LOS ANGELES—America’s second-largest city, run by Democratic mayors for a quarter-century, is in a rut. Voters are mulling whether a Democratic socialist might be able to dig it out. The popularity of incumbent mayor Karen Bass, a Democrat, has been dampened by frustration over persistent homelessness and the fallout from devastating wildfires in early 2025.L.A. county residents’ perception of their quality of life is at the lowest level in more than a decade, according to an annual survey sponsored by UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs.

Satisfaction across all nine of the survey’s categories—including healthcare, public safety, the economy, education and transportation—was lower in 2026 than in 2016, the study’s first year. That has created an opening for Nithya Raman, a Los Angeles City Council member and affiliate of the Democratic Socialists of America. She has consistently led Bass in the polls, though a recent survey showed them with even support just days away from the election after controversial remarks by Raman about L.A.’s police.A Raman win would put politicians from the DSA—until recently, a little-known fringe of the Democratic Party—in charge of the two most-populous cities in the U.S. following New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s surge to victory last November.

DSA candidates are also running in other cities including Washington, D.C., and Providence, R.I. Like Mamdani, Raman is young, progressive and born outside the U.S.—she in India, he in Uganda to parents of Indian descent.

But the 45-year-old mother of twins, who attend L.A. public schools, is more policy wonk in temperament. Raman had endorsed Bass for another term before shifting gears and jumping into the race in February, saying the city needed more accountability.

Bass and Raman were the top two finishers in the June 2 primary, leaving Republican former reality show star Spencer Pratt out of the general election. Raman’s version of socialism has centered on protecting tenants, expanding transit and bike lanes, and bringing down housing costs. She pushed for tighter rent controls while leading the city council’s housing and homelessness committee last year. But she has also acknowledged the market’s role in making one of the nation’s least affordable cities more livable.“We can stop city hall from being a barrier to opening small businesses and building the housing that we desperately need,” she said in an interview.

Like the New York mayor, she has campaigned on so-called pothole politics: a focus on quality of life and restoring public trust in government. She has said she would do a better job of managing L.A.’s budget to avoid cuts to city services.

Broken streets aren’t just a metaphor in L.A. It took an average of seven days to fix a pothole in the fiscal year that ended June 30, up from 0.9 days in 2021-22. Also, the average response time to repair a streetlight outage rose to 224 working days from 31 over the same period, amid a spate of copper-wire theft. Street homelessness remains a visible crisis despite billions in spending. Police are conducting fewer traffic stops despite fast-rising road fatalities. Bass, 73, who was born and raised in L.A., acknowledges her hometown has seen better days. But she says the city’s problems are decades in the making.“We have laid a very strong foundation in term one to address some longstanding city problems,” she said in an interview.

“The homelessness situation has been a problem for about 30 years and, yes, we’ve brought it down and now we know how to bring it down.”Bass is an experienced politician who served six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and was on former President Joe Biden’s shortlist for a running mate in 2020.

The three other DSA members on L.A.’s city council have endorsed Bass. So has Rick Caruso, the wealthy developer who lost to Bass four years ago.

The mayor, in her push for another term, has touted the city’s 47% drop in homicides since she took office. She has also attacked Raman for having called for defunding the police during her 2020 run for city council and for votes against adding more officers.

Raman has also been dogged by her early October appearance on a social media influencer’s Instagram page where she answered his question about “defascistizing” the city by talking about police reform and saying, in unison with the host, “only you can stop fascist liars” over what turned out to be a picture of Bass.

Raman said that she used the word “fascist” in reference to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the video was taken down at her request. But excerpts were widely broadcast on local news channels and became fodder in the final pre-election debate.

Raman’s electoral hopes rest in part on Bass’s unpopularity since firestorms ravaged L.A.’s Pacific Palisades neighborhood in January 2025. It was the city’s worst disaster in decades, and the mayor was out of the country on an official trip when the fires started.

Bass has repeatedly apologized for her absence.“Change is very much in the air all over the country, and it certainly is here,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the Luskin School of Public Affairs. L.A. is also struggling with issues that have roots beyond city hall—such as the economy, the cost of living and the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement.

Retail vacancy rates have more than doubled over the past decade, according to real-estate data firm CoStar. School enrollment is falling as families with children struggle to afford L.A.’s astronomical housing prices. The region’s most celebrated industry—Hollywood—is struggling and shedding jobs.“L.A. needs more love than it is getting from its mayor right now, and that is why I’m running,” Raman said. But she added: “It is not a job for someone who seeks a future in politics.”Write to Paul Kiernan at paul.kiernan@wsj.com