Los Angeles residents have launched an effort to recall City Council member Nithya Raman after just six months in office, after her support for squatters at a local park and her alleged refusal to respond to constituents about their concerns.
Raman, who is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, is the second member of the L.A. City Council facing a potential recall, along with Mike Bonin, who triggered outrage with his plan to put up homeless shelters at the beach.
Raman represents the 4th District, a wildly gerrymandered jurisdiction that includes parts of central L.A., areas around Hollywood, and even portions of the San Fernando Valley. The area has been hit hard by a surge in homeless residents.
Earlier this year, Raman joined protesters at Echo Park, opposing efforts by the L.A. Police Department to clear the park of a crime-infested homeless encampment. Many residents are furious she backed the squatters and opposed the police.
In fact, she ran on a promise to “defund the police”:
There is no more urgent or possible moment to end the racial, environmental, and moral crisis that is homelessness in LA. Our leaders have finally been forced to listen.
The path is not complicated: fund services. Fund housing. Fund care.
Defund the police.
— Nithya Raman (@nithyavraman) June 12, 2020
Now, Raman is facing a recall campaign called “CD4 for CD4,” as the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday:
CD4 for CD4, a campaign committee formed last month, served Councilwoman Nithya Raman with a recall notice outside her Silver Lake home Wednesday. On its website and elsewhere, the committee argued that Raman’s office is inexperienced,unresponsive and too politically radical for her constituents to endure a full four-year term.
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Assuming that its paperwork is in order, CD4 for CD4 would need to collect more than 27,000 valid signatures between July and early November to get a recall on the ballot in Raman’s 4th Council District, which stretches from Hancock Park north to Sherman Oaks and east to Silver Lake.
Raman defeated Councilman David Ryu by a comfortable margin in November, becoming the first council candidate at City Hall to oust an incumbent in 17 years.
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Raman won her seat last year with support from some influential leftist political groups, including the L.A. chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. Recall backers have highlighted Raman’s working relationship with that organization, which favors the abolition of police departments and prisons, saying it is one sign that the councilwoman has a “far left radical agenda.”
Earlier this week, Breitbart News noted that homeless people had taken over a pedestrian tunnel at Hollywood Boulevard in Los Feliz, which is on the border of Raman’s district.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new novel, Joubert Park, tells the story of a Jewish family in South Africa at the dawn of the apartheid era. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, recounts the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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