Los Angeles City Council District 4, currently represented by Nithya Raman, is a very different place than the district in which she was elected four years ago. A 2021 redistricting plan removed renter-dominated areas such as Park LaBrea and Mid-City and added the San Fernando Valley community of Encino, along with part of Reseda and Studio City.
It’s not a good fit for Raman, an urban planner who unseated incumbent Council member David Ryu with her victory in 2020. Raman, a former tenants’ rights activist and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, campaigned in 2020 on a platform of rent forgiveness and proudly featured the endorsement and backing of the DSA’s L.A. chapter. “Our stance will always be: abolish the police,” the group wrote on Twitter in 2020.
Raman recently voted against a pay raise for police, but voted for a massive pay raise for city workers, citing the cost of living.
The dissatisfaction with Raman’s performance in the job is evident in the list of endorsements for her leading challenger, deputy city attorney Ethan Weaver.
Weaver has the endorsement of law enforcement and firefighters’ unions, labor unions, LGBTQ organizations and business groups. He’s endorsed by the political action committees of the Los Angeles County Business Federation (BizFed), the L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and the Valley Industry and Commerce Association.
Weaver spent five years as a neighborhood prosecutor and says he witnessed a change from a cooperative relationship with City Hall staff after Raman took office. “Problems were ignored if they didn’t advance activists’ ideology,” he told our editorial board. “Running a city is not an ideological job. I don’t have room for ideology, only reality.”
Asked about the rising costs of LADWP and trash services in the city as environmental mandates are implemented, Weaver noted that “a lot of environmental ideas disproportionately harm poor and working class” families. “Rates are too high,” he said, and city officials need to keep ratepayers in mind.
On the issue of homelessness, Weaver said he would press for a phased withdrawal from the bloated and unaccountable Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority and invest in policies aimed at making Los Angeles “cleaner and safer.”
Asked if he supports higher taxes in the city or county for homelessness-related spending, Weaver answered flatly, “I do not.”
The L.A. City Council would benefit from more reality and less ideology. Ethan Weaver has our endorsement.
