Los Angeles saw a major political shake-up this week as a wave of democratic socialists was elected to key offices. Nithya Raman, the first democratic socialist to serve on the Los Angeles city council, defeated incumbent Karen Bass to become the next mayor. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing The Guardian.
Even in the deep blue city, Raman's victory was hardly a given and marked a stunning win for the progressive wing of the party. With her election, America's two largest cities will now be run by democratic socialist mayors.
The wins for the organization didn't stop there. Los Angeles voters backed numerous DSA-LA-endorsed candidates, including Marissa Roy for city attorney and Angela Gonzales-Torres, who defeated incumbent Jimmy Gomez for a US House seat. Other members won seats on school boards and the Burbank city council, meaning Burbank has the first socialist-majority city council on the west coast, DSA-LA said.
The organization saw its largest-ever slate of candidate victories after an election season in which volunteers knocked on more than 110,000 doors.
"These results show us what we've known for a long time: Angelenos are looking for an alternative to politicians beholden to billionaires and corporate interests," Anna Gross, a DSA-LA steering member, said in a statement.
"With representation across LA county, in the most powerful positions in city hall and for the first time in US Congress [Gonzales-Torres], we look forward to showing Angelenos what Democratic Socialist leadership can deliver."
DSA support was significant for Raman and meant that a large network of volunteers canvassed for her across the city in the lead-up to the election. But her campaign was also helped by the fact that Karen Bass was deeply unpopular. Polling has long shown that Angelenos are frustrated about the state of the city, and resentment over Bass's handling of the Palisades fire damaged her.
"If there hadn't been the Palisades fire in January of last year, I don't think Nithya would have run. And I don't think Karen Bass would have been defeated," said Zev Yaroslavsky, the director of the Los Angeles initiative at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles.
"The majority of the people of the city, a significant majority, think that the city is on the wrong track. And the Palisades fire was really the poster child for all that people are unhappy about."
This week's victories have boosted DSA-LA, which had more than 6,000 members as of last month and has seen another 2,000 people join this week alone, the chapter said.
The organization has significantly expanded its power and reach in recent years. Raman, who joined DSA in 2019, was the first elected to city council in 2020 in a stunning victory that saw her defeat an incumbent Democrat backed by Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton. Yaroslavsky said at the time that her election marked "a significant shift in the architecture of Los Angeles politics", he recalled.
In the years since, the city has voted in three other DSA candidates to serve on its 14-member council.
"The DSA organization has made an impact on LA city politics since 2020 when they supported Nithya Raman the first time," Yaroslavsky said. "They're pretty sophisticated in the way they target their resources, [which] are human resources – they have a lot of campaign workers and precinct walkers."
In an interview with the Guardian in September, DSA member Patrick Padilla said the organization's platform has broad appeal – including among many people who don't identify as democratic socialists. The group focuses on an array of issues, including affordable housing and tenant rights, immigrant rights, Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, among others, according to its website.
"We're coming to find that the status quo has not been serving everyday working Americans. And when I'm on the doors, I'm talking to people. People are just focused on how they can get by day to day," Padilla said.
Several candidates of the slate endorsed by the chapter this year won by huge margins this week. In the city attorney race, Roy won with 67.39% of the vote, according to the latest data available. Roy has pledged to make the city attorney's office into the "largest public interest law office in the city" and to use "the law to fight for working people, immigrants, renters, consumers".
Gonzalez-Torres won with 60.6% of the vote to Gomez's 39.4%, according to the most recently available figures. Gomez had served in Congress for nearly a decade and was endorsed by Aipac, which spent $2.7m in support of his candidacy. He stood in sharp contrast to Gonzalez-Torres, who described the war in Gaza as a genocide that the "Israeli military is only able to commit with the financial and political support of the US government".
While Raman's victory is undoubtedly a win for the chapter, the endorsement was complicated. Raman entered the race at the last minute after DSA-affiliated colleagues had already backed Bass, and another candidate was in the running. DSA member Rae Huang also ran in the mayoral primary and the chapter opted not to support any candidate.
The organization censured Raman in 2024 for pursuing an endorsement from a Democrats for Israel group, and its decision to back her in this election came after internal debate.