Raman the Nightmare Mayor

IN MY OPINION - The occult ballot-harvesting election machinery in Los Angeles has declared Nithya Raman to be the new Mayor. An obedient media has goosestepped along with that pronouncement. A less deserving candidate would be hard to find anywhere in the country. Nithya and her DSA-Communist comrades should be congratulated for their superior ballot-harvesting skills.

Voters wanted an escape from a City Hall that confuses spending with accomplishment and compassion with letting conditions go to hell. We had that candidate with Spencer Pratt. However, the usual late ballot-counting squelched someone willing to address the obvious problems Angelenos see daily.

We will now most likely discover that this election has produced a far worse and far darker outcome than the myriad failures of Karen Smiley-Face Bass. Raman defeated Karen Bass by declaring Bass failed us, and she did. But Raman’s record raises an uglier possibility: the same municipal dysfunction, delivered with greater ideological venom. And power sharing with DSA operatives who may be directing policy and leaving the not-so-bright Nithya as their DEI piñata girl for socialist policies?

Start with the streets. Raman’s transportation agenda favors protected bicycle lanes, bus corridors and aggressive road diets. Her supporters expect aggressive implementation of Measure HLA, which voters approved in 2024. You would think a mayor of a car-driven city would seek to speed up commutes and reduce pollution from idling cars. Instead, Raman prioritizes reallocating road space while fewer than 1% of Los Angeles workers commute by bicycle.

The budgetary problems begin before a single traffic lane disappears. Prop HLA ties qualifying repaving of at least 660 feet on designated Mobility Plan streets to additional planned improvements. The city’s chief budget officer estimated implementation at $3.1 billion over ten years and called it an unfunded mandate. Supporters dispute that estimate, which includes extensive sidewalk work. But where is the money to deliver these obligations while repairing our roads? City report

The consequences are already visible. By May 2026, StreetsLA estimated its budget would support only 60 lane miles of resurfacing that fiscal year, compared with more than 300 the previous year. HLA, coupled with separate federal wheelchair-access requirements and staffing shortages, constrains the work. The city has shifted toward large asphalt patches to avoid triggering additional obligations. Raman’s promise of aggressive HLA implementation requires a funding plan and a tax increase before HLA improvements to street paving can take place. LAist

Maybe the money Raman’s benefactors want devoted to road diets would be better spent replacing aging, broken water mains? Keeping people moving efficiently is a basic municipal obligation. Keeping water flowing reliably is more fundamental still. A city that cannot deliver water to homes, businesses and fire hydrants is failing at the foundations of civilization. Before City Hall redesigns the streets above ground, it should secure the infrastructure beneath them.

If you remove useful vehicle road capacity without attracting enough commuters to alternatives, traffic will worsen. Drivers will queue longer or divert onto neighborhood streets. Residents lose time, businesses face access problems, and quiet residential streets become commuter shortcuts, bringing more noise, exhaust, and dangerous traffic to the neighborhoods that were never intended to have thousands of cars crawling through them.

Federal Highway Administration research warns that conventional road diets above approximately 20,000 vehicles daily are more likely to increase congestion and divert traffic. FHWA

There is something profoundly elitist about prescribing transportation sacrifices for people whose schedules, bodies, and livelihoods do not accommodate the climate zealots’ preferred alternative. A person who can choose when and how to travel has options that a caregiver racing between jobs does not. Aaron Sosnick is primarily responsible for this sudden zeal for road diets.  Sosnick a New York hedge-fund billionaire and transportation activist. Reportedly spent $8 million that went to outside committees supporting Raman.

Making that caregiver’s commute worse is a real cost, even when nobody at City Hall enters it in the budget. Surely everybody who voted for Raman brain is thrilled beyond belief at the thought of more hellish traffic and higher taxes on top of our already sky-high taxes to support more traffic. Maybe Nithya should ride a bike from her Silver Lake mansion to City Hall?

The same disregard for immediate practical consequences runs through Raman’s encampment politics. The police union publicized her recorded remark: “I don’t think a kid’s gonna be safer because a tent is 500 feet away from a school.” Her argument is that relocating encampments does not solve homelessness. What is wrong with parents asking for safe access to school? lapd.com

A school buffer cannot cure addiction or move people into an $800,000 apartment. It can establish that certain public spaces have uses the city will protect. When encampments involve drug activity, blocked sidewalks, or hazardous conditions, residents need intervention now. People living in those conditions need intervention, too. Tolerating people as they slowly kill themselves while discussing “affordable” housing is morally repugnant.

Residents experience the failure every time they step onto the sidewalk. The mayor-elect should know that housing does not cure addiction. The street-addicts and mentally ill will continue to deteriorate until we acknowledge that these people need medical care, addiction rehabilitation, and basic shelter till they can take care of themselves.

Public safety deserves an explicit warning. Raman declared “Defund the police” in 2020. In January 2026, she opposed the plan to hire 170 additional officers; the City Clerk records her as voting no. Her campaign now says she will maintain staffing. We must hold her to it. Restricting recruitment while officers retire and leave can shrink a department without a formal declaration of defunding (sneaky). Los Angeles cannot afford another experiment in reducing police, especially with the Olympics coming.

Her response to the White Memorial Hospital confrontation offers another warning. Raman condemned federal agents and alleged they obstructed emergency access and detained American citizens. Federal officials said agents were obtaining medical care for a detainee and arrested people accused of assaulting officers. The hospital confirmed the detainee received treatment and said it had not authorized restrictions on the ambulance entrance. LAPD also reported responding to protesters blocking ambulance access. AOL

A mayor should establish the facts and protect patients and lawful access. Citizenship does not allow assaulting federal agents even if you disagree with the policy. Inflaming highly emotional issues stokes mob passions, leading to riots and property destruction.

Expect Raman’s confrontational approach to deepen conflict with Washington and invite further battles over federal funding. Courts have blocked broad sanctuary-funding penalties, so losing money is not an automatic consequence. docs.justia.com. But residents should still demand to know what she is risking, how she will protect essential services, and who pays for the litigation. Political theater has a cost when the audience is also underwriting the production.

For Jewish Angelenos, the quality-of-life question includes something even more fundamental: whether their mayor understands the hostility they face. This is a very recent phenomenon in Los Angeles, as this region has been especially receptive to people and cultures from all over the world who dream of a better life.

The Los Angeles region has America’s second-largest Jewish community by federation service areas, with roughly 565,000 Jewish residents identified in the Brandeis study. Their sense of safety and belonging is central to this city’s health. A mayor who loses their trust has created a serious governing problem. www.brandeis.edu

At September’s Jewish community forum, Raman defended describing Israel’s Gaza campaign as genocide; this is factually wrong. The Gazans are advocating for genocide “from the river to the sea.” She characterized BDS as legitimate peaceful protest. Her answers provoked audience displeasure. Federation CEO Rabbi Noah Farkas warned that the genocide characterization crossed a “red line” and explained that local Jews are blamed for Israeli government actions regardless of their own views. forward.com

That warning deserves to haunt her transition. Jewish residents should not have to wonder whether their mayor appreciates the difference between making a foreign-policy declaration and addressing the consequences that rhetoric can have for jews here. See the recent pro palestian protest at UCLA. Raman has condemned antisemitism and promised Jewish safety. But her words do not match her campaign rhetoric. forward.com

These issues belong together. A longer commute, an inaccessible sidewalk, businesses that have experienced smash-and-grab incidents or need to clean up human defecation before opening, a delayed emergency response, and fear outside a synagogue all diminish the freedom to enjoy life in Los Angeles. They turn ordinary activities into a gauntlet through a city that increasingly asks residents to accommodate its failures.

Raman’s danger is that she is an ideologue who believes she knows best. She will polarize the city, diminish the quality of life, make things more expensive, and make the city more dangerous. She will fall back on virtue signaling, lecture us about equity, and insist that the homeless have a right to be here and to be wherever they choose. Neighborhoods will undergo unpleasant transformations as soulless apartment buildings with inadequate parking will ruin tree-lined streets where families can walk, and neighbors can meet.

She will become even more ideological when explaining her policy failures. Do not expect adequate police protection. Expect even higher taxes to support unsupportable climate activism.

Raman is the nightmare mayor!

(Eliot Cohen is a longtime civic advocate who has served on the Neighborhood Council, the Van Nuys Airport Citizens Advisory Council, and the Board of Homeowners of Encino, where he was president of HOME for over seven years. A retired Wall Street executive with a 35-year career, Eliot brings a sharp eye to local governance. He critiques the bureaucratic missteps of City, County, and State officials. Eliot and his wife split their time between Los Angeles and Baja Norte, Mexico.)