Los Angeles City Councilwoman Nithya Raman moved past reality TV host Spencer Pratt in the city's mayoral primary on Sunday, capping a five-day turnaround after trailing Pratt on election night.
Raman now sits in second place with Pratt in third, according to the latest vote count from the Los Angeles Registrar-Recorder. Raman had 27.1% of the votes counted so far, while Pratt had 26.7%.
Both are vying for a Nov. 3 runoff against Mayor Karen Bass, who received 34.7 percent of the vote as of Sunday, and who the Associated Press has determined is ready to run.
“The odds have shifted dramatically in Raman's favor,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, a former member of the Los Angeles Initiative's executive council at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. “The trend is clear. He's been gaining on Pratt for the last three or four days. There's no reason to believe that's going to change. It's close, but at the moment he's probably in a race against Pratt.”
Raman now leads Pratt by 3,113 votes. In the latest update, Raman received 19,096 votes, while Bass received the next most at 15,691 and Pratt took 8,489.
“We are encouraged by the latest vote count and remain grateful to the thousands of Angelenos who took part in this campaign,” Raman said in a statement released by his campaign.
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Bass campaign spokesman Alex Stack said if Raman retains that position, the mayor “will be eager to win the race against an opponent who allows parking near schools and fights over-hiring, but is MIA trying to save jobs in Hollywood and fight when ICE raids LA.”
Mail-in ballots postmarked for the June 2 election will continue to be accepted by county election officials through Tuesday. Election officials estimate that about 368,000 ballots remain to be processed across the country. The city of Los Angeles makes up about 40 percent of the county's population.
Pratt took an early lead over Raman on election night, but Raman's numbers gradually improved as the votes were counted, leading political observers to begin predicting this weekend that he would eventually overtake Pratt.
Paul Mitchell, vice president of voter data company Political Data Inc., drew a comparison to the 2022 mayoral election, where Bass trailed Rick Caruso on election night but slowly overtook him to win.
“It's consistent with what we saw in 2022,” Mitchell said. “Every revision has benefited Raman to varying degrees.”
Mayoral candidate Nithya Raman smiles during her election night party at Boomtown Brewery on June 2 in Los Angeles.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Political strategist Michael Trujillo, who has not worked for any of the mayoral hopefuls, expressed serious doubts Sunday that Pratt could return to second place.
“He's about to come down now,” he said.
Analysts said Pratt, a registered Republican, was likely to appeal to conservative voters, many of whom were expected to vote early. Raman, by comparison, is a progressive democrat. Analysts say younger and progressive voters tend to hold onto their votes longer than conservatives.
In addition, many Democrats are believed to be holding their mail-in ballots until the eleventh hour as they wait to choose between Democratic presidential candidates.
Pratt, who rose to fame as a villain on the MTV reality show “The Hills,” turned the mayoral race into a national story, becoming a favorite of conservative media pundits at Fox News. President Trump, while not directly endorsing Pratt, offered words of support, saying he “heard he was a big MAGA guy.”
On Sunday, Pratt reminded his supporters that vote counting will continue in the coming weeks.
“They're not the only ones who know where to get votes,” he wrote on X before the latest figures were released, adding a winking emoji.
Pratt's campaign team did not immediately respond to a request for comment after the latest vote tallies were released Sunday night.
If Raman can ruff, he will likely pose a major threat to Bass. Although he did not enter the race during the application deadline, he was seen on social media. His years on the council have given him a deep understanding of the issues facing the city.
In a closely watched race, Raman will beat Bass 32% to 28%, according to a poll of registered voters conducted last month by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, sponsored by The Times. The poll said that 25% will vote or not, while 15% are undecided.
During the first four months of the campaign, Raman offered unrelenting criticism of Bass's first term, saying the mayor failed to act urgently on housing shortages, apartment construction, road repairs and the exit of entertainment jobs in the district.
Raman blasted Bass' decision to negotiate with the city's police over an expensive raise, saying the deal “destroyed the city.” He also opposed the $2.6 billion Convention Center development, saying it would take money away from city services.
Bass dismissed Raman's assertions, saying he achieved two consecutive years of homelessness declines — the first recorded in the city's history — and the rapid approval of 40,000 units of affordable housing. The mayor defended the Convention Center plan, saying that it will improve tourism, and that there is a need to increase the number of police officers so that the quality of the department does not decrease beyond what they have had since 2020.
Raman has not been praised by any of his colleagues on the City Council, and has been criticized by community leaders in his district for not paying enough attention to the concerns.
In recent weeks, Bass has offered his own critical analysis of Raman, saying the councilman has struggled to work closely with others — even his own allies. The mayor's supporters accused Raman of changing his position on a number of topics, including policing, the city's anti-camping ordinance and who should be mayor.
Mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt speaks to the media outside an election night party at Don Antonio's Mexican restaurant on June 2 in Los Angeles.
(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)
“It's weird,” Melina Abdullah, founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, said before the election about Raman's changes to the LAPD and the no-camp zones. “We want to make sure we can keep his promise. Right now we couldn't.”
Bass looked like a shoo-in when he launched his campaign for re-election in 2024. During that time, he gained notoriety for moving quickly to remove homeless people across the city, moving their residents to hotels, motels and other temporary accommodations. Many politicians in the region, including Raman himself, are seeking his endorsement.
Things changed in January 2025, when Bass was more than 7,000 kilometers away from a diplomatic event in Ghana when the Palisades fire broke out. Many voters viewed Bass's response to the fire as a failure of leadership. Pratt, who lost his Pacific Palisades home in the fire, blamed Bass for his loss and said it was what got him into the race.
Bass supporters characterized Raman's decision to jump into the race as a betrayal. Raman pushed back on that narrative, saying he gave Bass a significant boost in 2022, helping him defeat real estate developer Rick Caruso.
