在加利福尼亚州，选票的统计往往需要数天甚至数周。但尼蒂亚·拉曼（Nithya Raman）在11月3日举行的选举之夜集会，感觉就像是一场庆祝胜利的派对。年轻选民、竞选工作人员和工会成员涌入希腊剧院（Greek Theatre）的庭院，观看源源不断出炉的开票结果。当千禧一代市议员、隶属于美国民主社会主义者组织（DSA）的拉曼女士走上舞台时，欢呼声在格里菲斯公园（Griffith Park）回荡。“我充满希望，”她对人群说道，“我也真的很迷信，所以我们大家都要淡定，好吗？”
VOTES CAN take days, or weeks, to count in California. But Nithya Raman’s election night gathering on November 3rd felt like a victory party. Young voters, campaign staffers and union members flooded the courtyard of the Greek Theatre to watch returns roll in. When Ms Raman, a millennial city-council member affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), took the stage, cheers echoed through Griffith Park. “I’m very hopeful,” she told the crowd. “I’m also really superstitious, so we’re all just gonna be cool, OK?”
她本不必担心。随着每一批选票的公布，她对凯伦·巴斯（Karen Bass）的领先优势不断扩大。巴斯现年73岁，是一名现任民主党籍市长，在洛杉矶政坛盘根错节数十年。11月5日，巴斯女士致电昔日的盟友承认败选。在几乎整个民主党建制派都力挺巴斯女士的洛杉矶，拉曼女士的胜利是一场一代人未见的冷门。自2005年以来，洛杉矶还没有哪个挑战者成功将现任市长拉下马。
She needn’t have worried. Her lead over Karen Bass, the 73-year-old incumbent Democratic mayor who has been a fixture of Los Angeles politics for decades, grew with every ballot drop. On November 5th, Ms Bass called her erstwhile ally to concede. Ms Raman’s victory is a once-in-a-generation upset in a city where almost the entire Democratic establishment lined up behind Ms Bass. Not since 2005 has a challenger ousted an incumbent mayor in Los Angeles.
这也是美国民主社会主义者组织的一场胜利，该组织如今在其日益壮大的成员名单中，拥有了美国两个最大城市的市长——拉曼女士和纽约的佐兰·马姆达尼（Zohran Mamdani）。
It is also a win for the DSA, which can now count the mayors of America’s two largest cities—Ms Raman and Zohran Mamdani of New York—among its growing list of members.
促成拉曼女士胜出的最大因素是其对手的不受欢迎程度。在选举前一周接受民调的洛杉矶市民中，近三分之二对巴斯持负面看法。这位市长始终无法弥补她犯下的致命错误：在太平洋帕利塞兹（Pacific Palisades）惨遭大火吞噬时她却身在海外。“如果火灾没有在2025年1月爆发，我认为尼蒂亚·拉曼或其他任何人都不回跑去挑战她，”前市议员兼县监督员泽夫·亚罗斯拉夫斯基（Zev Yaroslavsky）认为。
The biggest factor driving Ms Raman’s win was her opponent’s unpopularity. Nearly two-thirds of Angelenos polled the week before the election viewed Ms Bass unfavourably. The mayor was never able to make up for her cardinal sin: being abroad when fires incinerated Pacific Palisades. “If the fire hadn’t erupted in January of 2025 I don’t think Nithya Raman or anyone else would have run against her,” reckons Zev Yaroslavsky, a former city-council member and county supervisor.
他补充说，这是一个“挂在她脖子上的石磨”。在6月初初选后数周，她对拉丁裔社区博伊尔高地（Boyle Heights）一座仓库火灾的处理方式也招致了批评。早期计票结果显示，包括博伊尔高在内的该市拉丁裔重镇的选民，在大火发生后的几个月里倒戈投向了拉曼女士。
It was a “stone around her neck”, he adds. Her handling of a warehouse fire in Boyle Heights, a Latino neighbourhood, weeks after the primary election in June also drew criticism. Early returns suggest that voters in heavily Latino areas of the city, including Boyle Heights, defected to Ms Raman in the months following the blaze.
饱受火灾之苦的选民对政府在应对无家可归问题和糟糕公共服务方面的表现也感到幻灭。在2022年的市长竞选中，58岁的政府事务从业人员罗兰多·奎瓦斯（Rolando Cuevas）投票给了里克·卡鲁索（Rick Caruso），这位亿万富翁开发商由共和党转为民主党，其竞选聚焦于犯罪和生活质量问题。今年他转向左翼，选择了拉曼女士。
Voters reeling from the fires were disillusioned by their government’s response to homelessness and poor public services, too. In the 2022 mayoral race Rolando Cuevas, a 58-year-old in government affairs, voted for Rick Caruso, a billionaire developer and Republican-turned-Democrat, whose campaign focused on crime and quality of life issues. This year he veered left and picked Ms Raman.
“我们只是需要在洛杉矶有新想法，”他说，“这座城市的一切都出了问题。”在拉曼女士的派对上，他遇到了年轻的邻居，他称他们为“核心DSA成员”。“我们曾经是截然相反的人，但现在我们站在同一边了！”他告诉他们。
“We just need new ideas in LA,” he says. “Everything is wrong in the city.”At Ms Raman’s party he ran into his young neighbours, whom he called “hard-core DSA”. “We were opposites but now we’re on the same side!” he told them.
拉曼女士将于下个月宣誓就职。洛杉矶市民能期待什么呢？尽管她是美国民主社会主义者组织洛杉矶分会的成员，但她与该组织的关系一直较为波折。她比起思想家更像是个政策专家，在市议会多年的经历让她熟悉了市政政府的因循守旧。她提出了诸如扩大公共资助托儿服务等宏大构想。然而，她眼前的计划更倾向于渐进式的发展，例如加快新托儿中心、住房以及电影拍摄的审批流程。
Ms Raman will be sworn into office next month. What can Angelenos expect? Though she is a member of the DSA’s LA chapter, her relationship with the organisation has been rocky. She is more of a wonk than an ideologue and years on city council have familiarised her with the torpid nature of municipal government. She gestures at big ideas, such as expanding publicly funded child care. Yet her immediate plans favour incremental progress, such as speeding up the permitting process for new day-care centres—as well as for housing and film shoots.
至少在最初，她必须优先处理不断增加的问题。臃肿的预算和巨额责任赔偿导致了结构性赤字；该市更换一盏路灯平均需要一年的时间；太平洋帕利塞兹目前也正处于重建之中。
Initially, at least, she will have to triage mounting problems. A bloated budget and massive liability settlements have led to structural deficits; it can take a year, on average, for the city to replace a streetlight; and Pacific Palisades is in the midst of rebuilding.
拉曼女士面临的最大考验将是为2028年奥运会做准备。天使之城希望其在世界聚光灯下的表现能更像巴黎2024年的辉煌，而不是2004年的雅典，当时奥运会成本高昂，甚至引发了希腊债务危机。洛杉矶有着成功的记录。上一次它主办奥运会是在1984年，它成为了几十年来第一个实现盈利的主办城市。然而，与20世纪80年代不同的是，如果奥运会私营非营利组委会LA28未能实现盈利，洛杉矶纳税人将承担任何超支费用。
Ms Raman’s biggest trial will be readying Los Angeles for the 2028 Olympics. The City of Angels hopes its turn in the global spotlight will be more like Paris’s 2024 triumph than Athens in 2004, when the Games were so costly that they helped trigger the Greek debt crisis. Los Angeles has a record of success. The last time it hosted the Games, in 1984, it became the first host city in decades to turn a profit. Unlike in the 1980s, however, Los Angeles taxpayers are on the hook for any cost overruns should LA28, the Games’ private non-profit organising committee, fail to make money.
除了赛事本身，地方领导人经常利用奥运会来加速大型基础设施项目。洛杉矶正在竞相修建一条耗资100亿美元的地铁延伸线。旨在通过“捷运系统”（一种无人驾驶的电动列车系统）方便公众前往机场的尝试，则一直受到代价高昂的延误困扰。
Outside of the competition, local leaders often use the Olympics to hasten big infrastructure projects. Los Angeles is racing to build a $10bn subway expansion. An attempt to ease public transit to the airport with a “people mover”—a driverless electric-train system—has been plagued by costly delays.
尽管对手是一名民主党人，但拉曼女士将洛杉矶的结果与全国中期选举中民主党战胜共和党联系在了一起。“全美各地的选民都在要求变革，”她对支持者说，“他们对破碎的现状以及一次又一次让他们失望的政客感到愤怒。”许诺自己不会成为那种毫无作为的建制派人士是很容易的。现在她必须证明这一点。
Despite running against a Democrat, Ms Raman tied the result in Los Angeles to Democrats’ success against Republicans in midterm elections around the country. “All across America voters demanded change,” she told her supporters. “They are angry about a broken status quo and the politicians who failed them over and over again.”It’s easy enough to promise that she won’t be one of those do-nothing establishment types. Now she has to prove it.