LOS ANGELES (AP) — In the aftermath of California’s primary election, both Nithya Raman and Spencer Pratt are eagerly anticipating the results to determine who will face off against current Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass in the November runoff.
As of Sunday, the outcome remains undecided, with the latest vote tally showing Raman inching into second place behind Bass for the first time since the polls closed on Tuesday. Raman, a progressive member of the city council, has surpassed Pratt, who gained fame as a reality TV star on “The Hills.”
Initially positioned in third, Raman has steadily closed the gap with Pratt, gaining more votes with each update released by Los Angeles election officials since the election day.
California is known for its leisurely vote-counting process, largely due to state laws that ensure a comprehensive tally. Ballots are sent to every eligible voter and are considered valid if postmarked by Election Day and received within a week.
In Los Angeles, similar to other counties across the state, mail-in ballots are processed in the order they arrive, meaning the latest returns are among the last to be counted.
On Tuesday night after polls closed, Los Angeles released results from mail ballots that had been returned early and already processed as well as votes cast that day. Since then, the county has been processing and releasing results from mail ballots that arrived later.
Election data shows that large numbers of Democrats held onto their mail ballots and returned them in the race’s final days, which helps explain why Bass and Raman have been doing better than Pratt in the votes counted since primary day.
The mayor’s race is nonpartisan, so none of the candidates had party identification next to their names on the ballot. Raman and Bass are both Democrats, while Pratt is a Republican.
The slow count has prompted claims of fraud, without providing evidence, from some Republicans, including President Donald Trump, who said his Department of Justice would investigate.
The president suggested that the state’s Democrats were somehow cheating so that two candidates he favors — Pratt and Republican Steve Hilton in the governor’s race — would be bumped from the top two slots and therefore be ineligible for the November general election. Democrat Xavier Becerra has advanced to the general election in the governor’s race but The AP has not yet called the second slot. Hilton leads Democrat Tom Steyer by 4.3 points in the race to advance to the general election as the second-place candidate, though his lead has been nearly cut in half since election night.
The general election in Los Angeles is likely to be a referendum on Bass’s leadership regardless of whether she faces Raman or Pratt. But the two would come at the campaign from very different directions.
Pratt, a conservative, would mount a more aggressive challenge to liberal governance in the city dominated by Democrats. He has made reducing homelessness a key part of his campaign, and he’s sharply criticized Bass’s leadership during the January 2025 wildfire in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood that destroyed his home and thousands of others. His candidacy had drawn outsized attention because of his celebrity, but it’s unclear if the buzz will translate into enough votes to make the runoff.
Raman, meanwhile, is taking on Bass from the left. She has promised to speed up housing construction, bring back entertainment industry jobs and improve services in a city known for dirty streets and buckled pavement. She was elected to the council with the backing of the Democratic Socialists of America, though the group did not make a formal endorsement in the mayor’s race. Her last-minute candidacy was a surprise after she endorsed Bass for reelection earlier.
______
Ohlemacher reported from Washington.