What happened
Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman will be the city's next mayor after beating incumbent Karen Bass in the November general election, according to a CBS News projection. The outlet noted that the result followed strong showings for Democrats across the country on Election Day.
Raman, a Democratic socialist, advanced from the June primary by finishing ahead of Spencer Pratt. She and Bass then became the clear frontrunners for the general election. The CBS report did not include vote totals.
A tight race at the end
A survey from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and the Los Angeles Times, released shortly before the election, found Bass and Raman tied at 40% among likely voters. According to the report, Raman had also hit a setback with voters about a week before the election.
The poll suggested that supporters of third-place finisher Pratt were moving. A week before the election, 41% of Pratt's primary voters had shifted to Bass, up from 22% previously. "A lot of the voters who were previously supporting Spencer Pratt in the primary have now weighed in, and they have moved to Bass," said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Berkeley IGS poll.
Raman's support among Pratt voters slipped from 16% in September to 14% in October. Still, 45% of Pratt's primary voters remained undecided, according to the poll, leaving a sizable group of voters unsettled going into Election Day.
Who Raman is
Raman announced her bid in February, a surprise move because she had previously endorsed Bass' reelection. During the primary she described her campaign as a "long shot" before overtaking Pratt to earn a spot in the general election.
Before joining the City Council in 2020, Raman co-chaired the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council Homelessness Committee and co-founded a homeless advocacy nonprofit. In 2025 she introduced a motion to cap maximum annual rent increases for tenants in rent-stabilized apartments built before 1978. The measure passed 13-2. She has said she hopes to do similar work to help small businesses.
Bass' career and late endorsements
Bass said this race would be her last campaign for office. She has spent more than two decades in public life, as a congresswoman and as Los Angeles' 43rd mayor. Raised in Los Angeles with her three brothers, she began her career as a nurse and physician assistant. She later founded the Community Coalition to help underserved residents of South Los Angeles confront substance abuse, poverty and crime.
She entered politics in 2004 as a member of the California Assembly, where she became the first Black woman to serve as Speaker of a state legislative body. She left in 2010 to run for Congress and served 12 years in the House.
Before the primary, Bass was endorsed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Vice President Kamala Harris. Nearly a week before the general election, billionaire Rick Caruso, her 2022 mayoral rival, also backed her. "For the love of LA, I must put the past behind me because this election must be about our future," Caruso wrote on X, adding, "I will be casting my ballot for Mayor Karen Bass." In a video, he said his concerns about Raman were not "much about ideology, but about competence."
