Indian-American Nithya Raman, a frontrunner in Los Angeles mayoral race, is drawing comparisons with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani for several reasons. She is fighting incumbent Mayor Karen Bass.
Nithya Raman emerged as the most prominent left‑leaning challenger to incumbent Mayor Karen Bass in the November 3 mayoral race. If elected in the November 3 polls, Raman will be the first Indian-American Mayor of Los Angeles.
A survey, conducted between September 15 and 20, found 39 per cent of voters favouring Raman for the Los Angeles Mayor post, compared with 28 per cent for Bass, according to PTI. Whereas almost one-third of the surveyed voters were undecided.
Who is Nithya Raman?
A member of the Democratic Socialist movement, Raman has served for six years as a City Councilmember. She is now in the race to become the next mayor of Los Angeles, the second-largest city in the US.
Raman, who had endorsed Bass for re-election before deciding to enter the fray, accused her of being a “missing-in-action” mayor for her absence when the city battled a massive fire in January last year.
Nithya’s early life: Born in Kerala on July 28, 1981, Raman moved to Louisiana when she was six. She was raised in a suburb of Boston.
Nithya lives in Silver Lake with her husband Vali Chandrasekaran and young twins Karna and Kaveri. She moved with her husband, a successful television writer and producer, to Los Angeles in 2013, and the couple had twins, who are now 10.
Nithya Raman’s Education: She graduated from Harvard with a bachelor’s degree in political theory before getting a master’s degree in urban planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Nithya’s career: She is a member of the Los Angeles City Council representing District 4. She ran for City Council in 2020 and won a historic victory, becoming the first Asian-American woman and the first South Asian ever to serve on the City Council.
In March 2024, she was decisively elected to a second term, according to her profile on official website.
“Since taking office, Councilmember Raman has prioritized delivering compassionate and effective services for people experiencing homelessness, building more affordable housing, and moving with greater urgency to meet our city’s climate goals,” the information stated.
Councilmember Raman serves as Chair of the Civil Rights, Immigration, Social Services, and Neighborhoods Committee, Vice Chair of the Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) Committee, and member of the Homelessness and Health Committee, Public Safety Committee, and the Ad Hoc Committee for Charter Review.
Why is Nithya Raman compared with Zohran Madani
According to reports, Raman a Democratic Socialist, has been likened to New York’s Zohran Mamdani, though she insists her political profile is distinct.
The New York Times stated that the comparisons with the New York mayor were inevitable. Aside from their DSA membership, both are millennials born abroad to South Asian parents, and their campaigns shrewdly deployed social media.
But political experts in Los Angeles told NYT that Raman’s savvy and charisma pale next to that of Mamdani, a preternaturally skilled politician.
If Raman wins, experts were quoted as saying that it will not be because she is the West Coast Mamdani. It will be because she is not Bass.
Raman has argued that Los Angeles is leaderless, with a broken government that struggles even to repair streetlights, fill potholes and respond to 911 calls in a timely fashion.
According to the report, Raman’s proposed policy measures range from more audits of homelessness programs to improved performance measures for city department heads. She has promised to create an office of tenant protection and develop a long-term plan to improve infrastructure.
Her proposals are less catchy and more incremental than Mamdani’s, but her supporters note that Los Angeles mayors have less unilateral power than New York mayors, the NYT reported.
They claimed that the public appetite for change has been apparent in her rise despite significant establishment opposition, including from the powerful police union and major business interests.
The prospect of a Raman victory is particularly tantalising for the small but polarising Democratic Socialist movement whose members backed both her and Mamdani as they seek to turn big American cities into a laboratory for progressive policies, the NYT reported.
