Latest results
Incumbent Nithya Raman has successfully won her city council seat with more than 50% of the votes cast, the threshold needed to win outright in the primary.
Ethan Weaver, a deputy city attorney, and her top challenger said he'd called to concede on Thursday, March 14.
As of Wednesday, just 12,000 votes remain to be counted in all of L.A. County. How many of those were cast in CD4 won't be known until they're all counted. Keep in mind that many of the remaining votes will take additional time to verify.
A note on the results
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Keep in mind that in tight races particularly, the winner may not be determined for days or weeks after Election Day. In Los Angeles County, the first batch of results released includes vote-by-mail ballots received before March 5, followed by early votes cast in-person at vote centers, then votes cast in-person on Election Day.
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The results you see are the votes counted through March 29, when they were certified.
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As of March 29, here's where the vote count stands:
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Total count to date:
- 1,641,715 (28.9% of registered voters)
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Estimate still to be counted: 0
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Note: In California, ballots postmarked on or before March 5 are counted toward the results as long as they arrive within seven days of the election (March 12). Results must be certified by county election officials by April 4.
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How we got here
L.A.’s worsening housing and homelessness crisis was front and center in the race to represent this district. Some voters who showed up to cast their ballot on Election Day in Los Feliz said Raman has championed smart policies on a tough problem. Others said it was time for a change.
Hollywood resident Vahan Saroians voted for former NASA engineer Lev Baronian (who placed a distant third). But Saroians said he would have been happy with anyone but Raman. He thinks her policies have failed to stop the growth of homelessness.
“Nothing is changing, so whoever is in charge is not doing their job,” Saroians said. “Encampments continue. They just move from one street to another street. Normal people who you never thought would be homeless are homeless.”
Los Feliz resident Brandon Cassadore said encampments have grown so much in his neighborhood that at times he feels unsafe.
“Change is good,” said Cassadore, who voted for Weaver. “We can’t just stick to the old ways if they just haven't been working.”
Tom Kanter, a Los Feliz renter, had seen the criticisms of Raman. But he said he voted for her because he does not support encampment sweeps without offering people help getting housed.
“I think there's some sort of stigma against homeless people where they need to be cast aside or swept under the rug, and that really rubs me the wrong way,” Kanter said.
Outside spending favored Weaver
Real estate interests, as well as police and firefighters unions, poured more than $1 million into defeating Raman. On election night, she said she was feeling energized, but also worried about the effect all that funding could have on the race.
“It's the kind of spending that splits the city apart at a time when more than anything else, we need to come together and do the hard work to get people into housing,” Raman said.
Early results on election night showed Raman and Weaver practically neck-and-neck. Weaver said the initial tally showed his message had resonated with voters, who wanted more action on the problems they see in their neighborhoods — especially when it comes to encampments.
“We have to manage the problem better on our streets day over day to keep our voters patient and engaged with us to show that we're making progress and that their communities are improving, not falling further behind,” Weaver said.
About the district
District 4 stretches from Silver Lake and Los Feliz in the east, into northern sections of Hollywood, before ending in Sherman Oaks, Encino and other parts of the San Fernando Valley.
This district changed more than any other during the city’s most recent redistricting process. Renter-heavy parts of Koreatown were taken out of the district, and parts of the Valley featuring more homeowners were added in.
Raman, who chairs the council’s housing committee, has found herself in the political crosshairs over her advocacy for new tenant rights and expanded eviction protections.
In the leaked tapes recorded at the L.A. County Federation of Labor headquarters in 2021, council members Nury Martinez and Kevin de Leon discussed using the redistricting process to dilute the power of renters in this district.
Maintaining the district’s previous boundaries, Martinez said, “solidifies her renters’ district, and that is not a good thing for any of us.”
De Leon said of all the districts, this was “the one to put in a blender and chop up left and right.”
Compared to the last election for this seat in 2020, about 40% of eligible voters were new to the district.
What's next
The race for this district was widely seen as a test of the staying power of political progressives on the L.A. city council. Raman, backed by the Democratic Socialists of America, became the first candidate to unseat a city council incumbent in 17 years when she first won her seat in 2020.
Those progressive politics manifested in heated campaign debates over how to best confront the city's homelessness crisis. Raman and Weaver sharply disagreed on a city policy that bans encampments near schools, parks and other “sensitive” locations.
Raman said these sweeps don’t get people off the street and into housing, while Weaver said preventing unhoused people from pitching tents near schools is crucial for public safety.
Recent LAist reporting uncovered an internal report that found the city’s policy, known as 41.18, is largely ineffective at housing people.
Raman also came under intense fire from some Sherman Oaks homeowners over her support of an affordable housing project near single-family homes.
Follow the money
Tracking your ballot
You can track the status of your ballot:
If your mail-in ballot is rejected for any reason (like a missing or mismatched signature), your county registrar must contact you to give you a chance to fix it. In Los Angeles County, the registrar will send you a notification by mail and you have until March 27 to reply and "cure" your ballot.
How we're covering this election
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Early voters and mail-in ballots have fundamentally reshaped how votes are counted and when election results are known.
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Our priority will be sharing outcomes and election calls only when they have been thoroughly checked and vetted. To that end, we will report when candidates concede and otherwise rely on NPR and The Associated Press for race calls. We will not report the calls or projections of other news outlets. You can find more on NPR and The AP's process for counting votes and calling races here, here and here.
