Nithya Raman on Thursday unseated Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass after a neck-and-neck race for the leadership for the US’s second largest city.

The young progressive’s victory means that the two largest cities in the US, as well the nation’s capital, Washington DC, have now all elected democratic socialist mayors.

Though Raman’s political ascendance in Los Angeles has sparked many comparisons to New York City’s mayor Zohran Mamdani, her political profile in her home town is very different from Mamdani’s, as is her often tense relationship with the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Here’s some key facts about LA’s new mayor:

Raman broke into politics in 2020 by unseating an establishment Democrat on LA’s powerful city council.

When Raman, an urban planner and political outsider, won a seat on LA’s city council in 2020, it was the first time that a sitting city council member had been ousted in 17 years. One LA political analyst called her win “a political earthquake”. Raman, whose campaign was endorsed by Bernie Sanders, was also the first DSA-endorsed candidate elected to office in Los Angeles. Raman credited her 2020 win to on-the-ground grassroots organizing, telling the Guardian at the time: “We knocked on 80,000 doors, which as far as we know, is a record. By the general election, we had 2,000 volunteers over all. We had 1,000 people just in our Slack.”

She has close ties to Hollywood progressives, including an endorsement from the Hollywood writers’ guild.

At the height of the #MeToo era, Raman served as the entertainment director for the Time’s Up, the organization founded by powerful women in Hollywood that created a legal defense fund for women in all professions to fight back against pervasive sexual assault and sexual harassment.

While older Hollywood celebrities such as Jane Fonda and Samuel L Jackson endorsed Bass, Raman secured endorsements from younger celebrities and comedians such as Mindy Kaling, Adam Scott, and Jaboukie Young-White. Raman’s husband, Vali Chandrasekaran, is a longtime TV writer.

She has also received attention from one very prominent celebrity Republican, former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, with whom she had “a widely publicized private meeting”.

Raman’s key issues are housing policy, homelessness and tenants’ rights.

Raman, an urban planner, has said she joined DSA-LA, which she did in 2019, not because of an “ideological drive”, but “because it was one of the only organizations that was meaningfully talking about housing affordability in the city”. Her mayoral platform calls for building more housing “at all income levels, everything from deed-restricted affordable housing to market-rate housing to social housing to homeless shelters”.

Her goal is to triple annual housing construction in the city, an approach that earned her an endorsement from advocacy group Yimby Action, which believes the best answer to housing affordability is simply building as much housing as possible.

Before she ran for office, Raman co-founded a still-active volunteer organization to help unhoused people in north-east LA.

In 2017, Raman was one of five co-founders of the SELAH Neighborhood Homeless Coalition, a group that organizes local volunteers in north-east LA to do outreach and advocacy with their unhoused neighbors. The group, which is still active and now claims 800 volunteers, is focused on recognizing “unhoused individuals as fellow members of our community worthy of the same dignity, respect and representation afforded to any housed person”.

Raman won the mayoral race despite a conspicuous lack of support from her city council colleagues – even the fellow democratic socialists on the council.

In a mayoral debate with Raman, Bass, her opponent, brought up Raman’s lack of support from other city council members and city leaders, saying: “Your colleagues have a very difficult time working with you.” The three other democratic socialists who were elected to the LA city council after Raman all endorsed Bass for mayor.

“So the establishment doesn’t like Raman: so what?” Los Angeles Times columnist Gustavo Arellano wrote, arguing that Raman’s outsider status was precisely what voters frustrated with LA’s Democratic political establishment wanted.

Raman, who was among the politicians revealed to have been targeted by establishment Democrats in the 2022 LA city hall audio tape leak scandal, won reelection to the city council in 2024 by a large margin.

At Raman’s election night party, “the political class of Los Angeles was absent,” Kurt Peterson, one of the leaders of hospitality union Unite Here local 11, which endorsed Raman, told Politico. But, he added: “Even though every city councilperson said they were standing with Karen Bass, not very many of the people they represent followed them to the polls.”

While DSA-LA ultimately did endorse Raman for mayor, the endorsement was … complicated.

The local chapter of the DSA did not endorse Raman during the primary, when she entered the race at the last minute after previously endorsing Bass.

After she beat out reality star Spencer Pratt for second place and advanced into the runoff against Bass, DSA-LA did “enthusiastically” endorse her, but noted that “Councilmember Raman’s relationship with DSA-LA, and the broader Angeleno grassroots left, has had some ups and downs”. Among Raman’s downs was “an inconsistent position on Palestine, which eventually resulted in conflict with the chapter over a 2024 endorsement from a pro-Israel Dem club”, the group wrote in its voter guide, noting that they believed she had since “worked with us to improve on this issue”.

But Raman’s DSA-LA endorsement was almost rescinded in a vote of national DSA organizers over her stance on Israel, the Los Angeles Times reported, with a national political committee voting 14-13 against rescinding the local endorsement in early November.

Despite the endorsement drama, DSA-LA was quick to celebrate Raman’s victory, posting a photo captioned, “YUP, that’s our mayor!!!” even before the Associated Press had called the election in her favor.

Raman is proud of her willingness to break with allies and take ‘unpopular’ positions.

Raman touts her political independence – including her willingness to vote against her allies on key policy issues – as the heart of her political identity.

She broke with the DSA on her belief that LA’s mansion tax, which brought in less revenue than supporters had hoped, needed to be reformed, which she called an “extremely unpopular sentiment”.

One Hollywood comedian who supports Raman contrasted her with Mamdani by saying, “She’s not ideological. She’s a wonk,” Vanity Fair reported.

Raman said she was “grateful” for comparisons to Mamdani, but “I am myself”.

In recent interviews, Raman has emphasized her political distance from the DSA.

“The mayoral candidate said she favors the Scandinavian model of social democracy, signaling a belief in a regulated free-market economy rather than the more explicitly anti-capitalist vision embraced by many in the DSA,” Vanity Fair wrote in an October profile.

Asked about comparisons to New York’s democratic socialist mayor, Raman said: “Mamdani is one of the most popular politicians in America right now, and I’m very grateful to be compared to someone who is that skilled as a communicator and a leader. But I am different. I am myself.”