Amid a flurry of political mail sent ahead of the upcoming election, Megan Shuham of Los Feliz received one piece in particular that gave her pause.
It featured a photo of Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman — a progressive, MIT-educated urban planner — next to one of L.A. County District Attorney George Gascón, known for his fight against mass incarceration by seeking lighter penalties for people convicted of crimes.
A caption on the mailer reads: “Nithya Raman and George Gascón broke their promise to keep us safe.”
“It did surprise me,” Shuham told LAist. “The mailer was saying if you don’t like what Gascón’s doing, you’re really not going to like Nithya either."
“I don’t think the two are associated,” said Shuham, a stay-at-home parent who lives in City Council District 4, which is represented by Raman. “It felt like a reach.”
The mailer comes from an independent expenditure committee funded by a powerful real estate mogul and the labor union that represents Los Angeles police officers. Together with the firefighters union, they are spending more than $1 million in an effort to defeat Raman, whose district runs from Silver Lake west to Reseda, and includes all or parts of the Hollywood Hills, Studio City, and Sherman Oaks.
These forces want voters to see Raman the same as the embattled Gascón, who faces 11 challengers looking to unseat him, and beat back a growing progressive trend in L.A. politics.
Raman, however, has indicated her district is one of the safest in the city.
"All of the negative ads funded by outside spending say that crime and homelessness are spiking in our district. But it's not true ..." she said in a statement to LAist.
Citing the Police Department's own data, she noted that violent and property crime had fallen in the last two years, and "we've continued to steadily reduce street homelessness as we’ve brought hundreds of people indoors," she continued.
"So I don't think [the ads] are representing our district or their motivations honestly."
Major contributions from a real estate mogul, police union
Real estate company Douglas Emmett Management, owned by Dan Emmett, contributed $400,000 to the independent committee opposing Raman, according to campaign finance reports. The Los Angeles Police Protective League contributed $164,000.
The company refused to state its reason for the contribution.
“While we are committed to transparency, we do not discuss the specific reasons for our contributions,” Douglas Emmett said in a statement.
Raman, who chairs the City Council’s Homelessness and Housing Committee, was a vocal opponent of Dan Emmett’s ongoing attempts to evict tenants from more than 700 units at his Barrington Plaza high-rise in Westwood — something he said was necessary to install fire systems.
An outspoken supporter of tenants’ rights, Raman sided with residents who accused Emmett of staging the mass evictions so he could raise rents in the rent-controlled building. The residents argued that the sprinklers could have been installed without evicting anyone.
The ad makes no mention of Emmett’s dispute with Raman. Instead, it focuses on her opposition to a city ordinance that banned homeless encampments within 500 feet of schools, parks and daycare centers.
At a recent candidates’ debate, Raman said the law — known as 41.18 — had done nothing to solve homelessness.
“It has pushed people around the neighborhood without actually getting people off the street,” she said. “The focus of my work has been getting tents off of our streets.”
Raman faces two challengers in the March primary. Ethan Weaver is a deputy city attorney. Lev Baronian is a software engineer.
Weaver assailed Raman’s position on 41.18. “The purpose of [the law] is about protecting our children. It's not about solving homelessness,” he said.
Baronian said he “wholeheartedly” supports the ordinance. “In fact," he added, "I think we should look at more places where we need to prohibit tents."
Independent expenditures dominate
So far, Raman has collected more money in individual campaign donations — about $368,000 — than her opponents. Weaver has raised about $252,000; Baronian about $32,000.
But it is the independent expenditures that are dominating this race.
The independent expenditure committee opposing Raman and two others supporting Weaver have raised more than $1 million to defeat the incumbent.
The firefighters’ union is playing a major role. It has spent more than $300,000 in support of Weaver, with some of its ads blaming Raman for a 10% increase in homelessness during her term. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and Kilroy Realty also have made significant contributions to eject Raman.
Independent expenditure committees supporting Raman, whose donors include the hotel and restaurant workers union Unite Here Local 11 and Smart Justice, have attracted more than $200,000.
The race is shaping up to be a barometer on the city’s more progressive tilt in recent years, said Fernando Guerra, a professor of political science and director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles.
“Raman was the face of that early momentum, as well as George Gascón, and now both are under severe attack,” Guerra said.
Follow the money
Differences on key political issues
Raman and her two opponents differ substantially on several additional key issues.
At the debate, held last month at the Autry Museum, Raman said she opposed a hefty pay raise last year for L.A. police officers because of the burden it placed on the rest of the city budget.
“Now we’re in a $250-million deficit, which is only going to increase and impact all of the other services that matter for quality of life,” she said.
Weaver said he would have supported the raise, regardless of its affect on the budget.
“Morale is low because there is no leadership for LAPD in City Hall, and I’m running to provide that leadership,” he said.
Baronian said the raise mostly kept up with the cost of living and he “definitely would have voted in favor.”
Government reform is another point of demarcation among the candidates. Raman has said she strongly supports expanding the size of the 15-member City Council to make it more representative of L.A. residents.
Weaver and Baronian oppose expansion. Weaver said he would not support it “unless we do real structural reform on how power works.” (Read more about the candidates’ policy positions at the LAist Voter Game Plan.)
The ad campaigns against Raman play on the fears and frustrations of voters, some of whom say they have buyer’s remorse after supporting Raman in 2020.
“I actually voted for her and unfortunately I regret it,” said Elizabeth Lovins, a renter who sits on the board of directors of the Los Feliz Improvement Association.
“I’ve seen the quality of life degrade over the past five years,” she added, citing among other things RVs in front of homes “dumping waste.”
If we blame one person, we ignore all of the other structural issues that predated that person.
— Aida Ashouri, Los Feliz Neighborhood Council
Jade Luu, a landscape architect from Silver Lake said she voted for Raman four years ago, but won’t be supporting her again.
“The increase in crime has been a major issue in my neighborhood,” Luu said. “Catalytic converters stolen, copper pipes cut, defecation, crazy people screaming obscenities, vandalism.”
Aida Ashouri, of the Los Feliz Neighborhood Council, said she believes L.A. is ”broken,” but she is unwilling to point to Raman as the problem.
“If we blame one person, we ignore all of the other structural issues that predated that person,” Ashouri said.
Amy Gustincic of Los Feliz agreed.
“It's very easy for someone running for office to say, ‘Yes, I’ll do that, I’ll fix that, I’ll make that better,’ and the incumbent has to talk about the realities of it,” she said.
One of Raman’s challenges is that the boundaries of her district changed dramatically during the 2021 redistricting process. Nearly 40% of the district now includes voters who have never seen her name on a ballot.
If no candidate garners a majority of the votes in the March 5 primary election, the two top finishers will face off in November.
Maloy Moore and Brian Frank contributed to this report.
