The surprising and divisive mayoral campaign of right-wing reality TV star Spencer Pratt came to an end on Monday, when Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, claimed her spot on the general election ballot against incumbent Mayor Karen Bass.
The second-place finish for Raman means that in the coming months, Bass will have to grapple with a challenger from her left. The incumbent mayor’s establishment bonafides at once lend her a strong political apparatus and make her the object of voter frustration. Raman, meanwhile, will face an uphill battle against the entrenched Democratic machine, which helped Bass easily secure a first-place finish. The embrace of mail-in voting by Angelenos slowly turned the tide for Raman, who initially trailed Pratt when polls closed last Tuesday.
Under California’s nonpartisan, open primary system, all viable candidates stood for the same June election — putting Pratt, a Republican, in the same primary as the heavily Democratic field. The top two advance to a runoff in November, meaning Los Angeles voters will choose between two Democrats in the general election ballot.
The emergence of Pratt, who rode a wave of outside conservative funding, prompted an intense debate among the city’s left on how to vote in the open primary. Rae Huang entered the race early on a progressive platform of strident police accountability measures, free and fast buses, and public housing. Raman, a city councilmember, decided to run at the last moment, with polls quickly showing she had a clearer path to a November runoff to fend off Pratt. Huang and her supporters insisted that she had the bolder leftist vision for the city, while Raman’s backers accused the Huang campaign of splitting the left amid a real threat from Pratt. The left is now faced with the task of repairing its fractures ahead of the November runoff.
Following Zohran Mamdani’s successful run for mayor in New York City, pundits were quick to ponder whether Los Angeles might be having its own Mamdani moment. But closer watchers of LA politics have been asking whether a different New York import could improve elections in the nation’s second biggest city: ranked-choice voting.
A ranked-choice voting system allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference. The system often leads to opponents with similar platforms and voter bases to cross-endorse, as was the case with Mamdani and his fellow progressive opponent Brad Lander, which helped stave off the more conservative-leaning former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. In the LA race, ranked choice would have allowed Raman and Huang to forge a similar alliance without compromising their positions and cooling the fierce debates among their supporters.
“We’ve heard lots of voters that they are voting strategically, they try and follow the polls instead of supporting their real favorite — that’s the narrative that I think ranked-choice voting would solve,” said Rachel Hutchinson, deputy director of research and policy at FairVote, a nonprofit that is pushing for ranked-choice voting across the U.S., including in Los Angeles, where City Council has until June 26 to decide whether to place a measure on the November ballot that would implement the system in future elections.
“Not only do people not have to drop out, but they can actually act civilly toward each other, especially if they share an ideology or they represent a similar community,” Hutchinson continued. “Voters under this system would feel more empowered to vote their conscience because they can still support their candidate.”
Raman joined the LA City Council as part of a wing of left-leaning victories that shifted the city’s political calculus, and has cast herself as a pragmatic leader with an eye for policy. But she faced challenges garnering support from the left amid accusations of flip-flopping and cozying up to entrenched local power. Despite running on defunding the police in 2020 as the first member of the Democratic Socialists of America elected to the council, Raman repeatedly voted to expand the Los Angeles Police Department budget, although she has pushed back on plans to expand the force. In 2024, Raman accepted an endorsement from Zionist group Democrats for Israel–Los Angeles, which opposed a ceasefire in Gaza, for which she was widely rebuked and even censured by DSA–LA.
Even though Raman and Huang are both DSA members, the local chapter declined to reopen the endorsement process for them. Raman’s three DSA colleagues on the City Council opted to endorse Bass.
Bass focused much of her fire on attacking Raman, despite arguably having the biggest ideological disagreements with Pratt. Bass and Raman were once allies: Bass campaigned for Raman in 2024, and Raman supported Bass in her previous mayoral race. But once Raman launched her last-minute campaign, Bass criticized her for claiming to be an outsider with no control over the current issues plaguing the city, despite Raman having spent years in City Hall.
On Monday, the local publication LA Material released a text message Bass sent Raman shortly after the latter filed to run; it contained only a tweet announcing Raman’s filing and a woman shrugging emoji.
Bass’s tenure as mayor has been rife with controversy, particularly over her handling of the deadly 2025 Pacific Palisades fire. The mayor was in Ghana attending an embassy party when the fire broke out, and she returned home the following day, with her city and reputation in tatters. Bass’s office has also been criticized for watering down an after-action report on the Palisades fire, including allegations that she scrubbed the most damning findings about the city’s shortcomings in responding to the blaze.
Her supporters are quick to point out that the Santa Ana winds, and not Bass, fueled the intense fire. And in fact, President Donald Trump, who endorsed Pratt, also shares blame for the slow recovery effort. The president and Republicans in Congress have declined to release the $34 billion in Federal Emergency Management Agency aid requested by California Gov. Gavin Newsom for assisting fire survivors.
The controversy over the fires largely fueled the campaign of third-place finisher Pratt, a former television star on “The Hills” who has never worked in politics and is best known for getting into public spats with his female co-stars. He centered his pitch on his anger at Bass’s handling of the Palisades fire — which consumed his home as well as thousands of others — as well as his disdain for the city’s homeless population, whom he called “bums” and “zombies” and argued should be arrested en masse.
Housing experts told The Intercept that Pratt’s assertions were completely divorced from reality. But they pointed out that the lack of significant progress on the issue of homelessness in Los Angeles under Bass has emboldened figures like Pratt to swoop in and spread misinformation and dangerous propaganda.
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