Mayor Karen Bass narrowly leads City Councilmember Nithya Raman in the L.A. mayor's race

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Set us as preferred Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was narrowly ahead of City Councilmember Nithya Raman, her onetime political ally, in the race to lead the nation’s second-largest city, according to early returns Tuesday.Bass, a veteran politician who had been politically weakened in the wake of the 2025 Palisades fire, was attempting to hold off a vigorous challenge from Raman, who stunned the city’s establishment this year by entering the race at the last minute.The slight gap between the two candidates does not bode well for Bass, since Raman is expected to secure a larger portion of the late-arriving ballots in the coming days.Those ballots tend to be cast by the younger voters who serve as her base.Raman, first elected to the council in 2020, joined the race in February, launching a challenge against someone she had publicly endorsed just a few weeks earlier.

Since then, the contest has been in many ways a generational fight, with the two staking out differing positions on public safety, housing production and strategies for ending homelessness.Bass, 73, was backed by much of the city’s political establishment, including the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and the county’s Democratic Party.Raman, 45, has aligned herself with groups that have emerged at City Hall more recently, including the left-wing Democratic Socialists of America and Streets For All, a transportation advocacy group.During the campaign’s final days, Bass went to venues populated by older voters, including senior centers in West Adams and in Northridge, where she danced with elderly Angelenos.

Raman showed up at bars and nightclubs and on college campuses, spreading her call for change at City Hall.Bass, who previously served in Congress and the state Legislature, secured just 34% of the vote in the June 2 primary, a weak showing for an...