Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman has routinely opposed efforts by her colleagues to block homeless encampments in their districts, voting more than 60 times since 2021 against measures to ban them near schools, libraries, parks, freeway overpasses and other public areas.
After announcing her bid for mayor, however, Raman took a sharp turn on the issue.
“When I’m mayor, if the council wants to create new [no camping] zones, I’m not going to stand in the way,” she told an audience in May.
Add the no-camping turnabout to a list of political issues on which Raman took one position only to later shift her stance — or in some cases, reverse it completely.
During her first run for City Council in 2020, Raman called for the defunding of the police, telling her followers that “the path is not complicated.” Two years later, she voted for a nearly 3% increase in spending on the Los Angeles Police Department, allocating an additional $82 million.
Raman urged voters in 2022 to approve Measure ULA, the tax on real estate sales above $5.4 million, dubbed by some as the “mansion tax.” On social media, she downplayed warnings that the tax would discourage apartment construction, saying the impact would be “very minor.”
The council member later changed course, saying the tax has had a disastrous effect on apartment construction and desperately needs an overhaul. “You can’t address a housing crisis with a policy that worsens our housing shortage,” Raman said in January.
Raman also voted this year to oppose a request from Mayor Karen Bass to add 170 police officers. The mayor said the hires were needed to replace officers who are retiring — and keep the department from shrinking.
Weeks later, after launching her mayoral campaign, Raman went on NBC4 and declared that city leaders need to maintain the size of the LAPD and keep sworn staffing from getting smaller.
Raman and her team have defended her various policy shifts, saying she made them after receiving new information, learning about changed circumstances or simply giving an issue a second look.
“My thinking has changed on this issue,” Raman told The Times in August, explaining why she no longer supports defunding the police. “I have voted for multiple budgets that have maintained our police staffing, sought to expand our police staffing. But I’ve also spoken up when I felt like raises being provided to police officers unbalanced our budget so much that we wouldn’t be able to provide other essential services across the city.”
Raman’s shifts have become fodder for Bass, her opponent in the Nov. 3 election, and the mayor’s allies. Bass, at a debate in Sherman Oaks, said Raman “talks out of both sides of her mouth” when discussing police hiring.
Raman’s tendency to rethink her policy decisions has also contributed to her strained relations with her council colleagues, nearly all of whom are backing the mayor’s reelection bid.
Councilmember Traci Park, who has not endorsed in the race, said she believes Raman is altering her public positions on police hiring and homeless encampments to appeal to more moderate voters — including those who backed Republican Spencer Pratt in the June 2 primary.
“It makes me question what she stands for, or if she actually stands for anything at all,” she added.
On Measure ULA, Raman said she changed her mind after reviewing studies on housing production. On police hiring, she said the mayor had acted irresponsibly, calling for more officers without providing a long-term strategy to pay for them.
And on homeless encampments, her team said a mayor lacks the legal authority to block council members from creating new no-camping zones.
Raman’s shifting stances even apply to the election itself. Raman initially endorsed Bass’ bid for a second term, appearing in news releases in January promoting the mayor. Weeks later, she jumped into the race herself, saying her decision was the product of mounting frustration over the state of the city.
Asked why she backed Bass in the first place, Raman said she did so to ensure the mayor would provide resources to her Hollywood Hills district. “Endorsing the mayor is part of that,” she said.
Those types of responses have riled her critics, who have portrayed her as indecisive at best, and an opportunist at worst.
Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, a Bass ally, said Raman dismissed warnings about Measure ULA, the so-called mansion tax, when it was still on the ballot and her views might have made a difference. She compared Raman earlier this year to an arsonist who shows up dressed as a firefighter, vowing to put out a fire they set themselves.
Even Councilmember Heather Hutt, perhaps the council’s least combative voice, said she doesn’t trust Raman after seeing her first endorse the mayor and then run against her.
“One day she’s yes, the other day she’s no,” Hutt told a crowd at a pro-Bass rally last month.
Some contend that Raman even reverses herself behind the scenes.
Ernesto Medrano, who heads the Los Angeles/Orange Counties Building and Construction Trades Council, said Raman assured labor leaders during a closed-door meeting last fall that she would not pursue any proposal for changing Measure ULA without first discussing it with the labor leaders who support the tax.
Two months later, Raman unveiled a plan to ask voters to rewrite Measure ULA, calling for her ballot proposal to be fast-tracked to the council.
“She said that she would come to us, but she never did,” said Medrano, whose group has endorsed Bass. “How do we trust somebody that doesn’t have the kind of integrity, the kind of character, to keep to their word?”
Raman has described her handling of that proposal as her biggest mistake at City Hall, saying she had failed to do the necessary work to build support and created “unnecessary friction.”
Former Deputy Mayor Rick Cole, who worked for former Mayor Eric Garcetti and now supports Raman, said the council member’s willingness to change her mind is a strength, not a weakness.
“One of Nithya’s best qualities is her willingness to reexamine her positions in light of changing facts,” Cole said. “Sometimes she has a new perspective and sometimes the world has changed. But in every case, she’ll take responsibility when she’s made a mistake and learns from it.”
City Hall needs someone who listens and is “willing to grow,” said Marlene Fonseca, who heads the Engineers and Architects Assn., a union that endorsed Raman. “Who wants a closed-minded leader?” she added.
When she launched her first campaign for council, Raman portrayed her platform as a series of moral choices, saying she would work to make sure the council “leads with its values.” She drew support from the Democratic Socialists of America and other leftist groups that were calling for the abolition of police and prisons.
After Bass took office in 2022, Raman became a supporter of Inside Safe, the mayor’s then-new program to move homeless people out of encampments and into hotels and motels. Raman voted for three city budgets that funded the program, approving $300 million in 2023 alone.
On the campaign trail, Raman has been a fierce critic of the initiative, calling it too expensive and pointing out that more than 40% of the program’s participants have returned to homelessness.
Raman, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who has been endorsed by that group, has also shifted her stance on LAPD leadership.
In 2024, she voted to confirm former Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell as the city’s police chief after he was nominated by Bass. At the time, her fellow DSA colleagues said McDonnell was the wrong person to protect the rights of the city’s undocumented immigrants.
As a candidate, Raman is now promising to replace McDonnell, saying he has not “met the moment” during federal immigration raids.
Raman has also switched sides on some less incendiary topics.
Last year, Raman voted in favor of a 45-day citywide moratorium on new RV parks, a move aimed at giving city planners time to draft permanent new rules to regulate such facilities. Two months later, when her colleagues requested a 10-month extension, she voted no.
In December 2025, Raman voted for a plan to dissolve the city’s Youth Development Department and consolidate it with several other city agencies. Five months later, however, she voted against an ordinance that would finalize the consolidation.
Because the vote was not unanimous, the ordinance needed a second vote for passage. When the proposal came back a week later, Raman switched her vote back to yes.
That same month, Raman also voted with her three DSA colleagues to oppose a plan to delay a series of minimum wage hikes for tourism workers.
Raman and a majority of her colleagues had voted the previous year for a package of increases that would culminate in a $30-per-hour minimum wage in summer 2028. The tourism industry responded by producing a ballot measure to repeal L.A.’s business tax, which would cost the city hundreds of millions of dollars.
Council members persuaded business leaders to drop that measure in exchange for an 18-month delay in the increase to a $30 minimum wage.
Raman and the three other DSA council members voted against the delay. But one week later, Raman broke with her DSA colleagues and voted for it.
Stella Stahl, a Raman spokesperson, said in June that her boss made the switch after recognizing that the deal gave the city “greater fiscal certainty.”
Months later, while receiving the hotel union’s endorsement, Raman said the second vote was merely procedural.
“I stood with workers when it mattered, and the workers knew that,” Raman said.
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