The City Councilmember positions her campaign around housing delivery, public trust, and policies affecting renters and immigrant-heavy neighborhoods
On February 7, 2026—just hours before the city’s filing deadline—Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman formally entered the race for mayor, launching an unexpected but consequential challenge to incumbent Mayor Karen Bass. The move reshapes the 2026 contest and signals a deeper debate over how Los Angeles addresses housing, homelessness, and public trust in City Hall.
Raman, who represents Council District 4, framed her decision not as a personal break with Bass—who endorsed her reelection in 2024—but as a response to what she called the city’s inability to deliver “big, structural change” at a moment of overlapping crises. “Los Angeles has the values,” Raman said in her announcement. “What we lack is a system that actually delivers on them.”
What Raman Is Running On
Raman’s mayoral platform centers on three core policy areas:
Housing and Homelessness: She is proposing aggressive expansion of affordable housing, stronger tenant protections, faster approvals for 100% affordable developments, and a shift away from enforcement-heavy homelessness responses toward permanent housing and services.
City Transparency and Accountability: Raman has pledged to reform how decisions are made at City Hall, including budget transparency, limits on backroom political influence, and stronger ethics enforcement—an implicit response to the lingering damage of the 2022 City Council corruption scandal.
Public Safety Reframed: Rather than expanding policing alone, Raman is emphasizing street lighting, safe infrastructure, mental-health response teams, and violence-prevention programs—an approach aligned with community-based safety models supported by many Latino advocacy organizations.
She will retain her City Council seat regardless of the election outcome; her term runs through 2028.
How Raman Plans to Unseat Bass
Raman’s challenge is not ideological posturing—it’s strategic. She is positioning herself as the candidate of execution over symbolism, arguing that despite progressive rhetoric, homelessness has worsened, housing remains unaffordable, and trust in city leadership is fragile.
Her relationship with Latino communities reflects that complexity. Raman represents districts with large Latino and immigrant renter populations, including Koreatown and adjacent neighborhoods. In the leaked 2021 audio that later triggered the 2022 scandal, then–Council President Nury Martínez and others discussed redrawing Raman’s district to weaken her renter base—comments that also included racist remarks targeting Oaxacan immigrants. Raman publicly backed an independent redistricting commission and aligned with groups such as CHIRLA in condemning anti-immigrant rhetoric and ICE enforcement tactics.
Despite resistance from parts of the old political establishment, Raman won reelection with strong grassroots support—evidence that her appeal extends beyond insider alliances.
In a crowded field that includes tech entrepreneur Adam Miller, housing advocate Rae Huang, and media personality Spencer Pratt, Raman is betting that Los Angeles voters—especially renters and working-class families—are ready for a mayor who challenges the system itself, not just manages it.
