By Stephen Witt, Los Angeles County Politics
A moderate political group is readying an independent expenditure campaign to keep LA City Councilmember Nithya Raman from becoming mayor and push back against what it calls the Democratic Socialists of America’s (DSA) strategy of unseating mainstream Democrats.
The group, Thrive LA, will activate its political action committee in the final weeks before the Nov. 3 election, with ballots going out today and ad production underway, Thrive LA Executive Director Ana Teresa Dahan said.
“Right now, our current danger is that moderate to conservative voters are so frustrated with their options that they won’t vote. And if they don’t show up, Nithya Raman will win,” said Dahan.
Thrive LA first took on Raman in 2024, when Thrive LA PAC backed challenger Ethan Weaver. City Ethics Commission records show the PAC spent at least $243,849 in that race, including a $180,868 digital ad buy against Raman. Raman won reelection outright in the March primary.
Dahan said Raman owes that win to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. Bass endorsed and backed Raman in the contested race, according to NBC News and the Los Angeles Times.
Dahan describes Thrive as a nonpartisan group focused on pragmatic governance and higher turnout, with two arms. A 501(c)(3) nonprofit handles voter education, including explaining how vote by mail works. The PAC, which tells voters whom to support, turns on as elections approach. She said the group’s main tactic is door knocking aimed at Latino voters who vote infrequently or not at all.
“That is our theory of change. Everything will get better if more people vote,” said Dahan.
Thrive also targets the DSA, which it argues has gained power in Los Angeles by mobilizing small, motivated electorates in low-turnout races. A Thrive presentation tracks DSA-LA’s rise from Raman’s 2020 council win to five city offices, and calls 2026 the group’s biggest expansion yet, with plays for mayor, city attorney and open council seats in CD3 and CD9.
The presentation also compares DSA members with the city’s population, saying 77% of members are white in a city that is 47% Latino. Those figures come from DSA’s 2021 national survey of about 13,000 self-selected members, not Los Angeles data. The same survey found that 80% of members 25 and older hold bachelor’s degrees, with a median age of 33.
Dahan argued that a Raman win would reach far beyond City Hall.
“Every Democrat who’s elected should be put on notice that if Nithya Raman beats Karen Bass, it will send a message to the DSA that every incumbent Democrat is vulnerable and should be taken out,” said Dahan.
Raman’s positions on Israel line up with national DSA, which endorsed the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement at its 2017 convention.
At the Jewish Los Angeles Mayoral Forum at the Skirball Cultural Center on Sept. 29, Raman described Israel’s war in Gaza as a genocide and called BDS a legitimate form of peaceful protest, though she said it is not part of her platform. She has broken with DSA elsewhere, saying at the forum that she has disagreed with the group on policing and market-rate housing and would keep LAPD at its current size.
DSA-LA endorsed Raman for mayor in September. Three other DSA-backed members of the City Council, Hugo Soto-Martínez (D-Hollywood), Ysabel Jurado (D-Boyle Heights) and Eunisses Hernandez (D-Highland Park), have endorsed Bass.
Dahan grew up in Echo Park and went to Belmont High School, where she said she led a student walkout over plans to cancel a new campus. She later served as managing director of Great Public Schools Now, an education nonprofit. She said she has also served on the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission, worked for former Federal Election Commission Chair Ann Ravel, and worked at NBCUniversal and AIPAC.
Dahan, who is Latina and Jewish, said she is proud of her time at AIPAC. She said her maternal grandmother’s family were crypto-Jews from Salamanca, Mexico, who lived publicly as Catholics, and that they might not have had to hide their faith to survive had Israel existed then.
“I will never take AIPAC off my resume. It was some of the best political training I’ve received in my career, and I’ve worked in politics for a long time,” said Dahan, adding that Thrive is not a Jewish organization and has nothing to do with Israel.
The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk begins mailing ballots to all registered voters today. Drop boxes open the same day, and Vote Centers open Oct. 24.
