Spencer Pratt’s early second-place cushion in the Los Angeles mayoral primary is shrinking with every new batch of late-arriving ballots. While he still leads Nithya Raman by tens of thousands of votes, her surge in the latest tabulation shows where the momentum lies. In California’s jungle primary, that matters more than one good election night headline.
The same slow, law-driven counting process that state officials defend as careful and inclusive is fueling a national firestorm. Donald Trump is calling the extended tally “BIG cheating,” claiming Democrats are trying to steal both the governor’s race and the L.A. mayoral runoff slot from right-leaning candidates, while the Justice Department quietly reviews the chaos. Between Gavin Newsom’s video defenses and Republican cries of fraud, every update from county registrars now lands like a shockwave, leaving both campaigns — and the country — bracing for an outcome that could arrive weeks too late to calm anyone.
