Let's Look At The 2026 LA Mayoral Election

There are several similarities between the 2025 New York and 2026 Los Angeles mayoral elections. Both cities rejected establishment Democrat candidates, Andrew Cuomo in New York and Karen Bass in Los Angeles, in favor of Democratic Socialists of South Asian heritage, Zohran Mamdani in New York and Nithya Raman in Los Angeles. More conservative candidates, Curtis Sliwa in New York and Spencer Pratt in Los Angeles, were also-ran contenders.

I started my tech career in the distant past working for the Los Angeles City statistical office, and the map above that breaks down the winning candidate in each precinct caught my eye: purple went for Bass, while yellow-orange went for Raman. Raman beat Bass overall 54.7% to 45.3%. (My wife and I live in just about the precise geographical center of the map, in a yellow-orange area.)

The purple areas on the map represent the current Democrat alignment, an alliance of the very wealthy and African-Americans. The large purple cluster at center-left is the prosperous West Side, including Brentwood, Bel Air, Westwood, Encino, and Pacific Palisades. Oddly, Pacific Palisades itself, vocally dissatsified with Karen Bass's hndling of preparation for and recovery from the 2025 fire, nevertheless went overwhelmingly for Bass. The purple and purplish areas extending downward from the center of the map are African-American.

The yellow and yellow-orange areas in the upper left, center right, and very bottom of the map went for Raman. They are primarily working-class Hispanic, white, and Asian.

Comparing the November general election totals to the June primary, Bass won the primary with 34.3%; Raman made it to the runoff with 29%, and Pratt came in third with 25.5%. It's hard to avoid thinking that much of the Pratt vote went to Raman; the Pratt voters apparently wanted a change no matter what. In addition, Bass had been a highly influential member of the Pelosi House leadership, but this alignment with the traditional Democrat establishment did her no good.

What this may mean for LA's future is hard to determine. The mayoral positions in Los Angeles and New York aren't the same; Los Angeles is only a part of Los Angeles County, which is governed by a separately elected Board of Supervisors, and the city schools are controlled by a separately elected Board of Education. The county runs the public hospitals, mental health, and social services, as well as the jails, while the county district attorney prosecutes felonies. There are also major municipal enclaves within the city boundaries, including Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, and San Fernando.

Raman also has a problem with her city council. According to Politico,

Since Raman’s last-minute entry into the race against Karen Bass in February, council members have piled on the Democratic Socialists of America-aligned progressive. Not one of Raman’s 14 colleagues has endorsed her, and the shots against her have intensified as she’s climbed in the polls.

. . . To accomplish her ambitious agenda on policing, transportation and homelessness, Raman will need a council majority to go along with her, although there’s ample reason to expect she’ll encounter resistance and deeper tensions. Raman’s platform relies on her bucking longstanding deference to council members’ positions on matters in their own districts, something she has done repeatedly over her nearly six years in office.

Council members’ complaints about Raman range from assessments of her trustworthiness and effectiveness to what some describe as a brusque professorial persona, a waffling on policy stances and an indifference to others’ priorities.

Some of the criticisms are motivated by loyalty to Bass, some come from long-simmering tensions about Raman’s personality spilling into public and others are about her approach to housing — a central plank of her candidacy — which upends long-standing City Hall customs.

The open hostility Raman is now facing has stunned even City Hall veterans.

She also campaigned on replacing LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell, apparently on the basis that LAPD cooperates too extensively with ICE. However, since the election, she's been silent on McDonnell; they've had a call, and McDonnell has pledged to work with her. If McDonnell is in fact removed, there is a concern that many LAPD officers would leave as well.

As ballots were being counted, Los Angeles Police Protective League director Jamie McBride warned that Raman’s election could lead officers to leave the department.

“If Nithya Raman becomes the mayor, the city needs to prepare for Armageddon,” McBride told NBC Los Angeles.

He added: “She won’t have to defund the police; police officers will just leave the department.”

Following Raman’s victory, the union congratulated her and said its president, Ricky Mendoza, had contacted her to establish a dialogue.

The union continued to express concern about potential cuts but acknowledged Raman’s stated opposition to further staffing declines, describing that as a shared goal.

Raman's advantage in the election was that she was a fresh face:

“Coming out of the pandemic, when encampments lined our streets and businesses were trying to reopen — we got Angelenos off the streets, made our neighborhoods safer, built more affordable housing and created new opportunities for working families,” Bass said. “We stood together through devastating wildfires and protected our immigrant communities when Donald Trump sent federal troops into our streets to spread fear and intimidation. That progress belongs to all of us.”

Raman’s campaign, by contrast, was fresh and positive. She successfully positioned herself as an outsider to the mainstream of Los Angeles politics.

Running both as a member of the council and as the alternative to the status quo gave Raman the luxury of claiming credit for city progress — she boasted of the decline in street homelessness in her district last year — while also distancing herself from the city’s struggles. She did not run a perfect campaign — a few late gaffes gave the Bass camp room for optimism as Election Day approached and the mayor closed the polling gap on the council member.

. . . Homelessness will top the agenda, and Raman has made herself susceptible to clear accountability: She has promised to reduce street homelessness in the city by 50% over the next two years. That’s a measurable goal, and one she may find hard to meet. Bass, no less committed to solutions in this area, managed to bring down street homelessness about 17% over four years.

It seems to me that voters in the 2026 election mostly were looking for fresh faces, but their dissatisfaction with the status quo reflected Spencer Pratt-adjacent concerns as much as anything else. The new faces will need to deliver.