Kerala-born urban planner Nithya Raman is projected to become the next mayor of Los Angeles

Nithya Raman, a Kerala-born urban planner who built her career on housing and homelessness, has been projected the winner of the Los Angeles mayoral election, defeating incumbent Karen Bass. Mayor Bass conceded after NBC News projected the result.

Results late Thursday showed Raman with about 53 per cent of the vote against Bass’ 47 per cent, with roughly 874,000 ballots counted. The result remains unofficial. Raman, 45, will take office in December and become the city’s first Asian American mayor.

Bass said in a statement: “I have called Councilmember Nithya Raman to congratulate her on her victory, and I have committed to ensuring a smooth and seamless transition.”

From Thrissur to city hall

Raman was born in 1981 in Thrissur and briefly lived in Thiruvananthapuram, where her father, Venkitaraman, worked at KELTRON and her mother, Sudha Kechery, worked in banking. She left India at about six. She became a naturalised American citizen at 22, taking the oath in Boston.

At Harvard, she studied Social Studies and joined a programme providing interest-free loans to tenants facing eviction. Her freshman-year roommate, Stephanie Stallings, recalled her sleeping outside in freezing weather to draw attention to homelessness. Raman later said the programme shaped how she thought about insecurity and how people could be stabilised during difficult moments.

India also shaped her path. During undergraduate research, she encountered a rural Tamil Nadu official who told her: “You must leave your shoes and your politics at the door.” She walked out without removing her shoes. The official later offered to open his office for her questions, and the episode featured in her senior thesis.

Her interest in urban governance grew from her time in India. In a 2020 interview with an Indian publication, she recalled working with slum-based organisations in Delhi against evictions and for basic services. “Seeing how the government decisions negatively impacted the lives and livelihoods of so many made me realise how important urban governance was. That pushed me to study urban planning,” she said.

Building a housing record

She earned a graduate degree in urban planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After MIT, she returned to India to build Transparent Chennai, a civic-data project. She was the project lead when she found that the location of public toilets had little relationship to the slums where residents were most likely to use them.

She moved to Los Angeles in 2013. Working in the City Administrative Officer’s office, she examined homelessness spending and found that much of about $100 million went towards arrests rather than housing, outreach or services. She co-founded the SELAH Neighbourhood Homeless Coalition in 2017 and later led Time’s Up Entertainment.

Her 2020 defeat of Councilman David Ryu made her the first challenger in 17 years to unseat a Los Angeles council incumbent. On the council, she backed stronger renter protections. Legislation she supported extended protections against eviction without specific cause to about 400,000 additional rental units, according to city figures.

In November 2025, the council approved her proposal to lower annual rent-increase limits for rent-stabilised apartments from 3 to 8 per cent to 1 to 4 per cent, depending on inflation. “The city has not done enough to protect renters,” she said before the vote.

Her politics have not always sat neatly with her allies. She has been repeatedly endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, yet she also identified with the pro-housing “Yes in My Backyard” movement. “But I feel like I have demonstrated over and over again that my decision-making has been independent,” she said in February.

A bruising race

Her mayoral bid began with a break from Bass, whom she had endorsed. She decided to challenge her the night before the February 7 filing deadline. Nine council colleagues reaffirmed their support for Bass. Raman finished second in the June primary, which secured her a place in the runoff.

Her homelessness record became a central dispute. In August, Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, a Bass ally, split the housing and homelessness committee that Raman had chaired since 2023. “The committee is behind in excess of more than 100 issues,” he said. Raman defended her scrutiny of city programmes as “oversight and accountability.”

There were real shortcomings in delivery. Her rental-voucher programme aimed to house 600 households by July 1, but only three had moved in by then, rising to 54 by August 13. Raman pointed to a 49 per cent decline in street homelessness in her district. Bass credited the improvement to her own Inside Safe programme.

The contest also drew heavy outside money. The Los Angeles police union spent more than $5 million opposing Raman, according to campaign finance records. Even so, her candidacy drew strong support from younger voters. Democratic consultant Mike Trujillo, who backed Bass, offered a blunt read of the result: “This is not a geographic coalition or racial coalition; this is a when-you-were-born coalition.”

Election night and the clock

At her election-night gathering at the Greek Theatre plaza, Raman brought her parents, brother, husband and 10-year-old twins on stage. Her husband, Vali Chandrasekaran, whom she met at Harvard, is a television writer with credits including “Modern Family” and “30 Rock.” Earlier in the campaign, she told an Indian publication that her four-year-old twins would interrupt speeches to ask for snacks or run around her. “I had to learn how to stay focused,” she said.

“Hopelessness can be fatal for a city, but this campaign refused to accept that,” she said on election night.

She now has a short runway. Preparations for the 2028 Summer Olympics add urgency to the job. On Thursday, she acknowledged the limited time ahead, calling hers “one of the shortest transitions across the country — for a city of 4 million people where the challenges are absolutely immense.” Her housing agenda will now be judged on results across Los Angeles, and her Kerala roots will be part of how the city and the country read that story.