Nithya Raman will change political coalitions in Los Angeles

from Jim NewtonCalMatters

This comment was originally posted by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

Los Angeles, with its extraordinary diversity, is a national case study in coalition politics—the merging of constituencies to create a political and governing majority.

This mayoral election which pits incumbent Karen Bass against council member Nitya Ramanoffers a new opportunity to look at the city’s changing constituencies and the ways in which growth is replacing previous patterns.

Some of what drives Los Angeles politics is time-tested: Mayor Tom Bradley, the city’s longest-serving and first black chief executive, was able to unite the city’s black voters with liberals, then concentrated on the West Side, in a coalition strong enough to elect him in 1973 and durable enough for four more mayoral victories.

Richard Reardon, a moderate Republican and Catholic who followed Bradley, reversed this merger by uniting San Fernando Valley moderates, inner-city voters, and Latino voters in 1993. That coalition easily swept him to re-election, but it has eluded every Republican who has tried to replicate it since, largely because Republican numbers have dwindled (less than 15% of voters in the city are registered Republicans).

The mayors who followed either managed to manage the city’s constituencies or were punished by them. James Hahn picked up Valley and Black voters, but lost both after opposing Valley segregation and refusing to reinstate Police Chief Bernard S. Parks; he was defeated in his re-election bid.

Antonio Villaraigosa energized Latinos and liberals and served two terms. Eric Garcetti expanded this political coalition in the era of COVID.

Bass’s mandate represents a new iteration of coalition politics, albeit with a distinctly difficult twist. Her victory in 2022 was, in a sense, a return to Bradley. It began with core support from the city’s black community and expanded its base to progressives with the help of organized labor. That effort was enough to defeat Rick Caruso, a former Republican running as a Democrat and funded with more than $100 million of his own money.

For Bass, the twist is that the coalition she built to fend off a former Republican is now being tested against a very different political challenge. Raman is also a woman of color who is younger and even more progressive than Bass. No modern mayor has ever won with a coalition and then had to reverse it to run in the opposite direction. It’s a tough turn, and both campaigns are looking to reassemble the coalition matrix that is LA

Initial election results earlier this month showed Bass strongest downtown, home to many black and Latino voters. Raman was a winner in the taller, younger precincts of Silver Lake, Echo Park and the Southeast Valley. These results in themselves are not very surprising.

But a closer look at the city’s demographics suggests other possibilities. Start with the districts won by Spencer Pratt in June. Despite his complete lack of a serious message or qualifications for the job, Pratt racked up victories in the Westside and western parts of the Valley. What’s notable about those returns, however, is that while Pratt won those sections, Bass finished second in most of them—surprising given that Pratt’s campaign was built on angering City Hall, and Bass in particular.

In a runoff where Bass represents the more conservative politician, these results could limit Raman, forcing her to look elsewhere for the votes she needs to increase her total from 28.5% to more than 50%.

One promising set of voters is new residents. Those who have lived in Los Angeles for a relatively short time have a distinctly different set of priorities than longtime Angelenos, a phenomenon observed last week by one of the city’s sharper political minds, Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson.

At a recent event hosted by UCLA’s Blueprint magazine (and co-sponsored by CalMatters), Harris-Dawson argued that newcomers to Los Angeles often see the city differently. He noted, for example, that many newcomers passionately support increasing housing density in Los Angeles, which could help reduce housing costs and even alleviate homelessness.

These are laudable goals, but they ignore part of what makes Los Angeles attractive to generations of migrants. Harris-Dawson noted that his own family, like many of the city’s black residents, came to Los Angeles from the South and settled here because it was the rare city that offered them the opportunity to buy a home, have a yard, enjoy space. For these families, single-family homes—and a city that values ​​them—represent not wasted land, but new opportunity. This is freedom itself.

Likewise, new residents may view crime differently than those who have been here a while. Pratt’s supporters, many of whom got involved through social media without ever having lived or worked in L.A., denounced Los Angeles as a city descending into the abyss. For those relatively new to the area, or those who grew up in its most sheltered neighborhoods, this may seem accurate. It is a big city with very serious crime: 230 people were killed here last year.

For longtime residents, however, those same numbers feel more like a relief than a dystopia. Two hundred murders a year is more than any community should tolerate, but the city was once home to more than 1,000 a year. That’s not to mention the outbreak of race riots in 1992 that erupted after the acquittals of Los Angeles police officers in the beating of a black man, part of a long legacy of police brutality that once haunted Los Angeles residents.

Does 250 murders a year represent a shocking level of violence? yes Do they represent progress? Also yes. It depends on whether you are comparing 250 to zero or 1000.

Newcomers bring energy and excitement to the city, and their demands for improvement are politically relevant. They are less likely to draw on nostalgia or adopt past habits. As such, they represent an important voting bloc in urban politics that transcends geography or race.

But they can also draw resentment from longtime residents who view their complaints as naïve and devoid of historical perspective.

In this election, Bass is likely to run strongest with voters who have been here the longest, while Raman is the more natural candidate for newcomers. A city whose politics have long been built from blocks must consider a new one.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.