Don’t call it a Spencer showdown yet.
Los Angeles City Councilwoman Nithya Raman is closing the gap with her mayoral rival Spencer Pratt, receiving a net gain of about 1,000 votes in a new tranche of primary votes released late Friday. The new total puts the progressive Democratic candidate at 154,000 votes, or 25 percent, just 20,000 votes ahead of her rookie rival, who received just over 28 percent of the vote. A quarter of a million votes are still outstanding, giving Raman a chance to catch Pratt for second place in the mayoral runoff against Karen Bass.
Incumbent Mayor Bass is already expected to advance from the primary with 35 percent of the vote.
The nominees gave a performance that embodied their entertainment origins. Reality star Pratt made a buzzy debut out of the gate when more than half the votes were counted on primary night. He even told reporters “she knows it’s ongoing” about the runoff with Bass.
But Raman – whose husband was a veteran 30 rock writer And producer Vali Chandrasekaran – quietly subverts its showy purpose in a way befitting the series. What was a 10-point lead on election night for Pratt had consolidated to seven points on Wednesday, six on Thursday and now three by the end of the week as more votes were counted. If the trend continues — and given that ballots arriving later are thought to favor Democrats — Raman could overtake Brat when voter turnout reaches 100%. The total number of votes currently stands at 71%.
The result would mark an abrupt end to what has been a meteoric campaign for the 42-year-old. Pratt was written off as a novelty just a few months ago, and came into conflict with some savvy and persistent trolling of Bass, distributing memes that attacked the city’s mayor as out of touch with reality and preying on resentment over her handling of the January 2025 wildfires and the city’s homelessness crisis. For her part, Raman hadn’t even been in the race for months, but she jumped in because she saw an opportunity to have a progressive track versus the right-leaning Pratt and moderate bass record.
If she jumps into second place to challenge Bass, that would transform the November election from a referendum based in part on Pratt’s outsider appeal to a more policy-oriented referendum on whether Bass’s moderate approach or Raman’s philosophy of activist government is better suited to the problems facing Los Angeles. A win for Raman in November would give Los Angeles a progressive mayor in the mold of Zahran Mamdani in New York.
Meanwhile, California’s governor’s race appears to have gained one entrant in the general election, with the Associated Press describing Democrat Xavier Becerra as certain to finish in the top two in Tuesday’s primary. Becerra passed Leader Steve Hilton on Friday with a new bracket that puts the former Health and Human Services secretary at 1.73 million votes with 68 percent of the tally counted. Republican Hilton is right behind him with 1.7 million votes, while progressive Tom Steyer is another five points behind with 1.34 million votes, with the two now competing for second place.
Becerra will become the first Latino governor in California history.
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