Inside Nithya Raman's Improbable Campaign for L.A. Mayor

From a Silver Lake Backyard to City Hall

The campaign that would eventually unseat Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass began with a whiteboard, a desperate countdown, and a backyard accessory dwelling unit in Silver Lake.

When Nithya Raman entered the race on February 7, 2026—the very day of the filing deadline—her operation possessed none of the trappings of a traditional mayoral bid. There was no office, no established bank account, and no professional infrastructure to speak of.

Ian Manheimer, who signed on as campaign manager after a 10 p.m. phone call the night before the deadline, later noted that for any observer who suspected Raman had been planning this run for years, a visit to that improvised headquarters would have quickly dispelled the notion.

As reported by the Los Angeles Times, the campaign’s early days were marked by family members rotating shifts to cook vegetarian Indian lunches for a handful of staff, a stark contrast to the massive, well-oiled machine of the incumbent mayor.

allowing homeless encampments in front of schools

This race mattered because it represented a fundamental test of whether a progressive, renter-focused platform could overcome the institutional weight of L.A.’s traditional power brokers. For the business sector and the city’s unhoused populations alike, the stakes were clear: a shift toward a more aggressive, service-oriented approach to the homelessness crisis versus the status quo of the Bass administration.

A Crowded Primary

Raman’s path to the runoff was anything but linear. Early in the primary, she was a largely unknown entity, with 51% of likely voters telling pollsters in March that they lacked enough information to form an opinion on her candidacy.

Compounding her struggle was the aggressive, social-media-driven campaign of Spencer Pratt, a Republican former reality television personality whose focus on the city’s liberal establishment threatened to siphon off enough of the electorate to lock Raman out of the final round.

Nithya Raman wins Los Angeles mayoral race, NBC News projects

The defining moment for the campaign came during the May 6 debate on NBC4. Facing a dystopian portrayal of Los Angeles, Raman struck back, famously declaring, “This is a MAGA Republican’s idea of what Los Angeles looks like.

This is really not the city that I love so much.” While some critics panned her performance, her team viewed it as a successful maneuver to frame the runoff as a binary choice between two progressive Democrats or a Democrat and a candidate whose rhetoric mirrored national Republican figures.

Raman ultimately edged out Pratt with 29% of the vote, securing her spot in the runoff against Bass, who led with 34%. Once the field narrowed, the campaign underwent a rapid metamorphosis.

Nithya Raman will be next mayor of Los Angeles; Karen Bass concedes

The Coalition That Built a Mayor

The runoff phase allowed Raman to reset, bringing in institutional support that had been absent during the primary. The Western States Regional Council of Carpenters and the powerful hospitality union Unite Here Local 11 provided the ground game necessary to reach voters who had previously been out of reach. Financial support followed, most notably from hedge fund manager Aaron Sosnick, who directed $8 million into independent expenditure groups.

The campaign’s strategy shifted toward a targeted outreach to Latino voters, a demographic Bass had dominated during the primary. By leaning into Spanish-language messaging and collaborating with content creators to discuss housing affordability, Raman managed to flip the script, leading among Latino likely voters in the final weeks of the race.

This was a critical pivot point, given the influence of voters in neighborhoods like Boyle Heights, who had been heavily impacted by city service failures, including the industrial fire that had plagued the area earlier that year.

Los Angeles Mayor-elect Nithya Raman makes remarks after winning mayoral race

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

Critics of the campaign, aligned with the Bass camp, argued that Raman’s record on the City Council was too permissive, pointing to her past votes and the presence of encampments near schools.

This “race to define Nithya” saw her unfavorable ratings climb throughout the autumn, yet she maintained a consistent, optimistic narrative about restoring city services. Her team maintained that her ability to reduce homelessness in her own council district provided the tangible proof needed to convince a skeptical electorate.

A Shift in Civic Trajectory

In the end, Raman’s victory was a triumph of ground-level organization over traditional endorsement-heavy politics. Her ability to move from a backyard startup to a city-wide movement reflects changing preferences in the L.A. electorate, which has grown increasingly impatient with traditional bureaucratic solutions to the city's most persistent crises.

As she moves into the mayor’s office, the question for Angelenos remains whether her “love letter to L.A.” can translate into the systemic administrative changes she promised on the stump.