Nithya Raman’s decision to hire the progressive consulting firm Fight Agency gave Mayor Karen Bass a fresh opening this week to attack her challenger from the left — and offered an early glimpse of the larger battle underway to define their November matchup.
But the differences between Raman and Bass extend well beyond the political consultants they hire.
At a debate Wednesday night in Sherman Oaks, the two clashed over homelessness, housing, policing and the basic functioning of City Hall, repeatedly challenging each other’s records and fitness to lead the nation’s second-largest city.
Increasingly, the contest is becoming a fight not simply over which candidate has the better answers, but over the question voters should be asking in the first place: whether Bass deserves another term, or whether Raman represents an acceptable alternative.
Bass, seeking another term after nearly four years as mayor, is trying to turn attention toward Raman’s six years on the City Council and portray her as an ineffective or risky alternative with plenty of plans but few results. Raman is trying to make the election a referendum on Bass’ stewardship of a city she argues has become less affordable and less functional.
Former Los Angeles City Councilmember Mike Bonin, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs, described it as “a fight about what the race is about.”
Dan Schnur, veteran political analyst and a professor at USC and UC Berkeley, put it another way: “Both candidates want this election to be about the other candidate.”
A new line of attack
The fight gained another dimension this week when Raman’s campaign confirmed that it had hired Fight Agency, a relatively new political firm whose clients have included New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
The firm has drawn scrutiny over its work for former Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner, who ended his campaign last month after a former partner accused him of sexual assault, an allegation he denied. Fight Agency faced criticism over its handling of Platner’s campaign and controversies surrounding his candidacy. Several hundred Democratic Socialists of America members subsequently signed an open letter urging candidates and elected officials not to work with the firm.
Raman, herself a DSA member, is seeking the support of the organization’s Los Angeles chapter in the general election.
Bass’ campaign quickly seized on the hire. Spokesperson Alex Stack called Raman’s decision to work with Fight Agency “a major liability for her candidacy and another example of putting her political ambition first,” pointing to the firm’s work for Platner and the subsequent criticism it faced from DSA members.
Raman defended the decision when asked about it during Wednesday’s debate, saying her campaign had weighed the controversy before moving forward. She described Fight Agency as an advertising firm that would work on paid media and pointed to its involvement in Mamdani’s successful mayoral campaign and other races.
“I want to win this race,” she said. “We wanted to make sure that we were hiring good people to make our ads.”
Raman’s campaign has said it plans to work with Fight Agency. Spokesperson Jeff Millman said the firm “had also been approached by other campaigns and committees involved in the L.A. Mayor’s race.”
The Los Angeles Times reported that Fight Agency said people affiliated with or allied with Bass had approached the firm about possible work. Asked about that account on Friday, Stack reiterated the Bass campaign’s denial, saying, “”Nobody from the campaign ever met with or tried to hire them.”
In a statement provided to the SCNG Friday, Raman campaign spokesperson Liz Garcia turned to the broader argument Raman is making in the race.
“What we saw in the primary is that Angelenos are tired of the broken status quo that has led to increases in housing costs, a rise in homelessness, and deteriorating city services,” Garcia said.
The campaign said Raman would work with those who share her goals of making Los Angeles “affordable, functional, and an easier place to live.”
Raman’s campaign also sought to frame her DSA membership around those issues. Garcia said Raman joined the organization because it was “one of the only political organizations in Los Angeles talking seriously about renters, housing, and affordability,” while noting that Raman has both agreed and disagreed with the group.
“She will always make the best decisions for Angelenos,” Garcia said.
Fight Agency did not respond to a request for comment by Friday afternoon. DSA-LA also did not respond to questions about the hire and Raman’s pursuit of its endorsement by press deadline.
Yet two longtime observers of Los Angeles politics questioned how much the identity of a campaign consultant will matter to voters.
Bonin, a progressive former councilmember, called the Fight Agency controversy “the ultimate inside-baseball, political intrigue story.”
He said he doubted an undecided voter would choose a mayor based on who a candidate’s political consultant is when residents are thinking about traffic, homelessness, street conditions and emergency response.
Schnur similarly said most voters do not know the names of political consultants, though they may ultimately see the product of their work.
Raman, he noted, has also assembled a broader team of advisers that stretch beyond Fight Agency.
Differences beneath the labels
The Fight Agency hire nevertheless arises as Bass and Raman are working to draw a sharper contrast between themselves.
The race has invited an easy shorthand: an establishment incumbent against a challenger further to her left. Schnur said the framing is “not perfect.” Bass has historically been an “extremely liberal politician,” and Raman has taken some positions that are more centrist.
“But on balance, this is a left-leaning incumbent running against an even more left-leaning challenger,” Schnur said.
The more consequential distinctions may be found in how the candidates approach the problems facing Los Angeles.
Some of their clearest differences emerged Wednesday over housing.
Both candidates say Los Angeles needs substantially more housing, but they differ over how the city should accommodate it and how far the government should go to protect single-family neighborhoods from increased density.
Bass argued that Los Angeles can meet its housing needs while preserving single-family neighborhoods, particularly by directing more development toward commercial corridors. She also criticized state laws overriding local zoning decisions, saying Sacramento should recognize the housing production already underway in Los Angeles.
Raman argued that the state has intervened because Los Angeles has failed to adequately plan for its housing shortage. While saying the city should make its own planning decisions, she warned that Sacramento would continue imposing mandates unless Los Angeles demonstrates that it can produce enough housing on its own.
Bonin said the disagreement reflects different starting points.
Bass is taking an approach long familiar in Los Angeles politics by emphasizing the protection of single-family neighborhoods, he said, while Raman views the issue primarily through the lens of a housing affordability crisis and the need to increase supply.
The practical difference in how much single family zoning would ultimately be affected may be relatively small, Bonin said, but the debate reveals something more fundamental about how the candidates view the housing crisis and whose concerns they prioritize.
Their approaches to homelessness reveal another difference in both policy and emphasis.
Bass has emphasized removing encampments and defended restrictions on camping near schools and other sensitive locations. She has also called for greater city control over the region’ s fragmented homelessness system and more treatment for people struggling with mental illness and addiction.
Raman has argued that enforcement policies that simply move unhoused people from one block to another do little to solve homelessness. She points to reductions in street homelessness in her council district and has called for greater oversight of city spending, shelter beds and service providers.
Bonin characterized the distinction as one between Bass focusing politically on homeless encampments and Raman focusing on homelessness itself — different ways of framing the same underlying problem.
The fight over change
But Bass used Wednesday’s debate to make a broader case against Raman that went beyond any particular policy or ideological label.
She repeatedly portrayed the councilmember as someone more inclined to study problems than solve them, questioned Raman’s relationships with her City Council colleagues and argued that Raman has had six years in City Hall to deliver many of the changes she is now promising as mayor.
Raman countered that the mayor possesses far greater executive power than an individual councilmember and argued that voters should judge Bass on the condition of Los Angeles after nearly four years in office. She pointed to broken streetlights, potholes, homelessness and other basic services as evidence that the city needs different leadership.
The exchange reflected the dynamic that Schnur described earlier: Both candidates are trying to make the election about the other.
Neither candidate won a majority in the primary, leaving both to compete for voters who backed candidates who did not advance to November.
“Ramen needs to win over a majority of the change vote,” that went to those candidates, Schnur said.
Bass faces the inverse challenge: persuading voters dissatisfied enough to consider replacing her that the alternative would be worse.
“Bass has also come to realize that she’s no longer able to convince Angelinos to reconsider their opinion of her,” Schnur said. “So instead, she’s trying to convince them that Raman would be even worse.”
That task helps explain why Raman’s ties to the political left could matter even if the name Fight Agency does not.
Raman emphasized at Wednesday’s debate that although she is a DSA member, she has taken positions independent of the organization, pointing to her support for changes to Measure ULA despite opposition from some allies on the left.
Schnur said Raman faces a delicate political task: identifying with progressive priorities that many DSA members support while also staking out positions that may put her at odds with the organization.
Some of the voters Raman most needs to reach are wary of DSA, Schnur said, even though he believes her association with the organization is viewed positively by more voters overall than negatively.
Bass, meanwhile, faces an unusual task of her own.
Schnur said the mayor is more accustomed to criticizing opponents for being too conservative than attacking someone for being too far left — a task he said appears to be new for her.
A race neither side can take for granted
Bonin said Bass remains a formidable candidate despite her high disapproval ratings, pointing to the advantage of incumbency and her institutional and organizational strength.
Raman, meanwhile, has repeatedly outperformed expectations in her political career, he said, cautioning against underestimating her again in the November election.
Neither should be underestimated, Bonin said.
For all the attention surrounding Raman’s newest political consultants, the November race may ultimately turn on a much simpler calculation: whether voters dissatisfied with Bass are willing to replace her with Raman.
Bonin distilled their competing appeals this way.
For Raman: “Take a chance on me.”
For Bass: “ Take a chance on me again.”