Don’t call it the Spencer Showdown yet.
Los Angeles City Council member Nithya Raman is closing the gap on her mayoral rival Spencer Pratt, picking up a net gain of about 10,000 votes in a fresh tranche of primary votes released late Friday. The new total puts the progressive Democrat at 154,000 votes, or 25 percent, just 20,000 behind her upstart rival, who has just over 28 percent of the vote count. A quarter of a million votes are still outstanding, giving Raman an opening to catch Pratt for the second-place spot in the mayoral runoff against Karen Bass.
Incumbent mayor Bass has already been projected as advancing from the primary with 35 percent of the vote.
The candidates have performed in a way that embodies their entertainment pedigrees. Reality-star Pratt made a noisy debut out of the gate when more than half the votes were counted the night of the primary; he even told reporters, “she knows it’s on” about a runoff with Bass.
But Raman — whose husband is veteran 30 Rock writer and producerVali Chandrasekaran— has quietly subverted her showy target in a way befitting that series. What had been a 10-point lead on Election Night for Pratt consolidated to seven points on Wednesday, six on Thursday and now three by the weekend as more votes are counted. If the trend holds — and given that later-arriving ballots are believed to favor Democrats — Raman may well pass Pratt when 100 percent of the tally is in. The total vote count currently sits at 71 percent.
That outcome would amount to a surprising end to what had been a rocket-ship campaign for the 42-year-old gadfly. Written off as a novelty just a few months ago, Pratt surged into contention with some savvy — and persistent — trolling of Bass, distributing memes that attacked the mayor as out-of-touch and capitalizing on resentment for her handling of the January 2025 wildfires and the city’s homelessness crisis. For her part, Raman for months was not even in the race, but jumped in because she saw an opportunity for a progressive lane vs the right-leaning Pratt and embattled record of the moderate Bass.
If she were to vault into the second spot to challenge Bass, it would flip November’s election from a referendum in part on Pratt’s outsider appeal to a more policy-oriented one of whether Bass’s moderate approach or Raman’s activist-government philosophy are best suited to the problems facing Los Angeles. A Raman win in November would also give L.A. a progressivemayor to mirror New York’s Zohran Mamdani.
Meanwhile, the California governor’s race appeared to gain one entrant for the general election, with the Associated Press calling Democrat Xavier Becerra a certainty to finish in the top two spots of Tuesday’s primary. Becerra passed leader Steve Hilton Friday with a new tranche that puts the former HHS Secretary at 1.73 million votes with 68 percent of the tally counted. The Republican Hilton is right behind him with 1.7 million votes, while progressive Tom Steyer sits a further five points back with 1.34 million as the two now battle for second.
Becerra would become the first Latino governor in California’s history.