourage new rental development. He said they would also seek to weaken the police, leading to a “free-for-all for crime.”

“They would run business out,” Waldman said.

Roy, who has promised to turn the city attorney’s office into “the largest public interest law firm in the city,” targeting wage theft, tenant harassment and other issues, disputed Waldman’s assertion.

“Allowing corporate bad actors to violate our laws doesn’t make L.A. safer or more affordable — enforcing protections for renters, workers, and consumers does,” Roy said in a statement.

Raman said in a statement that she shares “DSA’s commitment to fighting for working people and those who have been left behind by a political system that too often serves powerful interests instead of everyday Angelenos.”

But she also said “there is no liberal or conservative way to fill a pothole.”

“I’ve always believed the most progressive thing you can do is actually make government deliver,” Raman said. “Every time City Hall fails to do that— potholes that don’t get fixed, streetlights that stay dark, 911 calls that go unanswered — it erodes people’s faith that government can solve problems at all.”

Rick Cole, a former deputy mayor of L.A., said the DSA label for both candidates doesn’t mean they’ll adhere to the most dramatized versions of what DSA stands for. Neither candidate is an ideologue, he said.

Raman’s membership in DSA “is a signifier she’s going to be more skeptical of current policing,” said Cole, a Pasadena City Council member. “She’s going to be more focused on affordable housing. She’s going to be more focused on a humane approach to getting people off the streets.”

A poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies that was co-sponsored by The Times showed that in a head-to-head runoff, Raman was supported by 32% of the registered voters polled, compared with 28% for Bass.

Bass finished first in the primary, ahead of Raman, with former reality TV personality Spencer Pratt finishing in third place.

With Pratt now out, the race is on for both campaigns to appeal to his voters, who are generally considered more conservative. Even so, the Bass campaign said it doesn’t plan to focus on Raman’s DSA affiliation.

“What’s important isn’t labels — it’s what her [Raman’s] record shows, and that’s voting over and over and over to allow encampments near schools and to shrink our police force. It goes against what L.A. needs and what most of L.A. believes,” Bass campaign spokesperson Alex Stack said in a statement.

Raman, who was twice elected to the City Council with DSA support, has voted against additional police hiring and spending and creating new anti-encampment zones around the city.

One irony is that the three other members of the DSA on the City Council — Eunisses Hernandez, Ysabel Jurado and Hugo Soto-Martínez — have all endorsed Bass, citing the mayor’s fierce resistance to the Trump administration’s immigration raids last year, among other factors.

In the primary, DSA’s L.A. chapter recommended Raman but didn’t endorse her, with the distinction being that an endorsement comes with active canvassing and support from DSA members. DSA-LA co-chair Leslie Chang said it wasn’t yet clear whether her group would endorse Raman in the runoff.

A DSA endorsement for Raman now might be a mixed blessing, given that Pratt’s support came from more conservative parts of the city, said Christian Grose, a political science professor at USC.

“Karen Bass is not popular with Pratt voters, and the DSA is not popular with Pratt voters, but that’s who will decide the mayor’s election,” he said.

Roy, a deputy state attorney general, finished first in the city attorney primary by a wide margin and will compete against John McKinney, a deputy district attorney, in the runoff.

McKinney said electing Roy to the city attorney’s office would be like “going back in time” to when George Gascón was the top prosecutor in Los Angeles County, which police and prosecutors said was a disaster for public safety.

In the recent City Council primaries, DSA-endorsed incumbents Hernandez and Soto-Martinez both won reelection easily, while DSA-endorsed Faizah Malik failed to push incumbent Traci Park into a runoff in her Westside district.

In the Council District 9 race, DSA-endorsed community organizer Estuardo Mazariegos will be in a runoff with Jose Ugarte, a former aide to termed-out incumbent Curren Price.

DSA leaders are pleased overall with how their candidates have performed.

“DSA has really claimed a foothold for ourselves in L.A. County politics,” Chang said.

Los Angeles City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto lagged behind her two well-funded challengers based on early returns Tuesday night. But her incumbent colleague, City Controller Kenneth Mejia, appeared to be faring better in his bid to stay in office, holding a double-digit lead over finance executive Zach Sokoloff.

Progressive Marissa Roy led the field vying to serve as Los Angeles’ top lawyer in the first batch of returns surfacing around 8:20 p.m.

L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. John McKinney sat in second, while Feldstein Soto was positioned third. The top two finishers will advance to November’s general election. It could be days before the outcome of the race is clear. Mail-in ballots with a Tuesday postmark will be accepted by county election officials for another week.

With only two candidates running, the controller’s race will be decided this month and will not go to a runoff in November.

The city attorney’s race transformed suddenly this spring after the Los Angeles Police Department’s largest union broke with Feldstein Soto and backed McKinney. Independent expenditure campaigns have thrown $3 million behind McKinney in recent weeks, with much of that money coming from a political action committee controlled by Airbnb.

Feldstein Soto sued the rental giant for violating price gouging laws in the wake of the Palisades fire last year and has openly questioned whether McKinney would shy from aggressive litigation against Airbnb if elected.

“Special interests have gotten really accustomed to special treatment at City Hall. They get special treatment all the time,” Feldstein Soto said in a recent interview, suggesting that both McKinney and Roy had been compromised by outside spending. Independent expenditure campaigns supporting Roy also received roughly $725,000.

McKinney told The Times that if elected, he would “absolutely” sue Airbnb if necessary.

A representative for Feldstein Soto’s campaign declined to comment on the early returns late Tuesday night.

The three leading candidates often sounded like they were campaigning for different jobs.

Roy said she would run the city attorney’s office as L.A.’s “largest public interest law firm,” focusing on tenants’ rights, wage theft and other issues affecting working-class Angelenos. A deputy attorney general in the California Department of Justice, she also vowed to sue the Trump administration, linking arms with the attorney general’s office and other city attorneys in aggressive litigation to curb what many Californians see as targeted abuses of power.

McKinney talked more like he was running for city prosecutor, leaning heavily on his experience winning high-profile felony trials in the downtown courthouse. He said he would improve the way the city attorney prosecutes gun crimes and animal abusers. Despite his lack of experience as a civil litigator, McKinney also said he could bring down the city’s litigation costs, which exploded under Feldstein Soto.

“While all votes have not yet been fully counted, we feel optimistic about qualifying for the General Election in November. People want political courage. They want leadership,” McKinney said in a statement Tuesday night. “What is already clear, is that this election has been shaped by the pressing and undeniable concerns of the people of Los Angeles.”

McKinney previously ran for L.A. County district attorney in 2024 but disappeared in a crowded primary field.

While her term has been marked by financial strain, allegations of misconduct and mistreatment of employees and recent questions about her handling of a data breach that led to the leak of a trove of LAPD records, Feldstein Soto maintained that her opponents are far too inexperienced to serve as the city’s top lawyer.

She said she improved public safety by repairing her office’s relationship with the LAPD and filed more misdemeanors than her predecessor. Although legal costs surged, Feldstein Soto said she did her best to mitigate damage on a number of difficult cases she inherited when taking office in 2022. The rise of so-called “nuclear verdicts” in civil claims reflects a nationwide trend rather than a fault of her leadership, she said.

Feldstein Soto was endorsed by Mayor Karen Bass and U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). Roy had the support of the L.A. County Democratic Party, the city chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). In addition to the police union, McKinney was backed by his boss, L.A. County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman.

The city controller’s race, normally a fairly sleepy affair, has turned into the second-highest-spending race in the city.

Mejia, 35, known for his two corgis that he often features on billboards across Los Angeles, sought to retain his seat as the city’s accountant and auditor.

His only challenger was Sokoloff, a senior vice president for asset management at Hackman Capital Partners. Sokoloff, 37, alleged Mejia did not properly utilize the controller’s office to run audits on city departments and failed to keep up the auditing pace of his predecessor.

Sokoloff’s mother, Sheryl, has spent $7.5 million on independent expenditures in the race, mostly on attack ads and mailers against Mejia. Often, the ads point to allegations that Mejia in 2023 fostered a toxic workplace and made inappropriate sexual remarks to female subordinates.

A woman who identified herself as Sheryl Sokoloff hung up on a Times reporter last week when asked about the race expenditures.

Mejia said Sokoloff’s mother — married to Jonathan Sokoloff, managing partner of private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners — was trying to bankroll the seat for her son.

Mejia has long run on accountability and transparency for the city’s budget and made public-facing databases across dozens of topics on the controller’s website in his first term.

A licensed certified public accountant, Mejia is a member of the Green Party and does not accept endorsements from political parties or politicians. He was endorsed by the Los Angeles Daily News and multiple labor unions, including the United Teachers of Los Angeles and United Auto Workers.

Sokoloff, a Democrat, was endorsed by multiple former controllers, notable Democrats — including Schiff — and the L.A. County Democratic Party, along with other business advocacy groups.