00:00In a stunning political upset, socialist city council member Nithya Raman has won her race
00:05for LA mayor, unseating incumbent Karen Bass. Now, it might seem almost a foregone conclusion
00:11that Raman would win, given the public frustration with Bass, but actually looking back over the
00:16broad sweep of the campaign, this was never a likely outcome. When Raman jumped into the race,
00:21she had just recently endorsed Bass for re-election, and she was considered a marginal
00:26candidate with no real chance. She did not get help from the big public sector unions. She did not
00:31get help from her city council colleagues. What she did have was a great organization, not just the
00:37democratic socialists of America, but also the broader constellation of left-wing groups that
00:41have been active within the city for a very long time. Raman used that organization to overcome
00:47the challenge of Spencer Pratt from Pacific Palisades, who was running second in many of the polls leading
00:52up to the primary. And ultimately, she used that organization to overtake Karen Bass in the general
00:57election. It became easier for her to do so when the new homeless figures came out, showing that
01:01Bass was not leading the city in a forward direction, but that homelessness was actually increasing once
01:07again. The big question is what kind of mayor Nithya Raman will be. She didn't really impress voters with
01:12her political skills. She's not a great debater. She could barely explain why she was running. She doesn't
01:17exude the kind of charisma of Azoran Mamdani of New York. She might be a weak leader. And that means
01:22the people around her, the staffers, the fellow socialists on the city council, become much more
01:28important. We will have to look to them to see what the future direction of the city will be.
01:32We also don't know whether she's going to follow through on her promise to fire the LA police chief
01:37and what that would mean for the Olympics, which are arriving in just a year and a half.
