LAPD chief Jim McDonnell has done a good job by any reasonable measure, especially given the tough political circumstances. Yet Nithya Raman is vowing to fire him, if she’s elected. It’s one of the crazier pledges of a campaign that has already lost touch with reality.
Page F2From§Eachthe midnight edition — 6 October 2026
Raman drank margaritas through the protest, now wants the chief fired for how he policed it.
As it ran on the front
Nithya Raman wants Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell fired. The stated reason is his handling of the 2025 ICE protests. The complication is where Raman herself was standing during those protests: photographs the New York Post ran October 6 show her drinking margaritas while they unfolded. The protests she now cites as grounds for firing a police chief are the same ones she was photographed drinking through.
That is a filing discrepancy, the kind this desk tracks for a living. You can be present for an event, or you can make that event your reason for firing someone over it, but the receipts complicate doing both at once. The same October 6 story carries a second line worth reading twice: Raman supported McDonnell's appointment before she opposed it. He took office in November 2024. The protests came in 2025. The pledge to fire him came after.…
…(cont) Run the ledger forward and the gaps keep turning up in the same column. On September 25 the Post reported Raman's attendance record at the City Council: thousands of missed votes, flagged as recurring on "crucial issues." A council member who is not present for the vote is not present for the record either, which makes the margarita photograph less of an anomaly and more of a pattern with a frame rate.
On September 14 the ledger adds a line item closer to home. Raman's own Silver Lake house currently runs 1,879 square feet. The one she has proposed building in its place runs 3,528 square feet, with a spa and a two-car garage. That is an 88 percent increase in square footage for a candidate whose campaign has made housing affordability a central plank. The math reconciles. The message does not.
Then, on October 2, the campaign's own books came under question. Ethics complaints allege undisclosed payments to social media influencers, including comedian Adam Conover, boosting Raman's candidacy. A campaign asking voters to trust its disclosures is now itself the subject of a disclosure complaint — the same fact pattern this desk files under housing and under attendance, now filed under influencer contracts.
So the ledger reads, in order: present for the margaritas, absent for thousands of votes, building 88 percent more house than the ones she campaigns on, and unable to account for payments to her own online boosters — all before the request to fire a chief over his handling of the protest she watched happen with a drink in her hand. The numbers are not accusations, hon. They are the numbers, reconciled against each other, the way they always are on this desk.
“She wants the police chief fired over how he handled a protest she was photographed sipping margaritas through — that's not oversight, that's an alibi wearing a press release. Same candidate who's missed thousands of council votes, wants to build herself a house 88 percent bigger than the ones she campaigns against, and can't explain payments to the influencers hyping her own campaign. The guy at the end of the bar notices when the person demanding your accountability has been skipping her own.”
“Look, nobody's saying a candidate can't have a drink during a civil rights demonstration — that's just normal human behavior, and normal human behavior is relatable, which is good for the campaign. Did I say demonstration? I meant the discourse surrounding the demonstration. The point is her policy position on police accountability stands on its own merits, regardless of — regardless of whatever's in the photos, which, again, I have not personally reviewed.”
The receipts
LA mayoral candidate Nithya Raman wants to fire LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell, but photos show her drinking margaritas during the 2025 ICE raids.
· Nithya Raman’s social media lovefest under fire over secret payment claims: ‘Fake moral superiority’ from the morgue, 2 Oct 2026
· Hypocrite socialist Nithya Raman wants 88% more house from the morgue, 14 Sep 2026
· Nithya Raman’s thousands of missed votes — why they matter from the morgue, 25 Sep 2026
· Nithya Raman and Zohran Mamdani are both socialists — but there’s a key difference from the morgue, 29 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.