As of this morning, November 5th, City Councilmember Nithya Raman has ousted incumbent Karen Bass to become mayor-elect of the nation's second largest city. The race was called by Decision Desk HQ, AP, CBS and NBC, but final certification isn't until November 27th.
The latest count from the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder shows Raman with 429,450 votes, or 52.1%, while Bass had 394,796 votes, or 47.9%. Early returns had Bass slightly ahead on election night, but as later ballots came in, Raman pulled ahead and kept extending her lead. It's the first time since 2005 that an incumbent mayor has lost in Los Angeles.
Bass conceded this morning: "While this is not the outcome we hoped for, the people of Los Angeles have spoken," and said she has called Raman to congratulate her and is committed to a smooth transition. Her term ends and Raman's begins December 14.
So who is the new mayor?
Who is Nithya Raman?
If you haven't followed City Hall closely, her name might still be new. At 45, she represents a generational shift from Bass, who is 73.
Raman was born in India and is a graduate of MIT and Harvard, an urban planner by training. She is married to a screenwriter and is a mother of two. She first entered office by doing exactly what she just did again: beating an incumbent. She won her City Council seat in 2020 backed by the Democratic Socialists of America Los Angeles chapter.
That history matters. Raman is described in every race call as a democratic socialist and DSA-backed candidate, and she would be Los Angeles' first DSA-endorsed mayor. She didn't run as a conventional establishment Democrat. Her council record has been built on three issues:
1. Housing and renters. She has pushed for renters' protections and more oversight of the city's homelessness spending, shaped Los Angeles' sanctuary city ordinance, and said she'll sign an executive order on her first day to speed up housing approvals. During the campaign she blamed short-term rentals like Airbnb for destabilizing the rental market and attacked the severe shortage of new construction.
2. Fixing the basics. Raman entered the race at the last minute, telling local press she was frustrated with how Los Angeles has been delivering on "basic services". That was her exact phrase: "We're at a moment where we're not delivering on the basics at a time when the public has trusted us with hundreds of millions of dollars to solve complex problems." Think potholes, LAX's long-delayed electric people mover, trash pickup, permitting.
3. A different model of public safety. She has pledged to expand unarmed response teams for certain emergency calls and has vowed to replace LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell before 2030. That position made her a target for the police union, which spent millions against her.
On election night in Griffith Park her message was simple: "A city that was engineered over the last few decades to resist change, and the people right here who said enough is enough."
Why did Karen Bass lose?
Karen Bass made history in 2022 as the first woman to serve as mayor of Los Angeles, and as she said herself in her concession note, "Four years ago, you elected me as the first Black woman mayor in the history of Los Angeles". She came in with deep experience from Congress and the State Legislature, and with the full backing of the California Democratic establishment.
So why did she lose after one term? There wasn't one reason. There were six stacking up at once.
1. The approval collapse.
An October poll commissioned by The Post found just 25.5% of likely voters approved of Bass' job performance, while 71.7% disapproved. That number is hard to survive, no matter who you are.
2. Homelessness reversed course.
This was the issue she staked her mayoralty on. Her Inside Safe program moved people from encampments into motels, but voters didn't feel the change on the streets. Official figures this year put the city's homeless population at 45,194 in 2026, including 29,115 people living without shelter. After two years of modest declines, the number is rising again. Le Monde's analysis noted that her motel rehousing programs ultimately proved ineffective in the long run and became a symbol of poor management.
3. The Palisades Fire.
In January 2025, large parts of Pacific Palisades burned, destroying thousands of homes and killing 12. Bass took heavy criticism for two things voters remembered a year later: cutting the fire department's budget and her absence during the disaster, when she was on a diplomatic visit to Ghana.
4. A shrinking LAPD and a frustrated middle.
Sworn staffing in the LAPD had fallen to approximately 8,677 officers by April 2026. Residents in Hollywood, the Valley, and South LA all reported the same feeling: slower response times, more open-air drug use, less sense of order. Bass supported a billion-dollar police salary agreement and a downtown convention center modernization project that Raman specifically criticized as wasteful, which allowed Raman to attack her from both the left and the fiscal-responsibility right.
5. Affordability hit a breaking point.
According to data published October 30 by the California Association of Realtors, only 15% of households could afford to purchase a home at the median price of $958,450 in Los Angeles County. Add the contraction in Hollywood production, layoffs across studios, and rents that haven't stopped climbing, and you get a city that feels unaffordable to the people who have to live and work in it.
6. A generational election.
USC analyst Dan Schnur put it bluntly in an interview: "Bass did well with 20th century Los Angeles. Raman did well with 21st century LA". Raman's base — younger, progressive, renters, many voting late — turned out hard. Bass had the major unions, including the powerful police union, and endorsements from Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom, but she was seen as too close to the old guard. Young voters told pollsters they didn't see the same prospects their parents had, and Raman spoke directly to that.
What happens now?
Raman inherits everything Bass was struggling with, plus a deadline: the 2028 Summer Olympics. She will have to rebuild trust in basic city services while also preparing the city for the world to show up in 28 months.
Her tribute to Bass after the win was telling: she called Bass "someone who has given decades of her life to making this city what it is today" and said she would work to earn the trust of people who didn't vote for her.
For Angelenos, this is a sharp left turn, but also a very practical one. The campaign wasn't won on ideology alone. It was won on a simple argument: City Hall has forgotten how to say yes to building, to fixing, to permitting, to housing. Whether Raman can actually deliver that yes is the next story.
This blog post will be updated when the County certifies the final count.
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