Kerala-born politician Nithya Raman has won the Los Angeles mayoral election, defeating incumbent Mayor Karen Bass to become the first Indian-origin mayor of the United States' second-largest city. Her victory, confirmed by official figures from the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder, is a historic first for the city and a landmark moment for the Indian diaspora in America.
Raman, who is 45, secured 51.67 per cent of the votes against 48.33 per cent for Bass, according to the county figures. She received 405,193 votes, while Bass secured 379,069. The result makes Raman the city's first Asian-American mayor and its 44th mayor.
She will also become only the second woman to be elected to the city's highest office. The win caps a remarkable rise for a politician who entered electoral politics just six years ago and who had never before run for citywide office.
Raman was born in Kerala on July 28, 1981, and moved to the United States with her family when she was six years old. She became a naturalised American citizen at the age of 22. She completed her undergraduate studies at Harvard University before earning a master's degree in urban planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Before entering politics, she founded Transparent Chennai, an urban research organisation focused on improving sanitation and civic amenities in the Tamil Nadu capital. After moving to Los Angeles in 2013, she worked with the city's municipal administrative officer, helped establish the SELAH Neighborhood Homeless Coalition and served as executive director of Time's Up Entertainment.
Her political career began in 2020, when she defeated incumbent City Council member David Ryu to win a seat on the Los Angeles City Council, representing District 4. The victory made her the first South Asian person to serve on the council, and she was re-elected in 2024. She was also the first candidate backed by the Democratic Socialists of America to win a seat on the council.
From that base in Hollywood Hills and the surrounding neighbourhoods, she built a reputation as a progressive voice on housing and homelessness, and as a critic of the way the city had handled its most visible crisis.
The mayoral race itself was unusual from the start. Raman entered the contest in February, challenging Bass, whom she had publicly endorsed for re-election just weeks earlier. The contest soon became a generational and political battle, with the two candidates offering sharply different approaches to public safety, affordable housing and homelessness.
Bass, a former member of Congress and the California state legislature, had the backing of much of the city's political establishment, including the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and the county's Democratic Party. Raman, meanwhile, drew support from groups that have gained prominence at City Hall in recent years, including the left-wing Democratic Socialists of America and the transportation advocacy group Streets For All.
The two candidates also campaigned in strikingly different ways in the final days of the race. Bass focused on older voters, visiting senior centres in West Adams and Northridge, where she danced with elderly residents. Raman, on the other hand, campaigned at bars, nightclubs and college campuses, pitching her call for change at City Hall to younger voters.
Both candidates received substantial financial support from outside political groups after the June primary, and the race became one of the most closely watched municipal contests in the country.
Bass entered the general election in a weakened position. She had secured just 34 per cent of the vote in the June 2 primary, a poor showing for an incumbent, and her approval ratings had remained low following the 2025 Palisades fire, which broke out while she was outside the country on a diplomatic mission. During the campaign, she highlighted her administration's record on reducing violent crime, accelerating affordable housing projects and addressing homelessness.
Her administration said unsheltered homelessness, referring to people living outdoors and in vehicles, had declined by 11 per cent.
Raman, however, attacked that record directly, describing the mayor's efforts to tackle homelessness as costly and ineffective. Citing a reduction in homeless encampments in her own Hollywood Hills district, she pledged to halve street homelessness across Los Angeles by the summer of 2028 and eliminate it entirely by the end of her first four-year term. The promise spoke to the issue that dominated the campaign.
A poll conducted by Berkeley IGS and the Los Angeles Times between October 19 and 25 found that around 40 per cent of likely voters considered reducing homeless encampments a top priority for the incoming mayor. About 30 per cent identified public safety and the construction of more affordable housing as major concerns.
Addressing supporters at her election night gathering at the Greek Theatre plaza on Tuesday, Raman stopped short of declaring victory and urged the crowd to remain cautious as votes were counted. "I'm hopeful. I'm very hopeful," she told the cheering supporters.
"I'm also really superstitious. So we're all just going to be cool, OK? Very cool."
The caution proved unnecessary. By Thursday morning, the county figures showed her with a clear and growing lead, and news organisations were reporting her win as confirmed.
Raman's victory has drawn comparisons with the rise of other young progressive politicians in the United States, including New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and it places her in the vanguard of democratic socialists in municipal government. Her win is also the latest in a series of breakthroughs for Indian-origin politicians in America, coming on a midterm election night that also saw Abdul El-Sayed become the first Muslim American elected to the United States Senate.
Together, the results underline how far candidates of South Asian origin have come in American politics in a single generation.
For the Malayali community, the victory carries a special resonance. Raman traces her family roots to Keralam, with her father hailing from Thiruvananthapuram and her mother from Thrissur. Her father, R. Venkataraman, worked with Keltron, and her mother, Sudha, was an employee of Indian Overseas Bank.
Raman is married to Vali Chandrasekaran, a television writer and producer of Tamil origin, and the couple have two children, Karna and Kaveri. The story of a girl who left Keralam at the age of six and rose to lead Los Angeles has been followed with pride across Kerala and among Malayalis around the world.
The challenges awaiting her are formidable. Los Angeles is grappling with a homelessness crisis that has defied years of spending and policy initiatives, a shortage of affordable housing, and public safety concerns that featured heavily in the campaign. She will also lead the city during the final years of US President Donald Trump's presidency, and she will oversee the city's preparations for the 2028 Summer Olympics, one of the largest undertakings in its history.
Her pledge to halve street homelessness by the summer of 2028 sets a clear and measurable test for her first term, and her critics will be watching closely to see whether the approach she championed in her council district can work at the scale of an entire city.
What her victory changes, at least for now, is the direction of City Hall. After years in which the city's politics were dominated by its established leadership, voters have chosen a challenger who promised a different way of governing and a faster, more direct attack on the encampments that line its streets. Whether she can deliver on that promise will define her time as mayor.
For the moment, though, the result stands on its own: a Kerala-born urban planner, once a neighbourhood activist, is the next mayor of Los Angeles.
(Reporting based on The Times of India, Mathrubhumi and WION.)