After Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman unseated Karen Bass in the race for mayor, the national media pounced on an oft-repeated narrative. Like New York City, which elected Zohran Mamdani, and Seattle, which elected Katie Wilson, Los Angeles has elected a self-described democratic socialist as mayor.
While trepidation is in order, we don’t believe that Los Angeles residents should hire a Realtor just yet. While Raman is certainly progressive who has taken her share of wrongheaded positions, she campaigned on a reform agenda rather than a socialistic one.
We interviewed Raman and other mayoral candidates before the primary. We endorsed entrepreneur Adam Miller, who we thought had the best platform for bringing LA city government into the 21st century. We were concerned by Raman’s backing of the counterproductive Measure ULA mansion tax, for instance. But as we noted at the time, she sounded “like a reform-minded, ‘good government’ liberal.” (Bass declined or ignored several invitations by the editorial board over the course of the year for an interview.)
We asked Raman in that interview about her DSA background and the prospect of government grocery stores under a Mayor Raman and she noted, “I am not making those kinds of promises.” She focused on “delivering services people have paid for already.” She is well-versed in housing policy and echoed our support for reducing permitting hurdles. “Market-rate housing is what most people live in,” she added. “The city can’t build enough affordable housing. We need a robust private sector.”
That doesn’t sound like the second coming of Mao to us.
Raman echoed that pragmatic theme during her victory speech: “LA stopped being a place where we could build things, where we could open things, where we could film things, where we could create things.” She touted better public services, including “a transit system that can get people where they need to go, a city that is safe for its working people and … a city government that is capable of delivering on its promises.”
This editorial board is generally wary of democratic socialists, but Raman has given us no reason to doubt her seriousness in pursuing a reformist agenda that includes streamlining housing projects, improving public trust in City Hall, boosting police response times, speeding up the wildfire recovery and reducing homelessness. The devil is in the details, but she deserves a chance.
LA voters clearly rejected Bass’ clubfooted response to the fires and her perception as a status-quo leader who presided over an ill-performing municipal government. With the entirety of the Los Angeles political establishment backing pass, from the police union to even every single democratic socialist on the council backing Bass, Raman will be a rare mayor who owes favors to no one. Her political mandate comes from the people, not special interests.
We do hope Raman looks more toward private-sector than big-government solutions, puts the interests of Angelenos over the interests of public sector unions and we hope she leans more into being a careful reformer than a hardheaded ideologue. We are sure she will come up against staunch opposition if she tries to reform LA’s ossified bureaucracies, and that we will disagree with her on plenty of issues, but we wish the new mayor the best. A better Los Angeles is good for everyone.