LA’s political coalitions have been shifting. Nithya Raman will shuffle them even more

Los Angeles, with its extraordinary diversity, is a national case study in coalition politics — the cobbling together of constituencies to create a political and governing majority.

This election for mayor, which pits incumbent Karen Bass against Councilmember Nithya Raman, offers a new opportunity to consider the city’s shifting voting blocs and the ways that growth replaces previous models.

Some of what drives politics in Los Angeles is time-tested: Mayor Tom Bradley, the city’s longest-serving and first Black chief executive, was famously able to unite the city’s Black voters with liberals, then concentrated on the Westside, into a coalition powerful enough to elect him in 1973, and durable enough for four more mayoral victories.

Richard Riordan, a moderate Republican and a Catholic who followed Bradley, upended that fusion by bringing together the San Fernando Valley, central city moderates and Latino voters in 1993. That coalition easily swept him to re-election, but has eluded every Republican who has tried to replicate it since, mainly because Republican numbers have dwindled (less than 15% of city voters are registered Republicans).

The mayors who have followed have been able to either marshal the city’s voting blocs or been punished by them. James Hahn brought together the Valley and Black voters, but lost both after opposing Valley secession and refusing to re-up Police Chief Bernard C. Parks; he was defeated in his bid for re-election. 

Antonio Villaraigosa energized Latinos and liberals and served two terms. Eric Garcetti extended that political coalition through the COVID era.

Bass’s tenure represents a new iteration of coalition politics, though with a distinctly difficult twist. Her 2022 victory was in some ways a throwback to Bradley. She started with core support from the city’s Black community and extended her base to progressives with the help of organized labor. That effort was enough to trounce Rick Caruso, a onetime Republican running as a Democrat and funded by more than $100 million of his own money.

For Bass, the twist is that the coalition she built to fend off a former Republican now is being tested against a very different political challenge. Raman also is a woman of color, one who is younger and even more progressive than Bass. No modern mayor has ever won with one coalition and then had to turn it to run in the opposite direction. That’s a tough pivot, and it has both campaigns looking to reassemble the coalition matrix that is L.A. 

Initial results from the election earlier this month showed Bass was strongest in the city center, home to many Black and Latino voters. Raman was the winner in the hipper, younger environs of Silver Lake, Echo Park and southeast Valley. Those results are, by themselves, not terribly surprising.

But a closer look at the city’s demography suggests other opportunities. Start with the areas won by Spencer Pratt in June. Despite his utter lack of a serious message or job qualifications, Pratt rolled up precinct victories on the Westside and the western reaches of the Valley. What’s notable about those returns, however, is that while Pratt won those precincts, Bass finished second place in most of them — surprising, given that Pratt’s campaign was built on anger at City Hall, and Bass in particular.

In a runoff where Bass represents the more conservative politician, those results may limit Raman, forcing her to look elsewhere for the votes she needs to grow her total from 28.5% to more than 50%.

One promising pool of voters is new residents. Those who have lived in Los Angeles for a relatively short time bring a distinctly different set of priorities than longtime Angelenos, a phenomenon observed last week by one of the city’s shrewder political minds, Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson.

At a recent event hosted by UCLA’s Blueprint magazine (and co-sponsored by CalMatters), Harris-Dawson asserted that L.A. newcomers often see the city differently. He noted, for instance, that many newcomers passionately favor increasing the density of Los Angeles housing, which might help reduce housing costs and even alleviate homelessness.

Those are laudable aims, but they overlook some of what has made Los Angeles appealing to generations of migrants. Harris-Dawson observed that his own family, like many of the city’s Black residents, came to Los Angeles from the South and settled here because it was the rare city that offered them the opportunity to buy a home, to have a yard, to enjoy space. For those families, single-family residences — and a city that values them — represent not wasted land but new opportunity. It is liberty itself.

Similarly, new residents may view crime differently from those who have been here a while. Pratt’s supporters, many of whom chimed in through social media without ever having lived or worked in L.A., deplored Los Angeles as a city descending into the abyss. For those relatively new to the area, or those who grew up in its most sheltered neighborhoods, that may feel accurate. It is a big city with plenty of serious crime: Last year, 230 people were murdered here.

For longtime residents, however, those same numbers feel more like relief than dystopia. Two-hundred murders a year is more than any community should tolerate, but the city once was home to more than 1,000 annually. That’s not to mention the flashpoint of a race riot in 1992 that erupted upon the acquittals of LAPD officers for beating a Black man, part of the long legacy of police abuse that once haunted residents of Los Angeles.

Do 250 murders a year represent a shocking level of violence? Yes. Do they represent progress? Also yes. It depends on whether you compare 250 to zero or 1,000. 

Newcomers bring energy and excitement to a city, and their demands for improvement are politically relevant. They are less likely to draw upon nostalgia or to accept bygone habits. As such, they represent an important voting bloc in city politics, one that transcends geography or race. 

But they also may draw resentment from longstanding residents, who view their complaints as naive and lacking historical perspective.

In this election, Bass is likely to run strongest with voters who have been here longest, while Raman is the more natural candidate for newcomers. A city whose politics have long been built up by blocs has a new one to consider.