Nithya Raman will advance to the November election in the Los Angeles mayoral race after overtaking Spencer Pratt for second place as more votes were counted in the days after the June 2 primary.
Raman will face incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, who CNN projected on election night would advance to November.
She defeats Pratt, a Republican former reality TV star who generated buzz with a focus on homelessness and Bass’ response to the devastating Palisades fire.
Raman, a city councilmember, may be a tougher opponent for Bass in November than Pratt would have been. While the mayoral election is officially nonpartisan, Democrats heavily outnumber Republicans in Los Angeles, and Raman has campaigned as a progressive outsider against Bass.
“Right now, we have a city that feels rudderless,” Raman told CNN’s Elex Michaelson before the primary. “So many positions that haven’t been filled, places where Angelenos feel abandoned on some of the most important issues facing this city. I will bring that urgency, I will bring that accountability, I will bring that focus that Los Angeles needs and that Angelenos need.”
Pratt was in second behind Bass on election night, but he lost ground to Raman as the vote count progressed. California elections often take several days to resolve, a function of the nation’s most populous state running a largely mail-in election in which properly postmarked ballots received up to seven days after Election Day can be counted.
Raman overtaking Pratt was becoming increasingly likely in recent days.
Votes reported after election night in California tend to shift toward Democrats, as they typically include mail ballots that were cast closer to Election Day itself.
Across all votes reported in the June 2 primary since the close of election night counting, Raman had outperformed both Bass and Pratt through Sunday, gaining 43,000 votes on Pratt and increasing her overall share of the vote by about 5 points.
Reports this weekend were her strongest of the contest, with Raman winning about 40% of each batch and Pratt around 18%.
A disappointment for Pratt
On election night last week, Pratt said that he appealed to any city resident “that just wants basic quality of life,” regardless of party.
“I’m an Angeleno who said, ‘Enough is enough,’ and I had to step up,” he said. “I’m going to show everybody that I’m their mayor.”
In recent weeks, Pratt, the one-time villain of MTV’s “The Hills,” gained national praise from Republicans and those in President Donald Trump’s orbit. A filmmaker who supports Pratt created an artificial intelligence video that portrays Pratt as Batman and Bass as the Joker, and features Los Angeles residents pelting the state’s best-known Democratic figures with tomatoes.
Pratt’s supporters – and Trump – criticized how the city and state run elections in recent days as Pratt’s lead over Raman narrowed. Trump ended an interview Sunday with NBC’s “Meet the Press” after accusing local officials of “cheating.”
California has long had a reputation for being slow to report the results. That’s because a significant number of the total votes come in as mail ballots are dropped off on Election Day, according to the California Voter Foundation, a nonprofit organization that seeks to improve the election process.
First Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli, a Trump appointee who leads the Los Angeles-based US attorney’s office, posted last week that there was “evidence of election fraud in California,” adding that “investigations are underway.”
But Essayli later Friday also affirmed that it was untrue that a vote-count update on election night showed Pratt receiving zero new votes. Several conservatives, including Elon Musk, had shared that theory.
“There was a claim circulating on social media about an election night ballot update at the Los Angeles Registrar of Voters where one candidate received zero votes,” Essayli wrote on X. “We reviewed official county records. The claim is false. Each candidate received votes in every update.”
A progressive matchup is set
The November matchup now features a battle between left-leaning leaders in the nation’s second-largest city. Raman was an advocate targeting homelessness before being elected to the City Council and has vowed to reduce the number of people sleeping in tents or encampments by half before Los Angeles hosts the 2028 Olympics.
Bass argued before the primary that her experience set her apart from both Pratt and Raman.
“You cannot run the nation’s second-largest city without intimate knowledge, long-standing relationships, and collaboration on every level of government,” she said.
In an early May debate, Bass and Pratt attacked Raman repeatedly, to which Raman responded that “each of them thinks that running against each other is what’s going to help them win.”
Pratt shot back that he’d rather run against Raman.
“You think it’s easier to run against the incumbent mayor with all the unions, or a random city councilmember who’s been a failure for six years?” he asked.
CNN’s Eric Bradner contributed to this report.
