Mayor Karen Bass and Nithya Raman turned a South Los Angeles campaign forum into a preview of the increasingly bitter fight for City Hall.
Page A4From§Eachthe midnight edition — 4 October 2026
Housing-affordability candidate seeks permit for 88 percent bigger house, with spa and two-car garage.
As it ran on the front
I asked myself a question back in September, and I was sure I'd already closed the book on it. Was Nithya Raman independent of the people backing her campaign? I thought I had that settled — The Hill has her saying so herself, out loud, at a forum on the 30th, over at the Jewish Federation, with Mayor Bass standing right there next to her. I put a line under that and moved on to other business. Then this week I picked the same question back off the pile, and it came out a different shape than it did the first time through. What that word was covering, exactly, is the part I'd skipped.
Here's what else was on the page before that. Late September, a poll comes out of a university institute, the kind the local paper co-sponsors, and it has Raman ahead of the sitting mayor — eleven points, one outlet put it at, with a lot of people still saying they hadn't made up their minds. Eleven points is a fair amount of city to be ahead by. I sat with that a minute before I turned to the next sheet.…
…(cont) The next sheet was dated two weeks before the forum. Raman's got a house over in Silver Lake, 1,879 square feet is the figure given, and there's a permit application in to knock it down and put up something new — three stories, 3,528 square feet, a spa, a two-car garage. Work that against the old number and you get an 88 percent jump in space, which I worked twice, because percentages and I have a complicated history going back years. I went out to my own garage after I read that one, the way I tend to. One car fits in it, barely, and only because the car's seen better days — needs a fan belt I keep telling myself I'll get around to. No spa out there. No second bay. I'm not bringing up my garage to complain about my garage. I'm bringing it up because I needed to stand next to something real before 88 percent in square feet meant anything to me.
Housing is supposed to be the whole platform here. That's not my phrase — the piece from the 14th calls it central to her political identity, their words, not mine. Is the permit sitting with the planning department the same stretch of weeks she's out there saying that? Near as the dates line up, yes. I don't know what else to do with two dates that close together except notice them.
The backing from the socialist organization is in the same piece as the forum — on the campaign trail, is the phrase the piece uses. Not in the room, not confirmed where anybody was sitting that day, one way or the other. All I've got is the sentence, and the sentence says the organization has been behind her, and stayed behind her, the same week she's telling a crowd she's standing apart from exactly that.
This week's piece has her and Bass back at it again, a rally down in South L.A., the paper calling it contentious, heading into the last stretch before election day. Same two people. Same race. Same number sitting underneath it, eleven points, give or take whatever the undecided end up doing with themselves.
Oh — one more thing, before you go. Just hers. Not the organization's name. Not the coalition's. Just Nithya Raman's, on her own, applying for 88 percent more house, all by herself. You could call that independent.
“She tells a Jewish Federation crowd she's nobody's puppet, same week the socialists are still carrying her water on the trail — pick one. The woman running on housing affordability just filed to add nearly 1,650 square feet and a spa to her own house, 88 percent more space. There's always room at the top; she's just proving it with her own permit.”
The receipts
· Bass trails Raman in Los Angeles mayor's race: Poll from the morgue, 23 Sep 2026
· Bass trailing progressive challenger by double digits in new LA mayoral poll from the morgue, 23 Sep 2026
· Raman stresses 'independence' from DSA in Los Angeles mayor's race despite backing from the morgue, 30 Sep 2026
· Hypocrite socialist Nithya Raman wants 88% more house from the morgue, 14 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.