January 2025 Palisades fire<\/a>, which destroyed thousands of homes and left 12 people dead. She was out of the country when the fire broke out and has received criticism over her handling of the recovery.<\/p>\nPacific Palisades resident Hank Wright, whose home was destroyed in last year\u2019s fire, voted for Pratt in last week\u2019s primary. Now, with Pratt out of the running, he\u2019s not happy with his choices in the runoff, saying they range from \u201cdisaster to catastrophic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bass, he said, has been terrible for the city and is a major reason why his home is gone. Nevertheless, he\u2019s now planning to vote for her, out of concern over Raman\u2019s record and her ties to the Democratic Socialists of America, which supported her first two council campaigns and recommended her in its most recent voter guide.<\/p>\n
Wright said he supports the city law prohibiting encampments near schools and disagrees with the DSA\u2019s push to cut police spending.<\/p>\n
\u201cNithya would be catastrophic,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Pratt, the onetime star of MTV\u2019s \u201cThe Hills,\u201d used his campaign to express his anger not just over the Palisades disaster but also the city\u2019s handling of homelessness, crime and other issues. Bass is already hitting Raman on public safety, an issue stoked by Pratt during his campaign.<\/p>\n
Still, one expert warned that Bass will place herself in peril if she veers too far to the right \u2014 particularly in a November runoff, when the number of left-leaning voters is expected to increase dramatically. By then, the Democratic Socialists of America may have endorsed Raman, who is a member of the group, putting its considerable voter outreach operation into action.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe city is clearly moving to the left. You cannot tack to the right. This is a new era,\u201d said Fernando Guerra, who runs the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University.<\/p>\n
Raman, who declared \u201cdefund the police\u201d during her first winning campaign in 2020, has been moderating her views. <\/p>\n
Two days after launching her mayoral campaign, she said the LAPD should not shrink any further. Appearing last month in Sherman Oaks, she said she would not, as mayor, stand in the way of council members who are looking to create new no-camping zones in their districts.<\/p>\n
While in office, Raman has voted dozens of times against establishing new no-camping zones near homeless shelters, senior centers, freeway overpasses and other locations.<\/p>\n
Even so, a Raman victory would represent a seismic shift for the city, putting the city\u2019s first DSA member in the mayor\u2019s office. <\/p>\n
That, in turn, could be part of an even larger political realignment.<\/p>\n
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Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia, left and Los Angeles City Council candidate Faizah Malik attend a canvassing event March 15 in Westchester.<\/p>\n
(Eric Thayer \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
Voters just delivered a big victory to City Controller Kenneth Mejia, whose reelection was also recommended by the DSA. Deputy Atty. Gen. Marissa Roy, the DSA-endorsed candidate in the city attorney\u2019s race, is running well ahead of her runoff opponent, Deputy Dist. Atty. John McKinney, according to recent returns.<\/p>\n
On top of that, two DSA-endorsed council members \u2014 Hugo Soto-Martinez and Eunisses Hernandez \u2014 won easy victories over their respective challengers during last week\u2019s primary.<\/p>\n
Sean Wakasa, who co-chairs of DSA\u2019s L.A. chapter, said he is excited to see Raman make the runoff and is hopping his chapter will endorse her. So far, no decisions have been made on that front, he said.<\/p>\n
The upcoming runoff shows how much has changed in L.A. political circles over the past year. <\/p>\n
Raman, whose district stretches from Silver Lake to Reseda, was until recently a Bass ally, endorsing her reelection bid. Last year, she told The Times that Bass is the most progressive mayor in city history.<\/p>\n
Bass helped Raman during a tough reelection fight in 2024, pushing for the Los Angeles County Democratic Party to endorse Raman and appearing in the candidate\u2019s videos and campaign mailers.<\/p>\n
When she launched her campaign, Raman criticized Bass\u2019 progress on homelessness and affordability, while also arguing that the city \u201ccan\u2019t seem to manage the basics.\u201d<\/p>\n
Raman is more likely than Bass to pick up the voters who chose community organizer Rae Huang, a leftist who, like Raman, is a DSA member. She also has a shot at the voters who went with tech entrepreneur Adam Miller, who ran on the idea that he would manage the city better than Bass.<\/p>\n
So far, Miller and Huang have not publicly revealed who, if anyone, they plan to endorse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The gloves are off. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Nithya Raman have only begun to wage…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":857273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[6297,1582,276,2451,154640,89209,7265,2961,224,5337,12176,3546,3063,249145,34961,349850,11645,190258,5618,9111],"class_list":["post-857272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-bass","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-city","tag-dsa","tag-homeless-encampment","tag-homelessness","tag-la","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-mayor","tag-people","tag-primary","tag-raman","tag-record","tag-runoff-campaign","tag-school","tag-spencer-pratt","tag-tuesday","tag-voter"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116725384349476427","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=857272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/857273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=857272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=857272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=857272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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