Los Angeles City Council member Nithya Raman, a mayoral candidate and member of the Democratic Socialists of America chapter DSA-LA, has declined to answer sixteen questions about which parts of the group’s policy agenda she supports, according to an opinion column published by the New York Post’s California Post section, written by longtime California political strategist Jon Fleischman.
Raman has a long relationship with DSA-LA. The organization helped elect her to the City Council in 2020, backed her 2024 reelection, and endorsed her mayoral campaign this month. DSA-LA’s Democratic Socialist Program states that candidates seeking its backing are expected to “commit to our Program” both to secure an endorsement and to maintain the relationship afterward. Before this year’s mayoral race, DSA-LA said it would “throw the full weight of our power” behind whichever candidate it endorsed.
What the DSA Program Calls For
DSA-LA’s written program includes a number of specific policies:
- Government “expropriate” of privately owned housing and “creative use of eminent domain” to shift housing out of private ownership
- Universal rent control, vacancy taxes, and automatic rent freezes and eviction moratoriums during declared emergencies
- Reducing the number of sworn police officers and replacing sworn personnel with civilians for traffic enforcement and mental-health calls
- Redirecting police funding, decriminalizing drug use, and funding safe-injection sites
- City-owned businesses in groceries, restaurants and internet service
- Fare-free public transportation
- Expanded noncitizen voting in local elections
According to the column, the California Post sent Raman’s campaign sixteen questions drawn directly from that program, asking whether she supports measures such as using eminent domain to move privately owned housing into public or community ownership, reducing the number of sworn officers, decriminalizing drug use, allowing noncitizen voting and creating city-owned businesses. The campaign did not answer any of the questions, per the column.
A Mixed Record With DSA-LA
Raman has broken publicly with DSA-LA before. After the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, she criticized a DSA-LA statement for having “failed to reckon with the horrors committed by Hamas” and for being “unacceptably devoid of empathy for communities in Israel.” DSA-LA later censured her after she accepted an endorsement from Democrats for Israel-Los Angeles, though the chapter continued to back her.
Raman has also said publicly that she does not always align with the group’s tactics. “I don’t always agree with my allies on how to accomplish our goals,” she said earlier this year, while noting she shares DSA’s emphasis on the working class. Still, when DSA-LA endorsed her mayoral bid this month, she welcomed the support, saying she was “proud that DSA-LA is joining our broad coalition.”
The column argues that voters are entitled to know exactly which elements of the DSA-LA agenda a mayoral candidate endorses, particularly given the group’s own stated expectation that endorsed candidates commit to its program and its pledge to put its full organizational weight behind its chosen candidate.
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