The 45-year-old Harvard graduate, who was born in India, will face off against LA Mayor Karen Bass on November 3. The Democratic showdown highlights the rise of the socialist movement, championed by New York's Zohran Mamdani and Michigan's Abdul El-Sayed.
Page A207From§Eachthe early evening edition — 7 October 2026
New York tabloid calls leading Los Angeles mayoral candidate's police criticism 'idiotic — and dangerous'
As it ran on the front
Today we are making an insurgent run at an incumbent mayor, which is not a dish you can get over here, so I shall go slowly. You will need a sitting mayor finishing her first term, a 45-year-old city council member born in India and educated at Harvard, a police chief whose record has become the argument between the two of them, and a poll taken six weeks before election day.
Clive Insurgent. I have been insurgent against the landlord, in verse, and nobody has run a poll on me at all.
Gary Nobody needs to. We know how that one ends: you lose, and the deposit goes with you.
Begin with the poll. The University of California, Berkeley, working with the Los Angeles Times, released it on 23 September and found Nithya Raman ahead of Karen Bass, with a good many voters still undecided. A poll taken six weeks before the vote is a thermometer, not a result; you will be looking for the result, and there is none yet — the vote itself is 3 November.
Rob Undecided. That's the whole house on the rota, that is, and nobody's even taken a poll on who does the bins.
Keith I would sell tickets to that. Undecided Voters of Lambeth, limited edition, with a tin.
Turn Bass over and look at her underneath. The Guardian has her fighting, in its own word, "for her political life," with roughly a month to go and approval ratings it places alongside Donald Trump's.
Now fold in the chief of police.
Le Monde, which is what they read here, places her in "the rise of the socialist movement," alongside New York's Zohran Mamdani and Michigan's Abdul El-Sayed. The same candidacy, at home, is "idiotic — and dangerous." Nobody has reconciled the two, and nobody is trying.
Clive Dangerous. There's a word I have been after for my sequence, and the Americans have gone and used it on a council seat.
Gary It's not even their biggest council seat. It's a city bigger than this one, and you are still arguing about a line in a poem.
This serves nobody until 3 November, when it serves whoever is still standing. Until then it is a poll, a tabloid headline, and a police chief, simmering on a date that nobody has moved.
Keith There's plenty of time to get the tin printed. "Idiotic — and dangerous," right under the flag — it will sell before she has even won.
“They call criticizing a police chief "dangerous" because budget scrutiny is the one line this city's power brokers do not want crossed; Bass's approval sitting next to Trump's ought to worry voters more than anything Raman has said about law enforcement. The "homeless-industrial complex" line is about the contracts nobody wants audited.”
“Look, when you attack the police chief you are attacking public safety itself, it's that simple — Raman is clearly some kind of radical who wants no police at all, which, I mean, she sits on the city council and went to Harvard, so — did I say radical? Forget I said that.”
The receipts
Karen Bass is fighting for her political life as progressives battle to lead the US’s second-largest city Karen Bass has never lost an election. But this fall, she faces the fight of her political life. Bass has roughly a month to convince voters that she should be elected to a second term as the mayor of Los Angeles.
Angelenos are on notice: If they elect Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) City Councilwoman Nithya Raman as mayor, they will put a radical supporter of the homeless-industrial complex, an opponent of public order and an enemy of private property rights into City Hall.
· Bass trails Raman in Los Angeles mayor's race: Poll from the morgue, 23 Sep 2026
· From Karen Bass to Nithya Raman, LA repeats its mistakes from the morgue, 28 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.