00:00I'm going to be exploring one of the more interesting theories about where all those
00:04votes for Nitya Raman are coming from in the race for Los Angeles mayor. On Sunday, June 7th,
00:09Raman overtook Spencer Pratt to move into second place in the race for mayor, which would mean she
00:14would face off against incumbent Karen Bass in the general election if that pattern holds.
00:18Many people are wondering how she did that. She's not exactly a household name. She appeared to lose
00:22the one mayoral debate, and she even faced a recall effort by her own constituents a few years ago,
00:27so she's not really the most popular politician in LA by a long stretch. Well, one theory is that
00:32she's doing particularly well around young people. There are a lot of ballots coming in for Raman
00:36around UCLA, and downtown LA, where she's also doing very well, includes USC, so maybe young people are
00:42organizing for Raman and giving each other voter guides, and maybe socialism is attractive to
00:47Gen Z, so she's doing well there. Another theory is the one I put out before the election, which is
00:52that she's drafting off Spencer Pratt to some extent, but there's another theory which suggests that
00:56Raman is getting a huge number of votes from homeless people because downtown LA, where she's
01:01doing very well, again, includes Skid Row, where thousands of homeless people live. And keep in mind,
01:06Raman has extensive experience working with organizations that help the homeless. When she
01:10came to LA, she helped write homeless policy at City Hall. She then founded a homeless services
01:15organization, and she is the chair of the committee that deals with homelessness on the City Council.
01:20None of this means she made really much of an impact, but it does mean that she has connections
01:24among the people who work in these communities. And the theory goes that they registered homeless
01:30people to vote, and they probably harvested ballots, probably legally, since that's legal
01:33in California, from these same areas. Now, that has yet to be proven, but it is one way to explain
01:38her sudden surge, where huge batches of ballots are coming in, where she's doing much better than expected.
01:43It's good.
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