The Los Angeles Left Is at War With Itself Over the Mayor’s Race

There are two democratic socialists running for mayor in Los Angeles, but many West Coast leftists are already feeling the crush of defeat.

Rae Huang and Nithya Raman have each, at varying times, been hailed as Southern California’s analogue to Zohran Mamdani. Yet when the rallies and canvassing sessions have wrapped up, leftists admit that neither has the coalition nor the talent that fueled the New York City mayor’s rise . Huang voices the platform they like; Raman has demonstrated some political chops. Mamdani won because he had both.

With less than a week to go before election day in a crowded nonpartisan primary, Huang, Raman, and 11 other candidates are all vying for second place to the presumed front-runner, incumbent Democratic Mayor Karen Bass. Unless someone gets over 50 percent of the vote, the top two candidates will advance to a runoff in November.

There’s little chance either slot will go to Huang, a Presbyterian minister and activist who jumped into the race last November with plans to run from Bass’s left by campaigning on free buses, affordable housing, and police accountability. She has struggled to break 10 percent in the polls.

Raman, a city councilmember representing a sprawling district that spans the Los Feliz, Hollywood, and San Fernando Valley neighborhoods, surprised her allies and opponents alike when she joined the race just hours before the February filing deadline, but she has since amassed enough support that she could conceivably compete with Bass — or with Spencer Pratt, a right-wing reality TV star whose candidacy has fractured the city’s already divided left.

In the eyes of some leftists, a vote for Raman is the pragmatic choice to stop Pratt from making it to November, and a vote for Huang is a throwaway in the name of ideological purity.

Pratt has built a campaign attacking Bass’s handling of the Pacific Palisades fire, calling unhoused people drug-addicted “zombies,” and arguing that LA’s housing crisis should be solved with police force. In the eyes of some leftists, a vote for Raman is the pragmatic choice to stop Pratt from making it to November, and a vote for Huang is a throwaway in the name of ideological purity.

“While I understand the desire to vote for the most value-aligned candidate,” said Leslie Chang, a Raman supporter and co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America–Los Angeles, “if it comes at the cost of everyday people being able to live a better life, that’s not something I have sympathy for.”

Huang’s supporters, meanwhile, argue that Raman’s platform offers little daylight from Bass, whose status quo gave rise to Pratt in the first place.

“Those who consider themselves progressive, or even on the left, have kind of gone into retreat and not let themselves imagine a better political future,” said Michael Burns, a writer and performer who mailed in his vote for Huang. “And for me, supporting candidates with a bold vision, with a left vision, is part of contributing to that imaginary.”

Though both Huang and Raman are Democratic Socialists of America members, the local chapter has not endorsed either candidate, and Raman’s three DSA colleagues on the City Council have endorsed Bass. Huang and Raman’s campaigns did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment.

Despite being a DSA member, Nithya Raman has at times aligned herself with more conservative forces and struggled to build coalitions on the left. After running in 2020 on calls to defund the police, she voted to expand the Los Angeles Police Department budget in 2021, 2022, and 2023 . But she also voted against police raises in 2023, and this year, she opposed a plan by Bass to hire 170 more officers. In 2024, Raman accepted an endorsement from the Democrats for Israel–Los Angeles, a Zionist organization that opposed a ceasefire in Gaza, which earned her a censure from DSA–LA.

“I don’t know what version of Nithya I’m ever getting on anything,” said William Gude, a Hollywood resident. Known as @FilmthePoliceLA on social media , Gude is a fierce police accountability advocate who said he would have voted for Raman had she maintained her policy positions from her rise to City Council in 2020. Now, he says he finds it difficult to get responses from Raman’s office regarding police misconduct.

Raman’s supporters argue that at least their candidate has a political record to scrutinize. Huang has never held elected office, and her lack of campaign experience has shown itself on the trail. Earlier this week, the LA Reporter exposed that the Huang campaign had misrepresented its fundraising totals by claiming publicly that Huang had raised enough to qualify for public matching funds, when in reality she’d fallen far short. (The campaign has chalked the mistake up to clerical errors and lack of capacity.)

“The reason why I’m not voting for Rae Huang is kind of like a pragmatic approach and a belief that change comes incrementally,” said Sean Wakasa, who co-chairs DSA–LA along with…