A DSA Socialist Is Projected to Run Los Angeles. America’s Two Biggest Cities Would Both Have Socialist Mayors.

Written By TNT Staff, Posted on November 5, 2026

Nithya Raman is projected to become the next mayor of Los Angeles, unseating one-term incumbent Karen Bass. Decision Desk HQ called the race Wednesday; The Hill reported Raman ahead by about 26,000 votes, roughly 3 points, with mail still counting. That is a projection, not a certified result. But if it holds, the nation’s second-largest city joins New York under a Democratic Socialist of America lane — after Zohran Mamdani’s win made him mayor of the largest.

That is not a vibe. It is a governing project. Los Angeles hosts the 2028 Olympics. A “defund the police” socialist in City Hall is not a local curiosity. It is a national warning about what a blue wave buys.

Who Raman is

Raman is a Los Angeles City Council member and a DSA-LA member whose chapter endorsed her. The 19th says she ran “following the playbook of other democratic socialist-aligned candidates,” and that like other DSA-affiliated candidates she “had called for defunding the police during the 2020 nationwide uprisings” after George Floyd’s killing.

She attacked Bass’s signature homelessness program, Inside Safe. The 19th reports it has cost the city over $300 million to house about 6,000 Angelenos, with 40 percent returning to the streets. Raman touted cutting homelessness nearly 50 percent in her own district even as citywide rates rose. Controller Kenneth Mejia endorsed her early. The LAPD union poured in more than $5 million to oppose her, per campaign finance records cited by The 19th. Airbnb spent millions backing Bass.

Two socialist cities, one Olympics clock

Mamdani’s New York and a Raman Los Angeles would put democratic socialists atop America’s two largest cities at the same time. Progressive outlets will call that a mandate. Call it what it is: the DSA playbook moving from campus and council chambers into the mayor’s office of cities that run ports, airports, police departments, and — in L.A.’s case — a global Games.

Bass had labor and the police union. Raman had young renters, housing activists, and the socialist lane. Hollywood Reporter notes her relationship with DSA has been fraught — she was censured by DSA-LA in 2024 over Israel positions, then endorsed locally for mayor while national DSA challenged that endorsement. None of that makes her a moderate. It makes her a socialist who won the argument that counts: the vote.

What Angelenos just bought

Public safety is not a branding exercise when the Olympics arrive. Neither is a City Hall that treats the police department as the problem. Raman will inherit wildfire recovery, a production exodus, street disorder, and a Games security file. Voters who wanted Bass punished for the Palisades Fire and Inside Safe’s results got their wish, if the projection holds.

The rest of the country should watch the certification and the count. A projected DSA mayor of Los Angeles is already a political fact. A certified one, seated over America’s second city and the 2028 Olympics, is a stress test for whether “democratic socialist” still means higher taxes and weaker cops — or whether the brand finally has to govern a city that cannot afford the campus script.

TNT Staff