Nithya Raman moves into second in LA Mayor’s race as Pratt, Trump question vote count
Los Angeles City Council member Nithya Raman has moved into second place in the race for mayor, putting her on track for a spot in November’s runoff if current trends hold.
Raman overtook former reality television personality Spencer Pratt over the weekend as additional mail ballots were counted, reshaping one of the closest contests on the ballot.
New vote count shifts the race
According to updated results from the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, as of Monday morning, Raman held 27.1% of the vote as of Monday morning.
Incumbent Mayor Karen Bass remains in first place and has already secured a spot in the runoff.
Pratt has slipped to third with 26.7% of the vote, trailing Raman by just over 3,100 votes.
The reversal is notable because Pratt held second place on election night and had already begun positioning himself for a November showdown against Bass.
Pratt questions ballot totals
Pratt publicly challenged the changing vote count in a post on X, highlighting what he described as a net swing of roughly 43,000 votes since election night.
“‘A net swing of more than 43,000 votes since Tuesday..’ 43,000, huh? Where have I seen that number before…? Probably nothing,” Pratt wrote.
He attached an article about Los Angeles’s homeless population, drawing a comparison between the two figures without providing evidence of wrongdoing.
Trump joins criticism of California recount
The vote shift also drew attention from President Donald Trump during a tense exchange with NBC’s Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press” Sunday.
While discussing the 2020 election, Trump pivoted to the Los Angeles mayor’s race and argued that Republicans were losing ground because of what he called a “rigged election.”
“It’s happening right now in California,” Trump said. “They’re dropping fast because it’s a rigged election.”
When Welker pressed him for evidence, Trump responded: “All I have to do is look.”
Welker pushed back, saying that was not evidence and noting that California’s vote-counting process routinely continues for days after Election Day.
Trump posted on Truth Social early Monday morning to again criticize what he called the “CROOKED Election going on in California.”
Under California law, ballots postmarked on or before Election Day can still be counted if they arrive within seven days.
As Straight Arrow reported, mail voting accounts for the vast majority of ballots cast in California. Nearly 90% of voters used mail ballots in the previous election.
Elections officials must also verify signatures and process late-arriving ballots before they can be added to the count.
“If you really are at a place where you have almost all ballots cast by mail and allow a lot of them to come in later, or to be processed later, or even some extra time for people to cure their ballots, sometimes to get them to the right place too, all those things kind of build together to make it so that it can take longer on certain races,” John Fortier, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told Straight Arrow.
Bass campaign takes aim at Raman
The changing race has also sharpened the contrast between Bass and Raman.
Raman endorsed Bass during the previous mayoral election but later entered the race herself.
“We look forward to winning a contest against an opponent who allows encampments near schools and fights against hiring more cops, yet is MIA on saving Hollywood jobs and fighting back when ICE invades LA,” Bass campaign spokesperson Alex Stack said in a statement.
Vote counting is expected to continue throughout the week, leaving the battle for second place unresolved.
Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
