Socialist candidate Nithya Raman has won a stunning victory over Karen Bass to become the new mayor of Los Angeles.
The woke city councilwoman, 45, emerged victorious with a razor-thin margin Thursday to unseat the incumbent mayor, overcoming a double-digit deficit held by Bass earlier in the campaign.
Raman won 52 percent of the vote to Bass's 48 percent.
Raman's victory came as Democrats enjoyed midterm election wins across the nation, with voters swayed by her focus on the economy following Bass's turbulent tenure as mayor.
Bass was slammed for her mismanagement of devastating wildfires that caused billions in damage in January 2025, alongside rising crime and homelessness rates, leading Angelinos to boot her from office in a stinging rebuke.
Raman's victory was declared on Thursday after two days of neck-and-neck vote counting, and the race was called with the socialist candidate roughly 30,000 votes ahead.
Kicking off the race for the Los Angeles mayor's office at the start of the year, the cycle was also notable for the candidacy of former reality TV star Spencer Pratt, whose brash no-nonsense campaign style won national attention during the primary.
Pratt expected to take Bass to a run-off election after June's primary, but he was unexpectedly beaten to second place by Raman, who had been trailing in the polls with weeks to go.
Raman entered the general election campaign behind Bass by double digits, but the socialist spent the summer relentlessly criticizing the mayor's record and plastering her message of 'change' across social media.
Raman's victory on Tuesday night now makes her one of the highest-profile socialist figures in the nation, with many likening the new mayor's rise to New York City's Zohran Mamdani.
Socialist candidate Nithya Raman has won her election for mayor of Los Angeles
The woke city councilwoman, 45, emerged victorious in the midterm elections as Democrat candidates swept races across the country
Raman defeated incumbent Mayor Karen Bass in the election
Born in India, Raman moved to the US aged six before obtaining degrees at Harvard and MIT, and she became a naturalized American citizen aged 22.
After founding a homeless charity in 2017, Raman's political career took off in 2020 when she became the first challenger to successfully unseat an incumbent Los Angeles city councilmember in 17 years.
Raman earned a reputation in the city council as one of the most far-left progressive members, and her mayoral run this year led her to walk back some of her most extreme past positions including her support for the 'defund the police' movement.
When Raman launched her run for mayor in February, she announced her candidacy just hours before the filing deadline.
She had even endorsed Bass for re-election just weeks before, and Bass admitted Raman's challenge was a 'surprise' to her at the time.
But after Raman defeated Pratt and took Bass to a run-off election, the longshot bid gained traction.
Raman particularly hammered Bass for her handling of the Los Angeles wildfire crisis in January 2025, accusing her of mismanaging the disaster and allowing over $25 billion in damage before the fires were contained.
Raman launched her candidacy as a longshot, and had even endorsed Bass for re-election before 'surprising' the incumbent and launching her own campaign
Bass was heavily criticized for her handling of wildfires in Los Angeles last year which caused billions in damage
She sharply criticized Bass for visiting Ghana when the wildfires broke out and said the mayor had left the city unprepared, saying: 'I would not have left the country when weather warnings were dire and my duty was to the city.'
'There's always someone else to blame with Karen Bass: The weather, the county, the system,' Raman added in a campaign video in October. 'But Angelenos don't need more excuses. They need a mayor who takes accountability and gets things done.'
Facing the prospect of being kicked out of office, Bass made an impassioned plea to voters on Sunday to save her political future, warning that Raman's far-left socialist agenda would create havoc in Los Angeles.
She warned that Raman would bring a 'tremendous amount of chaos', and said the city could even lose control of the 2028 Olympic Games if the socialist won.
The incumbent mayor cited Raman's campaign promise to fire LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell if she is elected, which Bass said would cause an exodus of officers to follow him out of the department.
'I don’t think she has a clue what it takes to get a police chief for the nation’s second-largest city,' Bass said.
Bass notably apologized for her handling of the wildfires during a debate with Raman in October, saying she was 'profoundly sorry' that she was in Ghana at the time 'when my city needed me.'
'There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of the lives lost, the families that lost their homes, or the families where the home is still standing but they’re not able to be in it,' the mayor admitted.
When the race tightened in the closing stretch, Bass also brought out several major California politicos to bolster her campaign, including Democratic gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra and businessman Rick Caruso, who Bass beat in the 2022 mayoral election.
Caruso joined Bass on the campaign trail to warn voters off Raman, as he admitted he had 'struggled with the choices that we have' but argued Bass was the better of the two.
'She has worked hard to learn from the mistakes of the past,' Caruso said of Bass. 'I feel very strongly, because of my love for Los Angeles, I had to put the past behind me.'
Bass campaigned in the final days with businessman Rick Caruso, who she defeated in the 2022 mayoral election but who endorsed her over Raman
The race was also upended by the surprise candidacy of former reality TV star Spencer Pratt, who ran against Bass as a Republican.
Pratt's brash, no-nonsense style won him plaudits in the deep-blue city, including accusing Bass of 'burning my house down' after his mansion was lost during the wildfires last year.
While Pratt's candidacy ultimately fell short, the Los Angeles mayoral race may be remembered as much for the Republican's breakout performance as for the eventual winner.
