Progressive Nithya Raman advances to November runoff against Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Progressive city council member Nithya Raman has advanced to a November runoff against Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, setting up an unexpected matchup between two Democrats and former political allies to run the struggling city of nearly 4 million.

The outcome means Spencer Pratt, a Republican and former reality television personality from “The Hills,” is out of the running. His candidacy had drawn national attention because of his celebrity and willingness to challenge liberal governance in a city dominated by Democrats, but the buzz did not translate into enough votes to make the runoff.

Raman made a last-minute entry into the race, after she had endorsed Bass for reelection. She was elected to the council with the support of the Democratic Socialists of America, and the election will test whether voters in the heavily Democratic city want to move further to the political left to address long-running problems of homelessness, buckled streets and sidewalks and climbing rent and home prices.

The race also has historical markers. Bass is the first Black woman to hold the post, and Raman could be the first South Asian woman in the job.

“If you’re as frustrated by the broken status quo as I am, I hope you’ll join our movement to build a city that works for everyone,” Raman said in a statement. "For too long, City Hall has prioritized giving political advantage to powerful interests that fund elections. Meanwhile, working people pay the price in higher rents, depleted services and a city that has stopped working for them.”

“A campaign against Nithya Raman, who allows encampments near schools and cuts the police force, is one Mayor Bass looks forward to winning,” said Bass campaign strategist Douglas Herman.

Raman gained votes on Pratt in every vote update since Election Day as Los Angeles continued to process additional mail ballots and release results. Raman moved past Pratt and into second place on Sunday and extended her lead over Pratt on Monday to nearly 22,000 votes.

The mayoral matchup sets the field in one of the state's two marquee races. In the other, the California governor’s race, Democrat Xavier Becerra has advanced to the general election but it's not yet clear if he will face Republican Steve Hilton or fellow Democrat Tom Steyer. Hilton has more votes than Steyer, but Steyer cut into his lead by nearly a third in Monday’s vote updates.

The mayoral race was technically nonpartisan, so the candidates appeared on the ballot without party identification next to their names.

The election was not a vote of confidence in Bass, who according to incomplete returns received under 35% of the vote, a vulnerable position for an incumbent.

Bass represents the Democratic establishment as the incumbent mayor, and she’s backed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Vice President Kamala Harris and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, along with influential labor unions. She served in the state Legislature and Congress before becoming mayor in 2022 and was under consideration to be former President Joe Biden’s running mate in 2020.

Raman — in her first run for citywide office — has promised to speed up housing construction, bring back entertainment industry jobs and improve services in a city known for dirty streets, gridlock and homeless encampments that are commonplace in many neighborhoods.

“What we are doing right now is just not working,” Raman says. “LA’s primary strategy for homelessness has been to move encampments from one block to another, from your block to your neighbor’s block and back again. ... It’s political theater.”

It took nearly a week to determine who would face Bass in November due to California’s notoriously slow vote-counting process. Ballots are mailed to every eligible voter and they are counted if they are postmarked by Election Day and arrive at an election office within seven days.

Los Angeles, like other counties in California, processes and counts mail ballots in roughly the order they are received, so the last ones returned are the last ones counted.

On Tuesday night after polls closed, Los Angeles released results from mail ballots that had been returned early and already processed as well as votes cast that day. Those votes put Bass in the lead with Pratt running in second and Raman behind in third. Since then, the county has been processing and releasing results from mail ballots that arrived later.

Election data shows that large numbers of Democrats held onto their mail ballots and returned them in the race’s final days, which helps explain why Bass and Raman have been doing better than Pratt in the votes counted since primary day.

Born in India, Raman moved to the United States as a child and earned degrees from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she studied urban planning.

She has opposed efforts to prohibit homeless people from setting up tents within 500 feet (152 meters) of schools and daycare centers. However, she appears to have softened her opposition to no-camping zones, which were intended to curb the spread of encampments and clear streets. She voted against dozens of them on the council but later said she would not block them if elected mayor.

Raman’s positions on policing in the city have also changed.

She once talked of a department that would be much smaller and posted “defund the police” on social media in 2020. She did not support the mayor’s 2023 police contract, which she said was too expensive for the financially strapped city.

More recently, she said the Los Angeles Police Department should remain at its current size, about 8,600, down from about 10,000 in 2020. The police union has taunted her in ads, calling her “Flip Floppin’ Raman.”

In diverse Los Angeles, mayors are elected by building coalitions, ethnically and geographically. And to surpass 50% of the vote and win, Raman will need to find more supporters.

“I don’t think it’s impossible, but she is going to have to expand beyond her ideological base,” said Democratic consultant Bill Carrick, who sees Bass as vulnerable.

“The people who didn’t vote for Nithya weren’t voting against her, they were voting for somebody else. Karen (Bass) had a good number of people who were voting against her,” Carrick added.

Though Raman and Pratt are political opposites, both have attracted voters who aren’t happy with the city’s status quo.

Tanika Vickers, who works for a housing nonprofit in Los Angeles, said that she felt like she was part of a group of people who work and pay taxes but have been “forgotten.” She said she was frustrated with the way tax dollars were being spent, especially “throwing” more money toward homelessness without results.

She said she voted Raman for mayor because she was most qualified to execute her plans and fulfill what the city needs.

“I think that we are all looking for change,” she said.

Associated Press journalists Jaimie Ding in Los Angeles and Stephen Ohlemacher in Washington contributed.

Spencer Pratt, a candidate in the Los Angeles mayoral race, fields interviews during an election night event Tuesday, June 2, 2026, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jill Connelly)

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass speaks during an election night event Tuesday, June 2, 2026, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/William Liang)

Nithya Raman, a candidate in the Los Angeles mayoral race, smiles during a campaign event discussing tenant protections with renters in Los Angeles, Monday, June 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Nithya Raman, a candidate in the Los Angeles mayoral race, smiles during a campaign event discussing tenant protections with renters in Los Angeles, Monday, June 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Three more cases of the New World screwworm have been confirmed, including one outside the main cluster in Texas, demonstrating the difficulty of stopping a resurgent pest that could devastate the nation's cattle industry, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Monday.

The screwworm is actually a fly larva that eats living flesh instead of dead material. The flies lay their eggs in open wounds of animals like cattle, but wildlife, pets and occasionally even humans can be infested. The government has a program to breed sterile male flies and drop swarms of them from planes to mate with wild females, which kept screwworm contained at the southern end of Panama for decades.

So far, there are five confirmed cases: three calves and a goat in Texas and a dog from neighboring Lea County, New Mexico. The small dog, which the USDA initially reported as a Texas case, lives in New Mexico and was reclassified as the first in that state.

The dog had not traveled to Mexico or Texas, so authorities were investigating around the property where the pet lived. If they find infected flies, animal inspections in the area will increase, New Mexico State Veterinarian Samantha Holeck said during a virtual news conference Monday.

The first two screwworm cases were discovered last week in calves a few miles apart in south Texas. A case was announced Monday in a calf in La Salle County, southwest of San Antonio, and in a goat in Gillespie County, west of Austin.

In each case, officials have set up a 12-mile (20-kilometer) quarantine zone to try to slow the parasite's advance.

Along with cattle and other warm-blooded livestock, scientists worry screwworms could devastate the millions of wild white-tailed deer in Texas.

Scientists expect new cases could pop up in the coming days and weeks, but it doesn't mean screwworm is spreading rapidly, said Edward Burgess, a University of Florida entomologist who studies the fly.

“When that first case is seen, everyone is being vigilant and their eyes are on it more intensely,” Burgess said. “And when you are looking for something, you are more likely to see it.”

Screwworm gets its name from the maggots’ habit of burrowing — or screwing — into a wound, according to the USDA. The pest eats the flesh of the animal, further opening wounds and increasing the risk of deadly bacterial infections. Animals can die within a few weeks if not treated. There are a dozen government-approved medications to treat livestock.

The agency and the U.S. cattle industry have been racing to prevent an outbreak since screwworm was detected in Mexico late in 2024. The USDA has been dropping sterile flies in south Texas since February and is working to both increase sterile fly production in plants outside the U.S. and build a $750 million fly factory in Texas.

So far, screwworm's reappearance hasn’t greatly affected beef prices, which are already near record levels because there are fewer cows in the United States. Although the parasite attacks live cattle, it does not infest meat or fruit.

Canada temporarily stopped importing cattle, horses or other livestock from Texas on Friday. The parasites prefer humid areas where temperatures are at least 77 F (25 C), making them more of a summer problem up north.

Burgess said the long-term solution — breeding sterile male flies — is months away. Since wild female flies mate just once, if that encounter is with a sterile male, outbreaks can eventually be halted as the flies die out.

The goal is to have enough sterile flies to stop the pests from returning in 2027 after the winter kills off most of them, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins said at a news conference at the U.S. Livestock Insects Research Laboratory in Kerrville, Texas.

Scientists are also working on ways to sterilize only male flies to make the program even more effective.

Texas officials encouraged ranchers to keep a close eye on their herds and local wildlife. There's now a 24-hour screwworm hotline and a website and map for reported cases.

“This is a highly treatable condition if you act on it immediately,” Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said.

However, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller — who lost the recent Republican primary to a candidate backed by Abbott — said the federal response will take too long and risks crippling the cattle industry.

Instead, he says a poison bait could eliminate the screwworm problem in a few months, even if the USDA and other experts say the bait hasn’t been proven effective and could poison other flies, animals and even humans.

“What the hell is a good fly?” Miller said in an interview.

This story has been updated to reflect that the USDA revised the dog screwworm case to New Mexico, not Texas as the agency initially reported, and to correct the spelling of Kerrville.

Associated Press writers Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Scott McFetridge in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.

Signage is seen as U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins holds a news conference at the Knipling-Bushland U.S. Livestock Insects Research Laboratory in Kerrville, Texas, Monday, June 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, center, holds a news conference with ranchers, researchers and officials at the Knipling-Bushland U.S. Livestock Insects Research Laboratory in Kerrville, Texas, Monday, June 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

A ranchers arrivse for a news conference with U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins at the Knipling-Bushland U.S. Livestock Insects Research Laboratory in Kerrville, Texas, Monday, June 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

FILE - A test container of dyed fly pupae are displayed at a Domestic New World Screwworm Sterile Fly Production Facility to combat the northward spread of NWS and protect American livestock, in Edinburg, Texas, Feb. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

FILE - An adult New World screwworm fly sits in this undated photo. (Denise Bonilla/U.S. Department of Agriculture via AP)