Los Angeles City Councilwoman Nithya Raman wept Tuesday night as vote totals showed her falling into third place in the city's mayoral primary, trailing both incumbent Karen Bass and reality-TV-personality-turned-candidate Spencer Pratt by wide margins, the New York Post reported.
With 63.1% of ballots counted by Wednesday morning, Associated Press tallies showed Bass leading at 34.8%, Pratt at 30.4%, and Raman at 22.3%. If those numbers hold, Bass and Pratt advance to the November general election, and Raman's campaign is finished.
That result would be a stinging rebuke for the socialist councilwoman who once led in the polls. It would also mark a remarkable turn for Pratt, whose late-breaking social media campaign built around his Palisades fire activism appears to have resonated with voters far more than Raman's progressive platform ever did.
The last vote update, posted around 2:30 a.m. Wednesday, put hard figures on the gap. Bass had 172,720 votes. Pratt had 151,149. Raman had 110,848, roughly 41,000 votes behind the man best known for MTV's The Hills.
Raman trailed Pratt by about eight points. Election analysts cited in reporting on the race noted the margin could tighten as late ballots roll in, but closing an eight-point deficit is a steep climb under any scenario.
A fourth candidate, Rae Huang, drew about 3% of the vote. Huang had attracted favor from the Democratic Socialists of America, and her presence in the race may have prevented Raman from locking down the DSA endorsement outright, a detail that matters because DSA get-out-the-vote operations have proven decisive elsewhere. The organization's volunteer machine helped carry socialist Zohran Mamdani to the mayor's office in New York City.
Without that organizational muscle fully behind her, Raman was left relying on a progressive coalition that, when tested, didn't show up in the numbers.
Raman declared her mayoral bid in February after initially backing Bass. She positioned herself as the candidate for leftists dissatisfied with the incumbent's leadership, calling for a renewed homelessness plan and increased housing production.
The trouble was her own record. Raman served as head of the Los Angeles City Council's Housing and Homelessness Committee, the very body responsible for overseeing the city's response to the crisis she campaigned on. Critics pointed to what they described as her handling of the homeless crisis, and that criticism reportedly culminated in a stunt involving a homeless encampment set up outside her own home.
It's a familiar pattern in progressive politics: campaign on the failures of the system you helped run, then act surprised when voters notice the contradiction. The internal frustrations roiling the Democratic Party at the national level played out in miniature on the streets of Los Angeles.
Raman also suffered what was described as a disastrous debate performance, further eroding confidence among voters who might otherwise have been open to a challenge from the left.
Spencer Pratt's second-place finish is, by any traditional political measure, extraordinary. A reality television figure with no prior elected experience, Pratt built his campaign in the waning weeks of the race through viral social media videos. Those videos leaned on his activism during the Palisades fire and blamed both Raman and Bass for the city's problems.
Whatever one thinks of Pratt as a candidate, his performance exposed something real: Los Angeles voters were so dissatisfied with the available political class that a celebrity outsider could vault past a sitting city councilwoman backed by the progressive establishment. That's not a commentary on Pratt's qualifications. It's a verdict on the alternatives.
The broader Democratic coalition continues to struggle with this dynamic. When party leaders abandon high-profile initiatives that have no path forward, voters notice the gap between rhetoric and results. Raman's campaign may be the local version of the same problem.
As the returns poured in Tuesday night, Raman's composure broke. Her face scrunched and her eyes watered as she spoke to her children. She told supporters:
"I hope you know that everything, every person in this room is fighting for in this campaign has been about building a city that's worthy of you, and every child in this city."
The sentiment was genuine enough. But sentiment doesn't fix potholes, clear encampments, or build housing. Los Angeles voters, it appears, wanted something more concrete than aspirational speeches about the city their children deserve.
Raman had not conceded as of the last reporting. Whether late ballots change the math remains to be seen, but the deficit she faces is substantial.
If the current totals hold, the November general election will pit Bass against Pratt, an incumbent mayor against a social media celebrity. That matchup alone tells you how fractured Los Angeles politics have become.
For the progressive left, the result is a warning. Raman ran the playbook: align with the activist base, campaign on housing and homelessness, invoke systemic change. She had the institutional credentials. She had the committee chairmanship. She once led the polls.
None of it was enough. The voters who live with the consequences of Los Angeles's governance failures, the traffic, the encampments, the cost of living, chose differently. Some went with the incumbent. Others went with the outsider. Relatively few chose the progressive who promised to fix the very problems she'd been tasked with solving.
That pattern echoes beyond California. Progressive endorsements and alliances have drawn scrutiny across the country as voters weigh whether ideological credentials translate into competent governance.
The Democratic Socialists of America, meanwhile, couldn't consolidate behind a single candidate in one of the most progressive major cities in the country. Huang's 3% share was negligible in the final count, but it may have been enough to deny Raman the organizational boost that made the difference in tighter races elsewhere.
The left's internal divisions are not limited to Los Angeles. National figures have openly questioned whether the party's direction serves its voters or just its activist class. Even sympathetic media voices have struggled to paper over the cracks.
Nithya Raman ran as the progressive answer to Los Angeles's problems. Los Angeles answered back. The city that gave her a council seat and a committee chairmanship decided that record wasn't a selling point, it was a liability.
When a reality TV star finishes eight points ahead of a sitting councilwoman who chaired the homelessness committee, the tears aren't the story. The results are.