The 45-year-old Democratic Socialist unseated incumbent Karen Bass after previously leading civic activism in Chennai.
Nithya Raman has been elected as the mayor of Los Angeles, unseating the incumbent Karen Bass in the November 3 election. According to The Hindu, Raman is the first Indian-American and South Asian mayor in the city's history. She secured 52 per cent of the vote and is scheduled to take office on December 14, 2026.
The 45-year-old Raman is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Before her political career in the United States, she spent time in India between 2010 and 2013, where she led the research initiative Transparent Chennai. Rediff reported that her work in Chennai helped shape her progressive political philosophy.
While leading Transparent Chennai, Raman focused on urban planning and sanitation. The New Indian Express reported that she led a project to map public toilets in slum resettlement colonies to hold authorities accountable. She also worked on creating a bus route map for Chennai and building data registries for informal waste pickers.
Raman, who was born in Kerala, graduated from Harvard University and holds a master's degree in urban planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She moved to the United States when she was six years old. After returning to the U.S. in 2013, she worked in a city administrative office and became an activist fighting homelessness before entering politics in 2019.
