Nithya Raman and Karen Bass Head to Costner ‘Swing Vote’ Territory

They traded barbs for months and pillaged supporters by the barrel. So it was only fitting after all this that challenger Nithya Raman and incumbent Karen Bass would be deadlocked and separated by just a few thousand votes four hours after the polls closed in the L.A. mayor’s race.

Hey, when you’ve got a good show going, you don’t cancel it mid-season.

So Raman’s TV writer husband Vali Chandrasekaran could tell you. Or so anyone watching this race could tell you.

As of midnight in Los Angeles some 4,000 votes separated Bass, in the lead, with Raman just behind her, with 600,000 votes counted. Given that there are 580,000 votes remaining, that lead tells us nothing.

And given the fact that counting takes a long time — anything mail-in ballot postmarked today would still count in the next week — don’t expect a result anytime soon.

Raman and Bass are both Democrats, but Raman is to the left of Bass, if not as far to the left as her would-be New York counterpart Zohran Mamdani. Both Bass and Raman have pledged to do a lot for the film industry — but if you were running for mayor of Los Angeles right now, would you say anything else?

Still, this race isn’t the closest of the evening. That dubious honor goes to Scott Colom and Cindy Hyde-Smith vying for a Mississippi senate seat. With nearly a million votes in, Colom leads by…28 votes.

Bass has been here before. Her race was similarly tight with Rick Caruso four years ago, and she would go on to win by nearly ten points. It took three weeks.