On Tuesday, as counting in Los Angeles’s high-profile mayoral race got underway, The LA Times captured the quiet optimism in the speech of Indian-American Nithya Raman. Raman, a Democrat, was contesting the high-stakes race against incumbent Karen Bass, also a Democrat, and the newspaper described her as jubilant.“I’m hopeful. I’m very hopeful,” Raman told a raucous crowd fuelled by tequila and chicken tenders, according to the report. “I’m also really superstitious. So we’re all just going to be cool, OK? Very cool.”By Wednesday, as counting continued, the 45-year-old Thrissur-born Raman had widened her lead over Bass, securing 51.67 per cent of the votes counted against the incumbent’s 48.33 per cent. However, with about 67 per cent of the expected vote counted, the race remained too close to call. Her victory, when sealed, will make her LA’s first mayor of South Asian descent.For Raman, this was a significant milestone in a journey that began in Kerala, went through Delhi and ended in the heart of LA politics. For her extended family back in Keralam, it is a moment of immense pride.Must Read | Decoding the 2026 US midterms verdict: Why Delhi must rediscover and engage with the many AmericasBorn in 1981 in Thrissur, Keralam, Raman briefly lived on Ramasamy Kovil Street in East Fort, Thiruvananthapuram, where her father, Venkitaraman, worked at KELTRON, a state-run public enterprise, and her mother, Sudha Kechery, worked with India Overseas Bank. A few years later, when her father flew to the US for higher studies, the family moved back to Thrissur, where she attended kindergarten.“Thrissur is her mother Sudha’s hometown,” Prof Devanarayanan, a close relative in Thrissur, told The Indian Express. “The family migrated to the US when Nithya was in Class I. She’s still in touch with us and came down for a family event in 2019. She can follow Malayalam.”According to the family, Raman lived with them in an agraharam – a traditional South Indian residential neighbourhood meant for Brahmin families – in Thiruvananthapuram in the early 1980s, before her father moved to the US.Story continues below this adVidhya Shankar, a cousin, said: “It was an academic ambition, rather than career growth, that transplanted R Venkataraman to the US. Nithya’s younger brother Akash, who works in the financial sector, is 15 years her junior”.Must Read | US Midterm Elections 2026 Live Updates: Democrats vow probes into Trump’s ‘tentacles of corruption’Back in Thrissur, her relatives are ecstatic. “It’s a matter of pride that Los Angeles will have a mayor who can follow our language,” Devanarayanan said. “We spoke to Sudha on Thursday after hearing the news. She told us to wait until the final results are out. But they understand our excitement.”The excitement is palpable among relatives in Thiruvananthapuram too. Shankar said family members in the US actively helped with Raman’s campaign. “The family back in Kerala has been constantly getting videos and photos of the election mood in Los Angeles,” she said. “My sister and her family from Indianapolis were part of the campaign. Nithya’s uncle and his family too joined from Ohio.”In a post on X, Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor hailed it as the victory of “a daughter of Thiruvananthapuram”.Story continues below this ad“And with @ZohranKMamdani in New York, America’s two biggest cities will be run by people of Indian origin! I’m sure they will do a far better job than their counterparts back in India, who are reduced to powerlessness by a British-era system that disperses authority and budgets, leaving Mayors here without any real means to govern their cities effectively,” he said in a post on X.