Nithya Raman cut Spencer Pratt’s lead to about 3 percentage points in the Los Angeles mayoral primary on Friday, tightening the fight for the second runoff spot as the count kept moving. Raman was still behind by 20,672 votes in the race to face Mayor Karen Bass in the Nov. 3 runoff.
The update mattered because it came as Bass stayed in first place with 35% of the vote, Pratt held 28% and Raman rose to 25%. That means the contest for second place is still alive, even if Bass has held the lead from election night and appears set to advance if no one else overtakes her.
County election officials will keep accepting mail-in ballots with an election day postmark through Tuesday, and they plan to release new results every day through June 12. For Raman, that leaves one obvious question: whether the late-count ballots are enough to erase the gap before the field for the runoff is finalized.
The broader result also shows how the rest of the citywide races have settled around the mayor’s contest. City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto missed the runoff, while Deputy Atty. Gen. Marissa Roy and Deputy Dist. Atty. John McKinney were ahead of her. City Controller Kenneth Mejia easily turned back a challenge from real estate executive Zach Sokoloff, whose campaign drew a lift from $7.5 million in outside spending by his mother.
On the council side, Eunisses Hernandez said in an Instagram post that “Together, we earned another term for our community and our movement” after she reached 54% of the vote. Half a dozen council members won reelection, underscoring that the most dramatic uncertainty Friday was not at City Hall generally, but in the battle between Pratt and Raman for the chance to take on Bass, who is seeking a second four-year term.
That runoff structure is why the narrowing margin matters. Unless a mayoral candidate wins a majority outright, the top two move on, and Bass remains the only one of the nine incumbents at City Hall seeking reelection this year who has been pushed into a second round.
