L.A. mayor candidate and city councilmember Nithya Raman recently appeared with Hasan Piker (HasanAbi), a far-left and Marxist Twitch streamer with over 3 million subscribers. They discussed an array of topics from Raman’s views on housing and homelessness, to Piker’s favorite topic: Israel.
Raman agreed that Israel had conducted genocide in the Gaza Strip and, as she became visibly uncomfortable, ultimately attempted to shut down Piker’s many questions about Israel by stating that foreign affairs are beyond the mayor’s purview. According to Piker, he uses his questions about the Israel-Palestine conflict as a litmus test to determine whether a candidate can make appropriate moral judgments or is instead aligned with “corporate” interests.
I wrote about Piker last year where I noted that he has gone so far as to deny that there was any evidence of mass rapes perpetrated by Hamas during their October 7th attack. There is plenty to criticize about Israeli actions, but Piker’s views on the matter are extreme and his fixation was clear given that he asked a mayoral candidate who would be dealing with issues like potholes about 12 different questions relating to Israel.
Raman has appeared to drift away from her roots as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and contrasted herself to democratic socialists like New York City’s Mayor Zohran Mamdani – during the interview she stated that she is “different from Mamdani.” She has also shifted her image into one that seemingly embraces more sensible policy. After supporting Measure ULA, dubbed the “mansion tax,” she proposed reforms to mitigate its damaging effects on the broader housing market.
Her interview with Piker demonstrated that she is still deeply socialist with an extreme left-wing vision for the city.
In the company of her fellow socialist, she touted her leadership role in expanding destructive rent controls in L.A.: “I have led in L.A. the largest expansion of tenant protections in the city in 40 years. I actually led the process through which we lowered allowable rent increases in rent stabilized units here in Los Angeles … Increases went from being, you know, up to 10% to now being capped at 4%.”
We very quickly got to the crux of the problem with Piker and Raman – they were having the wrong conversation. Piker presented a criticism to Raman about her plan to increase housing construction, stating that some see this as benefiting developers. “How do you ensure that the housing boom still serves working-class Americans rather than wealthy investors?” asked Piker. Instead of acknowledging that it would be in our interest to make building in the city more attractive to developers, Raman validated Piker’s generic and simplistic concerns and presented her highly questionable plan.
“Well first, I want to make sure that new housing doesn’t displace existing residents … that’s why you need to do protection and production side by side … by planning in ways that creates more density neighborhoods that are wealthier that have historically resisted it while limiting new density, limiting new growth in neighborhoods that are really suffering from gentrification and displacement … I also want to be very clear that the market will not provide housing for everybody … And that is where I think the government needs to step in. We have to build public housing. We have to build social housing. We have to build affordable housing.”
Apparently, she’s concerned that the market wouldn’t provide housing at prices that regular folks can afford and she wants to address this by only building in wealthy and expensive areas and providing social housing for the rest of us, which will quickly become neglected, roach and crime-infested government projects. It’s a confused plan to say the least.
Piker’s misguided war against the faceless elites continued when he questioned Raman about why she attempted to modify ULA with her proposed 15-year exemption for new construction. Piker questioned whether this was just a thinly veiled tax-break for developers – this is at a time when it has become abundantly clear that ULA drove developers away, which is contributing to our high housing costs.
According to Raman, she was protecting ULA from attempts to repeal it by addressing its deleterious effects – unintended consequences that should have been fairly obvious when she first supported it but Raman didn’t foresee them just as she is now failing to foresee the consequences of her housing plans.
This interview was a low-point in Raman’s struggling campaign – she’s currently polling lower than Bass and Spencer Pratt. Piker asked her about why she called for defunding the police during the BLM protests and why she changed her mind. Her response was unfortunate, “You know, after being in government for the last 5 years plus, I think it is really important to make sure that we are able to respond to calls for help.” She had to spend 5 years in office to learn that?
Piker also asked why she had decided to run for mayor given that she endorsed Bass. Raman accused Bass of essentially taking political bribes. “Our mayor has made decisions that have betrayed working-class Angelenos over and over again in return for political donations that are now funding her campaign.” She included in this Bass’ championing of an expensive LAPD contract and claimed that a $3 billion convention center expansion was “in return” for support by local business interests.
The interesting thing is that she endorsed Bass before running for mayor herself. In other words, she endorsed a candidate who she believed betrayed the city.
The irony of the interview is that Piker and Raman spent most of it talking about all of the ways the municipal government has failed the city – corruption, waste, fraud, abuse, expensive programs that don’t work, street lights that don’t work – yet they both wish for more government interventions and more government programs.
Perhaps they believe that waste, fraud and abuse aren’t intrinsic to the system. But that only adds to their long list of delusions.
Rafael Perez is a columnist for the Southern California News Group. You can reach him at rafaelperezocregister@gmail.com.