Washington: Keralam-born Nithya Raman is maintaining a lead over her former political ally and incumbent Mayor Karen Bass in the Los Angeles mayoral race after a fiery televised pre-poll debate.
Bass (73) and Raman (45) – both Democrats – sparred in the debate on Tuesday night over issues such as the homelessness crisis, police department leadership, and public safety in Los Angeles, the second-largest city in the US.
If elected in the November 3 polls, Raman will be the first Indian-American Mayor of Los Angeles.
A member of the Democratic Socialist movement, Raman has served for six years as a City Councilmember.
Raman, who had endorsed Bass for re-election before deciding to enter the fray, accused her of being a “missing-in-action” mayor for her absence when the city battled a massive fire in January last year.
Bass was on the offensive in the hour-long debate and accused Raman of being “unserious, indecisive” and not ready for the top city job.
Raman hit back, saying that Los Angeles “cannot afford another four years of decline, mismanagement, or excuses.”
“Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” Raman asked the viewers, quoting the famous line of President Ronald Regan in the presidential election debate in 1980.
Born in Keralam on July 28, 1981, Raman moved to Louisiana when she was six. She earned a bachelor's degree in political theory from Harvard University and then a master's degree in urban planning from MIT.
Ahead of the Tuesday night debate, Raman led by 11 points over Bass in the survey conducted by Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California, and co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times.
The survey, conducted between September 15 and 20, found 39 per cent of voters favouring Raman for the Los Angeles Mayor post, compared with 28 per cent for Bass. Whereas almost one-third of the surveyed voters were undecided.
On Wednesday, a day after the debate, prediction market Kalshi put Raman’s odds of winning in the mayoral election at 56 per cent, compared with 45 per cent for Bass.
Citing rising homelessness in Los Angeles “despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent”, Raman said a vote for her would help build a “city that’s functional, that’s affordable and where people are welcomed here to build their dreams once again.”
Stepping up her attack on Bass for her absence during the massive fire at Palisades in South California last January, Raman said she was in the city’s emergency operations centre attending to the needs of evacuated constituents throughout the disaster.
“The question I heard over and over, there and across the entire city, was, ‘Where is our mayor? Where is our mayor?’” Raman said.
“You will not have to ask where our mayor is if I am mayor. I will be on the front lines,” Raman asserted.