Amid a flurry of political mail sent ahead of the upcoming election, Megan Shuham of Los Feliz received one piece in particular that gave her pause.
It featured a photo of Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman — a progressive, MIT-educated urban planner — next to one of L.A. County District Attorney George Gascón, known for his fight against mass incarceration by seeking lighter penalties for people convicted of crimes.
A caption on the mailer reads: “Nithya Raman and George Gascón broke their promise to keep us safe.”
“It did surprise me,” Shuham told LAist. “The mailer was saying if you don’t like what Gascón’s doing, you’re really not going to like Nithya either.”
“I don’t think the two are associated,” said Shuham, a stay-at-home parent who lives in City Council District 4, which is represented by Raman. “It felt like a reach.”
The mailer comes from an independent expenditure committee funded by a powerful real estate mogul and the labor union that represents Los Angeles police officers. Together with the firefighters union, they are spending more than $1 million in an effort to defeat Raman, whose district runs from Silver Lake west to Reseda, and includes all or parts of the Hollywood Hills, Studio City, and Sherman Oaks.
These forces want voters to see Raman the same as the embattled Gascón, who faces 11 challengers looking to unseat him, and beat back a growing progressive trend in L.A. politics.
Raman, however, has indicated her district is one of the safest in the city.
“All of the negative ads funded by outside spending say that crime and homelessness are spiking in our district. But it’s not true …”…
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