LOS ANGELES – Nithya Raman will advance to the November general election for mayor of Los Angeles, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, after overtaking former reality television personality Spencer Pratt for second place in the June 2 primary.
The result sets up a November runoff between Raman, a progressive city councilmember, and the incumbent Mayor Karen Bass. While the mayoral race is officially nonpartisan, the matchup represents a concentrated struggle within the Democratic coalition for the future of the United States’ second-largest city.
The outcome carries significant implications beyond municipal governance. As Los Angeles prepares to host the 2028 Summer Olympics, the city serves as a global bellwether for how Western megacities manage systemic crises-specifically homelessness and urban instability-under the pressure of international scrutiny and polarized political climates.
The Mechanics of the California Vote
Raman’s ascent to second place occurred in the days following the primary, a common phenomenon in California’s electoral system. The state operates a largely mail-in framework under the California Elections Code, where ballots postmarked by Election Day can be counted for several days afterward and where almost all registered voters are sent ballots by mail.
Historically, these late-counted ballots tend to shift toward Democratic candidates, as they are more likely to come from younger, lower‑propensity and urban voters. In this cycle, Raman outperformed both Bass and Pratt in the post-election night tallies. Through Sunday, Raman gained approximately 43,000 votes over Pratt, increasing her overall share of the vote by about five percentage points.
Recent reporting batches showed Raman capturing roughly 40% of the vote compared to Pratt’s 18%, solidifying her hold on the second runoff slot and effectively ending Pratt’s long‑shot bid to unseat Bass in November.
A Clash of Progressive Visions
The November contest will now feature two left-leaning leaders with diverging philosophies on administration and accountability. Raman has positioned herself as a progressive outsider, challenging the efficacy of the current city leadership and arguing that City Hall has moved too slowly on homelessness, housing and basic service delivery.
“Right now, we have a city that feels rudderless,” Raman told CNN’s Elex Michaelson before the primary. “So many positions that haven’t been filled, places where Angelenos feel abandoned on some of the most important issues facing this city. I will bring that urgency, I will bring that accountability, I will bring that focus that Los Angeles needs and that Angelenos need.”
Mayor Bass has countered by emphasizing the necessity of institutional experience and existing governmental networks, pointing to her two years in office and prior service in Congress and the state Legislature as evidence she can navigate complex federal and state funding streams that underpin the city’s homelessness response.
“You cannot run the nation’s second-largest city without intimate knowledge, long-standing relationships, and collaboration on every level of government,” Bass argued.
The primary candidates’ dynamics were marked by friction, particularly during an early May debate where Bass and Pratt both targeted Raman. Bass pressed Raman on her record in her council district, while Pratt cast both Democrats as out of touch with residents’ concerns. Raman responded that “each of them thinks that running against each other is what’s going to help them win,” while Pratt asserted he would prefer Raman as an opponent over Bass, questioning if Raman had been “a failure for six years” as a councilmember.
The runoff now forces Los Angeles’ dominant political party to adjudicate between Bass’s emphasis on continuity and coalition‑building and Raman’s promise of a sharper break with the status quo on housing production, tenant protections and public safety.
Populism and the Integrity of the Ballot
The candidacy of Spencer Pratt, a former star of MTV’s “The Hills,” introduced a populist, Republican-aligned element to the race in a city where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than three to one. Framing himself as a political outsider, Pratt focused his campaign on homelessness and criticized Mayor Bass’s response to the Palisades fire, gaining traction among voters dissatisfied with the city’s quality of life and skeptical of existing institutions.
Pratt’s campaign leaned heavily on online provocation and meme‑driven messaging, including an artificial intelligence-generated video portraying him as Batman and Bass as the Joker, depicting residents pelting Democratic figures with tomatoes. The video underscored how generative AI has become a low‑cost, high‑impact tool in local campaigns, raising fresh concerns among election officials and disinformation researchers about manipulated imagery in down‑ballot races.
As Raman closed the gap on election night and then pulled ahead in subsequent counts, Pratt and his allies, including former President Donald Trump, challenged the validity of the counting process. Trump ended a Sunday interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” after accusing local officials of “cheating,” echoing rhetoric he has used to cast doubt on mail‑in voting more broadly.
The controversy extended to the legal sphere:
- First Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli, a Trump appointee, posted that there was “evidence of election fraud in California” and that investigations were underway, without providing specific details.
- Concurrent social media theories, shared by figures including Elon Musk, claimed a vote-count update showed Pratt receiving zero new votes.
- Essayli later clarified that the “zero vote” claim was false, stating that official county records showed each candidate received votes in every update and reiterating that any federal inquiry would follow established Department of Justice election protocols.
Elections officials stressed that gradual shifts in margins are a predictable feature of California’s vote‑by‑mail system, not evidence of manipulation. Their public explanations, and Essayli’s subsequent correction, underscore how quickly unverified claims can move from fringe social media posts into mainstream political discourse-even in a municipal race.
The Roadmap to 2028
The central policy battle for the November runoff will likely center on the city’s homelessness crisis and broader housing affordability. Raman, a longtime advocate for the unhoused before her tenure on the City Council, has pledged a specific, measurable goal: reducing the number of people living in tents and encampments by 50% before the 2028 Olympics. Bass has defended her administration’s Inside Safe program and emergency housing initiatives, arguing that durable progress requires coordination with county mental health and social services agencies, as well as sustained state and federal funding.
This objective is not merely local; the visibility of Los Angeles’ street crisis remains a point of international discussion regarding the social contracts of global hubs. The city’s preparations are taking place under the umbrella of the host‑city agreement with the International Olympic Committee and the 2017 LA 2028 Games agreement adopted by the Los Angeles City Council, which commits the city to providing transportation, security and other core services during the event. How the next mayor deploys land‑use authority, policing resources and social‑service partnerships in pursuit of those goals will shape not only the city’s Olympic presentation but also everyday life for millions of residents.
The November election will determine whether the city maintains its current administrative trajectory under Bass or pivots toward Raman’s progressive urgency as it enters the final four-year countdown to the Olympic Games-testing, in real time, whether Los Angeles can reconcile its humanitarian obligations with the demands of hosting a global mega‑event.
Worth a look
