Nithya Raman wants to be mayor of Los Angeles. But she won’t tell voters which parts of the Democratic Socialists of America’s agenda she supports.

That’s not just evasive. It’s contemptuous of Los Angeles voters, who have every right to know what someone asking to run their city intends to do with it.

The DSA has already told voters what it expects of her.

Raman isn’t some Democrat who happened to pick up an endorsement from an organization she barely knows. She is a member of DSA-LA. The organization helped elect her to the City Council in 2020, backed her reelection in 2024 and this month endorsed her campaign for mayor.

The DSA is pretty clear about what comes with that endorsement. “To secure an endorsement and maintain a relationship after endorsement,” its Democratic Socialist Program says, candidates seeking DSA-LA support are expected to “commit to our Program.”

That’s not an accusation from Raman’s opponents. That’s the DSA describing its own rules.

And its endorsement isn’t some ceremonial pat on the back. Before choosing a candidate in this year’s mayoral race, DSA-LA promised it would “throw the full weight of our power” behind whoever received its endorsement.

They chose Nithya Raman.

So what does the DSA expect its endorsed candidates to commit to? Start with private property.

DSA-LA calls for government to “expropriate privately owned housing” and advocates the “creative use of eminent domain” to move housing out of private ownership. It supports universal rent control, vacancy taxes and automatic rent freezes and eviction moratoriums during declared emergencies.

Then there’s public safety: The DSA program calls for reducing the number of sworn officers and replacing sworn personnel with civilians for traffic enforcement and mental-health interventions. It supports redirecting police funding elsewhere, decriminalizing drug use and funding safe-injection sites.

DSA-LA also wants city-owned businesses in industries including groceries, restaurants and internet service, fare-free public transportation and expanded noncitizen voting in local elections.

These aren’t warnings about what socialists might someday try to do; they’re policies DSA-LA has put in writing.

Does that mean Raman agrees with every word? Not necessarily.

That’s why the California Post asked her.

The Post sent Raman’s campaign 16 straightforward questions drawn from the DSA agenda. Does she support using eminent domain to move privately owned housing into public or community ownership? Reducing the number of sworn police officers? Decriminalizing drug use? Noncitizen voting? City-owned businesses?

Sixteen questions. Her campaign answered none of them.

We know Raman can separate herself from the DSA when she wants to. After the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack, she blasted a DSA-LA statement that she said “failed to reckon with the horrors committed by Hamas” and was “unacceptably devoid of empathy for communities in Israel.”

DSA-LA later censured her after she accepted an endorsement from Democrats for Israel-Los Angeles, but kept backing her.

So Raman knows how to draw a line.

Raman herself acknowledged earlier this year that while she shares DSA’s emphasis on the working class, “I don’t always agree with my allies on how to accomplish our goals.”

Maybe so. Then tell voters where.

Instead, when DSA-LA endorsed her this month, Raman welcomed it. She said she was “proud that DSA-LA is joining our broad coalition.”

Nobody forced Raman to join the DSA. Nobody forced her to seek its endorsements. And nobody forced her to accept the volunteers and political muscle that come with them.

If Raman wants voters to separate her agenda from the DSA’s, the burden is on her to tell them where she parts company.

Los Angeles voters deserve to know what someone asking to be their next mayor intends to do with their city. The California Post gave Raman 16 chances to tell them.

She refused every one.

That isn’t just evasiveness. It’s contempt for the voters whose trust she is asking for.

Jon Fleischman, a longtime strategist in California politics, writes at SoDoesItMatter.com

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