Heading Into Final Stretch of L.A. Mayor’s Race Nithya Raman Faces DSA Revolt, Questions About Commitment To Boycott, Divest From Israel

With just a week until the election, the Democratic Socialist frontrunner in the Los Angeles mayoral race, Nithya Raman, is facing backlash from her leftwing base over what it feels is insufficient support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, BDS, movement.Ms. Raman has described Israel’s actions in Gaza as a “genocide.” She has said that the BDS movement is a “legitimate form of peaceful protest.” The Democratic Socialist candidate was endorsed by the Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. However, the national DSA is threatening to overturn that endorsement if Ms. Raman does not show sufficient support for the BDS movement. The issue arose after it came to light that the city chapter did not ask her about “R22,” which is a party resolution that requires DSA chapters to ask candidates about their stances on BDS before endorsing a candidate. The national committee is also threatening to expel her. On Monday, the DSA national committee held a meeting to discuss Ms. Raman’s stance on Israel and said it is working to organize an October 31 meeting with her to evaluate her commitment to its cause. If Ms. Raman does not provide “clear and unequivocal commitments” regarding Israel, it will move forward with a vote on whether to rescind the Los Angeles chapter’s endorsement, a spokesman for the committee told the Los Angeles Times The spokesman added that the national DSA wants her to oppose weapons shipments to Israel and warned that if she has not “expressed support for BDS and condemned weapon shipments out of LAX” by January 1, the party will compile documentation to show she had “ample” opportunity to meet its demands and “begin a disciplinary process” that will lead to “a vote on expelling Nithya Raman.”Ms. Raman provided a statement to the national committee that sought to clarify her stance on BDS, saying that she believes the “best way for working Angelenos to stand in solidarity with Gaza is through non-violent protest, legislative action, and diplomatic pressure, including BDS.”It was unclear whether the statement provides a firm enough commitment to satisfy the party. The DSA did not respond to The New York Sun’s request for comment by the time of publication, however, a former adviser to President Obama, Tommy Vietor, a vocal critic of Israel, said the threat was poorly timed. “The best way to build political power in this country is to kneecap the more progressive candidates right before the election. Genius move here,” he posted on X.As Ms. Raman faces backlash from the Democratic Socialists, she has recently sought to distance herself from several of the organization’s hot-button proposals such as calls to abolish police departments, prisons, and the U.S. Senate. She has also tried to allay voter concerns about her socialist credentials, telling CNN’s Elex Michaelson last week, “I’m a capitalist and I’m also a Democratic Socialist.”Told that may be confusing to voters, she said the DSA is a “big tent” and she wants to prevent capitalism from causing “harm” to city residents.Several polls appear to show that Ms. Raman is the frontrunner in the mayoral race. With the election just a week away, a McLaughlin and Associates poll released earlier this month found Ms. Raman with an eight-point lead over Mayor Karen Bass. A recent University of California Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies survey found Ms. Raman has a double-digit lead. Those polls come as Ms. Bass’s approval rating has been stuck in the 20s for months. Amid the apparently dire position for Ms. Bass, her opponent in the 2022 mayoral race, Rick Caruso, says he will vote for the mayor over Ms. Raman. “I’ve struggled with the choices that we have, but I’ve given it a lot of thought, especially a lot [of] thought over the weekend,” Mr. Caruso told a local TV station, ABC7. “I’ve looked at the records and I’ve made a clear decision of who I’m going to vote for…And that’s going to be Mayor Bass.”The Californian businessman said that he has worked with Ms. Bass over the last year and believes she has “worked hard to learn from the mistakes of the past” and is “most prepared” to run the city.Mr. Caruso also raised concerns about Ms. Raman’s promise to remove the Los Angeles police chief, James McDonnell, a move the businessman says will “not be good for the city” or LAPD morale. While Mr. Caruso questioned whether Ms. Raman is ready to be mayor, she is also facing pushback on a topic of which she is supposed to be an expert: housing policies. In an interview on the Iced Coffee Hour podcast, Ms. Raman, who was until August the chairwoman of the Housing and Homelessness Committee, was questioned by host and real estate investor Graham Stephan and a frequent guest of the show, celebrity realtor Jason Oppenheim, about current city policies that seek to protect renters from wealthy landlords. Mr. Oppenheim noted that rent control policies not only are preventing owners from covering the carrying costs of high mortgage rates, property taxes, and repairs, but also driving down the average value of multifamily homes at Los Angeles — by roughly 30 percent in the last four years — making the investment unprofitable and undesirable to potential buyers. “If you bought a fourplex in 2017, you made zero money in 10 years. You could’ve put that money in the stock money and doubled it,” he said.Ms. Raman interjected, “You probably made rental income from it,” to which Mr. Oppenheim replied, “No, because you generally lose money every month.” He added that rent control suppresses the sales value of rental properties by 20 to 30 percent.“This clip is unreal. Nithya Raman has absolutely NO clue about how housing works in LA,” one of the candidate’s primary competitors, reality TV star Spencer Pratt, wrote on X. “This lady was chair of the Homelessness and Housing Committee for years and she’s genuinely hearing this for the first time in her life.” As Ms. Raman heads into the final stretch, she is fighting back against her detractors. On Monday, the campaign filed an ethics complaint against a “conservative Super PAC” that supports Ms. Bass, Thrive LA PAC. Ms. Raman’s campaign alleges that the PAC has put up signs urging voters to call a number to talk to her about the issues up for debate. The callers are then allegedly greeted by an AI-generated clone of Ms. Raman’s voice that “carries on a live conversation, making up answers to voters’ questions in real time,” and provides responses that she never actually gave. The complaint also alleges that the voice clone is intended to deceive voters and violates a California law that requires content created with AI to include a disclosure that the material is “generated or substantially altered using artificial intelligence.” The system also allegedly does not disclose who paid for it.Thrive LA PAC called the complaint “false and absurd” in a statement and said it has followed the rules. “All of our ads have been properly disclosed. In fact, how else would they have known who to file a complaint against?” the group posited.

Heading Into Final Stretch of L.A. Mayor’s Race Nithya Raman Faces DSA Revolt, Questions About Commitment To Boycott, Divest From Israel

Heading Into Final Stretch of L.A. Mayor’s Race Nithya Raman Faces DSA Revolt, Questions About Commitment To Boycott, Divest From Israel

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