By Jose Herrera
City News Service
LOS ANGELES (CNS) – City Councilwoman Nithya Raman emerged victorious in the race for Los Angeles mayor today, with incumbent Karen Bass conceding defeat as her opponent continued to widen her lead.
The latest figures released Thursday by the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s Office showed Raman with 429,450 votes, or 52.1%, while Bass had 394,796 votes, or 47.9%. As of Thursday morning, Raman had a 34,654-vote lead, up from 26,124 on Wednesday night.
Raman is widely expected to continue extending her lead since her main support base – younger, progressive voters – tend to cast their ballots later in the election cycle, and those are the ballots now being tallied by the county.
Just before midday, Bass issued a statement conceding defeat.
“While this is not the outcome we hoped for, the people of Los Angeles have spoken,” Bass said. “I have called Council member Nithya Raman to congratulate her on her victory, and I have committed to ensuring a smooth and seamless transition. Moving this city forward is what Los Angeles needs from all of us.
“I love Los Angeles. I believe in Los Angeles. And I will continue to ensure the promise of a better life belongs to all of us. Thank you.”
Bass held a narrow lead over Raman when an initial tally of early balloting was released on Tuesday night, but as the counting of ballots cast close to or on election day were added into the totals, Raman edged into the lead, and she has extended it with each ballot drop since.
Raman, speaking at her Election Night party Tuesday in Griffith Park, said voters wanted change.
“We have so much to celebrate tonight here in Los Angeles. This election is about change, too, a city that was engineered over the last few decades to resist change, and the people right here who said enough is enough, because for too long our broken and unjust status quo has convinced Angelenos that this is the best that we can do,” Raman said.
“Our City Hall became a place where we became so used to saying ‘no,’ we forgot how to say ‘yes,’” Raman added.
She said Tuesday night she was going to be patient and wait for the vote-counting process to continue.
“There are still a lot of ballots to count, and we’re going to let that count finish,” she said. “I’m hopeful. I’m hopeful. I’m very hopeful. But I’m also very superstitious. So we’re all just gonna be cool, OK?”
As of Thursday morning, there were believed to be more than 700,000 ballots from Tuesday’s election that remained to be tallied countywide. It was unclear how many of those ballots were cast by Los Angeles city voters.
The candidates had been running neck-and-neck late in the campaign. A UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll, co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times and released last week, found both with 40% support among likely voters, while 19% remained undecided.
Bass had closed the gap after a September poll found Raman leading by 11 percentage points.
Bass and political action committees that support her focused their late-campaign attacks on Raman’s public-safety record, particularly her call to remove Los Angeles Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell. They also portrayed Raman as inexperienced.
Raman faced criticism after saying the LAPD was at a “gold standard” under former Chief Daryl Gates. She later apologized, explaining that she had been referring to Special Order 40, which limits city police cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
Jamie McBride, one of the directors of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union representing LAPD officers, told NBC4 this week a Raman victory could have devastating consequences for the department.
“If Nithya Raman becomes the mayor, the city needs to prepare for Armageddon,” McBride told the station, noting that the nation’s third largest police department is already severely understaffed ahead of the 2018 LA Olympics. “She won’t have to defund the police; police officers will just leave the department.”
Raman has said she is seeking the mayor’s office to fix what she calls a “broken city” under Bass. She has criticized Bass over a billion-dollar police salary agreement and the cost of a downtown convention center modernization project.
Bass is seeking four more years to continue work on homelessness, housing, affordability and public safety. The two have repeatedly clashed over homelessness, policing and housing policy.