Nithya Raman Groaned at Over Graham Platner Campaign Firm

Los Angeles mayoral candidate Nithya Raman drew loud groans and hisses Wednesday night as she tried to explain why her campaign hired Fight Agency, the progressive consulting shop that worked on Graham Platner’s U.S. Senate campaign in Maine.

And it wasn’t just Republicans raising questions about the firm.

Several hundred members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have signed a letter urging candidates and elected officials to boycott Fight Agency and consultant Morris Katz over their work for Platner.

Raman is herself a member of DSA’s Los Angeles chapter.

Asked during the debate whether hiring the firm was really the best judgment call, Raman first pointed somewhere else.

“Well, I did hire an advertising agency to make my paid ads, who also worked with Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s successful campaign,” she said.

That didn’t help.

The audience of several hundred responded with groans and hisses.

Raman pressed ahead, noting that Fight Agency had worked on “many, many other successful campaigns,” before insisting she needed a strong team to beat Democratic Mayor Karen Bass in November.

“Here’s what I do want to say, that I do want to win this race,” Raman said. “I’ve retained most of my good campaign staff … we’ve made sure to invest in our team, and I hope that we can win this seat, and I’m going to work as hard as I can to win.”

The moderator tried again.

“Did you weigh the pros and cons of being associated with Graham Platner’s campaign?”

“Absolutely. But we wanted to make sure that we were hiring good people to make our ads,” Raman replied.

Then came the stumble.

“We have to get talent to be able to run our team,” she said. “We we we we weighed the issues.”

Platner won Maine’s Democratic Senate primary before abandoning the race in July after sexual-misconduct allegations engulfed his campaign. He has denied the allegations.

His candidacy had already been battered by inflammatory past comments and controversy over a chest tattoo that critics said resembled a Nazi symbol.

Fight Agency also helped engineer Mamdani’s successful New York City mayoral campaign, giving Raman an obvious reason to want its political firepower.

But the Platner baggage followed the firm west.

Raman then tried to turn the judgment question back on Bass, attacking the mayor over an adviser who also performed crisis-communications work for a company facing scrutiny over a major Los Angeles warehouse fire.

“That, to me, is a real, real, real problem,” Raman said.

Bass agreed the arrangement “should not have happened” — then pointed out the obvious pivot.

“However, I don’t know what the heck that has to do with the question that you asked her,” Bass said.

More over at Fox News:

Socialist LA mayoral candidate Nithya Raman drew loud groans and hisses from a crowd of Democrats after fumbling her explanation for hiring the same political consulting firm that ran disgraced Senate candidate Graham Platner’s campaign — who dropped out over sexual misconduct… pic.twitter.com/VlbGdHo1YX

— Fox News Politics (@foxnewspolitics) August 21, 2026