LA’s Democratic Socialists Fracture Over Mayor Race

With less than a week to election day in a crowded nonpartisan primary, Los Angeles voters are being pulled in opposite directions as two Democratic socialists—Rae Huang and Nithya Raman—battle for the left’s future while trying to deny a path to Spencer Pratt

On a political front that used to feel unified, Los Angeles leftists are now fighting each other—right before voters decide who moves on to November.

In the nonpartisan primary. election day is less than a week away. and there are two democratic socialists trying to reshape the city’s direction: Rae Huang and Nithya Raman. Huang. a Presbyterian minister and activist. jumped into the race last November after deciding to challenge Mayor Karen Bass from the left. Her pitch has centered on free buses, affordable housing, and police accountability. Raman, a Los Feliz-Hollywood-San Fernando Valley city councilmember, entered the race just hours before the February filing deadline. She has since built enough support that her candidacy could force a runoff against Bass—or. if she falls short. help open a path for Spencer Pratt. a right-wing reality TV star.

All three candidates are competing in a crowded field of 14—Huang, Raman, and 11 other contenders. Unless someone wins more than 50 percent of the vote, the top two advance to a runoff in November.

For many on the left, the stakes inside this primary are personal. They aren’t only choosing between platforms; they’re trying to decide what kind of left they want to exist after this week ends.

Some leftists frame the choice as practical: vote for Raman to keep Pratt out of the runoff. and treat a vote for Huang as ideological purity with little chance of changing the outcome. Others see it as the reverse—support Huang if you want a bolder break from Bass’s status quo. and view Raman as too close to the politics that helped create the opening Pratt is exploiting.

“What’s stuck for people is the feeling that the left is splitting at the moment it can least afford to,” one sentiment runs through both camps, even when they disagree on who deserves the blame.

Huang’s supporters argue that Raman’s platform doesn’t offer enough daylight from Bass—the status quo they say made Pratt possible in the first place.

Michael Burns. a writer and performer. mailed in his vote for Huang and said his support is about backing candidates with a “bold vision” rather than retreating into small incrementalism. “Those who consider themselves progressive. or even on the left. have kind of gone into retreat and not let themselves imagine a better political future. ” Burns said. “And for me, supporting candidates with a bold vision, with a left vision, is part of contributing to that imaginary.”.

Raman supporters make the opposite case. Leslie Chang. a Raman supporter and co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America–Los Angeles. said she understands the desire to vote for the most value-aligned candidate. but not at the cost of everyday people. “While I understand the desire to vote for the most value-aligned candidate. ” Chang said. “if it comes at the cost of everyday people being able to live a better life. that’s not something I have sympathy for.”.

The fight has sharpened around what each candidate has— and hasn’t—done in office.

Raman is a city councilmember, and her supporters point to a record they can scrutinize. But her critics say she has struggled to build coalitions on the left even while identifying as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. According to the record described in this race. Raman ran in 2020 on calls to defund the police. but voted to expand the Los Angeles Police Department budget in 2021. 2022. and 2023. She voted against police raises in 2023, and this year opposed a plan by Bass to hire 170 more officers.

In 2024, Raman accepted an endorsement from the Democrats for Israel–Los Angeles, a Zionist organization that opposed a ceasefire in Gaza—leading to censure from DSA–LA.

William Gude. a Hollywood resident known on social media as @FilmthePoliceLA and described as a fierce police accountability advocate. said he would have voted for Raman if she had maintained her policy positions from her rise to City Council in 2020. Now, he said, it’s difficult to get responses from Raman’s office regarding police misconduct.

Huang, by contrast, has not held elected office. Supporters of Raman argue that Huang’s lack of campaign experience has been visible on the trail.

Earlier this week. the LA Reporter exposed that the Huang campaign had misrepresented its fundraising totals by claiming publicly that Huang had raised enough to qualify for public matching funds. while she had actually fallen far short. The campaign described the mistake as clerical errors and a lack of capacity.

Even with those criticisms, the larger left argument is less about resume lines than about what this moment requires.

The most recent poll in the race, released on Thursday from the Los Angeles Times and the University of California, Berkeley, showed Raman close to Bass with 25 percent support to Bass’s 26 percent, and ahead of Pratt at 22 percent.

Huang was not treated as a viable path to the top two. In the polls described here, she has struggled to break 10 percent.

In the eyes of Raman backers, Huang’s voters—listed in the poll as 9 percent of respondents—are both delusional and important. They want Huang’s campaign to drop out and they want her supporters to switch.

But not all doubt about Raman’s rival automatically points toward Huang. Roughly 10 percent of voters remain undecided, and Gude said he’s considering sitting this election out.

Even the two candidates’ styles are part of the argument about whether the left has anyone ready for the big stage. The race includes claims that Raman struggles during debates and public conversations. In an appearance earlier this month on influential political commentator Hasan Piker’s stream. she stumbled over questions about the sale of property in illegal West Bank settlements and the LAPD’s training collaboration with the Israeli military.

Combined with Huang’s “messy rollout,” the result, in some views, is that neither candidate is currently commanding the kind of spotlight LA politics demands.

The third figure in this triangle, Spencer Pratt, has offered the left a different kind of pressure.

Pratt hosts campaign events in Los Angeles. including one on May 20. 2026. described alongside a photo credit from Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images. His candidacy. in the account presented here. is predicated on the idea of personal loss: his platform centers on the destruction of his Palisades home in the Pacific Palisades fire. which he blames on Bass and not on climate change. During multiple appearances, including on podcasts with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, he implied climate change is a hoax.

Pratt did not respond to requests for comment.

The campaign also includes a push to position him as a regular person fed up with what he calls corruption among “elites” like Bass and Raman. His language targets both “bums” and unhoused people. with allegations and depictions in the race described here. including claims that unhoused people are drug-addicted “zombies” and that LA’s housing crisis should be solved with police force.

In one ad described in this account, Pratt stands in front of an Airstream trailer while claiming he is living there after his house burned down. The account says he was actually staying at the Hotel Bel-Air for over $1,000 a night.

He has said the city’s unhoused population is not being forced onto the street and called that premise a “lie,” arguing in a local ABC interview that people do not want shelters because they want to “abuse” animals on the street. He has claimed that unhoused people are on “super meth.”

His proposed approach includes arrest-first rhetoric. The description here says Pratt has argued that if elected he would have police “arresting people and the people that aren’t getting arrested. we’re getting to mandatory medical treatment.” He has also said that whoever is left would be sent to Seattle once his administration stopped providing resources and housing services. which he called “unplug them.”.

Benjamin Henwood. director of the Homelessness Policy Research Institute at the University of Southern California. says those messages don’t match the data and reality of Los Angeles homelessness. Homelessness has nearly doubled in Los Angeles over the last decade. though it has dipped slightly in the last couple of years. Henwood’s position in the account is that housing affordability is what drives homelessness.

The account cites a 2023 audit from the LA city controller’s office finding roughly 46,260 unhoused people live in Los Angeles, while there were only 16,000 interim shelter beds available. Henwood said that even with some new beds added since then, the total is not enough for everyone.

“That’s one of the most expensive ways to try to address homelessness,” Henwood said.

The account also says substance abuse and mental health problems are not the main drivers, even though they’re among the most visible issues to the public. It adds that Henwood said it’s unclear whether Pratt’s arrest-first strategy would even be legal.

Practical constraints matter in the critique. Henwood is quoted saying incarcerated people can only be held for short periods and then must be released, and that the approach spends public tax dollars without advancing a longer-term goal.

Matthew Lewis, director of communications at California YIMBY, takes a broader view. He argues that Pratt’s campaign. which he disagrees with. reflects a reaction to Democratic cities failing to address the housing crisis. “You see the same thing play out all over the place,” Lewis said. “And what that suggests is that this is not a Spencer Pratt phenomenon, this is an American city phenomenon. Spencer Pratt is a consequence of pretending we could brush it under the rug.”.

Even as Pratt’s rhetoric draws fire, Bass remains vulnerable to LA-specific grievances.

The account says Bass faced intense scrutiny for her handling of the twin Pacific Palisades and Eaton fires that destroyed thousands of homes and killed dozens of people. It also details a controversy around her travel: despite promising not to travel abroad during her tenure. Bass was in Ghana attending an embassy party when the fires broke out. and returned the following day. Defenders of Bass point to strong Santa Ana winds that whipped up last year’s fires and say a mayor can’t control the weather.

Henwood said Pratt’s message is landing with voters because people are frustrated. In 2024. Angelenos voted to increase the sales tax rate to fund homelessness programs. and Henwood argued Democrats set expectations too high about what that tax could accomplish. The account says people acted because they believed something had to be done, yet the problem still wasn’t fixed.

Back in the left’s internal fight, Huang and Raman are each seen as responding to that same anger—just in different directions.

Huang’s campaign, the account says, has always leaned into frustration with a Democratic establishment that struggled to improve core city issues. Her approach calls for public and social housing owned by the city and immune from the profit-driven market.

Raman also calls for social housing, but the account says she pushed for new exemptions to the city’s “Mansion Tax,” a progressive tax on the sale of certain high-value property. Huang and her supporters have criticized those reforms as catering to corporate real estate lobby interests.

The local DSA organization has not endorsed either candidate. The account says DSA–LA has not endorsed Huang or Raman, and Raman’s three DSA colleagues on the City Council endorsed Bass.

Wakasa said he remains excited that two democratic socialists are in the race and that the debate has been necessary, even as DSA has come under scrutiny for declining to endorse. DSA eventually “recommended” Raman in a voter guide.

Wakasa described canvassing for DSA–LA City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez, saying most voters aren’t focused on left infighting. They are focused, he said, on day-to-day breakdowns—lack of street lights amid copper wire theft, and potholes and damaged sidewalks.

As election day nears, the left is still trying to decide which failure is more dangerous: losing Pratt in the runoff, or settling for a candidate that doesn’t match the politics some supporters believe LA needs.

For Raman backers. a second-place finish would be a major win for LA’s progressive left and could reverberate through city hall politics for years. A failure to make the runoff. the account says. could be a major disappointment too—leaving a flawed but promising candidate behind and a fractured left that couldn’t coalesce.

Burns. who lives in Los Feliz and said he has voted for Raman’s city council runs twice. said he understands Huang may be left out of the runoff. But he believes her candidacy can still translate into energy for future leftist campaigns. “I genuinely believe that Rae’s primary goal isn’t just winning this election,” Burns said. “It’s really trying to build momentum for a different political future in Los Angeles.”.

Even Pratt has shown signs of trying to drive a wedge between his rivals on the left. The account includes social media activity Thursday: Pratt wrote on X that he “respect[s] that she actually walks the walk” in reference to Huang. and grouped Raman with “corrupt champagne socialists.” Huang’s account posted a response after Pratt’s share. adding that it was clear LA is fed up with the status quo and is looking for new leadership. Huang quickly deleted the post and replaced it with a new statement. She wrote that Spencer is “an opportunist dehumanizing the vulnerable to advance his media career. ” and that he has “no interest in meeting the needs of the majority of Angelenos.”.

The left’s argument is now packed into a single week of voting—one in which the difference between a “pragmatic” choice and a “purity” vote may determine not just who advances, but whether the movement sees itself as capable of governing together when the counting ends.

Los Angeles mayoral race Rae Huang Nithya Raman Karen Bass Spencer Pratt Democratic Socialists of America DSA-LA homelessness police accountability Mansion Tax Pacific Palisades fire nonpartisan primary runoff election