LA's mayoral race has become the Democratic Party's most revealing internal battle

With three weeks to go before a vote that could install the nation's second-largest city's first democratic socialist mayor, Nithya Raman took the stage at a Universal City television studio and cited a name most Los Angeles voters would not have expected to hear praised on any campaign trail: Daryl Gates.

Raman, a second-term City Council member, was criticizing incumbent Karen Bass's police department for what she said was its cooperation with federal immigration agents. During the final debate, she argued that the city had once set the national standard on refusing to assist immigration enforcement — pointing to the tenure of Daryl Gates as evidence. "And now, under this mayor, we’ve actually lost trust from our immigrant community," she added.

Gates helmed the Los Angeles Police Department from 1978 until 1992, stepping down in the aftermath of riots that erupted when his officers were acquitted in the beating of Black motorist Rodney King. For older Black and Latino Angelenos who lived through that era, the favorable reference landed as a serious misstep.

The idea that she would mention Daryl Gates as the golden age of policing just shows that she has no knowledge of L.A. history.— Karen Bass, Los Angeles Mayor

Raman offered an apology but accused Bass of distorting her words in order to deflect attention from her own record, according to dnyuz.com. The flare-up threw into sharp relief what is at stake in a contest that polls show is closely fought, making it one of the most fiercely contested and instructive fights over where the American left is headed.

Viewed from afar, the race looks like many others that unfolded during a turbulent primary season: a Democratic incumbent squaring off against a challenger with Democratic Socialists of America backing. That surface similarity, however, obscures a more complicated picture. Both Bass and Raman are firmly on the left side of the political spectrum — they finished first and second in June's open primary, well ahead of former reality television personality Spencer Pratt, who attracted favorable attention from right-wing media yet placed third.

The true dividing line in the race, according to dnyuz.com, is not a disagreement between centrist and progressive Democratic politics. Raman has attracted an unlikely coalition of left-leaning but dissatisfied voters — ranging from wealthy housing developers to young socialists. Their target in Bass is not a country-club establishment but rather the governing coalition assembled over decades by Black, Latino, and labor organizers who fought to win political power in a city that long shut them out.

I’m tired of nothing getting done in the city of Los Angeles. We’re supposed to be one of the greatest cities in the world. Right now, everyone around the country, I think we’re wanting our representatives not to be part of the establishment, because the establishment isn’t working.— Jiao Chen, Raman fundraiser co-host

Voter frustration is real and documented: Los Angeles carries the country's largest unsheltered homeless population and struggles with high rents, cratered streets, and the aftermath of fires, according to reporting across multiple outlets. That discontent has fueled Raman's anti-establishment pitch even as questions persist about what, precisely, her socialism means in practice.

Raman has held nominal DSA membership since before her first run for the L.A. City Council in 2020, when she became the first socialist elected to the 15-member body. She has said she joined after being impressed, in her work as a city planner and tenants' rights advocate, by the local chapter's efforts to protect renters in a city where housing costs kept climbing. Three additional DSA members have since won council seats. The L.A. DSA chapter voted this summer to back her mayoral campaign and has been making calls and knocking on doors for her — though portside.org notes the effort cannot match the scale of New York City DSA's campaign for Zohran Mamdani, given smaller numbers and a later start.

The endorsement has itself become a battleground. DSA's National Political Committee ruled that the local chapter had violated the national organization's requirement that all endorsed candidates support the boycott, divestment, and sanctions policy toward Israel — a position the local never asked Raman about. The NPC also deemed her insufficiently pro-Palestinian, even though Raman has long described Israel's war on Gaza as a "genocide," according to portside.org. A vote by the NPC to withdraw the local's endorsement and remove Raman from the organization remains possible.

Longtime DSA observers, according to portside.org, see the potential expulsion less as a judgment on Raman specifically than as a pushback against the organization's major locals that invest resources in candidates who may occasionally deviate from national platform planks. A comparable situation arose when DSA's national committee withheld its endorsement from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in her 2024 re-election bid, citing her vote to fund Israel's Iron Dome air-defense system, despite her leading role in opposing offensive weapons transfers to Israel. Her home chapter in New York took the opposite position, backing her candidacy.

The internal DSA rift — between locals that prioritize mass electoral outreach and a national committee that portside.org describes as dominated by sectarian leftists "plainly uncomfortable with the messiness of interactions with electorates" — has drawn coverage not just from left publications but from national newspapers, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair, a sign of how broadly the stakes are perceived.

Raman's own council record complicates the socialist framing. On at least one notable vote, portside.org reports, she positioned herself to the right of her three DSA council colleagues: when Bass put forward a conventional police officer for LAPD chief in 2024, all three colleagues voted no, while Raman joined the majority in confirming him — a decision she now distances herself from on the campaign trail. She did align with her DSA colleagues in backing a $30 city minimum wage phased in by 2028, and again when she opposed a business-supported effort to push that deadline back by 18 months.

The outcome of the upcoming election, in a racially and economically diverse city of nearly 4 million people, is expected to offer clues about how similar clashes will play out on the national stage — including in the 2028 presidential primary — as various factions of a disorganized left compete to define the Democratic Party's identity and agenda, according to dnyuz.com.

Why it matters — The November 3 result will test whether DSA-aligned politics can win a major American city and may preview the factional fights that will shape the Democratic Party heading into 2028.

Sources differ on Whether Raman's Daryl Gates remark was a genuine misstep or was twisted by Bass: Bass said the remark shows Raman 'has no knowledge of L.A. history' (dnyuz.com) vs Raman apologized but said Bass was twisting her remarks to avoid scrutiny of her own failures (dnyuz.com)

Reported by dnyuz.com, magzter.com, portside.org, wsj.com